The Return of the Amazing Dr. Funkenstein and his Psychedelic Paraphernalia

Apparently the language of consciousness is poetry, at least to Virginia Woolf. That's what I liked about Mrs. Dalloway over Thinks--in the They Live-type fight scene between Virginia Woolf and David Lodge, Virginia Woolf has won (imagine getting your ass handed to you by a dead English woman)--because Mrs. Dalloway captures consciousness better than Thinks.

Thinks relies on the parlor trick of making the two different consciousnesses of the book into two separate writing methods. (Of course they're different--they're written in two separate ways!) But what would he do to represent a third person? And a fourth? Or the twenty-seven-billion people who are in Dalloway?

No, Woolf's got the idea. She creates a common language for consciousness to speak in, that may not be representative of the basic-ness of human thought, but it allows us to understand what is going on--how the nature of thought is the same but the people are different. She may be filtering her characters' consciousness through herself, but, after all, she is creating them. And to those of you naysayers I say- c'mon, are you really afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Day 35-

Still afraid of examining my own consciousness. The thought of writing my thoughts down in this blog terrifies me. It's as if by examining my head I'll ruin it. Like sticking a q-tip too far into your ear and popping your ear canal--there's gotta be irreparable damage that can be done by trying to psychoanalyze myself. (Although I do play a doctor on TV.) But I should probably get over it. (After all, I have to in order to pass this course.)

This is my book review of Kazuo Ishiguro's The Unconsoled. It's appearing in The California Literary Review at the time the book was first released, 1995/6.

Here's a sample review from CLR, about Haruki Murakami's After Dark.

Now enjoy my review. (Or else!)

The Unconsoled by Kazuo Ishiguro

The Unconsoled
by Kazuo Ishiguro
Vintage, 535 pp.

CONSOLE ME

Our narrator and protagonist, known only to us as Ryder, arrives at his hotel for the start of the most important concert tour of his career and finds no one, not even the staff, there to greet him. The rest of Ryder's stay is just as anticlimactic and comical.

Kazuo Ishiguro's new book The Unconsoled is set in an indistinct European city and acted out by a man who doesn't always remember where he is and what he's supposed to be doing. The plot tends to meander. Imagine, if you will, a book that is the rambling of a mind going about his business. How does one get through a dense book where not a lot of exciting stuff is happening?

Readers familiar with his Booker Prize-winner The Remains of the Day, will recognize Ishiguro's charming narrative style. (At times it's this alone that make this over-five-hundred-page book readable.) There are paragraphs that are four or five pages long, but Ishiguro makes them interesting enough to an engaged reader. But you're either an Ishiguro fan, or you're not. Be prepared for a literary experiment that is part James Joyce and part Franz Kafka.

Ryder's wild ride is both (or neither) psychological realism and absurd fantasy. Ishiguro seamlessly blends together the zaniness of a madman and the mundane qualities of perusing the Tuesday newspaper. The result is a study of consciousness. What type of consciousness in particular, however, is hard to tell. What condition is the brain that's telling us this tale? Is Ryder an amnesiac? Suffering from multiple personalities? An insomniac zombie? Or just an "absent-minded professor" type? Just how we are supposed to read this, Ishiguro never clues us in on.

The landscape Ishiguro paints is dreamlike and surreal. To borrow a term from Freud, there's a lot of condensation going on. We're in a small city in Europe that might be in Germany, or Austria, (or Paris for all we know)--a town that Ryder has never been to--but yet we are constantly meeting people from his past in England, including a possible mistress and child.

Ryder is at times confused by what's going on, and at other times a vital part of the confusion. For instance, Ryder does find it strange when Mr. Hoffman, the manger of the hotel, calls him down to the lobby to tell him about the death of Brodsky's dog. But when Hoffman suggests they must get moving along, Ryder leaves for the party in his dressing gown. He then arrives at a fancy dinner party in his night clothes and prepares to give a speech which he thinks of starting "collapsing curtain rails. Poisoned rodents. Misprinted score sheets." Ryder later flashes the guests when he gets up to make this speech and no one seems to mind. There is a logic at work in the events of the book that is never fully defined, but fully consistent.

The Unconsoled doesn't really climax. The story does deliver on it's promises (and Ishiguro on his experiment) but Ryder seems unchanged. That doesn't really bother Ryder--the reader lacks closure. We want Bob Barker to reveal what's behind door number three. Perhaps it is the reader who is unconsoled.

Dear Abby,

I find I am constantly and consistently mistaking my wife for a WWI-Kaiser-issue helmet filled with potato salad. Which would be fine, except when I go to bite her forehead I find she is not as tasty--she hits me! (Do you know how strange it is to be yelled at by a side dish?) Please send help in the form of John Wayne and His Howling Commandos. As per your request, I have included bread for the children for you Bread for the Children drive. (Is whole wheat acceptable? Otherwise I'll have to go buy some Wonder-loaf and mail it to you separately.)

Sincerely,

mango Ketridge throat-wobbler banana fanna gobble goo. Old brown shoe / in which I've lived like a foot / barely daring to breathe or watch movies with Groucho / as they do on streets named Tu Do / where the men wear codpieces and mustaches designed by Fu Manchu (registered trademark).

(Of course this is actually an entry about Oliver Sacks. Wouldn't he say that all humans want to be creative?)

(Tell me you love me.)

Now here's a classy lady! There's something incredibly compelling about reading an autobiography of a person who tells you she's lying to you. (Perhaps I'm just a sucker.) But it's so believable. (Now I definitely sound like a sucker.)

The truth is always stretched. Non-fiction, memory, news media--it might as well always be considered fiction. As part of the human condition, we always reformat the truth to make ourselves look better. It's just that some of us are making art and some of us are pretending to be saints.

In any case, there's no way of empirically knowing "the truth" of any situation. We can find out what facts different stories have in common and compile a version of the truth suitable for us, but we cannot know because there is nothing to know.

Lying its own truth. (To paraphrase what she said) she's just trying to get at the feel of the situations she was in. And the way you feel is always legitimate.