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The Dartmouth
March 29, 2024 | Latest Issue
The Dartmouth

BOOKED SOLID: Suffering for their art

Writing in a wistful, melancholy style, Ishiguro uses the pages of his book to demonstrate both the darker aspects of musical devotion and the unexpected joys that music can provide. A love for music, he shows us, can bring people together, transforming the unlikeliest of pairs into friends or confidants. In "Crooner," the first story in the collection, a guitar player in Venice works up the nerve to talk to famous singer Tony Gardner when he spots the celebrity dining in a piazza. The guitarist, Jan, feels drawn to the singer due to black-market records by Gardner helped his mother survive a hard life of single motherhood under Cold War communism. This shared connection fosters a bond between the two men, and Gardner hires his new friend to play guitar as he serenades his wife.

Observing interactions between Gardner and his wife, Jan senses something amiss between the couple. He vows to repair their love with music, just as Gardner's music restored his mother's happiness: "You can count on me tonight, Mr. Gardner I'll make it as good as any orchestra, you just see," Jan said. "And Mrs. Gardner will hear us and who knows? Maybe things will start going fine between you again. Every couple goes through difficult times."

What Jan does not pick up on, however, is the self-inflicted and irreparable nature of the Gardners' marital strife, because in order to be remembered as an old "great," Tony Gardner must reenter the spotlight to revive his celebrity status. To do this, Gardner is convinced he needs a divorce and a younger wife.

Thus, as Ishiguro demonstrates, devotion to music has its darker side. Although Gardner and his wife love one another, Gardner's musical aspirations and his pretensions to greatness demand divorce. Music abets misery, and inevitably the reader wonders if it's really worth it and, if it is worth it, how it can be so? Where does the power music exerts over human beings originate, and how does it grow?

In the title story, "Nocturne," Ishiguro probes these questions further. Stuck in an unsuccessful career, talented saxophonist Steve agrees to plastic surgery, even though the mere thought of cosmetic surgery makes Steve feel phony and shallow. He ultimately agrees, however, because his agent is convinced an improved appearance will help Steve finally take the next step in his musical career.

Despite Steve's great talent, his "dull, loser ugly" looks (as his manager describes him) keep him from true greatness. Thus, surgery seems the obvious solution. At the "swanky hotel" where Steve is sent to recover from his surgery, his room is next to that of Lindy Gardner the soon-to-be-abandoned wife from "Crooner."

Lindy is shallow. She name drops like no other ("I've got the cutest chess set," she tells Steve at one point. "Meg Ryan brought it in for me last week.") and is well acquainted with the art of plastic surgery. She is also profoundly jealous of Steve's talent. When she hears a recording of his music, she is stunned into silence.

The contrast between the talentless, famous Lindy and the gifted, utterly unappreciated Steve speaks to the pain that devotion to music can cause, a pain that Ishiguro grapples with in each of the stories in this volume. At one point, Steve muses that "if there was a figure who epitomized for me everything that was shallow and sickening about the world, it was Lindy Gardner: a person with negligible talent but who's managed all the same to become famous, fought over by TV networks and glossy magazines, who can't get enough of her smiling features."

How true talent can go unnoticed even punished while the talentless succeed is the essential question that plagues each character in Ishiguro's collection of stories. The author uses quiet prose and relatable characters to examine this topic with elegant precision, crafting a book that is beautiful despite its dark message.