The Crazed

Rating:
Summary: Strong, poetic, vivid
Review: I liked Ha Jin's Waiting, but preferred The Crazed. This book was a quick read, and extraordinarily well-written. The descriptions of people, objects and scenes in this novel were made incredibly real through the author's poetic and creative word choices. I thought this author particularly skilled in this area, in that he described things in a unique and creative manner that enabled the reader to vividly picture the scene/object or feel as the narrator did:

"When I entered the sickroom, Mr. Yang was sleeping with the quilt up to his chin. The room was brighter than the day before; a nurse's aide had just wiped the windowpanes and mopped the floor, which was still wet, marked with shoe prints here and there. The air smelled clean despite a touch of mothball."

"His shortwave radio was still on, giving forth crackling static. I got up and flicked it off. At once the room turned quiet as if the whole house were deserted."

"It was almost midmorning. I opened the window of our bedroom to let in some fresh air. Outside, on the sunbaked ground a pair of monarch butterflies was hovering over an empty tin can, which was still wet with syrup. The colorful paper glued around the can showed it had contained peach wedges."

"As I wondered whether I should turn back, the door opened slowly and Mrs. Yang walked out. She was a small angular woman with deep-socketed eyes. Seeing me, she paused, her face contorted and sprinkled with tears. She lowered her head and hurried past without a word, leaving behind the rancid smell of her bedraggled hair. Her black silk skirt almost covered her slender calves; she had bony ankles and narrow feet, wearing red plastic flip-flops."

"[The train] pulled out smoothly as if wafted away by dozens of hands waving along the platform."

I especially liked how the author colored the descriptions of people other than the narrator by giving the reader the narrator's impression, rather than objective facts, about those people--it added an extra dimension to the writing:

"Today she seemed under the weather, her eyes red, rather watery, and an anemic pallor was on her cheeks. Her youthful outfit, an apple-green ruffled skirt with a white shirt with ladybugs printed on it and a shawl collar, didn't add much life to her."

"I was amazed by such a shrewd answer."

"To my thinking he was too optimistic."

"Mr. Song wore blue sneakers and a gray jacket, which was shoulderless and barrellike--a standard garment for middle-aged male college teachers at the time. I was amused to see him in such a jacket even when he was jogging."

"Between our squat cups sat a teapot like a small turtle. Banping was always proud of his teaset, which he claimed was of a classic model."

The narrator's emotions are made so palpable by the author's writing that the reader cannot help but empathize/identify with him:

"For some reason I was suddenly gripped by the desire to touch her, my right hand, so close to her waist, trembling a little."

"I grew dubious and angry, feeling the painting must be either false or satirical. To some extent I was perturbed by my response to it. This kind of work used to touch me easily, but now it had lost its impact because I had begun to look at things with doubtful eyes."

"I realized I shouldn't have come to seek Banping's advice. granted he treated me as a friend, speaking with complete candor, he and I were by nature different kinds of people: I was too sensitive, too introverted, and maybe too idealistic, whereas he was a paragon of peasant cunning and pragmatism."

Like the "crazed" patient rambling seemingly incoherently, each chapter picked up on one of many seemingly minor details from the previous chapter, and expanded upon it. Ultimately, this served to weave the narrative together and yet propel it forward at the same time, paralleling the progress China's democratic student movement in 1989, against the backdrop of which this novel is set. (The language highlights this backdrop: in Beijing during the outbreak of violence surrounding the marches on Tianenmen Square, the narrator explains, "[i]n the indigo sky a skein of geese appeared, veering north while squawking gutterally. The sight of the birds reminded me of a squadron of superbombers.")

Overall, a very impressive, worthy novel.

Rating:
Summary: A "crazed" life as a reflection of society
Review: Professor Yang of Shanning University, China, is "The Crazed" of Ha Jin's new novel. Having just suffered a stroke, he is given to frequent rants, many pieces of which hint at a wretched life lived. His faithful graduate student and soon-to-be son-in-law Jian Wan is assigned by the university to attend to the professor's daily needs. In the sparse hospital room, he cannot help listening in on the rants. As he does, Wan tries to understand the deep sense of loss that his professor has suffered. It is later evident to the young graduate student that the professor has had to deal with much personal pain and a fruitless existence. "Every intellectual is a clerk in China", Professor Yang raves, "just a clerk, a screw in the machine of the revolution." The professor's unfortunate life eventually changes the course of at least three others.

