'Sometimes a student is advised by his or her peers to give characters “higher stakes” or “more agency.” This tends to lead me to groan internally. Isn’t living from day to day enough of a stake? Isn’t living itself the most important action, if you really pay close attention to the world?'
Yiyun Li on what a minor character can tell us ⬆️
A thought provoking essay
#YiyunLi #amWritingFiction #minorCharacters #the70percent #literaryCriticism #life #living #agency
> Why would one want to access another person’s pain, when there is enough in one's own life?
from Kindness (the 1st story) by #YiyunLi
This is a tough question. Maybe it's the explanation why poor people refuse to enjoy so-called high class things, which should be subtler and usually more sorrowful.
Start reading
Gold Boy, Emerald Girl
By #YiyunLi
In the title story, a professor introduces her middle-aged son to a favorite student, unaware of the student’s true affections. In “A Man Like Him,” a lifelong bachelor finds kinship with a man wrongly accused of an indiscretion. In “The Proprietress,” a reporter from Shanghai travels to a small town to write an article about the local prison, only to discover a far more intriguing story involving a shopkeeper who offers refuge to the wives and children of inmates. In “House Fire,” a young man who suspects his father of sleeping with the young man’s wife seeks the help of a detective agency run by a group of feisty old women.
Finished this a few days ago:
Not a lot to say at the moment. Although I enjoyed it quite a bit, it really felt like the second half or so lost much of the momentum and intrigue that was built up in the first half?
Which in terms of the story itself, actually makes sense. Much of the novel pivots on the complicated friendship (?) of two young girls. That relationship, far from a simple friendship, injects the book with a great deal of uncertainty and curiosity early on. It also inspires the sort of koan-esque aphorisms that Agnes shares.
But as the novel proceeds and distance comes between the two girls - geographic, but also figurative - so it makes sense that the tone shifts, as does the tension.
Yiyun Li's *The Book of Goose* is quite wonderful so far! The relationship between the two main characters is just mysterious enough, unsettling enough, to keep you unsure of where things are headed. The narrator (Agnes) speaks in aphoristic language that doubles that sense of mystery and uncertainty.
Begin to read Wednesday’s Child by Yiyun Li
‘One of our major novelists’ Salman Rushdie ‘One of our finest living authors’ New York Times A dazzling new collection of short stories, spanning 15 years of writing, from Yiyun Li, the prize-winning author of The Book of Goose and Where Reasons End A dazzling new collection of short stories written over a decade, spanning loss, alienation, aging and the strangeness of contemporary life – from Yiyun Li, the prize-winning author of The Book of Goose A grieving mother makes a spreadsheet of everyone she’s lost. A professor develops a troubled intimacy with her hairdresser. And every year, a restless woman receives an email from a strange man twice her age and several states away. In Yiyun Li’s stories, people strive for an ordinary existence until doing so becomes unsustainable, until the surface cracks and grand mysterious forces – death, violence, estrangement – come to light. And even everyday life is laden with meaning, studded with indelible details: a filched jar of honey, a mound of wounded ants, a photograph kept hidden for many years, until it must be seen. Li is a breathtakingly original writer, an alchemist of opposites: tender and unsentimental, metaphysical and blunt, funny and horrifying, omniscient and yet acutely aware of just how much we cannot know. Beloved for her novels and memoirs, she returns here to her earliest form, gathering short stories and a remarkable novella never before published in the UK. Taken together, the stories in Wednesday's Child articulate the true cost of living with all Li’s trademark unnerving beauty and searing wisdom.
Goslings in flight and @DukeAsia summer book club on the road - join me tomorrow to chat on a favorite novel by a favorite author: #TheBookofGoose, by #YiyunLi (@fsgbooks 2022)
7/20/23 Thursday* 7-8pm ET
Details and registration for zoom link:
https://duke.is/9ewhg
In this session Professor Eileen Chow will lead us in a discussion of Yiyun Li's critically acclaimed novel The Book of Goose, Winner of the 2023 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. APSI book club events are open to the Duke community and general public. Please join us for the conversation!
Some Bits: Nelson's Linkblog
Novel Exploration
Hailong
Trevor Burrows
eileen chengyin chow
LordWoolamaloo
JBRoss