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The Crazed
by
Ha Jin
Since the appearance of his first book of stories in English, Ha Jin has won the National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award, and garnered comparisons to Dickens, Balzac, and Isaac Babel. "Like Babel," wrote Francine Prose in The "New York Times Book Review," "Ha Jin observes everything... yet he tells the reader only--and precisely--as much as is needed to make his dec...more
Hardcover, 336 pages
Published
October 22nd 2002
by Pantheon
(first published 2002)
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First, let me say, I loved the feel of the paper in this book. LOVED it. It felt good on my fingers. Please someone tell me I'm not alone on this? I don't know when I last noticed paper quality... it was lovely.
Now, the book itself was okay. I wanted more, and maybe that's my fault. Ha Jin tells an amazing story, but honestly, I was turned off by the reciting of poems and chants and songs. It got old. Not to mention I am not a huge poetry person either (yes, there are exceptions) but this was bl...more
Now, the book itself was okay. I wanted more, and maybe that's my fault. Ha Jin tells an amazing story, but honestly, I was turned off by the reciting of poems and chants and songs. It got old. Not to mention I am not a huge poetry person either (yes, there are exceptions) but this was bl...more
The review below is not entirely true. It gets better towards the middle and end but probably not a book I would recommend.
Set during the Tiananmen Square uprising of 1989, The Crazed, a novel from Ha Jin, the award-winning author of the bestseller Waiting, unites a prominent Chinese university professor who suffers a brain injury and Jien Wen, a favorite student and future son-in-law who becomes his caretaker. As Professor Yang rants about his earlier life, his bizarre outbursts begin to strike...more
Set during the Tiananmen Square uprising of 1989, The Crazed, a novel from Ha Jin, the award-winning author of the bestseller Waiting, unites a prominent Chinese university professor who suffers a brain injury and Jien Wen, a favorite student and future son-in-law who becomes his caretaker. As Professor Yang rants about his earlier life, his bizarre outbursts begin to strike...more
My first thought on finishing was chagrin that I might easily have gone through life without reading or even knowing about this great novel. I just happened to spot it on the library shelf, and picked it up because I'd liked
Waiting
.
It's true that I have a special interest in stories about China, but what makes this one so special for me is the way the narrator, Jian, is handled. He's a young graduate student, engaged to be married, with important exams looming, who must put everything on hold...more
It's true that I have a special interest in stories about China, but what makes this one so special for me is the way the narrator, Jian, is handled. He's a young graduate student, engaged to be married, with important exams looming, who must put everything on hold...more
My father is a history fiend. He loves reading historical novels and learning about the past. One year over the holidays my three siblings and I, without any planning or discussion amongst us, all purchased him gifts of books or videos on World War II. I think he finally reached the point of being overwhelmed by historical information.
I've read several of my father's books, but have never been able to embrace history the way he does. I do like it though when a book is able to take a historical e...more
I've read several of my father's books, but have never been able to embrace history the way he does. I do like it though when a book is able to take a historical e...more
"Everybody was surprised when Professor Yang suffered a stroke in the spring of 1989. He had always been in good health, and his colleagues used to envy his energy and productiveness - he had published more than any of them and had been a mainstay of the Literature Department, directing its M.A program, editing a biannual journal, and teaching a full load. Now even the undergraduates were talking about his collapse, and some of them would have gone to the hospital if Secretary Peng had not annou...more
May 13, 2012
Mircalla64 (free Liu Xiaobo)
rated it
4 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
cina
pazzia o libera espressione?
un professore colpito da ictus
un allievo e suo futuro genero che lo assite
la parlantina si scioglie e le parole vengono fuori,
ma in certe situazioni è meglio pensare di essere di fronte alla pazzia...
per tutto il libro ci lasciano pensare che il pazzo sia il vecchio professore
straparla, ricorda il suo passato e mette in discussione la sua vita
le donne, la carriera e la scelta di essere uno studioso
il povero Jian non può che seguire i suoi deliri e porsi la dom...more
un professore colpito da ictus
un allievo e suo futuro genero che lo assite
la parlantina si scioglie e le parole vengono fuori,
ma in certe situazioni è meglio pensare di essere di fronte alla pazzia...
per tutto il libro ci lasciano pensare che il pazzo sia il vecchio professore
straparla, ricorda il suo passato e mette in discussione la sua vita
le donne, la carriera e la scelta di essere uno studioso
il povero Jian non può che seguire i suoi deliri e porsi la dom...more
The title to Ha Jin’s third novel could be turned into a question. Who are the crazed? At some level, they include the entire Chinese system that views the human species as a stock of puppets. In a country like China, each person struggles with their decisions and choices, where an inner yearning to pursue the full extent of one’s individualism can land one under state suspicion. In The Crazed, Jin examines the plight of the Chinese people up to the point of Tiananmen Square. He shows through th...more
As a university student applying to graduate studies, I realize how tough it can be with "office politics" getting in the way of research. But as a student in a democratic and free country, I appreciate that I can go in any direction that my research takes me (provided I can secure funding). Ha Jin's novel The Crazed gives us a view into Chinese scholarship of the recent past, and, like the main character Jian Wan, makes us question the present and the future of studies in a highly insular commu...more
This book at times was frustrating. Ha Jin does have an excellent use of the language. He also never plans on going back to live in China, due to the content of this book.