Jian Wan himself is desperately trying to hold it all together-caring for his professor while his PhD qualifying exams loom around the corner. The fate of these exams will determine whether or not he can make it to Beijing to be with his ambitious fiancée, Meimei (Yang's daughter). At first, Jian Wan assumes he has no other choice than follow the scholarly course that has been charted for him. However, Yang's endless rants about the meaningless existence of a scholar, along with a transformative trip to the countryside, point him in another way. "As a human being, I should spend my life in such a way that at the final hour I could feel fulfillment and contentment, as if I had completed a task or a journey." Jian Wan says. He no longer wants to pretend to be a scholar, but live instead, a truly productive life. As Jian Wan tries to find a way out, he realizes he is powerless in a society that crushes all dissent. The final pages of The Crazed find Wan in the midst of the cathartic events of Tiananmen Square.

Ha Jin's sparse writing style, which was on wonderful display in "Waiting", is as effective as ever. His words are as clinical and precise as the hospital room in which much of the novel is set. The pace moves forward rapidly and well. Sometimes, I found that the professor's rants covered a lot of space in the text prolonging the suspense a bit too much. These sections set in the hospital with an almost unrelenting focus on the professor were a little claustrophobic.

Despite these small distractions, the main story comes through loud and clear in Ha Jin's wonderful book. The machinations of a government that can manipulate the smallest events in its citizens' lives are on awful display here. Jian Wan in the novel sees an image of China: "in the form of an old hag so decrepit and brainsick that she would devour her children to sustain herself."

In such a society, one wonders, who cannot help but be "crazed".

Rating:
Summary: Many layers, many turns of face...
Review: This novel moves a lot slower than "Waiting." There's a lot of literary lecture interspersed throughout the story, as it revolves around an old literature professor who suffers a stroke while his student/future-son-in-law is assigned to take care of him. The setting is in the late 80s during the student demonstrations against the Chinese government. There are a lot of references to re-education in the earliest days of the revolution, as well as how life in modern China affects everyone's lives, each in different ways. Also written are a lot of fascinating theories about the difference between Chinese and Western poetry.

For most of the story the main character, Jian Wan, similar to the protagonist in "Waiting," seems conflicted, confused, and perhaps lacking in understanding of his teacher's suffering. However, as the story progresses, the writer slowly transforms Jian. At first he's a promising, arrogant scholar, so certain of his path to follow in the footsteps of Professor Yang. Yet little by little, he agonizes over solving the puzzle of his teacher's rantings, and left with only more questions, until he finally questions his own career. When once Jian was clearly ready to take on the role of the intellectual, living in a communist regime which doesn't respect intellectuals, he now wonders if his life would indeed have more meaning if he took an official role in the government, so he could actually make a difference in people's lives. Such a strong reverse in decision would possibly end his impending marriage, and change his life completely.

The end of this book illustrates how much an oppressive regime determine's the course of one's life, no matter how much a citizen tries to work within the system. No matter how much a citizen tries to just do his own work and mind his own business, it seems that his life will always be affected by the decisions of those around him, and those decisions in turn, are affected by one's own personal gain. Certainly, making this realization, knowing you have no freedom, no choices in how to live your life, can drive a person crazy.

The story really didn't pick up until the last third. In fact, everything pretty much led up to the climax of the abominations at Beijing. At first it was just a setting, a description in the background, but by the end it became the center of the story. I think this was the most riveting part of the novel. Ha Jin's description of the demonstrations and massacre in Beijing were shocking and horrifying. The fate of Jian Wan was like the beginning of a whole new adventure. I would love to see a sequel to this novel.

"The Crazed" is definitely a lot more of a challenging read than "Waiting," and I think it takes a bit of patience and perseverance to get through it in order to reach the exciting and dramatic conclusion. However, I give it five stars simply because I think the last couple of chapters were a great reward.

