Book

Paul Beatty

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Psychedelic When you're young, psychedelic is a primary color and a most mesmerizing high. Santa Monica was full of free multihued trips. The color-burst free-love murals on Main Street seemed to come to vibrant cartoon life when I passed them. The whales and dolphins frolicked in the clouds and the sea lions and merry-go-round horsies turned cartwheels in the street. The spray-any-color-paint-on-the-spin-art creations at the pier were fifty-cent Jackson Pollock rainbow heroin hits that made your skin tingle and the grains of sand swell up and rise to the sky like helium balloons. Looking into the kaleidoscopic eyes of a scruffy Bukowski barfly sitting in the lotus position along the bike trails fractured your soul into hundreds of disconnected psychedelic shards. Each sharp piece of your mind begging for sobriety.

PAUL BEATTY is SO sick. If I ever get a tattoo. It's gonna be on my right arm/hand and it's gonna say "Two Hours A Day." I need a fucking regimented writing schedule. In other news. Brooklyn College is official choice #1 for MFAs next next year because he went there.

!

#3 Murakami Ryu’s Almost Transparent Blue

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我拼命吸气,但只有一点空气吸进身体，那空气似乎并不是通过口腔和鼻孔,而是从胸前的一个小孔中流出来的。我的腰麻木得不能动弹，心脏一阵阵绞痛，太阳穴的血管膨胀着，无规则地怦怦乱跳。闭上眼睛，我觉得整个身体在被温存的爱抚，又像涂在汉堡包上的奶酪一样正在融化。我的体内分裂成级冷的部分和带有热量的部分， 它们回旋着，像试管中的水和油块。 村上龙《近似无限透明的蓝色》 Finished October 11-22

"摇滚、吸毒、群居、暴力、飞车、堕落的青春" (sex, drugs, violence, rock n' roll, misspent youth etc.) is somehow appropriate motifs for the moment. Don't ask and I won't tell, not that there is anything to tell, actually. It's a matter of state of mind, rather. Not that there is anything going on there, either. Sometimes I think I need to stop being infatuated/attracted to the shifty characters in life. I'm not sure they are actually more interesting. Living like this can be tiring though. Life becomes a collection of notes and notices. Lately, I feel like every conversation is a research point, like I wish people would just hand me the abridged version of their life and interests on a effing facebook profile or something. But I'm not actually whining... I'm actually, pretty productive, pretty happy, pretty in love, not really on the last bit, I don't think, but it's fun to say, not fun to regret, so let's cut that in half.

My hairdresser called this time instead of text msg to remind me to get my hair treated. Ring tone scared me nine in the morning cuz nobody calls cells in this country unless it's an emergency. "Qing Qing, why are you always forgetting? What are you doing today?" So far he's blown me off twice to sit down and chat because he's works thirteen hours a day and six days a week, either that or he actually doesn't love me, but I honestly think he is busy, and I honestly need his story, just because... I don't know, youth, hippies, skateboarders, hip-hop, lifestyle, art, hairdressers somehow go well together. He's great. I'll just make him write an autobio while "playing with my hair."

Hey... wasn't this a book review?

Oh, dear Minako, happy birthday, btw.

Reading Almost Transparent Blue is like driving with some reckless, miserable, drunken kid. Every other chapter you endure a 70 mph car crash, only to discover, miserably, that you are still alive, as alive as the fly on the pineapple in the sink. I didn't know half of the drug terms because they were in Chinese, but the early scene of heroine injection is about the closest acquaintance I will ever be with heavy drugs. It's a dirty dirty book. I'm not sure I liked it. I did like the shock factor, the type of visceral, caught off guard, he did fuckin' what, mouth hanging open shock values that have made me grown as a person, methinks. It's the type of experience that you wonder about, like yesterday when Wengang Ge cursed from the bottom of the floor to the top, throwing his coat with so much force and fury against the wall. When quiet people go berzerk, you wonder... you just wonder... Except it made me wonder what it must be like to live in an abusive home, how one must grow numb. Anyway, men are scary, can be, I wouldn't one screaming or hurting me ever, that is all.

Reading Almost Transparent Blue isn't always as raucous as rock music though. The book is interluded with mute, ambiguous scenes of the narrator with Lily. I once said books are driven by characters, this is true in most places, and it's true here. The problem with ATB is, I couldn't sympathize with any of the kids, however many there are. Six? Seven? But maybe Murakami was going for a blurred youth nameless faces type of effect, but I didn't like the narrator.