The Crazed is about Jian, a master's graduate student who is preparing for his PhD tests that will qualify him to transfer to the highly reputable Beijing University, when his advisor suffers from a stroke. His advisor is also his fiancee's father, who lives in Beijing, and is preparing for medical tests to become a pediatricia...more
The Crazed is about Jian, a master's graduate student who is preparing for his PhD tests that will qualify him to transfer to the highly reputable Beijing University, when his advisor suffers from a stroke. His advisor is also his fiancee's father, who lives in Beijing, and is preparing for medical tests to become a pediatricia...more
Ha Jin offers an insight into China's culture that is at once confronting and revealing. Although his work is driven by seemingly ordinary plots, the real beauty is in his portrayal of a late twentieth-century China, as it wrestles with its inner turmoil between traditional values and contemporary influences.
I've read a few reviews that criticise the first half of The Crazed for being slow and uninteresting, but nothing could be further from the truth. Granted, there is a certain softness inhera...more
I've read a few reviews that criticise the first half of The Crazed for being slow and uninteresting, but nothing could be further from the truth. Granted, there is a certain softness inhera...more
I picked up this book because quite frankly I was excited to find a beautiful hardcover book in one of the local Little Free Libraries. I enjoyed it more than I thought I would and wondered if I had been drawn to the subject matter on a subconscious level. The focus is on a young graduate student, Jian Wan, who helps take care of his professor, Yang, who has suffered a stroke. His professor begins raving in his delirium and the student begins to learn not only more about his professor but also b...more
The Crazed was the first of Ha Jin’s books I read after stumbling across it as a new release when working at a public library. I did not remember much about the book other than a considerable feeling of disappointment and a few of the main characters. After re-reading War Trash (which has become my favorite of his novels), I decided to revisit The Crazed as well.
The Crazed shares many common themes with the better known Waiting. Both novels mix a detailed look at domestic China (complete with th...more
The Crazed shares many common themes with the better known Waiting. Both novels mix a detailed look at domestic China (complete with th...more
Ok. First of all do NOT read this book's description on Goodreads, it ruins the whole book! Also don't listen to these fools' reviews whining about this book: "its boring" "the end mystifies me" and so on. How anyone could be "mystified" by the end of this book, or could have "no idea what Ha Jin was trying to say", leaves me incredulous.
I'll admit I also thought it was monotonous at first. I was mildly interested for the first 100 pages--but after that I was totally consumed. The writing is si...more
I'll admit I also thought it was monotonous at first. I was mildly interested for the first 100 pages--but after that I was totally consumed. The writing is si...more
For the fact that I had to review an online synapsis of what this book was about, says it all. Cold, boring, and a teaser in the beginning you can see coming from a mile away. I grabbed it because the author is a celebrated Boston University professor, and he had acclaim for his previous book. This thin read is definitely thin. Tiananmen Square flashback and a strained relationship. Skip!
I love Ha Jin's writing style. Waiting was one of the best things I read in 2011. But despite being equally as captivated by his prose now, The Crazed just didn't work for me. I didn't feel like the main plot tied well with the political undercurrents (despite there supposedly being parallels between the two?) and the final climax of the novel felt extraordinarily rushed and out of place. The pacing of this book was odd, the main character wasn't engaging, and the constant references to novels,...more
When a college professor suffers a stroke and ends up hospitalized, his student and future son-in-law is called upon to help take care of him. In the confining hospital room, the student learns many truths about his teacher. Meanwhile the student uprisings he hears about in the news head toward their climax in Beijing. Ha Jin's books have never been quick page-turners for me. His writing is slow and deliberate, and I've always felt rewarded in the end. As others have commented here, the first ha...more
Good read - lots of good insight about Chinese society in the late 1980s. Very interesting to see how the characters' behaviors are shaped by the social, economic and political situation in China at the time. Ha Jin weaves a complex web of deception, trickery, selfishness, greed and at the same time redemption and personal growth. Various philosophical questions deftly addressed through some great storytelling. I would have given the book a 3.5 if I could but Goodreads doesn't allow that option....more
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Aug 24, 2011
Jim Talbott
rated it
4 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
fiction,
male-author
Ha Jin is wonderful at creating novels that assert the primacy of the individual in the face of massive historical forces. In this case, he tells the story of a young graduate student who is assigned to take care of his professor/future father-in-law who has just had a stroke and who, in his hospital ravings, increasingly reveals the person behind the masks he wears as a professor in a Chinese university in the late 1980s, a person both more complex and more petty than he normally chooses to rev...more
This book is about a Chinese poetics masters student, Jian, who’s major professor and father of his Fiancée suffers a stroke at the beginning of the book. Jian is responsible for taking care of Professor Yang during the afternoons, and while listening to his ravings comes to learn about the professor’s dissatisfactions, troubled past, marital problems, and regrets. As the course of the book progresses Jian comes to question his career choices and relationship, ending up in Beijing for the Tianan...more
