Butlers : real and fictional

Also in today's blog [at the end]

Checking the comment situation
Liz Calder interview


The third leader article in yesterday's Daily Telegraph was about butlers.

"The world faces a worrying shortage.
As the number of wealthy households expands, so does the demand for butlers. Those who keep a tally of these things say as many as two million are needed around the globe. Can there be enough suave imperturbability to go round? A butler - not to be confused with his inferior, the valet - is a multi-talented beast whose duties may range from ironing the morning copy of The Daily Telegraph to managing dozens of staff in a number of houses.
Rock stars love them, so do Russian oligarchs, and at least one Labour minister couldn't possibly function without his gentleman's gentleman. They may be redolent of a bygone age, but they are, as a species, natural-born survivors.
Whatever the modern world throws at them, they ensure that good order reigns with a murmured "very good, sir" issuing from the stiffest of upper lips."

Earlier this week I mentioned that Mr Bookworm had brought home two second-hand books: A Sensible Life by Mary Wesley which he has read and enjoyed, and The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro which I have read and was bored by.



I long to know what Mr B thinks of it. It's possible he will find it as enthralling as did the judges who awarded it the 1989 Booker prize, and the people who filmed it with Anthony Hopkins in the starring role.



On page 8 of the Tiscali bio of Hopkins, I found this –

"In Merchant/Ivory's The Remains Of The Day, he was superb as James Stevens, butler for James Wilby and a man so repressed that duty has become everything to him. Thus he loses a chance at happiness with housekeeper Emma Thompson and looks away when Wilby foolishly sympathises with Hitler. With realisation comes torment, and Hopkins is in his element, seemingly dormant then suddenly on the verge of a volcanic emotional eruption. He well deserved his Oscar nomination."

Maybe the film moves faster than the interminably slow novel. If our public library has the video, I'll be interested to compare it with the book.

For those who have neither read nor seen The Remains of the Day, it's a long-winded reminiscence of a life spent in the service of the late Lord Darlington of Darlington Hall, now owned by an American, Mr Farraday. The principal characters are the butler, Stevens, and the housekeeper Miss Kenton. The action takes place over six days, but it seemed to me like six years, so slow was the pace.

On Saturday [June 2nd] Kazuo Ishiguro is the subject and star of a conference at Liverpool Hope University.
On the conference page of the university's website, I read this –

"Kazuo Ishiguro is one of the finest writers of his generation. Although primarily a novelist, he has also written short stories, television scripts and a screenplay. Ishiguro’s work explores issues of class, ethnicity, nationhood, place, and the functions of art itself. As a Japanese immigrant coming to Great Britain in 1960, Ishiguro has used his unique perspective to write international novels that contain ‘a vision of life that is of importance to people of varied backgrounds around the world.’ This diversity is underscored by the surreal masterpiece, The Unconsoled (1995), and his latest novel, Never Let Me Go (2005), a stunning affirmation of Ishiguro’s ability to investigate moral dilemmas without compromising the art of fiction."

Is it possible for a first class piece of fiction to leave an enthusiastic reader unmoved?

The book has 137 reviews at Amazon UK and 174 reviews at Amazon US, all but a few wildly enthusiastic. Clearly I am out of step here. Or are the reviewers writing what they think they should rather than what they really feel?

Checking the comment situation

First, a word to Gloria who noticed the strange times at which I appear to be posting blogs. I'm a lark, not a night owl, Gloria, and I used to post between getting up at six-ish and breakfast at eight-ish. But I found that when I did that the posts would often appear under yesterday's date. So now I post after breakfast around nine-ish.

Why the times shown are not accurate I have no idea.

If the people who made comments on Tuesday's blog will scroll down, they will find that their comments are now where they should be.

On investigating, I found ten comments suspended in limbo. I hope this won't happen again, but will make a point of checking.

Liz Calder interview

Much as I wanted to hear this, downloading Real Player seemed to involve downloading a lot of other programmes I was unlikely ever to use. In the end I decided to play safe and not download any of them.