21st Century Literature discussion
12/23 Frontier
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Frontier - Final 5 Chapters & Whole Book
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Marc
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Dec 01, 2023 06:22AM
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“All my stories—my novels, my novellas, and my short stories—are written sequentially, from beginning to end. I never arrange them together or put them in a different sequence.” "...the reader who expects narrative to “make sense” in any conventional way will find himself utterly frustrated. Though characters like Sherman are, supposedly, human, we cannot identify with them because their perceptions are unstable and their reactions appear nonsensical, as both dialogue and action build confusion instead of consensus through a sequence of non-sequiturs.
Now that I've finished I've been looking at the fantastic background information shared by Marc . These quotes resonated with me and with my experience. I am left with a sense of dissonance , confusion and relief.
Pebble Town is a shapeshifting enigma , its inhabitants constantly confronted with experiences that make no sense , relationships are muddled and memory is a blunt instrument. Moments of calm and insight are fleeting, time stretches and compresses , and the border between humans and the natural world is both blurred and corrupted .
In my reading experience I'm reminded of my visits to galleries of modern art . In the Saachi gallery in Chelsea. London I failed to connect with room after room of work until, wandering disconsolately down to the basement, a single enormous piece had such a profound effect on me that I still contemplate it in my mind years later. Or, in The Tate, a small room of Rothko's work held no magic for me until a particular day when I sat with them for a couple of hours in a sublime period of contemplation .
How we receive abstract art is dependent on a more fragile substrate of mood , emotion and time than its figurative sibling . When an artist like Can Xue deliberately deconstructs every part of narrative, the familiar anchors of plot , character development and sense of place, it's hard to engage unless we in that sweet spot .
Going back to art galleries for a moment , with this novel , I found my attention drifted . It was like being in a roomful of Can Xue paintings , the first five fascinating , the next five " I think see what is happening " , the last five a more disturbed and frustrated " where's the gift shop, get me out of here ? ". That's on me, of course. A limited attention span .
But, but, but ...despite this there is something magical and deeply moving here, about the human experience when all is broken , about the terror of a world without history, memory or comprehension and about how we still can find glimpses of beauty and connection . The complete absence of familiar scaffolding creates something of that experience in me as I read , and perhaps , most strongly in the end , just like many living in such a world , the desperate need to escape ..
Hester wrote: How we receive abstract art is dependent on a more fragile substrate of mood , emotion and time than its figurative sibling"I think the abstract art analogy is very apt, Hester, especially in the later third with Liujin as the focal point. The butterflies for example, are a motif, but mean different things in different contexts - they are bred by the design institute to fill the garden/mission in one place, they are an invisible manifestation of Liujin's spirit in another. Just like the way a visual artist might find a symbol inspiring and use it again in different paintings, related explorations but not a linear story.
Its interesting to me that others found it easier later, I actually found Liujin to be much harder. All of the people seeking the frontier on their own are seeking, which gives them direction. The are looking for freedom of movement, beauty and expression as their goal, but Liujin already has that being a child of the frontier, so her goals seem more difficult to resolve - even for herself. She is constantly asking herself questions. As I write this, it seems to me that her quest is for a quest, for a purpose. What the Frontier doesn't do for anyone is give them a connection to others, everyone seems lonely except Qiming who is filled with love and doesn't seem to need it back. Each of Liujin's chapters is an attempt of her's to connect to someone. And then I thought that she finally had a beautiful connection to Amy, so the ending felt like a pretty harsh realism to me. We might want connections, but since life is finite, is it really the goal to count on them? Isn't the beauty of the physical world enough? Is that why the butterflies are poison? This is like the yogic sutra about karma, all trees bear fruit, all fruit is poison. Basically everything we do has consequences and it is in anticipation of consequences that suffering arises. This is why I wonder if my culture ignorance plays in to the opacity of the text for me in places.
I felt like there was ambivalence about the value of pushing outward that grows in the last bit, with Nancy and Juan giving up the freedom of the frontier to return to patriotic ditch digging for the red flag, a kind of return to comfort and inclusion that did not read as ironic. Everyone's homesickness, "living in two places". A growing regard for connection as the value for Liujin, Ying finding his way to communicate through the rock, Roy finding his mother etc. Snow as the last metaphor which gives an enclosing effect, both isolating but also cozy if you are not alone, and beautiful.
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Liujin began to feel almost talismanic to me… some sort of “key”—-Jenna, I think what makes her difficult to “resolve” is that she seems to be the possibility of a new way or future. And this is uncertain or still being defined.
I began to feel like Pebble Town was a kind of liminal space, almost a bardo of sorts (in this case, a transitional state between life and death but one trying to reconnect humans and nature or maybe just reharmonize human nature). I might be off my rocker… Anybody else read it this way? (No, you huffed too much nutmeg over the holidays, Marc, is a perfectly fine response.)
