Yiyun Li Redux

Hungry Like the Woolf revisits Yiyun Li's The Vagrants and comes up with a very different sense of the novel than I derived, but one that is both interesting and well supported by the text. The review really drives home some of the central, powerful themes of the book.

My reading was a little different because I tend to downplay some of the more negative elements (the realism) because they strike me as so ordinary, so that the extraordinary--the small acts of mercy and kindness that made the days possible and bearable for some--took on a starker relief.  But that is how the reader collaborates with the text--always an interesting process filled with insights that others can learn from.

One other complementary point I derived from the book is that the Totalatarian system in the book is a stand-in for fate, circumstances, what-have-you, for those of us who live outside of the system.  That is to say that what applies in this system applies in many ways to our own lives.  The things that bind us are not necessarily as omnipresent and fearsome, but The Vagrants has a larger context--a meaning outside of the politics of the moment.  And it is in that aspect of the book that Li has achieved a kind of triumph that doesn't often come from books about oppressive systems.  The system is integral to the plot-line and the circumstances, but the situations that develop and how people deal with them are universals that transcend the moment of the novel.  For example, Nini's circumstance is not one confined to totalatarian regimes--she could be one unloved, "unnecessary" child anywhere in the world--one lonely person seeking the security of someone to love her.  The same is true for the plight of many of the characters--not all of the problems are problems of regime--many are problems of simply being human.  One cannot overlook the specific condemnations of an intolerable system, but one can also find here simple observations about how people in all places at all times have survived oppressive circumstance--whatever form that circumstance may have taken.

I think the narrowness of vision that Kerry deplores in the introduction to the piece may be part and parcel of reading the book too narrowly--the critics who fail to see what it is do so because the book is perhaps not the best condemnation of a crushing political system.  But then, it seems, that is not all it was intended to be--indeed, it may not even make up the better part of what Yiyun Li explores in the book.

Comments

  1. Thank you for the kind link and for understanding what I was driving at. All day, I have been worried that my post was incomprehensible.

    I do think The Vagrants has been underrated and I do think it is one of the best books of 2009 (at least of those I have read). As you say, there are layers and layers below the political surface. Oh, and kudos for giving some light to the case of Lui Xiabo. China may not be what it was in the 1970s, but it doesn't exactly embrace freedom of expression either.

    Anyway, I have enjoyed your posts on The Vagrants. This exchange of ideas is what I love about the online community of book lovers. I generally avoid reviews of books I am going to read once I decide to the read them, so did not get back here to read them until after I posted my own review. But you also raised new issues I had not considered and you made connections to her short story collection, which I have not read.

    I really enjoyed reading your perspective. And not only because we agreed on a number of points.

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  2. Dear Kerry,

    Thanks so much for taking the time to comment. I very much enjoyed your review and seeing someone else comment on the broader implications of Li's work. I tend to be a somewhat naive reader; that is I read for enjoyment and one of my chief enjoyments is deft use of the language and of the tools of the trade. I think we're both in agreement, that Ms. Li has a great command of these skills and tools.

    More, I'm really glad you enjoyed the book--it sounds that you may have enjoyed it as much as I did.

    shalom,

    Steven

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