Soul Mountain

Rating:
Summary: A Stretch
Review: I enjoy reading international authors and try to get a feel for how life looks in different parts of the world. Anytime you read a translated work, a reader must accept that some of the rhythms and nuances that inflected the original work may see off-kilter. From the United States reading Xingjian's work, it was a stretch. Structurally, the work seems to lack unity. Then there is Chapter 72 where the author argues with the editor, "This isn't a novel! A novel must have a complete story." You realize that even though it took Xingjian 5 years to write this, it was never intended to be a traditional structurally unified tale. I remember one chapter early in the text where he goes up a mountain, gets lost from his guide, and is stranded and lost in the forest. I stopped reading for awhile because I was worried about how the character would find his way down the mountain. I needn't have worried, because the whole thread was dropped. For all I know, he's still stranded on top of a mountain.

Once you begin to get used to the rhythm and seemingly disjointed structure of Xingjian's writing, it does unravel with a great beauty. Like a travel guide of sorts, you wonder where the next set of pictures will take you. The most dramatic and classically bite-sized engagement I had was in Chapter 46 where the man is trying to break off a relationship with a woman. He is sexually attracted, but with little else. She picks up a knife, eventually turning it on herself, and captures him at the same time, preventing him from leaving. It's a snapshot, but it's masterful.

My sense is that all of these pictures are freeze-frames about a soul who is lost, without a real purpose or something in which to believe. It is an exploration into loneliness, physical soulless liaisons, and stopgap celebrations. While it is very long and hard to feel a sense of the whole, in the end it was a meaningful experience for me. Enjoy!

Rating:
Summary: Remember how subjective Great Literature can be.
Review: I write this review not to argue why this book is or is not good, as some people have. To make such a judgement realy misses the exquisite subjective pleasures of picking our own favorate books. In the end, I think this is perhaps the perfect novel for me, but I would not disagree that it is unpalitable for others. That's simply because (thank goodness) everyone has different tastes.

Instead, I can tell you why I like the book, and if you feel the same way I do, you should check it out.

To begin with, I have read the book in both Chinese and English, and am looking for the French edition, which was translated by the author himself. Although I did feel that the translation certainly suffered, to a certain extent I grant that it was probably without malice, and simply a casualty of the fact that translating from Chinese to English (unlike from French or German to English) is a highly personal and subjective experience. Unfortunately, this book was not written specificaly with western consumption in mind, so many of the characters and metaphors are very Chinese, and would seem strange to Americans (in the same way that the behavior of the women (especialy Zhang Ziyi's charcter) in Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon seemed strangely aloof to many Americans). These themes can never be 'translated,' one simply has to understand them from experience.

Gao Xingjian himself was a well known modern artist and playwrite in Mainland China untill he fled in the late 1980s. Since then his works have not been published there, but instead in Taiwan and France, where he now lives. Perhaps he is not the best known author in modern China, however, most American literary figures are comparatively unknown as well. We can only hope that popularity never becomes criterion for a Nobel Prize, because I could not stomach Tom Clancy or Michale Criteon usurping the honors due a true literary prodigy.

However, as I stressed before, to each his (or her) own, and I would hardly blame a person for prefering Criteon or King, I would just disagree with them.

What draws me to this book is it's vivid cultural landscape. It is broad, meandering, and even incoherent, but it reflects well the reality I have personaly expericned. Not all roads lead to Rome, and not all the stories of my life meet in a single place, or form a singel plot, but they are all important to me, they all build up the world I've come to know and love. The overall theme, though, of alienation and a sense of rootlessness in this slick new tethlon world of tall cities and global mono-cultures is a sad consistency in all of humanity's long history. (after all, the people of the middle ages no doubt struggled with their modernity just as we now strugle with ours)

As in this book, I don't actualy like or dislike this modern world, or maybe it's that I both love and hate it, at the same time. There are so many emotions and visions, people and places, stopped by or passed over in my life that it's impossible to feel just one way, or even consistently about the world I live in.

