Diversity in Writers: Will the Real Jeeves Please Stand?

The article below is from my Camera Lucida blog posted on December 7, 2005 (twelve years ago).

Then, I started to examine what multiculturalism meant to non-White Canadians (Americans, British etc.) and my views have remained exactly the same today as shows my article a couple of days ago Thanksgiving.

Note: The links to the Amazon.com book lists are not current. Ishiguro, Smith and Rushdie are prolific and have produced books through 2018, and they continue to write in the dystopian style they adopted early in their careers. I recommend changing the Amazon.com search by "publication date" to see their current activities, and the rave reviews all round, including:

- Kazuo Ishiguro's The Buried Giant, published in 2015:

Ishiguro has created a fantastical alternate reality in which, in spite of the extremity of its setting and because of its integrity and emotional truth, you believe unhesitatingly. - The Financial Times, February 2015

- Salman Rushdie's 2017 The Golden House, published in 2017:

The Golden House” has been billed by its publisher as Rushdie’s return to realism. Yet the New York City on offer is so gilded and remote that the novel reads like what one’s impressions would be if all one knew of it came from back issues of Vanity Fair magazine. - The New York Times, September 2017

- Zadie Smith's Feel Free:

“…You will have to take liberties, you will have to feel free to write as you like…even if it is irresponsible. - Zadiesmith.com

(Note: Rather than use "truth" as the target, Smith, like all dislocated people, who gravitate towards dystopia - and violence - choses "irresponsible" instead. She knows words and her word choice is not an error.)

All have won various prizes and perhaps the most prestigious is Ishiguro's Nobel Prize for Literature in 2017:

Kazuo Ishiguro
The Nobel Prize in Literature 2017
[...]
Prize motivation: "who, in novels of great emotional force, has uncovered the abyss beneath our illusory sense of connection with the world." - The Nobel Prize in Literature 2017

Jeeves of course died in 1975 (born in 1881), and his ghost did not write the 2018 listed books. Rather, they are contemporary reprints which probably do not do the aesthetic credit that the older versions did to his craft.

First edition
Author: P. G. Wodehouse
Publisher: George Newnes
Publication date: May 1919 [Source]

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Diversity in Writers: Will the Real Jeeves Please Stand?

England has witnessed several years of non-English authors who keep winning literary prizes, or just literary acclaim. Zadie Smith was recently in the headlines, Salman Rushdie has managed to outlive his fatwa, and another less famous but prolific writer, Kazuo Ishiguro, has written yet another book from those fair British Isles.
I’ve read books by all three, even tried more than one of each. And all leave me less than enthralled, slightly confused, and struck by a lack of authenticity. I find their characters to be caricatures. Both Rushdie and Smith go for hyperbole, while Ishiguro goes for exactly the opposite.

I’m beginning to wonder if non-British writers, however much they were born on the Island, can really capture the spirit of the land.

“Remains of the Day” by Ishiguro has a gloomy, undecipherable, remorseful butler try to recapture something of what he’s lost during all those years of selfless service. Actually, I recant my observation about Ishiguro’s understatement. What could be more of a hyperbole than this?

Then there is P.G. Wodehouse, with the inimitable Jeeves. His adroit butler who really always does save the day, after a lot of scampers and near-disasters along the way. And he does get to have his day at the sea-side also, and quite frequently.

I think Wodehouse captured his character with affection as a butler who certainly is not going to be bossed around by any Lord! No remains for him to collect.

Sometimes I wonder; if you don’t have your full emotions invested in a place, how can you write positive things about it? Like Rushdie, Smith and Ishiguro, who seem to deny a possibility for a future in their books, and press on with their circular exaggerations trying to find meanings for themselves.

Ishiguro’s 2001 book “When we were orphans” is about an Englishman who mysteriously lost his parents as a young boy in Shanghai. He returns as a professional detective to solve that ultimate mystery. It reminds me of these writers, trying to find clues about their past by digging into words.

Ishiguro’s latest book forfeited the unapproachable Far East, and his ancestral home, for something even more alien. It seems like he’s completely given up on ‘his’ England. “Never let me go” is about a Utopia (or a dystopia) on cloning. No more real people, real places or real stories for Ishiguro in the advent of the 21st century.

Why doesn’t this progression of his thoughts and stories not surprise me?

Quote from an interview with Ishiguro on "When we were Orphans":

There's a certain kind of branded, packaged atmosphere of Shanghai: this exotic, mysterious, decadent place. The same in Remains of the Day. It was a case of manipulating certain stereotypical images of a certain kind of classical England. Butlers and tea and scones: it's not really about describing a world that you know well and firsthand. It's about describing stereotypes that exist in people's heads all around the world and manipulating them engagingly.

