Hi all,
back after a rather long break.
I did however not abandon on the WLF-prize project during that break and continued reading
Frontier by Can Xue in an English translation by Karen Gernant & Chen Zeping. Finished it yesterday evening actually, so it took me the best part of 2 and half months to finish it.
If I would be asked to describe
Frontier in one word, I would probably choose the word "confusing". Should I be asked to describe it with a short sentence, I would probably come up with something along the lines of: "struggling with confusion till the end."
Still, if the above description seems to suggest that I did not like the book, I would say that "not liking" does not entirely cover how I feel about it. I would rather say that it was not my cup of tea. While reading it, I often felt like a kid that is forced to finish a plate of witloof he does not like.
The novel follows a set of characters who all live, or spent an amount of time, in Pebble Town, a town which I understand to be to the north of China, close to the border with, I presume, Russia.
As a yardstick, you can assume that each chapter is written from the point of view from one of those characters, where each character returns as the focal point in several chapters. Each of these characters interacts with the other characters. They live in the same town. They visit each other, they talk and exchange thoughts with each other, etc.
As the novel depicts the experiences and occurrences of these characters, it seems to constantly swerve from one aspect to another and skip from one occurrence to another. This without any apparent logic. The novel, at times, also uses a lot of details that often seem irrelevant. Those details and the fact of swerving between events, had quiet a confusing effect on me as reader.
To add to that, the novel also often uses flash-backs. It does that in the same apparently chaotic way, skipping from one point on a time-line to another without it being very clear where one viewpoint in time stops and another begins. That adds to the confusion.
And to make it even more confusing, at different points, elements that seem like magical or supernatural are blended into the mix. This can e.g. be animals that appear at times or places you would not expect them or material things that behave in an almost magical way, e.g. walls that bend or roofs that open.
All the above confused me to a point, that I often reread parts in the book just to gain a feeble impression of not entirely having lost track of the novel.
All that confusion is a such not a problem. With many novels I, at least a certain stages, wonder what the writer is on about and seem lost in the book. In Abercrombie's First Law-books e.g., the battle scenes can be so detailed and extended that I kind of loose track. But then there is a general overruling story-line of the novel that catches the reader and offers him a helicopter perspective as to where he is in the story. I guess that is what is generally referred to as a plot.
And that brings me to the impression of Frontier that puzzled me the most: this novel does not seem to have a plot. Even after I turned the last page, I'm not sure what the novel is about. It just seems to be a loose recount of the daily lives of Luijun, of Qiming, of Sherman and of the other characters. But there does not seem to be an underlying general story-line. And the magical and supernatural elements mixing in, do nothing to offer a clue.
At times, I thought Pebble Town was a metaphor for a de-intoxication facility and that each of the characters had been sent there to cure a habit of using. Then I thought Liujun, who seems to be the main character, was actually lying on her dead-bed during the entire novel and her life was recalled through her feverish dying dreams. But I never was quiet sure.
So after having finished the novel, I read
the stub about the novel on Wikipedia. And got the impression that other readers were just as confused as I was or, as it is put in the linked Wikipedia-stub, estranged. And that that feeling of confusion and estrangement is actually the main theme/objective of the novel. And that was not really my cup of tea.
So far I find the English somewhat unnatural, or it may be old fashioned, I don't know. Would that be because it reflects the original text or is more the translator's style.
The disadvantage of not being able to read books in their original language....
I kind of second the above quote from Peter D. The translation felt rather construed and unnatural at times. Then, I guess that Chinese and English are so fundamentally different, that that is probably unavoidable to a certain extent. Just as an illustration, when I'm taking away an order at our local Chinese restaurant, the Chinese the staff there speak sounds like a succession of short rapid dynamic sounds, with a very pronounced determination and aim always oozing from it. That impression fits right in with the (presumed) mercantile nature of Asia. Yet, in the English translation, I found nothing of the dynamic nature of the spoken Chinese referred to above.
So, in a nutshell, this was not my cup of tea. I actually had to force myself to finish the novel. That being said, I learned to like witloof in the end.
I think next up will be Laszlo Krasznahorkai. But I will not hide that I plan on reading an English written novel first. Just to get some bearings back.
Cheers,
Francis
www.musicandliterature.org
www.asymptotejournal.com
