The Thumbnail Book Reviews
by John Q McDonald --- 23 December 2001
by Gao Xingjian
Though a successful playwright and author, Gao Xingjian was not popular among officials in the massive Beijing bureaucracy. Then he was diagnosed with cancer, only to discover, six weeks later, no cancer at all. Hounded out of Beijing, Xingjian embarked on an epic journey across the Chinese countryside. Soul Mountain is the equally epic novel that resulted from this journey. The structure of this book is inventive and non-linear. The characters are often reduced merely to You and I, She and He, and the line between narrator and participant is drawn very faintly. Xingjian's protagonist explores village life in southern and western China, into the borderlands of Tibet. At times, he collects folk tales and songs. At others, he enters a personal realm of Buddhism and Taoism. The character meets with people who have come shakily through the Cultural Revolution. Temples and towns have been ravaged, looted, destroyed, cleansed of their individuality. But the culture is slowly awakening, though still living beneath the stifling central control of the government. And the narrator connects with a woman, to whom he tells folk tales and invented stories. These are almost universally tragic or violent. They are almost a metaphor for the relations between the men and women of this book. They don't understand one another, and the male perspective is often possessive and violent. Lingshan is the mountain that is sought, and it is a climb within as well as without. The book is complex and troubling. It also glows with a certain humanity. This reader can't quite judge the quality of this translation, but it did often seem uneven and opaque. There are dreams, stories, tales, history and adventure in the book. It is an omnibus journey. Challenging and sometimes compelling.
(Gao Xingjian was awarded the 2000 Nobel Prize for literature.)
Also by Xingjian: [Buying a Fishing Rod for My Grandfather]