More Holiday Cheer

James Perloff with "Hell's Mirror: Global Empire of the Illuminati Builders"

James Perloff writes at Amazon.com about a recently released book: Hell's Mirror: Global Empire of the Illuminati Builders by Texe Marrs:

With his usual outstanding research skills, Texe Marrs makes the case that the architecture for a future satanic kingdom has long been under construction here on Earth. Many of the pagan idols that were torn down as Christianity advanced are now being restored. Although the book discusses some structures I was familiar with, such as the Georgia Guidestones and the Masonic layout of Washington, DC, it includes information about them that I had not heard before, such as the blood, possibly sacrificial, that is on top of the Guidestones. The book includes many rare photographs of Masonic, Kabbalistic and satanic buildings and monuments I had previously been unaware of. The hidden meanings of various occult symbols are explained in this book. A welcome addition to any truth-seeker’s library.

Texe Marrs has this brief biography on the Amazon.com page:

Texe Marrs is author of over 50 books, including the Conspiracy of the Six-Pointed Star: Eye-Opening Revelations and Forbidden Knowledge About Israel, the Jews, Zionism, and the Rothschilds, #1 bestseller Dark Secrets of the New Age and Codex Magica: Secret Signs, Mysterious Symbols, and Hidden Codes of the Illuminati. A retired career U.S. Air Force officer, he has taught at the University of Texas at Austin and has appeared on radio and TV talk shows across America.

Here is Texe Marrs' website.

And James Perloff's website and twitter page.

Ishiguro photographed in an English countryside.
[Photo credit: Andrew Testa]

Here is a tweeter who writes:

[R]umour has it that @SalmanRushdie was hiding post fatwa in this house in Chipping Campden in Gloucestershire.

and a tweet reply:

@wodekszemberg @SalmanRushdie is there supposed to be any significance in this being next to a graveyard?

Ishiguro has a daughter Naomi with his English wife. Here is photo of her with a school friend from 2008.

As luck would have it, the mansion in front of which Ishiguro is posing is in Camden. So we can conclude that Ishiguro lived in Camden, and is now a Londoner according to his Wikipedia entry.

That is a strange coincidence that he lived n the same region in England as where Rushdie was rumored to have stayed during his fatwa. Or maybe not. Possibly, Ishiguro arranged Rushdie's secret accommodations.
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Here is more on the location of the photograph in the beautiful Cotswalds made to look like some abandoned barren land:

Kazuo Ishiguro, a novelist, in Chipping Campden, England, Jan. 26, 2015. Ishiguro’s new novel, “The Buried Giant,” is the riskiest and most ambitious venture of his celebrated career, a return to his hallmark themes of memory and loss, set in a ogre- and pixie-populated ancient England. “I don’t know what’s going to happen,” Ishiguro said. “Will readers follow me into this?” (Andrew Testa/The New York Times) - XNYT109

Below, I have posted and artcle I wrote at Camera Lucida in 2005 (!) where I clearly understood the perils of "diversity:" Diversity in Writers

Update (December 22, 2016) on Zadie Smith and Kazuo Ishiguro:
Smith continues with her theme of race/multi-race/mixed-race/ and some sociopolitical commentary about racial divides and biases often subtly elevating the "black" side of her own mixed-race "heritage." Here latest book is Swingtime which I have reviewed and will post soon.

Ishiguro abandoned the silent Butler narrator of a very real British household a while ago and started to write science fiction, not C.S. Lewis' Christian-based allegories, nor Tolkien's adventure sagas (also religious allegories) but dystopia fantasies of the world, or lives, falling apart. Although should add that The Butler had this creepy ghost-like aura. Ishiguro's latests, The Buried Giant:

Sometimes savage, often intensely moving, Kazuo Ishiguro’s first novel in a decade is about lost memories, love, revenge and war. [Source]

As wrote (full post below):

[If] you don’t have your full emotions invested in a place, how can you write positive things about it? Like Rushdie, Smith and Ishiguro, who seem to deny a possibility for a future in their books, and press on with their circular exaggerations trying to find meanings for themselves.

Non-allegorical, dystopian science fiction fits that creative void.
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Wednesday, December 07, 2005
Diversity in Writers
Will the Real Jeeves Please Stand?

England has witnessed several years of non-English authors who keep winning literary prizes, or just literary acclaim. Zadie Smith was recently in the headlines, Salman Rushdie has managed to outlive his fatwa, and another less famous but prolific writer, Kazuo Ishiguro, has written yet another book from those fair British Isles.

I’ve read books by all three, even tried more than one of each. And all leave me less than enthralled, slightly confused, and struck by a lack of authenticity. I find their characters to be caricatures. Both Rushdie and Smith go for hyperbole, while Ishiguro goes for exactly the opposite.

I’m beginning to wonder if non-British writers, however much they were born on the Island, can really capture the spirit of the land.

“Remains of the Day” by Ishiguro has a gloomy, undecipherable, remorseful butler try to recapture something of what he’s lost during all those years of selfless service. Actually, I recant my observation about Ishiguro’s understatement. What could be more of a hyperbole than this?

Then there is P.G. Wodehouse, with the inimitable Jeeves. His adroit butler who really always does save the day, after a lot of scampers and near-disasters along the way. And he does get to have his day at the sea-side also, and quite frequently.

