91传媒

In my view, something important happens on page 9: the word 渟ee� appears seven times, 渓ook� six times. There also 渇ollow with one eyes,� 渇ix one gaze,� and 渕ake eye contact.� All on a single page! See what I mean?

Now look, Kazuo Ishiguro is a Nobel Prize-winning writer. He knows that one of the 渞ules� of good writing is to favor variety.  Don檛 repeat; use a synonym. Or better yet, delete. Avoid redundancy.

We should be on the lookout for moments when a writer (or visual artist, or composer, or choreographer) disregards the 渞ules.� These moments invite interpretation. There may be more going on than meets the eye.

In the entire book, words like 渟ee� and 渓ook� occur over eight times as often as 渉ear� and 渓isten.�  淓ye� appears eighty-nine times; 渆ar� just thirteen.

This preponderance is surely due to the fact that the narrator possesses 渆xtraordinary observational ability.� After just two days in the store window, Klara observations equip her with extensive knowledge of human behavior攁nd soon thereafter with insight quite profound. Human beings, she realizes, can act one way when they feel the opposite. They may even feel contrary emotions simultaneously.

Later, Klara vision occasionally goes a little wonky, dividing up into 減artitions.� Rereading these scenes, I came to recognize this as a special visual superpower.

And yet, Klara can檛 smell.  She can檛 taste.  Her sense of touch comes up only rarely. (Among dozens of comments about the sun appearance, there only one about its warmth.) And while her sense of hearing seems to have come preloaded with perfect pitch (she notes that Josie voice ranges 渂etween A-flat above middle C to C octave�), this seems more useful as a potential party trick (渟ing for me the harmonic minor scale�) than an ability for gaining useful knowledge, let alone wisdom.

Listening is a struggle. Klara has trouble making out words in the Open Plan, Capaldi studio, the sushi caf茅, the theater, and everywhere outdoors (which, she says, has 渦nusual acoustics�). Gradually she learns to glean information from tone of voice, but these efforts are rudimentary, and are sometimes compromised by her partition-vision, which makes sound fade to the background.

(I couldn檛 help but notice that there essentially no music in this story, just some snatches at the theater. A monotone 淛osie, Josie, Josie� that the Mother repeats, 渁s if this were part of a song.� An unsung harmonic-minor scale.  The Mother un-played cello.)

As I hinted above, we say 淚 see� to mean 淚 understand.� 淢y view� means 渕y way of thinking.� 淟ook� stands in for 減ay attention�; 渢ake a look� for 渆xamine� or 渃onsider.� Ishiguro takes part in this equation of vision with reason, but I suspect he is also making a commentary on it. Klara and the Sun asks what is gained, and what is lost, when we privilege sight over other senses as a way of knowing.