This book is a highly-charged politically-oriented book, chronicling life in Communist China. I'd give it a '4' except the beginning is slow, slow, slow. But if you stick with it, it reads well. The story revolves around a graduate student who is ordered by the Communist party to take care of his professor after the latter is beset with a stroke. At the hospital, the elder man becomes delusional and his caregiver is at once uncertain about the road into academia that he had hoped to follow. This...more
The first half of this book wasn't doing it for me: it was about this grad student who had to listen to the rantings of his post-stroke mentor as he took care of him in his hospital room and was embarrased and freaked out by the experience. But the last part had two memorable scenes- one in which he goes to the countryside and has a sort of awakening about the conditions of the poor, and another in which he sort of stumbles into Beijing on the day of the Tiananmen Square massacre. In the end he...more
The Crazed is centered around university students set in Revolutionary China (during the Tiananmen Square Riots in fact). Jian, a promising graduate student in literature, becomes disillusioned when his mentor starts having stroke-induced rants filled with inner torment and rage regarding the Revolution. Jian then drops his prior academic plans to participate in the Tiananmen Square riots. The Crazed contains Ha Jin's signature gracefully spare and poetic writing style. Though this is not as coh...more
As of 1/26 reading on my (new) Nook! 1/27 Finished. I liked this. As I read I liked it more. I recalled Lu Xun's "Diary of a Madman." Who was crazed? It is set during the student movement in 89, though only a small part occurs in Beijing. Still, there is a madman calling a warning for the children - and "children" - the next generation - was being manipulated by party members and officials or being mowed down by tanks or gunned down by the army. The author goes so far as to have one of the chara...more
There is no doubt Ha Jin is a stunning writer, but this book doesn't really pick up until the last quarter. There was simply not enough depth in the first three-quarters of the book; pages and pages are spent on Jian's relationship with Mr. Yang but little really comes about. It could easily have been shaved down. I would have liked for more of the ending to have seeped through into the beginning of the book, as I was much more interested in what occurred during the end of the book and it wasn't...more
Ehh. The last two chapters are really good. There were some interesting insights into Chinese culture as well. But I was never really able to connect with the main (or any other) character. There were several unnecessary descriptions of female anatomy too. Nothing too blatant, but certainly not needed to advance plot or establish character and therefore disappointing to find it included. I'd give this one a pass if you're considering it unless you're locked in a room and your only other choices...more
An OK read. I discovered Ha Jin through a short story "When Cowboy Chicken Came to Town" that I really liked and used in class, so I thought a novel by him would be great. It wasn't. The basic story is a PhD candidate (and future son-in-law) Jian watches over his professor in the hospital. Through the professor's seemingly mad ramblings, Jian pieces together the professor's life and thinks about what he is doing with his. I would have completely written this book off if not for the end, when so...more
Ha Jin is subtle. He doesn't beat us over the head with an overview of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. So the non-Chinese reader can be a little lost here without that background. (The best preparation I can think of is Nien Cheng's magnificent Life and Death in Shanghai.) The Cultural Revolution was a world turned upside down. Anyone subject to foreign influences---intellectuals, officials, students, artists and dissidents---were labeled "rightists" or "counterrevolutionaries." They were humil...more
This was good. It gave me (as did Waiting) such an amazing glimpse in to the personal/cultural differences between Chinese life and ours. And it was an interesting "young man finds himself" story.
There was one part in the story where the main character's literature professor is giving his theory on the difference between Western and Eastern poetry. He says that Western society is built on the individual, and so a writer protects his individuality as something precious and adopts a persona for wr...more
There was one part in the story where the main character's literature professor is giving his theory on the difference between Western and Eastern poetry. He says that Western society is built on the individual, and so a writer protects his individuality as something precious and adopts a persona for wr...more
The Crazed tells the story of Jien Wen, a graduate student in China during the Tienanmen Square uprising. When his soon to be father-in-law, and academic mentor, suffers a debilitating stroke, Jien is tasked as one of his caretakers. Jien spends every afternoon attempting to study for his PhD qualifying exams, but instead finds himself distracted by his old professor's ranting and raving about Mao and the weaknesses of being an academic. At first, Jien dismisses everything as the delusional word...more
| topics | posts | views | last activity | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ha Jin...The Crazed, Ha Jim In General | 4 | 15 | Aug 10, 2012 08:10am |
Ha Jin is the pen name of Xuefei Jin, a novelist, poet, short story writer, and Professor of English at Boston University. Ha Jin writes in English about China, a political decision post-Tiananmen Square.
More about Ha Jin...
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I think I was just mad that it was over and done.
:(
Jul 03, 2010 06:24am
Jul 03, 2010 08:13am