Perhaps it is a mental illness that creates these extremities of thought, but it is a madness that's catching. More and more, I see people who have a similar mix of mournfull elation and vivid desolation as they wander through the course of their lives. For me, Soul Mountain is not a story but a life, not a novel but a chronicle, one that speaks uniquely to my own sense of isolation and identity.

I hope it can do the same for you.

Rating:
Summary: Never blends into a unified work
Review: I thought that several parts of the book were outstanding. I enjoyed the author's descriptions of his trips into the mountain rainforests - he captured the beauty and the danger inherent in the land. I found his experiences in Buddhist temples and encounters with the monks very interesting. But does a compilation of travel descriptions mixed with second-person meditations make a novel?

Xingjian addresses this in one of the later chapters of the book. He describes a dialogue between the author and a publisher concerning whether the writings constitute a novel. In essence, the publisher argues that there are no characters and no plot - hence, no novel. The author argues that the I-You-She personas are characters and questions whether a novel needs a plot. The question of what comprises a novel is never really anwered, and Xingjian closes the chapter by stating that the chapter is ineessential to the rest of the book.

Overall, I thought the book was rather disjointed. I felt that the second-person storyline was confusing and distracted from the rest of the novel. Although many chapters of the book are excellent, they never seem to merge into a unified whole.

Rating:
Summary: Pfffft!
Review: Soul Mountain describes the search of an individual for his being at several levels. After the author more or less gets his life back when the diagnosis of lung cancer is found to be wrong, he tries to find life. The I-figure is travelling along the Yangtze river in search of glimpses of the past: primeval forests that have not yet been destroyed, people who still know the old folk songs, Daoist temples that are still functioning. But everywhere he encounters the ravages of modern day China: the Three Gorges Dam, people poaching pandas, bare and eroded mountains. There is also a "you" figure, another aspect of the I-figure, that is in search of the more spiritual and social/erotic aspects of life by his quest to find Soul mountain. During this quest he is accompanied (or should I say hampered) by the "she" figure, which is supposed to be the more feminine side of the character.

This book is a strange mixture of a travel diary, folk stories and philosophical explorations. The constant switching between the characters and the different aspects of the book made it difficult to get into the story. I liked the search for the old China, could hardly follow some of the philosophical insights into human relationships (is this maybe due to the huge cultural gap between the Chinese and European cultures?) and I (as a woman) absolutely hated the female part of the character. She is everything a woman is supposed to be in the eyes of certain extremely old-fashioned men: dependent, weak, whining, walking a mountain on high heels. Hello: this is the 21st century! Nowadays, there are plenty of strong, independent and interesting women around. I cannot imagine how this book won the author the Nobel Prize.

Rating:
Summary: This is a poor Nobel Prize Winner
Review: I struggled though 1/2 of this book before I decided to throw it away. I bought it as a serious work of fiction and was expecting a well developed and 'deep' intellectual book.

My surprise and shock at the lack of structure to the book and the constant suggestions of rape and female abuse put me off, although I am not a supporter of womens issues.

This is hardly a book for anyone, it seems to me to be an indulgent trip through this mans eyes. I thought that he was basically evil with no soul or spirituality in him at all.

I can only imagine that the Nobel Prize was given to him for his 'heroic' writing during the Chinese repression of intellectuals. Another case of Political Correctness over talent. I am left to wonder who didnt win the Nobel prize that year. I would be pretty [mad] had it been me.

Bob Thomas

Rating:
Summary: UNIQUE AND POWERFUL
Review: This has to be one of the most controversial books on the market. Either you love it or hate it, as reflected by ratings from 1 to 5 stars. I read the book first in Chinese (my first language), then in English, and I think I can partially explain this contradiction.

The central theme of the book is straightforward. A dying man goes on a quest for adventure and closure. The reason he chose to go to the Soul Mountain is purely coincidental, he heard the name casually mentioned by a fellow traveler on the train. We can only speculate that he was drawn to the "Soul" mountain in the hope of finding some spiritual enlightening and the meaning of his own existence.

