Book Club Extraordinaire
  • Home
    • BExtraordinaire Roster
    • BExtraordinaire Calendar
    • RSVP
  • Blog BExtraordinaire
  • Past Reads
    • 2021 >
      • The Mysteries
      • The Long Petal of the Sea
      • The Silent Patient
      • The Broken Heart of America
      • The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek
    • 2020 >
      • Where the Crawdads Sing
      • Death of a Red Heroine
      • Age of Light
      • Beneath the Scarlet Sky
      • Next Year in Havana
      • What the Wind Knows
      • Simon the Fiddler
      • The Dutch House
      • Dear Edward
    • 2019 >
      • Caleb's Crossing
    • 2018 >
      • Educated
      • To Have and To Have Not
    • 2017 >
      • A Gentleman in Moscow
    • 2016 >
      • The Mare
      • Fates and Furies
    • 2015 >
      • Citizens of London
      • Euphoria
      • The Blue Flower
      • Being Mortal
      • Waiting for Snow in Havana
      • All that is Solid Melts into Air
      • All the Light We Cannot See
    • 2014 >
      • On Such a Full Sea
      • A Canticle for Leibowitz
      • The Luminaries
      • The Lowland
      • Alice Munro shorts
      • The Goldfinch
      • The Round House
      • Salvage the Bones
    • 2013 >
      • The Monuments Men
      • Wild
      • The Great Fire
      • A Time of Gifts
      • Sweet Tooth
      • The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
      • To the End of the Land
      • The Casual Vacancy
      • Canada
      • The Light Between Oceans
    • 2012 >
      • One Amazing Thing
      • Bossypants
      • The Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet
      • Rules of Civility
      • Cutting for Stone
      • Just Kids
      • Red Badge of Courage
      • Lost on Treasure Island
      • The Reluctant Fundamentalist
      • The Children's Book
    • 2011 >
      • The Cellist of Sarajevo
      • Food Rules
      • Freedom
      • Unbroken
      • The Painted Veil
      • The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
      • Elegance of the Hedgehog
      • Soul Mountain
  • Highlights
    • The Complete List
  • ReaderRec

Blog Extraordinaire

Soul Mountain Chapter 1

10/31/2010

0 Comments

 
"The old bus is a city reject." The first sentence introduces one of the many themes of the book: the clash between the past and the present.  The twentieth century's cultural revolution has been a period of turbulent change in China. The transformation from a crippled empire into a modern nation has involved painful and often damaging political and social adjustments.
Note the "you" pronoun, Xingjian's use of the second person point of view becomes important as you read further. I think of Calvino's "On a Winter's Night a Traveler"- the use of "you" is personal and intimate, the author is talking directly to you, the reader.

"...you arrive in a mountain country town..."
"...you stand with your backpack..."
"...  you find yourself..."

David Der-Wei Wang's interview with Gao Xingjian, as interpreted from Chinese by Daniel Fertig., says,"the second you bring in "you," the second person, it becomes a dialogue, and it becomes a trading of thoughts between people. The use of "you" creates a dialogue.

In the second paragraph you realize you are the “tourist" or the outsider. The locals have been here for many generations.
and:
"People here speak with a unique intonation even though they are descendants of the same legendary emperor and are of the same culture and race.
"

About now, I feel like I have entered an episode from the "Twilight Zone."
"You can’t explain why you’re here. It happened that you were on a train and this person mentioned a place called Lingshan."
Lingshan means soul or spirit mountain.
"You’d been to lots of places, visited lots of famous mountains, but had never heard of this place."

Ancestors/History references:
Who doesn’t love the home of their ancestors?
"This type of scarf, and how it’s tied, dates back many generations but is seldom seen these days"


0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Picture
    Kathy Corey
    I'm an expert amateur or maybe an amateur expert.

    Archives

    May 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    May 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    June 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    November 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    March 2012
    February 2012
    January 2012
    November 2011
    October 2011
    September 2011
    August 2011
    July 2011
    June 2011
    March 2011
    February 2011
    December 2010
    November 2010
    October 2010

    LinkedinFacebookBlog RSSTwitter

    Email us
Tweets by @kathycorey

Categories

All
A.S. Byatt
Authors
Barbery
Bextraordinaire
Biography
Blogs
Book Club
Books
Bossypants
Byatt
China
Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
Elegance Of The Hedgehog
Fiction
Food Rules
Franzen
Freedom
Galloway
Gao
Hamid
Hillenbrand
Just Kids
Lacks
Maugham
Movies
Niffennegger
Nonfiction
Novel
Painted Veil
Patti Smith
Pollan
Quotes
Read
Rebecca Skloot
Red Badge Of Courage
Sankovitch
Skloot
Song Dynasty
Soul Mountain
Stephen Crane
The Cellist Of Sarajevo
The Children
The Children's Book
The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks
The Relucant Fundamentalist
The Time Traveler
Tolstoy And The Purple Chair
Unbroken
Video
World War Ii
Ww Ii
Zamperini

RSS Feed

View my profile on LinkedIn