“I was hungered and ye gave me meat”: I n search of the Ultimate Eating Experience in Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Gourmet

Abstract

This article reads Ishiguro’s early screenplay The Gourmet (1986) as a work of comic Gothic,
blending archetypal Gothic elements (ghosts, cathedrals, crimes) and a dark, eerie, and
supernatural atmosphere with elements of comedy and satire. The main character’s quest for the
most unusual food on earth, or rather unearthly, serves as a mere pretext to depict a postThatcherite London, where homelessness and hunger were at every corner of the street. The
screenplay explores two types of hunger: the literal starvation of the poor who have nothing to
eat and depend on night shelters for survival, and the insatiable cravings of the rich, embodied
by the epicurean Manley, for whom nothing is good enough and who treads the earth far and
wide and depletes his great financial resources to satisfy his gastronomic desires. Manley finally
manages to reach his goal but is disappointed: the ghost he has eaten does not taste good and he
feels sick afterwards. In the end, the two worlds remain separate as they have always been: while
the ever-dissatisfied Manley is likely already plotting a new culinary adventure, the hungry
remain forgotten and ignored, the real flesh-and-blood ghosts of the story.