Dear TCL Readers: Going to keep this newsletter on the briefer side, what with it being a holiday week. Earlier this year, it was a great pleasure to be asked to write a companion essay to the Criterion Collection DVD edition of Claude Chabrol’s 1995 masterpiece
The technique of writing one thing while telling the reader something else is indeed fascinating. To the examples above I would Kazuo Ishiguro's "The Remains of the Day", and also "An Artist of the Floating World". The first is narrated by a man who apparently cares only for formality and custom, but actually cares for someone else. The second is narrated by a man who feels guilt for betraying his mentor, and acts this out obliquely by apologising for his (tiny) part in Japan's wartime regime. Brilliant when it's done so well. I have tried to do this in a small way in some of my own writing, but it isn't easy.
The technique of writing one thing while telling the reader something else is indeed fascinating. To the examples above I would Kazuo Ishiguro's "The Remains of the Day", and also "An Artist of the Floating World". The first is narrated by a man who apparently cares only for formality and custom, but actually cares for someone else. The second is narrated by a man who feels guilt for betraying his mentor, and acts this out obliquely by apologising for his (tiny) part in Japan's wartime regime. Brilliant when it's done so well. I have tried to do this in a small way in some of my own writing, but it isn't easy.