Subversive

The postmodern novel, it has been argued, is almost by definition "subversive" of the literary tradition to which it self-consciously belongs. The relationship between the two, we have heard on many occasions, is insistently ironic. It is indeed a postmodern commonplace that the undermining of genre is a structural function of any incorporation of other genres into the novel. Certainly, it is an effect of the code by which novels are read (and written) at this juncture. Linda Hutcheon's label of historiographic metafiction has been crucial in this regard, and it may well be appended to Ishiguro's novel, along with the labels of postcolonial and postimperialist. (4) One purpose of my investigation here is to introduce some doubts regarding this blanket assignation of subversiveness, and suggest that the postmodern irony may even tend to conceal cultural patterns that may legitimately be held to account by a less postmodern sort of critique. The ironic, postmodern staging of history in my view amounts to a misrecognition of history.

The chapter title and the first passage about Stevens's lodging clearly belong to the travelogue, which is the ostensible motivation for the entire journal comprising Remains. However, as is the case throughout, the record of Stevens's motoring trip leads time and again to digressions. These digressions are sufficiently coherent to be analyzed as a number of separate generic components. That is, Stevens's journal incorporates distinguishable elements that can be analyzed as the carriers of different genre conventions.

Thus, the travel record is abandoned in favor of a reflection on a letter from Miss Kenton. The letter functions in this instance as a textual gateway to a subplot with entirely different genre conventions than the travel narrative, namely, a sentimental story about private (but never quite intimate) relations, which parallels the professional relations in which the butler stands. The story of a romance that never took off, this sentimental narrative is typically told around key moments that Stevens recalls. This is true also of the plot concerning Lord Darlington's disastrous entanglements in foreign policy between the wars, which is here introduced by Stevens as an alternative story line to which he might attribute a comment about "errors trivial in themselves," which he had inaccurately (he surmises) attributed to Miss Kenton (R