I think Wodehouse captured his character with affection as a butler who certainly is not going to be bossed around by any Lord! No remains for him to collect.

Sometimes I wonder; if you don’t have your full emotions invested in a place, how can you write positive things about it? Like Rushdie, Smith and Ishiguro, who seem to deny a possibility for a future in their books, and press on with their circular exaggerations trying to find meanings for themselves.

Ishiguro’s 2001 book “When we were orphans” is about an Englishman who mysteriously lost his parents as a young boy in Shanghai. He returns as a professional detective to solve that ultimate mystery. It reminds me of these writers, trying to find clues about their past by digging into words.

Ishiguro’s latest book forfeited the unapproachable Far East, and his ancestral home, for something even more alien. It seems like he’s completely given up on ‘his’ England. “Never let me go” is about a Utopia (or a dystopia) on cloning. No more real people, real places or real stories for Ishiguro in the advent of the 21st century.

Why doesn’t this progression of his thoughts and stories not surprise me?

Quote from an interview with Ishiguro on "When we were Orphans":

There's a certain kind of branded, packaged atmosphere of Shanghai: this exotic, mysterious, decadent place. The same in Remains of the Day. It was a case of manipulating certain stereotypical images of a certain kind of classical England. Butlers and tea and scones: it's not really about describing a world that you know well and firsthand. It's about describing stereotypes that exist in people's heads all around the world and manipulating them engagingly.

Review of "Thanksgiving: The Holiday at the Heart of the American Experience"

Master of the Munich Golden Legend, 1400-1460
The Tower of Babel
Folio 17v from the Bedford Book of Hours.
Illumination (10 in × 7 in), 1415-1430

Genesis 11:1-9
1 And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech.
2 And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there.
3 And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them throughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for morter.
4 And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.
5 And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded.
6 And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.
7 Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.
8 So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city.
9 Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.

It is fascinating that Melanie Kirkpatrick should start her new book Thanksgiving: The Holiday at the Heart of the American Experience with the chapter headed Newcomers. She writes in the chapter of her visit to Queens, New York to give a presentation on Thanksgiving to sixteen-year-old new immigrants in a public high school especially constructed for "new comers" and aptly called Newcomers High. She could have at least called it "New Americans."

She writes, as though it is a good thing: "If the Tower of Babel had a contemporary earthly home it would be located in the corridors of Newcomers High." Yet this biblical tower, which was intended to reach God, was never completed since he "confound[ed] their language, that they may not understand one another's speech" and thus couldn't communicate with each other. Their lofty and arrogant goal collapsed.

But what is fascinating about Kirkpatrick's account is not this usual glorification of multiculturalism, which all westerners are now doing, but how she rewrites the history of Thanksgiving to fit this multicultural ethos.

Thanksgiving dinner was created out of a specific historical context. The foods describe the original historical event and thus a specific time in American history. Re-structuring the menu changes this history and makes Thanksgiving something else.

Kirkpatrick recounts their Thanksgiving meals students described to her:

There would be non-traditional food on the menu too as their families initiated their own Thanksgiving food traditions by incorporating favorite home-country dishes into the classic American meal.

If Kirkpatrick wants immigrants to contribute their thanks with their own particular histories and backgrounds, then she should advocate for a different holiday: Multicultural Thanks to America perhaps. Changing the foods changes the holiday. Kirkpatrick is not directly (or consciously) advocating for a new Thanksgiving narrative, but in her desire to be "inclusive" she is boldly rewriting American history. A less generous critique would be (given that she is a seasoned researcher and historian) that she is provoding a false version of American history to fit her ideology of inclusiveness.

The rest of the book offers nothing new or no new insights. There is the mandatory chapter on the "tragedy" of the Native Americans, who have wrung the sympathy tears out of contemporary Americans for decades, the same way that blacks have picked at the wounds of slavery even when they now have been infinitely compensated by the collective guilty conscious of whites. In an interesting but long chapter on turkeys, Kirkpatrick appears to refute the historical presence of the bird on Americans' Thanksgiving dinner tables by weaving in substitutes (oysters, geese chicken) but finishes off the chapter by acknowledging the importance of the bird in celebrating the holiday.

She also writes of the generosity of Americans in holding out their hands to the poor. Churches and communities provide food and dinners for the poor to celebrate the holiday, with some collecting their turkey from food banks, and other sitting together at communal tables for a Thanksgiving meal in church basements. Thanksgiving, in the peculiar history of American christianity, is a quintessentially American Christian holiday, coming close to Christmas and Easter. She gives no account of parallel charitable outreaches by those multi-faith, multi-cultural Thanksgiving co-celebrants she writes about.

What could have been an interesting re-counting of the American Thanksgiving story becomes tarnished by its ode to multiculturalism and its attempt to make Thanksgiving, inacurately, into a multicultural event. It might be excusable if Thanksgiving: The Holiday at the Heart of the American Experience were an innocent attempt at inclusveness. But its agenda is bigger than a generous inclusion of all "Americans" and becomes a subtle movement toward changing America instead.