Particularize Books Toward An Artist of the Floating World
| Original Title: | An Artist of the Floating World |
| ISBN: | 0571225365 (ISBN13: 9780571225361) |
| Edition Language: | English |
| Characters: | Masuji Ono |
| Setting: | Japan |
| Literary Awards: | Booker Prize Nominee (1986), Whitbread Award for Novel and Book of the Year (1986) |
Kazuo Ishiguro
Paperback | Pages: 206 pages Rating: 3.76 | 21282 Users | 1849 Reviews
Be Specific About About Books An Artist of the Floating World
| Title | : | An Artist of the Floating World |
| Author | : | Kazuo Ishiguro |
| Book Format | : | Paperback |
| Book Edition | : | Deluxe Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 206 pages |
| Published | : | March 3rd 2005 by Faber and Faber (first published 1986) |
| Categories | : | Fiction. Cultural. Japan. Historical. Historical Fiction. Literature. Asian Literature. Japanese Literature. Asia. Literary Fiction |
Explanation Concering Books An Artist of the Floating World
In the face of the misery in his homeland, the artist Masuji Ono was unwilling to devote his art solely to the celebration of physical beauty. Instead, he put his work in the service of the imperialist movement that led Japan into World War II. Now, as the mature Ono struggles through the aftermath of that war, his memories of his youth and of the “floating world”—the nocturnal world of pleasure, entertainment, and drink—offer him both escape and redemption, even as they punish him for betraying his early promise. Indicted by society for its defeat and reviled for his past aesthetics, he relives the passage through his personal history that makes him both a hero and a coward but, above all, a human being.Rating About Books An Artist of the Floating World
Ratings: 3.76 From 21282 Users | 1849 ReviewsAssess About Books An Artist of the Floating World
"And if on reaching the foot of the hill which climbs up to my house, you pause at the Bridge of Hesitation and look back towards the remains of our old pleasure district, if the sun has not yet set completely, you may see the line of old telegraph poles still without wires to connect them disappearing into the gloom down the route you have just come, And you may be able to make out the dark clusters of birds perched uncomfortably on the tops of the poles, as though awaiting the wires along
This book is difficult to describe. What is it about? An old man, an artist, a young man, grandchildren and satisfaction. Also regret and the courage to live a life you can be proud of.
This is a quiet but accomplished novel about post-war Japan; of reconciling both the state and individual of the modern world, with the crimes and convictions of the past. The novel is a thematic precursor to Remains of the Day, published three years later, which similarly uses an unreliable first-person narrative to explore what it means to have lived an honourable life. An Artist of the Floating World is a far more subdued novel, with a greater specific cultural focus, and as a result, its
If you've already read The Remains of the Day, chances are your enjoyment of An Artist of the Floating World will be greatly curtailed. And that is the sheer tragedy of this book.Replace Stevens with Masuji Ono. Replace a tottering England with a war-ravaged, financially unstable Japan and insert Ishiguro's penchant for allegory. And TADA you have An Artist of the Floating World.This book had potential to be a very emotionally charged commentary on a nation rebuilding itself from its charred
Masuji Ono, the narrator, fights a constant battle against himself. Ono must emotionally cope with not only the guilt he feels from his past participation in injurious governmental activities, but also the pains of ageing and the loneliness he experiences through both the death of family members and his alienation from the new generation. Onos writings are a form of self-therapy. His tactic is to postpone the recognition of his past and spend as much time as possible avoiding a confrontation
Ishiguro is at his absolute best when he is exploring pain. He takes mundane characters, ordinary people, and demonstrates how the present is perpetually pervaded by the past.Memories shape us and, in some ways, define who we are. There is no moving away from them, no matter how hard we might try. And thats what makes most of his stories so compelling, the human struggle is something he evokes in all its bitterness; yet, here he failed. Normally when I pick up one of his novels I am drawn
0 comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.