Arthur Golden
Dec. 23rd, 2005 04:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
khiemtranI happened to read a few pages of Memoirs of a Geisha yesterday. With luck I might be able to read a bit more of it over the break.
Some early thoughts:
- I like the sense of immersion and the depth of what would be worldbuilding in a fantasy context. I don't know if the world depicted is true to life, but it certainly feels real. There's more detail there, and, in particular, more unexpected detail, than I feel I could make up. This helps to convey a sense of authority and transportation. I loved the touches like the cubby holes for shoes outside a classroom, with the most junior students having to use the highest holes, such that they had to climb up on the lower holes to reach them, being careful not to step on the shoes of the senior students.
- The narration includes a lot more explanation than is fashionable in modern SF. The book is written with the narrator speaking directly to a modern, non-Japanese audience, and almost every point that might cause confusion is explained early on. Rather than being a negative, this style also helped to reinforce the sense of a lost world, such that everyday things now have to be explained.
- The background information, and there was a lot of it, was always in the background. Each digression or descriptive scene was overlaid with an emotional meaning. There was never a sense that a scene was about providing background, it was always about understanding the characters emotions, and the background just happened to support it.
- Likewise, while the pacing was slow, it was also steady. There was always something changing, whether it was the setting or the character's situation or the reader's knowledge about the world. I think the amount of explanation also helped here, because it meant that there were always new things to learn.
- The narrator's voice was solid and convincing. It was written at a conversational level and just seemed to flow on and on. This is a voice I'd like to master one day. I've always liked the Frank McCourt style of easy narration, but I can't quite get the register right.
Some early thoughts:
- I like the sense of immersion and the depth of what would be worldbuilding in a fantasy context. I don't know if the world depicted is true to life, but it certainly feels real. There's more detail there, and, in particular, more unexpected detail, than I feel I could make up. This helps to convey a sense of authority and transportation. I loved the touches like the cubby holes for shoes outside a classroom, with the most junior students having to use the highest holes, such that they had to climb up on the lower holes to reach them, being careful not to step on the shoes of the senior students.
- The narration includes a lot more explanation than is fashionable in modern SF. The book is written with the narrator speaking directly to a modern, non-Japanese audience, and almost every point that might cause confusion is explained early on. Rather than being a negative, this style also helped to reinforce the sense of a lost world, such that everyday things now have to be explained.
- The background information, and there was a lot of it, was always in the background. Each digression or descriptive scene was overlaid with an emotional meaning. There was never a sense that a scene was about providing background, it was always about understanding the characters emotions, and the background just happened to support it.
- Likewise, while the pacing was slow, it was also steady. There was always something changing, whether it was the setting or the character's situation or the reader's knowledge about the world. I think the amount of explanation also helped here, because it meant that there were always new things to learn.
- The narrator's voice was solid and convincing. It was written at a conversational level and just seemed to flow on and on. This is a voice I'd like to master one day. I've always liked the Frank McCourt style of easy narration, but I can't quite get the register right.