Hester, the way you summed it up in your last paragraph is quite beautiful. I certainly felt like I went through a moving “experience” as a reader. One I have found hard to capture in writing.
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That’ll be echoing in my head as the year ends and a new one begins!
Hoping 2024 treats you all well (filled with floating gardens & birds symbolizing good fortune)!
Marc wrote: "I think part of that deconstruction had me trying to respond to the text the way I might to instrumental music (harmony, dissonance… a feeling of hope or fear… or, in many instances with this book,..."That was how I based one of my approaches to the book, and I hoped by graphing the tension of discord against the resolution of harmony in the novel, I could gain an insight. It did not help me and one thing that complicated matters is that Xue often uses a mixed signal, especially if her surrealistic episodes. An example would be from the Sherman-- chapter four:
Suddenly, a filthy dog pounced on her. She shouted “Ouch!” as she fell. She stared straight ahead, like a dead person. Marco kept shouting at her and lightly patting her face. Sherman also shouted at her. After a while, she finally revived, and the color returned to her face.
“Where did it bite you?” Sherman asked immediately.
“It didn’t. That wasn’t a dog. That’s, that’s my auntie.”
The above passage, creates tension as it begins but Xue undercuts the tension during the dialogue. The result isn't so much a tension and resolve or release but more like a dismissing of initial tension. I found parts like these interfered with my attempt to analyze this like modern music.
I have some questions. How did everyone react to the surreal elements of this novel. There are a number of them and they must be considered, but I found interpretation to be very subjective.
One definite device Xue uses is the question. There are rhetorical questions, questions incorporated into the novel logically, questions as part of dialog. Do any of you have any thoughts on these varied uses of the question that helped you understand the novel? I am not including examples but I think you'll recall or can find examples of your own.
Sorry, for multiple edits on this post. Goodreads was not cooperating with me today and I had to bounce from device to device to get this post written. Sorry if you received incomplete earlier versions during editing process.
Hester wrote: "“All my stories—my novels, my novellas, and my short stories—are written sequentially, from beginning to end. I never arrange them together or put them in a different sequence.” "...the reader wh..."
I so agree with your last paragraph. Thanks for putting it so well.
Marc wrote: "I began to feel like Pebble Town was a kind of liminal space, almost a bardo of sorts (in this case, a transitional state between life and death but one trying to reconnect humans and nature or maybe just reharmonize human nature). I might be off my rocker… Anybody else read it this way?.."I agree Marc that there was definitely a liminal quality the setting. I didn't see all of Pebble town as a Bardo but that definitely stood out in the episodes along the river, with Sherman and Little Leaf and Marco. There the guardians were probably actually dead, burying the pebbles which seemed to represent individuals hearts, like in a graveyard. Marco's quest seemed like a journey into hades from greek literature, maybe because he was looking to go back to the West. I do think that the whole thing represents a transitional setting, and "frontier" itself to my American ear denotes quests.
Also agree that as a child born in Pebble Town, Liujin has a totally different way of being in the world than the others. And my struggle is definitely to relate to her way of being more than the others - is she hallucinating? others do not see reality as she does. is she isolated and stranded? or is this a freedom of emotion and movement and interpretation that is unique and the goal? The design institute employs the transplants - they come to the frontier looking to be part of a grand plan, to create a larger design as it were. But Liujin is just a cog in the commercial wheel. So she doesn't feel inspirational to me. And she is so suspicious and paranoid until she befriends Amy, I never really even liked her.
I feel like I have a stronger sense of narrative from the book than others might and Marc's mention of music made sense here. It may be because I think I let things harmonize like with music, getting the meaning from the grouped impressions rather than specific words. So for example that scene with the dog knocking her down, it adds to the impressions of Sherman and Marco as caring, but one more competent and doing than the other, it reinforces the distortion in reality between Liujin and others - she sees one thing others agree on something else - and it emphasizes her extreme interiority - she hardly communicates with them.
Very, very late to this. Had to thank all of you who commented on this book. I HAD to read it. It's a totally amazing book requiring a lot of work from the reader. Nothing I've read compares to it. I suspect it may be a way of telling of survival during a total societal upheaval.
Gini . I think you're right on all counts and I'm so glad you loved it ..for me it was more of an endurance test which I got through by understanding my response of persistent confusion , frustration and brief moments of clarity mirrored those of the inhabitants of PebbleTown . I've read many novels about displacement and living in worlds where you have little agency or control but can't remember another like this Usually they deploy a story that gives rise to a combination of horror , compassion and anger as the novel seeks to inform , illuminate or educate . The experience of the displaced feels like a form of madness, as nothing makes sense , and this novel put my brain right where they were , including the dreams and hallucinations ...
Hester, I think your experience might have been precisely what the author intended. Translation must've been a challenge.
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It’s really one of those books that put me through myriad feelings: delight, frustration, laughter, annoyance, wonder, etc.
Are there scenes or characters that have still stuck with any of you since finishing the book?