Rating:
Summary: Multi-layered and subtle
Review: Winner of the PEN/Faulkner award and the National Book Award for his novel, "Waiting," Ha Jin left his native China for the US in 1985 and is now a professor of English at Boston University. With this third novel, set in 1989, at the time of the Tiananmen Square upheavals, he again demonstrates his command of the English language and the nuances of human behavior. His prose is spare and compact and charged with the sense that anything might happen.

The book opens calmly, even placidly, as the narrator, graduate student Jian Wan, explains that his mentor, Professor Yang, has suffered a stroke. Yang has been helping him prepare for the Ph. D entrance exams for classical literature at Beijing University, the foundation of Jian's meticulously planned future. He will pass the exams and join his fiancée, Professor Yang's daughter Meimei, in the city, "where we planned to build our nest." He will become a teacher himself and spend his life in scholarly pursuits, a spiritual aristocrat, rich in heart, as his teacher has counseled. Now, as the closest thing to a family member available, Jian has been assigned to nurse Yang, which he is glad to do, though uneasy about the lost time. "I was anxious - without thorough preparation I couldn't possibly do well in the exams."

A sober, conventional, conscientious young man, Jian's settled outlook is soon disrupted by more than inadequate study time. The professor is suffering a kind of dementia that at first seems nonsensical. But as the days pass, Yang focuses on events which seem to come from his past. An intellectual, Yang was a "target of the struggle" during the Cultural Revolution. He had been denounced, humiliated, his books burned. Once he had told Jian that during difficult times he would quote Dante to himself. " 'They could hurt me physically, but they could not subdue my soul.' " But now, his mind wandering, Yang's lofty sentiments have deserted him. One morning he belts out a rousing political rhyme. "His singing made my scalp itch as I remembered hearing Red Guards chant it in my hometown. By so doing, those big boys and girls had contributed their little share to the revolution; but that had been two decades before, and now the song was no more than an embarrassing joke." Additionally, Yang "would not have been entitled to sing such a progressive song together with the masses." How, Jian wonders, did he learn it?

Listening to his professor's ravings, Jian is unsure how much is real, how much made up. Yang bounces from oddly skewed parables to blissful descriptions of an adulterous affair. His moods swing from joy to savage recrimination. He makes bitter pronouncements on family and scholarly life, the political hypocrisy and expediency of communism and academic backbiting. He is sarcastic, angry, blubbering and regretful. Jian is often "shocked," sometimes repelled, but intrigued too. Could he have understood so little of his teacher's life? As he comprehends his professor's vast store of disappointment, he begins to question his own assumptions. Things have been kept from him - university maneuverings, petty jealousies and passions, a welter of unspoken thought. From Yang's dementia emerges a hopeless prospect, the uselessness of opposing political force; the shame of sacrificing personal integrity. Naturally this hopeless prospect dismays young Jian. He must act to prevent it.

Meanwhile the events at Tiananmen Square are building. Jian and his friends, far away, listen to the Voice of America, with mixed feelings. Meimei, in Beijing, never mentions the demonstrations, but exhorts Jian to study and concentrate on getting ahead. Jian, tossed one way and another, struggles to find his way through his doubts and the events conspiring against him. Eventually he goes to Beijing to take part in the demonstrations. And we all know how that turned out.

But rather than despair over the state's crushing fist, Jian's insight is personal. He did not go to Beijing for some great ideal, but to impress Meimei. Most revolutionaries, he reflects, joined the struggle to "escape an arranged marriage or to avoid debts or just to have enough food and clothes. It's personal interests that motivate the individual and therefore generate the dynamics of history."

Ha Jin's novels are multi-layered, deceptively simple stories with an undercurrent of tension and unease. The State looms over the individual with the powers of catastrophe and reward and the individual maneuvers within it as best he can. Though the bulk of "The Crazed" takes place in Yang's hospital room, Ha also takes us to Jian's Spartan dormitory quarters, meals with his friends and even a trip to the rural countryside, which contains more shocks for Jian. The struggles of daily life continually challenge the individual to small rebellions and betrayals, balanced against risk and integrity. Finally, Jian comes of age, a man less blinkered, but not without hope and plans for his future.