BOOKS
589
books are all as delicate as antique vases, and sometimes just as cold. Oc–
casionally, in fact, his craft can almost seem too well-designed, too care–
ful in its calculations; it seems almost too symbolic that Stevens's English
country house be taken over by a crude, straightahead American, and
too allusive that a couple mentioned in passing, just before an Indian
anecdote, be called " Mr. and Mrs. Muggeridge" (as if to summon up
Malcolm Muggeridge, who famously - and appropriately - claimed that
Indians were the last great Englishmen). Yet all this can be forgiven so
long as Ishiguro shuttles with such discretion between his motherland and
his mother tongue, making close to us the quiet heroism that is the
other, unacknowledged side ofJapanese "inflexibility." There is a nobil–
ity to Stevens's uprightness , and a pathos too , only compounded, per–
haps, by hi s awareness that all the world will interpret it as folly . In the
end,
The Remains oj th e Day
is a perfectly English novel that could have
been written only by a Japanese.
The
Changing
Culture
of the
University
Spring 1991
VOLUME LVIII NUMBER 2
$5.00 per copy
$1.50 postage and handling
available from:
Partisan Review
236 Bay State Road
Boston, MA 02215
617/353-4260
"The Changing Culture of the Uni–
versity," a Conference (November 2-4,
1990), was made possible by funding
from the National Endowment for the
Humanities and the Daniel and Joanna S.
Rose
Fund, Inc.
PICO IYER
A Special
Issue of
Partisan Review
with contributions from:
LIONEL ABEL
ROBERT ALTER
JAMES ATLAS
BRIGmE
BERGER
CLEANTH BROOKS
ROBERT BRUSTEIN
MORRIS DICKSTEIN
DENIS DONOGHUE
JEAN BETHKE ELSHTAIN
NATHAN GlAZER
MARY GORDON
GERTRUDE HIMMELFARB
HILTON KRAMER
EDITH KURZWEIL
JULIUS LESTER
STEVEN MARCUS
CZESLAW MILOSZ
WILSON J. MOSES
CYNTHIA OZICK
WILLIAM PHILLIPS
ROGER SHATTUCK
CATHARINE STIMPSON
