Photo: Outside the Labyrinth, Patrice Gracia 2015
Look at that picture. It’s the maze outside the freakin Budapest National Theatre!
Since Ishiguro is so concerned with how personal accountability intersects with personal and public delusionality, it only makes sense that he should have written a book in which a man approaches a public concert and keynote–and his family life–with the reckless, responsibility-free logic of dreams (stand up to give a speech and find yourself naked; turn into a pig; go backwards every time you step forwards, and why the hell not? And while you’re at it, neglect your child! Break every promise you make! Ignore a man’s getting his leg sawed off in front of you! LIFE IS BUT A DREAM!). Or, perhaps, a book in which a public figure should look about him and see all people and events only as elements of his own, all-important emotional life, while the public, simultaneously, view him only as a means toward forwarding their own agendas: public life is an interface at which people cease to recognize other people as people; there is only the I! Or, perhaps, a book that satirizes the idea that dreams have any meaning at all, by presenting the poverty of choice and experience that dreams represent. Or perhaps, a book that proves that ALL meaning can be found in dreams and the subconscious, giving us the dream-life of a character and practically begging us to deduce a coherent biography from the symbols!
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