Ben Marcus reads Kazuo Ishiguro's "A Village After Dark," and discusses it with The New Yorker's fiction editor, Deborah Treisman. "A Village After Dark" was published in the May 21, 2001, issue of The New Yorker. Ben Marcus's upcoming book, "The Flame Alphabet," will be published in 2012.
This is the New Yorker fiction podcast from the New Yorker magazine.
I'm Deborah Treisman, fiction editor at the New Yorker.
Each month we invite a writer to choose a story from the magazine's archives to read and discuss.
This month, we're going to hear a village after Dark by Kazuo Ishiguro, which appeared in the New Yorker in 2001.
When the silence behind me had gone unbroken for several minutes, I resolved to address my hosts with a little more civility, and I turned in my chair.
The story was chosen by Ben Markus, two of whose stories have appeared in the magazine this year.
His new novel, the Flame Alphabet, will be published in January.
Hi, Ben.
Hi.
So Ishiguro was born in Japan, and he moved to England as a child.
And hes probably best known for his 1989 novel remains of the day and the 2005 novel never Let me go, both of which were made into movies.
When did you start reading him?
I read remains of the day, and I wasn't sure what I had read.
It was so quiet and so subtle.
It was gripping, but I couldn't figure out why.
And I didn't think I should be interested in a butler and some regret he might have had.
It's just so modest.
But I felt such control.
And when I reread it, I saw all these little things he was doing to, I guess, suggest this vast, awful inner life of his main character.
After that, I kept up.