It's hard to write a narrator based on yourself, I suppose. No matter how hard one tries, the danger of narcissism always slips in. Murakami Ryu's Ryu is a cloudy narrator. He's more narrator than 1st person storyteller, and though that makes him more distant, less biased, somehow it makes it all the worse because it makes his persona seems cold, distant, lost. And we know coming of age (or never coming of age, for that matter), or lost is what he is, but it's frustrating because the other characters unwittingly surround him, reflects off of him, and the reader too, is dancing around him, wishing he would wake up, Ryu, wake up, do something, don't just stand there, do something, Ryu.

There was one scene that was classic Japanese manga/cinema. One of the kids, after beating up his girlfriend viciously, slits his wrist. "Now you know how I feel about you," he says to her. To which she replies, "Toshiyama, we're going out to eat. It's noon already and nobody's eaten yet. If you want to die, go die alone, go outside and go die alone, don't bring trouble for Ryu." Insert deadpan Japanese girl voice.

Hmmm... but I don't remember her name, don't care for her name, maybe that is okay.

Hmm... well, moral of the story, know your limits. ;)

book review #1 《草样年华》

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Okay, the upside, my Chinese is certainly getting better. The downside, my English is certainly getting worse. Like um, writing in English is actually hard now. This has to be the hardest entry I've ever written. Christ. Understandable. But. Too fast too fast. 草样年华II by 孙睿 Finished September 21-26

过去，我们大学生是大熊猫。 现在，成了被遗弃的接头野猫。

I gave myself a limit of two weeks a book, which means. After plucking a couple of never-heard-of bestsellers with nice covers and anecdotes at the local book store, I've arrived at the junction of being a book wiser, a few Chinese characters richer, and a stomach full of fury. It might seem like having finished a book a week and two days before the set two week limit is a testament to the quality of the book. It actually means having thoughts of "okay, that's it, I'm not reading this shit" after every chapter, but I've made some sort of a mental vow to finish every book I start here. But with all its bestselling and grabber - "a classic novel read by over 10,000,000 college students," 《草样年华 》falls not only short, but flat on its face, so flat if it ain't flat enough I want to punch the author's face flat myself for wasting trees, ink, and not to mention, my time. But it's not the time I'm worried about at this moment. Time I've got. It's the sheer amount of unhappiness and LACK of escapism this book provides.

Then again, contemporary Chinese lit, if nothing else, is always a slap in the face.

But this book lacks the spirit and soul of Lu Xun. It lacks the bones - a theme, a message, a point, and all that is fine, just fine, except satire only goes so far before wit become sour and then dour, and I swear I've never hated more a protagonist, a supporting cast, and the one with the guiding hand - the author.

Why the hate? Worse yet, why the apathy turned to hate because I'm so entirely apathetic toward the well-being of every individual in the book (and this, ladies and gents, is how you know a novel fails, complete and utter apathy). Well, the bits and the pieces of the book are all promising. It starts out sharp as we meet the narrator, or rather, the narrator's mind. It's a brilliant bird view introduction that glides through the social and economic changes of China from the observations of a recent college grad. He dips in the soulless, capitalist markets of new China, makes sarcastic comments, talks about the ills of getting into and going to grad school, makes scathing comments, reflects on his roommates in college, expatiates on his ex-girlfriend... makes more world weary remarks. The beginning was nothing if not sharp, and if it were reduced to an essay just then, all would have been okay, I would still have hope for twenty-somethings writing books in China. Unfortunately, the book ended when the expository is finished and the story began.

I think that's the main problem with this popular genre of fiction (愤世嫉俗？ A mix of world weary youth disillusion / black humor? A most unfortunate execution wrought from coming of age syndromes?) written by the doomed after-80ies generation. The book ends when the story begins. They should all just write articles with sharp commentary, instead of dragging it on and on for 250 pages and sagging the minds of their readers. Or maybe, twenty-something year olds just don't have enough stories.

What is the story? Well, there is no story, no good story, no salvageable story. If we try to pinpoint a linear story. It's a recent college grad from an mediocre university still very much in love with his ex-girlfriend who is in France got hit on by some random chick who knew him when he was in a band in college and they went out on the ground that if his ex-girlfriend in France came back he would be back with her and then goodie she did come back and he went back with her but the new girlfriend won't give him up and tries to break the old relationship, but that didn't work, but in the end the protagonist and his girlfriend broke up anyway for miscellaneous, stupid reasons.

The most memorable parts of the book are not any twists in the plot or ANY, and I repeat ANY OF THE CHARACTERS. In fact, all the characters are smart but trying, jaded and bloated, and very very annoying. The most memorable parts of the book are when the narrator reflects on a nut or a bolt of the college experience, but even those are overshadowed by the tinge of cynicism that drowns any credibility he has.

But honestly, even writing about this book makes me unhappy.

Next up, Murakami's After Dark is already translated into Chinese. It is considerably more difficult. Why do I feel like a 汉奸？