‘Keeper of the Flame’: Kazuo Ishiguro on the greatest love song ever written
Japanese-born British novelist Kazuo Ishiguro is one of the country’s most celebrated writers. A recipient of the 2017 Nobel Prize in Literature, the Swedish Academy praised Ishiguro’s body of work, stating: “Who, in novels of great emotional force, has uncovered the abyss beneath our illusory sense of connection with the world.”
Initially exploring the Japanese identity in 1982’s A Pale View of Hills and 1986’s An Artist of the Floating World, Ishiguro received praise for his insightful examination of the English class system in 1989’s The Remains of the Day, winning that year’s Booker Prize and eventually adapted for film in 1993 featuring Anthony Hopkins.
Music often forms an essential creative guide for Ishiguro, even if the songs he loves aren’t directly referenced in his many novels. Speaking to The Guardian in 2014, Ishiguro recounted Tom Waits’ influence on the genesis of The Remains of the Day: “You feel a lifetime of tough-guy stoicism crumbling in the face of overwhelming sadness.”
Waits’ narrative vignette pointed toward a different creative path for Ishiguro: “I heard this and reversed a decision I’d made, that Stevens (the novel’s protagonist) would remain emotionally buttoned up right to the bitter end. I decided that at just one point – which I’d have to choose very carefully – his rigid defence would crack, and a hitherto concealed tragic romanticism would be glimpsed.”
Offering further insight into popular music’s inspiring spark as a writer, Ishiguro offered Powell’s Book blog in 2015 a collation of songs that shared an emotional resonance with his upcoming novel The Buried Giant, set in a fictional post-Arthurian proto-England plagued with national amnesia where a Briton couple who have vague memories of a son together head to a neighbouring village to seek clarity.
Ishiguro was keen to stress the songs assembled were in harmony with the tone and themes of his novel over any literal relationship: “The visual landscapes conjured up by these tracks are unlikely to match the setting of the novel. But each of them relates in some significant way — usually at the level of theme or emotion — to what happens in the story. I’m not going to spell out just how — I’ll leave that to you.”
Choosing an intriguing array of artists, including Ennio Morricone, Leonard Cohen, and Emmylou Harris, it’s Nina Simone’s ‘Keeper of the Flame’ which Ishiguro singles out for its aching passion and red-blooded will: “So many love songs are about the start of love or the end of love. This one’s about the battle to keep love alive over the long distance, through hostile, inclement conditions. Simone was surely one of the very greatest singers ever. She brings resolution, stoicism, and courage to the song, as well as a sense of carrying wounds that may never heal.”
A highly memorable cut from Simone’s 1967 LP High Priestess of Soul, its seductive strings percolating smokily around her intimate contralto croon, the piece stands as one of her most passionate recordings, an obvious source for any writer wanting to enter the fraught terrain of love and longing at its most sensuously evocative.
