Monkey Arhat Pond

Time stands still for eternity, profound love unfolding in ever-increasing forms, yet we never fully grasp its beauty. This groundbreaking work, hailed as one of the two writers who have paved the way for 21st-century fiction, is the first complete exploration of love. ◎ Editor's Choice☆ "I must salvage the memory of love before it is forgotten." (Yuan Zhesheng, "Everything is a Short Story") After a long period of "capturing lonely corners," Yuan Zhesheng, in his later years, turned his attention to another universal literary theme: love. In "Monkey" and "Arhat Pond," he writes, questioning, "How good can love be?" Love is at the core of his work. Yet, as we follow Yuan Zhesheng from the novel's opening to its conclusion, we can subtly sense the presence of elements beyond love, elements that defy explicit articulation. As a later reader, we cannot know whether this was intentional; but what is certain is that Yuan Zhesheng has once again crafted a work within this universal literary theme that is worth revisiting.
☆ "'Religion' and 'love' have equally many followers and are equally 'layered.'" In the later years of Yuan Zhe-sheng's creation, he increasingly incorporated religious themes into his works. "Luohan Pond" included in this book combines religious statues such as the Eighteen Arhats and Concubine Guanyin with love and artistic creation. The combination of "worldly love", "otherworldly religion" and "the essence of artistic creation" makes "Luohan Pond" different from Yuan Zhe-sheng's early lyrical works. The lyrical artistic conception of the novel is as profound as a legend.
Yuan Zhesheng, long a hidden gem in his short story research, uses short stories as a foundation in this rare collection of novellas, employing different perspectives, the same characters, similar sentences, and fragmented time periods to retell the same story. He also omits and obscures many conflicts, creating a tranquil atmosphere that permeates the book. This "novel," devoid of numerous overt conflicts and complex plot twists, develops a richer dimension through Yuan Zhesheng's linguistic manipulation.
Synopsis: The rain keeps falling, and love, isolated by the hazy veil, draws a quiet young man from a military dependents' village to the doorstep of his beloved Liang Yuling countless times. The moon rises repeatedly, and love, enveloped in the lingering dusk, prevents sculptor Jian Xingzai from successfully crafting a majestic Buddha statue. The outlines he carves always resemble the image of his beloved, Xiao Yueniang, too flamboyantly.
They are both deeply affectionate people, but how beautiful can love be after it has become deeply devoted? If it is destined to be unattainable, how can one get closer?
◎ Celebrity Recommendation: Like all excellent modern novelists, Yuan Zhesheng attempts, through his own linguistic labor, to dive solitarily into the obscurities of existence. Like the most dedicated translator, he uses fiction to translate the essential sadness shared by afternoon raindrops, the chirping of midsummer cicadas, and all other sights. He makes the long-dormant experience suddenly manifest in fiction. On the other hand, when this pure sadness permeates all human events in his novels, Yuan Zhesheng always makes everyday details become unfamiliar to us again: because of him, we can no longer truly know what it is to be "not alone" in this world.
—— Taiwanese novelist Tong Weiguo’s “Monkey” and “Arhat Pond” both tell stories. The former is a relatively “normal” world of teenagers (commonly seen in novels); the latter returns to the lyrical poetry techniques of his early years, and expands and develops into an allegorical space, with more ingenious design of metaphors and symbols, and the contrast between the character meanings and the plot. Rather than reading with the shadow of Shen Congwen, it is closer to Wang Zengqi - a mixture of "The Rite of Initiation" and "Chronicles of Da Nao", but it is a pre-modern secular space in Taiwan - the pursuit of the aesthetic conception and redemption of poetry, close to the teachings of the "Beijing School".
—— Malaysian Chinese writer Huang Jinshu Social norms, moral lessons and the "necessary conditions for becoming a man" are all smuggled and spread through coming-of-age novels, projecting the fantasies that are lacking and cannot be filled in the growth process of ordinary people. "Monkey" chooses ordinary people who are not given much attention in traditional coming-of-age novels as narrators, presenting another type of process full of frustration, dissatisfaction and disillusionment with the traditional coming-of-age novel discourse.
——Taiwanese novelist Zhang Yaosheng◎Award record★"Monkey" won the 33rd Taiwan "Wu Zhuoliu Literature Award" Novel Award in 2002.
★ The author has won many important literary awards in Taiwan, such as the "Times Literary Award", "United Daily News Literary Award" and "May Fourth Literature Medal". He also won mainland awards such as the Beijing News Tencent Top Ten Books of 2017, the first "Book Making Award" for original novel of the year, and other awards.

2018-11-01

四川人民出版社

Houlang, Houlang Literature

200

9787220109478