I’ve been revisiting some of my favorite books on audio, because sometimes there’s no friend like an old friend, and because I need a soothing stream of smart stories flowing through my head as much as possible these days. Oh, I do my fair share of doom-scrolling, hand-wringing, hair-tearing, and general lamentations. I rage. I sob. And then get out my earbuds and running shoes and escape, at least temporarily, as long as my privilege, leg muscles, and phone battery life allow.
One of these favorites is a novel I consider one of the greatest ever written in the English language (and the author’s Nobel Prize in Literature would seem to back me up): Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day. If you had to read this in a literature class when you were young, you probably hated it; what teenager would have any interest in the narrative of a “proper English butler” during the years before and after World War II? I did not read it in school but rather well into adulthood, so I was better situated to be stunned by its quiet tragedy. Later readings transformed mere “stunned” into “devastated.” This last encounter rendered me truly shattered.
Stevens, the butler, dedicates his whole life to fulfilling the role of proper English butler to the extent that he can’t not play the role, not even in his own personal narrative (which, in classic Ishiguro style, is magnificently unreliable). Though this may be hard to fathom in our time, it does give him a deep sense of purpose and self-worth, which is what pretty much everyone at every time has sought. Of course, there’s a downside – several of them. Many readers like to focus on Stevens’s repression, the fact that he’s so committed to his role that he can’t allow himself to love, even though there are clear (to the reader) signs that he craves companionship as much as anyone. Sure, but to shake your head over this alone (secure in the knowledge that you would never do that) is to miss the bigger picture, and it’s a picture that should seem very familiar to us right now.
The lord of the house where Stevens serves, as it turns out, was a Nazi sympathizer. Yes, this is a spoiler, but don’t pout; this is not a shocking-plot-twist kind of book, so read it anyway – again if you already have. As Stevens faces the remains of his life, he has to grapple with the fact that he dedicated the bulk of that life to someone who aided and abetted evil. If he played a significant role in supporting that evil, he’s part of it; if, on the other hand, he was “just the butler,” then his life’s work – perhaps his life as a whole – is meaningless.
How do you live with that? How do you reconcile your sense of self-worth with the possibility that you might be a bad person – or, perhaps just as personally dreadful, that you are insignificant? Well, if you’re Stevens – or if you’re alive today – you construct a narrative that rationalizes everything you’ve done. I work hard. I mean well. I’m a good person, I just didn’t know at the time what was truly going on. He isn’t as bad as all that; he’s done kind things too. People only want to see the bad in him, and they’re hypocrites because they’ve done bad things themselves. But he’s a good person. I’m a good person. But don’t shake your head over this, secure in the knowledge that I’m describing other people, just yet.
The second story I want to talk about is in many ways about as different from Ishiguro’s novel as you can get. Shirley Jackson’s short story “The Lottery” takes a third-person objective point of view, compared to the unreliable first person of Stevens, and the short story's spare style contrasts sharply with the rich details of the novel. If you read this one in high school, and chances are you did, you probably liked it. In discussions about it, you probably talked about why these people would go along with such a barbaric ritual every year even though there was a chance they would be the “winner” this time. Why didn’t anyone stop it? And the answer was probably something about conformity, about how people are simply too afraid to pull a Katniss Everdeen and stand against the crowd, even for their loved ones. And there was probably a lot of head shaking. But there’s an element to this story that often gets overlooked, because these are not mere sheeple, but perhaps wolves in sheeple clothing.
At the end of the story, the neighbors who were so cheerfully chatting with Tessie are now, post-lottery picking, grabbing stones with both hands, stones so big they struggle to carry them. There isn’t mere mindless acquiescence here; there’s blood lust. They keep the lottery because they want the lottery. They want someone to single out from themselves to destroy. They do – and we do too.
Like Stevens, we all want to think of ourselves as good people. But that becomes a trap. If you see yourself as fundamentally good, you’ve got a problem when you’re faced with something you’ve done or not done that isn’t so great. Haul out the old Psych 101 book and take your pick from the chapter on cognitive dissonance: you can rationalize, you can deny, you can sublimate, you can scapegoat. The other side is just as bad. I didn’t realize at the time. You’re a hypocrite by accusing me. I’m not listening to this; I’m going for a run. Heh heh.
Or you can go another way, which brings us to the third story. As you tell the story of your own life, you can create your character not as a “good person” but as someone capable of both kindness and brutality, and you can choose your actions not in terms of how they reflect who you are but how they connect you to the world, and what their results will be in that world. Stop looking in the mirror and start looking out the door, even if, like me, at times you shudder at the idea of what's out there.
But if you’re reading this, you’re the choir to my preaching. You probably know all this already, and like me you’re struggling to figure out how to do something about it. You’ll find no answers here. In my darkest hours I wonder, like Stevens, whether my devotion to books and literature has had an insignificant impact – or, worse, whether it has been a case of full-on denial on my part. Yes, I read good books, so yes, I am good. I vote for the correct side, I rally for the just causes, some of my best friends are. But what has it actually done? How has it actually changed minds that so desperately need changing? Does my story matter at all, or is it just for my own gratification?
Don’t answer that for me. Ask it of yourself instead.
