Sidharth Vardhan's Reviews > 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 which they once lined the sky. "

Set in post world war II Japan, this beautiful little novel is Ishiguro doing his usual great job - the subtlety, the painting of something larger (atmosphere of a country in this case) and a narrator who knows how to forget (unlike that of 'The Sense of Ending' Ishiguro's narrators never forget anything substantial - just a few minor details like when something happened or exchange a few details). Even the non-chronological flow of prose is so brilliantly conversational.

The title refers to the kind of life artists lead - away from social responsibility chasing after soft, beautiful things that become unreal in the daytime like pleasures from the district.

' Artists’, my father’s voice continued, ‘live in squalor and poverty. They inhabit a world which gives them every temptation to become weak-willed and depraved. Am I not right, Sachiko?’
‘Naturally. Yet perhaps there are one or two who are able to pursue an artistic career and yet avoid such pitfalls.'

The novel is about the narrator's dilemma - of having to choose between avoiding those pitfalls and his artistic need to pursuit beauty

An artist’s concern is to capture beauty wherever he finds it."

And his life is full of oscillations between the two and thus the metaphor of bridge of hesitation on his way to pleasure district. Smooth. The novel starts at a point where the author is inclined to believe that people around him are of opinion that not only he tried being socially responsible but failed with devastating effects on the whole nation. And thus the need to look back at his own life. And the question - if an artist is just giving out as his or her message what is the spirit of people at the time, how much he or she can be blamed for leading them?
The other themes I am too lazy to discuss.