{"id":26,"date":"2004-06-02T22:29:30","date_gmt":"2004-06-03T05:29:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/index.php\/archives\/2004\/06\/02\/balzac-and-china\/"},"modified":"2007-05-19T09:45:27","modified_gmt":"2007-05-19T16:45:27","slug":"balzac-and-china","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/2004\/06\/balzac-and-china\/","title":{"rendered":"Balzac and China"},"content":{"rendered":"

This month\u2019s book\u00adclub book was \u201cBalzac and the Little Chinese Seam\u00adstress: A Nov\u00adel\u201d<\/a> by Dai Sijie, which has received rave reviews from all over. I found it a nice, easy read that touched on some extremely dif\u00adfi\u00adcult sub\u00adjects (the Cul\u00adtur\u00adal Revolu\u00adtion, the dif\u00adfi\u00adculties of peas\u00adant life, life\u2019s inequit\u00adies, abor\u00adtion, and failed dreams) extremely lightly. The tone feels like sum\u00admer read\u00ading des\u00adpite these sub\u00adjects. It was\u00adn\u2019t a sur\u00adprise to learn the author is a film-maker \u2014 you can almost see the Chinese moun\u00adtains and the mist and the poverty-stricken vil\u00adla\u00adgers cut off from civilization. <\/p>\n

One advant\u00adage of a book\u00adclub is to make you see things you would oth\u00ader\u00adwise miss in a book; in this case the irony of two teen\u00adagers being sent to be re-edu\u00adcated who end up edu\u00adcat\u00ading the vil\u00adla\u00adgers about music, films, clocks, and dent\u00adists. And we spent a little time dis\u00adcuss\u00ading the shifts in tone and nar\u00adrat\u00ador in the book and wheth\u00ader that had deep\u00ader sig\u00adni\u00adfic\u00adance, or was meant to indic\u00adate any\u00adthing in par\u00adtic\u00adu\u00adlar, or not. But most of the time we talked about oth\u00ader things, like every\u00adone\u2019s fam\u00adily his\u00adtory (ran\u00adging from Chinese\/Japanese through Irish\/French), which I think shows the book some\u00adhow did\u00adn\u2019t grab our ima\u00adgin\u00ada\u00adtions the way oth\u00ader books have (such as \u201cKing Leo\u00adpold\u2019s Ghost\u201d<\/a> by Adam Hoch\u00adschild). Worth read\u00ading (and does\u00adn\u2019t take long to read), but not a great book. I hear the film is worth see\u00ading, though.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This month\u2019s book\u00adclub book was \u201cBalzac and the Little Chinese Seam\u00adstress: A Nov\u00adel\u201d by Dai Sijie, which has received rave reviews from all over. I found it a nice, easy read that touched on some extremely dif\u00adfi\u00adcult sub\u00adjects (the Cul\u00adtur\u00adal Revolu\u00adtion, the dif\u00adfi\u00adculties of peas\u00adant life, life\u2019s inequit\u00adies, abor\u00adtion, and failed dreams) extremely lightly. The \u2026 Con\u00adtin\u00adue read\u00ading \u201cBalzac and China\u201d<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wp_typography_post_enhancements_disabled":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}