I mean, assuming any of them actually read. But Kazuo’s 1986 book, An Artist of the Floating World, which I have not read (surprising, given my general love for his work, even that weird Giant book), cleaves far closer to the state of affairs down there than 1984.
As the sea change in our country slowly (slowly) begins to create an atmosphere in which the rats are jumping ship and Trump and his associates might face the tiniest consequences for their actions, it’s obvious to me that what’s happening isn’t out of Nineteen-Eighty-Four. It’s a narrative told in the brilliant 1986 novel An Artist of the Floating World by Nobel Prize winner Kazuo Ishiguro.
The book takes place in Japan after World War II and the fall of the country’s imperialist regime. It’s narrated by a man named Masuji Ono, a once-prominent painter who has aged into obscurity verging on disgrace because — as the novel slowly reveals — Ono had turned his artistic ability toward making totalitarian propaganda. As in The Remains of the Day, the reader is forced to read between the lines, in the subtext and in the reactions of the people around and to the narrator, because the narrator is unwilling to admit certain truths, even to himself. Though early in the book it seems as though Ono might understand and feel guilty for what he enabled, by the final chapters, he’s set in his ways, content with a flimsy narrative of his own goodness and unwilling to fully reckon with the pain and damage he caused to his country.
(This is really just an excuse for me to rant about nerd culture for a bit, so buckle up.)
I post this here so you can point to it when self-entitled manchild-nerds start carping about Martin or Rothfuss finishing their stories, or about how the latest Star Wars didn’t reflect their tiny white male hero fantasies. Do you want a good book/movie or do you just want any old thing? Do you want to listen to a story or do you want to make one? Art takes time and isn’t ready until the artist is ready. Plus, if your theory about midichlorians and Admiral Thrawn didn’t pan out, it’s probably because you’re not a fucking artist making movies — you’re just life-support unit for minutiae and factoids about a fantasy story meant to entertain. You’re like a PhD in Uselessness.
(In summary, my old fall back rant: At what point did audiences start thinking they were investors who got a say in a product rather than consumers paying for the chance to view it? Get a life.)
If you’d been thinking about wrapping up the series and writing an end, why did it take you 20-something years to write it?
[Laughs.] Time. There’s really no point in doing it without a strong reason for doing it; and the strong reason was, I was burnt out. I didn’t really have anything more to say about the Shannara world. Number two, I wanted to do some other projects. I had other stories I wanted to tell. Finally, and this is something you can’t identify with, but when you get into your seventies, you start thinking about how much time you have left. I thought, “I’m going to be really pissed if I die and don’t get this written.” The concept that I’d had earlier in life — that I would live forever — might not turn out to be true. [Laughs.]
You wanted to make sure that you wrote the ending.
I tell everybody, I didn’t want Brandon Sanderson writing it! Brandon’s my friend so I can say that. [Laughs.] He’s the famous example of somebody who finished off Robert Jordan’s [work] — and did so better than I thought Robert Jordan. I didn’t want somebody to think he was better than I was. [Laughs.]Â
It’s Friday and we’re all getting ready to hunker down this weekend and survive the plagues, pestilence, slack-jawed riots, and roving gangs of psychotic 80s-punk themed cannibals driving souped-up muscle cars with corrugated metal welded to them for armour. Oh, wait, sorry…. just checked the calendar. That’s NEXT weekend. Enjoy!
Hey, the ReLit awards are back… And while everyone is glad for an extra recognition machine, no one is asking if anything has changed… Is it still just a jury of one? Is there any transparency whatsoever on who chooses what books get considered? etc. Same questions as before;
There is nothing else happening anywhere else in the world except here in this book news post. Repeat that sentence quietly to yourself five times and make a cup of tea.
Bookninja 