The Thumbnail Book Reviews
by John Q McDonald --- 4 June 2012
by Dai Sijie
"Right now, ignorance is in fashion..." says one of the characters in this novel. She refers to the Cultural Revolution, a decade of darkness and famine in Communist China during the 1960s and 1970s. One might observe in our own politics today, a strong strain of anti-intellectual fervor, and wonder if given sufficient power, the forces of darkness would work to supress the availability of a broad education (like cutting student grants and loans, slashing budgets for schools and universities, electing officials who denounce "intellectual elitism"). It could never happen here, right? -- But we digress. It is the depths of the Cultural Revolution, an era in which China's re-education of its citizens extended to banishing intellectuals and their children to the pastoral countryside, to learn a thing or two about being a worker among the people. Ma, our narrator, and his close friend Luo are sent to a remote village, where they're put to work in the fields and local mines. The book opens with them defending Ma's violin against the ignorant inspection of the locals who sense it is a tool for Western musical influence and hence corruption of the revolution. There is a comical note to the suspicious revolutionary tattle-tale atmosphere, but it is a dark comedy. Lives are at stake. There have been many novels, this book most remeniscent of those of Milan Kundera, that tell the bizarre upside-down world of totalitarian control in the name of proletarian revolution. This book fits well within that realm. It is the semi-autobiographical tale of how these boys try to find some sanity in their exile, and how they find romance and love through the contraband books of Balzac and other European writers. These they share with a young seamstress in a nearby village. Luo and the girl fall in love and adventures within the strictures of their culture ensue. Ma is mildly jealous of their affair, but everyone is walking on eggshells lest their stash of literature be discovered. The book is oddly light and witty, but there are dark shadows throughout. It is a bit disjointed, and some of its forebodings have no resolutions. In the end, we don't even know what might become of Ma and Luo, except to realize that Sijie survived the Cultural Revolution, to emigrate to France where he now makes films and writes. In French, no less.
See Also: [Cousin Bette by Honoré de Balzac] ["Socialism is Great!" by Lijia Zhang]