The onslaught of awards and critical acclaim this book has garnered (including the biggie, The National Book Award of 1999) epitomizes the most lamentable trend in such current practices: pandering political correctness.

Despite featuring wooden dialogue spoken by boring characters I could care less about and descriptions that rival phone book listings in their vividness, Waiting DOES conform to pre-existing, fetishized Western notions of Chinese culture. Thus, delighted progressive (probably white, perhaps guilt-ridden) tastemakers were all too eager to reward such an "exotic" tale of unrequited love even though the surface originality of an actual Chinese romance (!) from an actual Chinese guy (!!) written in English (!!!), barely conceals the amateurish, mundane disposability that is the book's true nature.

To its supporters, the spare minimalism of the writing matches generalized perceptions of the Asian aesthetic forging a sort of modern, Eastern Hemingway in which his level of economical depth and insight is matched or, dare I say, even exceeded. And while it is true that sometimes "less is more" (as with Hemingway or, say, William Carlos Williams), sometimes "less is simply less". Waiting is, quite simply, hackneyed drivel that underscores the immutable fact that whether it resides in the sewers of New York City or the fields of a rural Chinese village, crap is still crap.