46: The Vagrants by Yiyun Li

[puritybrown.livejournal.com]

46: The Vagrants by Yiyun Li

I find myself in two minds about this novel. It's undoubtedly a grand achievement: it takes an almost pointillist approach, building a picture of life in an industrial town in the People's Republic of China in 1979 by hopping around from character to character, showing us this person's daily routine, now this person's, now this person's; always letting us know something of their pasts, their hopes, their fears, and their illusions before moving on to the next one. The narrative voice is rather distant, and that's the only way something like this could have been made to work. If we were fully caught up in the minds of these characters, I expect the POV switches would have been wrenching and disorienting; the distance allows us to see all of what they do and feel and believe without getting lost.

I admired this novel; I enjoyed it. And yet while I turned the pages eagerly once I had the book in my hand, I didn't feel a need to go back to it once I'd put it down. There are a lot of momentous events in this novel, but -- perhaps because of the multitude of characters and the distant narrative voice -- there's not much sense of story. Things happen, one after the other, and you can even see the fuses being set (typically by accident, or otherwise unintentionally) that will end up being lit several chapters later. But for all that, I got the feeling that the omniscient narrator could continue to observe the inhabitants of Muddy River and tell me what they were doing and thinking and feeling for a hundred years without stopping. As I said, I don't think Li could have built and explored such a large cast of characters, and thereby created such a vivid sense of the complexity of the society she's writing about, without maintaining that narrative distance. But in making all of the characters equally important (even the ones who only appear for a paragraph), Li ends up making all of the events equally important as well, which leeches the novel of narrative drive and urgency.

Despite this, the novel is still very much worth reading -- for the excellent writing, for the fascinating characters, and for the glimpse of China during the period shortly after Mao's death, when the pro-democracy movement was first making its presence felt. I feel it's a successful book in many ways, even though I hesitate to call it a successful novel.

(tags: a: li yiyun, china, chinese-american)

Comments

[marina-bonomi.livejournal.com]

Very interesting, thank you!

This: 'But in making all of the characters equally important (even the ones who only appear for a paragraph), Li ends up making all of the events equally important as well, which leeches the novel of narrative drive and urgency.' set me to thinking.
Could it be that it was exactly the intention of the writer? Since for the characters something momentous but distant and possibly vaguely understood at the moment could have been just as important as something else smaller and more immediate but also nearer and more personal?
From what I gather from reading Chinese books about the pre-reform times (and Russian ones about the old USRR) living in a state dictatorship gives quite a different perspective about the relative importance of events and urgency in a time of confusion can have just as many bad consequences as good ones...

I didn't know of this book, I'll definitely read it.

[puritybrown.livejournal.com]

Oh, I have no doubt that it was intentional. It's a really interesting effect, unconventional and thought-provoking, encouraging the reader to look at the town (and by extension the society of which it is a part) as a whole, a complex interlocking system of systems. And many times, it is exactly a very small, seemingly insignificant decision or event that sets in motion something huge and momentous. I should perhaps say explicitly that, without wanting to make assumptions about what Li was setting out to do, I don't think she was trying to write a narrative-driven novel and failing; I think the big-picture, everything-is-equally-important effect was precisely what she was aiming for.

And I wanted that to be enough, I really did, and while I had the book in my hands it was enough, because this is a very good book indeed. But then I'd put the book down and forget about it for days on end. And... I don't know. I hesitate to criticise the book for that, because usually the question I ask about a book is "what's it trying to do, and is it succeeding?" and as I said, I do think The Vagrants succeeds at being the book Li wanted it to be. It's just that I'm used to wanting to continue with a book once I set it down, and in this case I didn't have any particular desire to read further. (I didn't want not to read further, but when I kept reading it was more out of stubbornness and a desire for completion than out of a desire to know what would happen next.) It was an odd experience.

[marina-bonomi.livejournal.com]

Ah, thank you for explaining, I had misread that part of your comment (English isn't my first language, so it's defintely more likely that it depends on how I read it rather than on how you wrote it).

Yes, I had it happen with some books too, and usually with books dealing with life in this kind of environments/political situation, I think it could be a reaction to the described atmosphere (regardless of the writer's skill, sort of 'I need to get away from that cage')or a need to try and 'digest' the book before being able to think on it.

Or sometimes a book just doesn't resonate within oneself.