Tag: Remains of the Day

My Japanese tutors

Ishiguro, Fukuyama, Kawasaki and Murakami. I read Ishiguro in bed, watched Fukuyama on Charlie Rose, watch Kawasaki interview on his latest book Enchantment and dream on with characters in Murukami’s novels.

Multi-media tutors. They might look Asian, but speak and write perfect English. Best of both worlds. Like Singapore or Hongkong.

Ishiguro penned beautiful prose and plot, that even Amazon’s founder must admit, the Remains of the Day was one of his favorites. In Never Let Me Go, the author portrays a love triangle out of the most unlikely of circumstances (among the donors of organs, our sci-fi characters). The mood and textures were so alluring. These supposedly “sub-humans” ‘ were made available as spare parts. “We let you experiment with arts to prove you had souls at all”

(and if they could demonstrate that they were in love, they might get a deferral – like college graduates who got their student loan deferred).

On to Fukuyama. who banked on the End of History (or marking) on the creation of Democratic Institutions e.g. those of the United States of America.

(a wiki check showed his family was in State College, PA “We Are”).

He answered Charlie Rose succinctly, and never missed a beat (about Arab Spring etc..).

Quite a professor, deserving his Standford upgrade.

Then on to the Enchanter. The smile in the eyes says it all.

He kept mentioning Charles Branson, of Virgin group, who stooped down and shined his shoes to win him over (to Virgin frequent flyer). To Guy, one needs to live as if there would always be a tomorrow (in contrast to what Fukuyama commented about America ” who has partied as if there were no tomorrow for the past thirty years”).

Reciprocity rules the universe. So is Karma. We saw that first-hand last Sunday with Bin Laden.

Murukami’s world is dreamy, with male characters who struggle with his own sexual and social identity (Murukami himself is a long-distance runner and writer. I wonder if his next novel would be about the Boston Marathon tragedy, as he once worked on the Tokyo’s rail cultish subject).

Murukami blends romance, cultism and eschatology in one fell swoop in 1Q84, his blended best.

By mentioning these accomplished authors, I am hoping the Asian gene pool rub off on the  second third generation of Vietnamese American. And I hope to live to watch one of my own on Charlie Rose, commanding public attention and admiration. It doesn’t matter where you came from and how humble (or horrible) the circumstances surrounding your beginning (in America). The only thing that matters is where you end up, in this case, undeniable success of my Japanese tutors.

Never let go

14 Vietnamese women were found and freed from Baby101, a Taiwanese outfit operated outside of the law in Thailand.

They were paid to be surrogate mothers (artificial insemination or otherwise), whose future babies would be put up for adoption.

Baby, never let me go.

Newsweek has a piece about anonymousUS.org, an organization which seeks to organize “kids who are not all right” and demand access to their records.

In “Never Let Me Go” Ishiguro explores the “human side” of clones (children who are brought up to stay healthy and to eventually become organ donors).

“We ‘let you study arts’ just to see if you had any soul at all”, says the head mistress . It’s “the Island” 2.0.

I realize the technology (for cloning and artificial insemination) is there.

And that once we let the tiger out of the cage, there is no turning back.

Still, I feel sad for the characters in “Never Let Me Go“.

They seek a normal life i.e. romance – in this case triangular one, in vain.

It’s been more than a decade that the top 1% of the world’s richest keeps getting richer, while the bottom billion live on longer (thanks to vaccination and bio-tech discoveries ). This divide will only rush in the next rung of colonization (Upper vs lower rungs): medi-tourism- offshored drug testing- outsourced pregnancy and why not – organ harvesting.  Money can buy anything from nuclear waste to nuclear families.

Sign here. Down payment now, and the rest paid upon delivery (organ donor to baby delivery). First, start with donating the blood. Then, just don’t stop there.

Half a kidney is quite acceptable.

How about your whole kidney.

How about your whole life, since inception.

Test tube babies. Youtube adults. (How about $400 to keep the peace).

Life is difficult, completely. Just never let me go. Hold me like I am (the Only girl – by Rihanna).  Ishiguro portrays a world of tomorrow, where there are only  forced choices – yet like the retired butler in

“the Remains of the Day“, we are reluctant to leave the estate of comfort behind. Gone are the days of laughter under the lantern. Modernity doesn’t ask for permission. It just shows up like a force of tyranny – way past curfew, and not for a cup of tea. It asks us, to set aside Rousseau “social contract” for  a  “biological contract” – surrogate mothering – in the name of progress. What can be done will soon become that which must be done.

 

E-memoir

Mark your calendar. Summer 2010 will be a bookend event.

It will be Gutenberg-like. It’s the beginning of the disappearance of Revised Print Edition.

It’s Google e-book store, where you can download the latest version of any book. Gone are the paper backs.

Or Large Print for that matter.

Select your own font.

http://www.tgdaily.com/games-and-entertainment-features/49631-google-plans-summer-opening-for-e-book-store

Our interaction with the pages is now replaced by our interaction with the screen.

A little divided (sight) as opposed to united (auditory, such as Audio books) according to Walter Ong.

Dumb terminal, long-lasting batteries, and unlimited “cloud” storage capacity make all this possible.

Books are now published on demand, or download. Paper or plastic?

Save a tree.

Somehow the image of “the Remains of the Day” (Bezos’ favorite book) came to mind.

A wall full of books, and the grandfather clock, all gone. What are there for the butler to do but writing his e-memoir?

I must admit the tone of that novel brought me back to an era where service is considered noble. And you could only get a glimpse of that now a day at Four Seasons or Nordstrom.

One of my pet peeves at Penn State was when students slowly folded their Collegiate only after  the prof had started to speak.

Today’s equivalent of turning off their e-readers.  Everything non-digital are “the remains of the day”.