The Soul Mountain (Lingshan) continues to elude Gao, and the closest thing he ever got to is the Soul Rock (Lingyan) where women burn incense when they want to have sons. Unlike many other readers, I could not detect any deep moral or religious questioning on the part of the author, nor is there a spiritual awakening in this book.

What has captivated me is Gao's lyrical description of the amazing landscape, the villagers, the Taoist priests, the monks and the hermits who live in the deep mountains and back woods. He reflects fleetingly on his past, full of memories of political persecution, failures in love and relationships, lack of fulfillment, and wrestles with his own demons of loneliness and homesickness. I am moved by his irrepressible sadness whenever he encounters remnants of his childhood: ponds with floating duckweed, arched stone bridges, small town wine shops---.I am dazzled by Gao's masterful use of both traditional and modern Chinese prose, his subtle sense of humor, irony, drama, mystery and his knowledge of history and folklore.

Gao's alternative use of "I." "you" and "He" does not bother me. In my mind's eye, I see the same person. But I find his jumps from reality to fantasy, from the mystic mountain to the sizzling bedroom a bit disorienting. His haunting nightmares and his philosophical rambling remind me of Avant Garde paintings. One gets a sense of power, but not beauty.

I read the Chinese version of the book first and loved it. However, when I read the English translation, I felt something was lost. It was not the fault of the translator, but the huge problem of uprooting a monumental work from its native land and transplanting it in a foreign soil. It is therefore surprising to me that so many Western readers are able to enjoy this remarkable piece of literature.

The matter of women in Gao's writing requires some cultural context. By tradition, the mainstream Chinese writers have been reticent about the matter of sex. Serious writers did not engage in description of sexual love. But as a modern writer, Gao probably feel obliged to break this taboo, although in my opinion, he probably does not feel comfortable about it, nor is this one of the more successful aspects of the book. The women in Gao's book are hard for the Westerners to relate. One book reviewer at Amazon.com described these women as "deranged or
hysterical drama queens of the highest order."

When reading this book, it is important to consider the social context it was written in. For more than 3 decades beginning from 1949, the only art form allowed in China was the exultation of the victory of the Communist revolution and the greatness of Mao Zedong. It is to Gao's credit that he was able to create his own unique writing style, despite this very difficult creative climate.

If "uniqueness," "power" and "craftsmanship" are the chief criteria by which art should be evaluated, then Gao deserves the highest honor possible bestowed upon him.

H. Mei Liu, M.D., author of GRANDFATHER'S MICROSCOPE

Rating:
Summary: Inspiring look inside a man's soul
Review: As this man walk's China, he comments on the things he sees, the people he meets and his thoughts. I believe he is on a pilgrimage and I never once heard his name, but it didn't matter because I saw into his heart and looked deep into his eyes and saw his soul. This is a good man. I listened to the audio cassette version of this book (13 tapes) and found it to be a wonderful companion as I drove each day. I was so sad when it was over. This book could have continued double size and I would have loved it. A wonderful read.

Rating:
Summary: I like this book because it did inspired me.
Review: I like this book because it did inspired me. It showed other dimensions of the world. It recorded the feeling and lives of different characters. It's not about good or evil people and happy or bad ending. Life is much more complicated than Hollywood movies.

The reasons that some readers may not get it are:

1. The English translation.
It has to do with English itself. Many slang and sayings cannot be translated directly. Comparing to Chinese, English has shorter history and less vocabulary. There are many sayings are hard to understand without the knowledge of the native culture and history. No matter how good the translator is, the flavor will lose greatly. Unfortunately, It happened to every English translated Chinese book.

I am not sure the title "Soul Mountain" is appropriate because the character pronounced "ling" in Chinese is a very tricky one.

2. Few people can climb the high mountain.
Few people can resonate with Einstein. Understanding a piece of good literature requires nothing less than understanding a good physics theory.

