Lonely Game

☆ Beijing News·Tencent's Top Ten Books of 2017☆ Douban's 2017 Reading List Chinese Literature (Fiction) TOP1
☆ The first annual original novel of the Zuoshu Award, "Capturing the Lonely Corner with Innocent Eyes," was praised by Zhang Dachun as one of the two writers who supported the 21st century novel. Winner of the Taiwan Wu Zhuoliu Literary Award, the United Daily News Literary Award, and the Times Literary Award...
※Editor's Recommendation※
Yuan Zhesheng, known for his calm and restrained short story style, is ranked alongside Luo Yijun as Taiwan's foremost novelist of the 1960s. He is also one of the two writers Zhang Dachun hailed as "the pillars of 21st-century fiction." He has also influenced a group of young Taiwanese authors, including Tong Weiguo, Gan Yaoming, Gao Yifeng, and Wang Congwei. If Yuan Zhesheng had continued writing, perhaps he would have become Taiwan's most outstanding novelist today...
American novelist Hemingway famously proposed the "Iceberg Theory," which states that writers only leave one-eighth of their writing open to the reader, while the other seven-eighths remain hidden. Yuan Zhesheng, a longtime admirer of Hemingway's "Iceberg Theory," also demonstrates his own unique style of writing in "The Lonely Game." Through his characteristically calm prose and minimalist structure, he leaves only one-tenth of the text open; the blank spaces between the lines conceal the profound nine-tenths, leaving the reader to explore. Only when the reader perceives that nine-tenths does the true meaning of Yuan Zhesheng's writing emerge.
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※Introduction※
In "The Lonely Game," a collection of seven short stories, Yuan Zhesheng repeatedly captures loneliness, "the inevitable dilemma faced by all human beings," through diverse interpersonal relationships, such as the affection between parents and sons, the friendship between classmates in youth, and the love between husband and wife after years of marriage. The sense of solitude permeates his writing. Loneliness and solitude have always been a common theme in literary works, and it is an emotion that many writers strive to depict. However, when we carefully savor Yuan Zhesheng's calm and restrained words in "The Lonely Game," we will ultimately discover a unique way of writing about loneliness.
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In Yuan Zhesheng's best works, he clearly isn't content with simply depicting fragments of life, but rather seeks to express more complex perspectives through narrative form. This allows him to transcend the limitations of realistic simulation, as exemplified in the award-winning "Farewell." In the story, a father takes his youngest son on a train to see off his older son, a deserter; the youngest son then departs at the harbor to bid farewell to his father. As this unfolds, the characters' relationships gradually drift apart, and the narrative's power diminishes. A novel about family affection unexpectedly evokes a sense of isolation and desolation, a sense of indifference and a sense of utter loneliness. Even if we're as close as family, what can we do about it?
Literary critic Wang Dewei: The author of "Farewell" possesses exquisite control over the text, maintaining a constant state of calm and distance. The deliberately subdued and subtle tone makes the small characters floating around in the Hong Kong town appear even more humble and desolate due to their vague identities. The author's extensive use of plain brushstrokes, far from being empty due to its failure to depict the characters' psychological changes, actually reveals the author's deep concern: the fragmentation and alienation of human existence, through the characters' fleeting encounters, disconnected actions, and experiences.
Contemporary Chinese writer Zhang Dachun replaces restraint and omission with a strong desire for expression. He seeks to fuse personal feelings with social realities into a single literary entity. However, he does not forget the art of concealment. He strives to strike a balance between revealing and implying. He uses rich and accurate descriptions of reality to build the structure of his works. He also understands that he must penetrate the depths of society to achieve his goals.
—Taiwanese novelist Zheng Qingwen

2017-09-01

北京联合出版公司

Houlang, Houlang Literature

248

9787559604170