For instance, Stevens notes, he seems to expect his servants to banter with him. Farraday, who seems disconcertingly oblivious to some of the finer points of decorum and class. Stevens's old employer, Lord Darlington, to whom he devoted the better part of his life, has died, and he now works for an American, Mr.

Gone are the days when butlers like himself presided over household staffs of two dozen gone are the days of huge house parties. Stevens, too, we learn in the course of his extended monologue, has become something of an anachronism in postwar Britain. The book bears a pronounced kinship with his last novel, ''An Artist of the Floating World,'' which told the story of one Masuji Ono, an artist and dedicated student of Japanese imperialism, who is left socially and esthetically stranded after the end of the war. Ishiguro - who was born in Nagasaki, Japan, in 1954 and who has lived in England since 1960 - gives us a sharp yet moving portrait of his adopted country, and of the social changes it sustained in the years before and after World War II. The voice speaking here is that of Stevens, an English butler who aspires to greatness as the perfect servant, and the narrator of Kazuo Ishiguro's subtle new novel, ''The Remains of the Day.'' Through Stevens, Mr. They wear their professionalism as a decent gentleman will wear his suit: he will not let ruffians or circumstance tear it off him in the public gaze he will discard it when, and only when, he wills to do so, and this will invariably be when he is entirely alone.'' The great butlers are great by virtue of their ability to inhabit their professional role and inhabit it to the utmost they will not be shaken out by external events, however surprising, alarming or vexing. For such persons, being a butler is like playing some pantomime role a small push, a slight stumble, and the facade will drop off to reveal the actor underneath. ''Lesser butlers will abandon their professional being for the private one at the least provocation.

The Remains of the Day By Kazuo Ishiguro 245 pages.

The remains of the day 1989