Rating:
Summary: A Masterpiece of the Mind
Review: "Soul Mountain" is a panoramic mosaic of a quickly vanishing China. A nostalgic search for an inferred Mountain leads the author into a search of reality, of who he is and what has shaped his country. It's a jagged tale of startling incoherence that binds one to it until the last page. Along the road "you", "I" and "she" meet interesting people and examine interesting themes, which consistently diverge from one another. It starts with "you" in a dirty bus stop and ends with "I" comprehending and understanding nothing. A truly fascinating tale of humanity and the forces that shape people and their times, a worthy winner of the Nobel and a wonderful read for the brave at heart.

The novel is a nostalgic monument to ancient themes in a modern time. He paints verbal pictures of ancient traditions and places that rest on the mind and leave a warm, comforting feeling within the depths of the reader. His portrayal of ancient and unforgotten traditions and practices that survived the cultural revolution resonate through the mind and leave a trace of envy and a sense of "I wish I could see it too" attitude. It's a novel in which the author tries not to forget his roots nor from where he came but also tries to grasp reality and the meaning of life, love and theology.

Gao takes on the task of examining reality leaving the reader unsure of what is and isn't real. The author asserts that "it is impossible to disentangle imagination from experience" and elsewhere asks "where is the boundary between memory and wishful thinking? How can the two be separated? Which of the two is more real and how can this be determined?" Even the main characters in the plot are not real but mere reflections of each other "you" is the reflection "I" created, and "she" was created by "you" and "he" is the back of "you".

Other expressions of reality are found throughout the narrative. The author talks about "reality existing through experience" and emphasizes "personal experience" but then infers that "reality cannot be verified and does not need to be." The author makes a startling conclusion that "reality is myself, and that reality is the perception of this instant and it can't be related to another person." In the end any reality that is portrayed is "distorted" since the author "had been unable to portray real life." The reader is never sure where they are or what is true or false yet certain that they are hearing something.

But the novel, as I assume the author did, loses love. "She" says "love is an illusion which people conjure up to delude themselves. You don't believe in the existence of something called love; it is either the man possessing the woman or the woman possessing the man."

A novel of such magnitude cannot leave out an examination of religion and God. "Soul Mountain" attempts to trace religion from the "a vestige of early human civilization; the worship of fire" through to the authors conclusion when "I" sees a "small green frog" and "knows this is God." But "I" honestly admits that he doesn't "know if God, and the Devil in fact exist but both were invoked by you who are the embodiment of both my good fortune and my misfortune." Gao admits later on (in reference to folk songs) that "what should be revered isn't revered and instead all sorts of things are worshipped."

In this examination of faith he confronts the reality that the Chinese "government doesn't allow of superstitious practices." In spite of these inhibitions he takes his reader into the realm of ancient religious traditions that are still invisible to the western eye.

This is a monumental search for the self, humanity, history, culture and identity. It is cast against the morass of the vast expanse of China. Eventually "the act of searching itself turns into a sort of goal, and the object of the search is irrelevant" and the "true traveler is without goal, it is the absence of goals which creates the ultimate traveler." Gao is the ultimate traveler but I am left to think that Gao's own search has led him to the vacuous belief that "life is joyous, death is joyous, it is nothing more than your memories." If this is what life is, then I too would "wail" with Gao and (in the words of the author) it would be the "wail of accumulated sadness being released."

Rating:
Summary: Victim of the Nobel Committee, again
Review: I must say that I asked for it. After struggling endlessly to finish The Tin Drum, which I purchased solely because of the press and the Nobel Prize label, and a brief hiatus reading technical books (which are far easier to read btw') I picked up Soul Mountain. I must admit that the cover art and the prominent Nobel Prize for Literature stamp on it drew me in like a whale to the beach. After yet another painful journey trying to just get a hold of a book so I can appreciate it's prose I must say that I feel the committee has fooled me again. I came to amazon.com not to vent but to find an explanation of the book that would help. Luckily I am not alone in my soul numbing stupor and have found solace in the reviews of others here who feel the same. I am starting to think that the Nobel Prize people are playing some cruel joke on the book buying public. Even though it is against my moral fibre to destroy a book I think this one may be destined for the rubbish bin (or at least the library donation box) once I am finished reading it. This is definitley one mountain I would not wish anyone else to have to climb.