Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Ishiguro, Kazuo (Vol. 110) - Cynthia F. Wong (essay date Winter 1995)

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Cynthia F. Wong (essay date Winter 1995)

SOURCE: Cynthia F. Wong, "The Shame of Memory: Blanchot's Self-Dispossession in Ishiguro's A Pale View of Hills," in Clio, Vol. 24, No. 2, Winter, 1995, pp. 127-45.

[In the following essay, Wong employs literary theorist Maurice Blanchot's theories on first person narration to analyze Ishiguro's A Pale View of Hills.]

"… the necessary condition for the solitude of a madman is the presence of a lucid witness."

                                                —Blanchot

The first novels of the Japanese-born and British-educated contemporary writer, Kazuo Ishiguro, employ a deceptively simple narrative strategy to develop the remembrances of protagonists reflecting upon and finding a meaning for their personal lives. Speaking in the period after turbulent historical times, the first-person narrators set private experience into a...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. Kazuo Ishiguro with Gregory Mason (interview date 8 December 1986)
   2. Merle Rubin (review date 30 November 1989)
   3. Gabriele Annan (review date 7 December 1989)
   4. Hermione Lee (review date 22 January 1990)
   5. Kazuo Ishiguro with Allan Vorda and Kim Herzinger (interview date 2 April 1990)
   6. Cynthia F. Wong (essay date Winter 1995)
   7. Bert Cardullo (essay date Winter 1995)
   8. Roz Kaveney (review date 12 May 1995)
   9. Merle Rubin (review date 4 October 1995)
   10. Richard Eder (review date 8 October 1995)
   11. Brooke Allen (review date 11 October 1995)
   12. Charlotte Innes (review date 6 November 1995)
   13. Stanley Kauffmann (review date 6 November 1995)
4. Further Reading
5. Copyright