Nocturnes, hope and ‘that croony nostalgia music’

Authors: Teo, Y.

Pages: 170-187

DOI: 10.7765/9781526157546.00016

Abstract:

In his chapter on Nocturnes, Ishiguro’s only collection of short fiction, Yugin Teo delicately unthreads the stories’ engagement with the feeling of nostalgia which plays such a prominent role in Ishiguro’s fictions. Teo thinks through this ‘longing for a better world’ as it manifests in three ways: home and the desire to return to innocence; the utopian spaces facilitated by shared reminiscence; and the form of the short story itself as a medium through which to convey the fleeting nature of nostalgic hope. Developing from insights in his own important monograph Kazuo Ishiguro and Memory (2014) Teo thinks through the complex relationships and tensions which nostalgia presupposes between longings for the past and hopes for the future; as he remarks, the ‘collection of stories is ultimately about dreams and dreamers, and the difficulties of holding on to one’s dreams and initial optimism for the future’. Questions also arise which have implications for Ishiguro’s works more broadly, to do with regret, whether or not characters experience epiphanies (the traditional heart of the short story) from which they learn, somehow, to negotiate their pasts and alter their futures. However, as Teo points out, there remains a characteristic ambiguity in the stories, and one can never be sure whether nostalgia enables or hinders elusive happiness.

https://eprints.bournemouth.ac.uk/38361/

Source: Scopus

Nocturnes, hope, and ‘that croony nostalgia music’

Authors: Teo, Y.

Editors: Shaw, K. and Sloane, P.

Publisher: Manchester University Press

Place of Publication: Manchester

ISBN: 978-1-5261-5753-9

Abstract:

Ishiguro’s Nocturnes (2009) has to some extent been neglected in scholarly examinations of his oeuvre, due to the lack of sustained exploration of the psychological and emotional arcs of his characters in contrast to his novels (Wong 2019). This chapter examines Ishiguro’s unique exploration of nostalgia through the five stories, and his meditations on fleeting utopian moments in the vignettes featured in the collection.

Ishiguro’s novels, The Unconsoled and When We Were Orphans in particular, depict intense nostalgic moments that complicate the boundaries between individual history and the imagination. This childhood longing for a better world carries with it a utopian impulse, one that is in further evidence within Nocturnes. Scenes of nostalgia often lead to ‘imaginary utopian spaces’ (Waugh 2011) in his novels, however he structures his examination of these themes differently in the collection. Ishiguro employs the musical forms and themes from jazz standards in the Great American Songbook in exploring the complicated relationship between the fleeting quality of nostalgia, the persistence of memory and loss, and the haunting nature of melancholia.

While a sense of hope exists in the utopian spaces generated in his novels, Ishiguro’s meditations in Nocturnes utilise the short story form as constitutive of a critical form of nostalgia, one that acknowledges the different ways of remembering the past as well as the complications that accompany a desire to cling on to cherished memories. Despite the observed limitations of the short story form to his writing style, Ishiguro demonstrates in Nocturnes both the transformative potential of nostalgia to overcome loss, and its equally formidable efficacy in keeping an individual ensnared in the past. In this collection of stories, the theme of music is utilised as a way of reinscribing the utopian spaces and to introduce a unique meditation on nostalgia’s power.

https://eprints.bournemouth.ac.uk/38361/

https://manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781526157539/

Source: Manual

Nocturnes, hope, and ‘that croony nostalgia music’

Authors: Teo, Y.

Editors: Shaw, K. and Sloane, P.

Publisher: Manchester University Press

Place of Publication: Manchester

ISBN: 9781526157539

https://eprints.bournemouth.ac.uk/38361/

https://manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781526157539/

Source: BURO EPrints