Entry #247
- Listening to:
- Bach, Well-tempered clavier, book I.
- Just read:
- Kazuo Ishiguro,
An artist of the floating world. This is a
great novel, written in a wonderful style. It bears definite
resemblences to Ishiguro's The remains of the day
(which was made into a film). Both
novels tell the story of a man reminiscing on a period of his
life about which he is becoming unsure. In both novels, the
earlier period is the 1930s, and in both, the men have to
reassess the way they behaved then in the light of the changed
post-war world.
Ishiguro writes beautifully. The course of the novel is an
extended narration of events by the artist of the title,
Masuji Ono. His voice is distinctive, being very measured and
precise. The beauty of the book is that through this slow,
careful narration of events, one that is superficially dry and
emotionless, you can pick up the self-justifications that Ono
is telling himself. You can perceive his growing realisation
that his behaviour was probably suspect, and that his past is
also liable to prejudice his family's future. Highly
recommended.
A
neat
selection of short essays by the linguist Geoff Nunberg, covering
a range of topics, from American newspapers and the word "Jew", to how
interjections are the grammatical part of speech where 90s slang has
focussed most of its attention.
Comments