A Floating Life: The Adventures of Li Po: A Historical Novel

Rating:
Summary: Sublime melancholy, like a good bowl of Huangjiu
Review: Anything written from the Zhuangzi/Daoist point of view, from Lin Yutang's 'Moment in Peking' on down the sadly short list, shows an entirely different portrait of China than we are used to seeing. Amid the conformity, an eccentric; amid the tradition, a progressive; amid the acquiescence, a rebel; amid the herd, an individual. The tide never has, and probably never will, turn, but it is nice to know that there will always be those willing to swim joyously against it.

Li Po, or Li Bai as he is called in standard Mandarin, is one of those rare such characters in Chinese history, and Simon Elegant brings him convincingly to life, a man of flesh and blood and spirit.

I know little of Li Bai; here in China he is much memorialized but less remembered, so the tales in "Floating Life" are as much as I know about the mythology beyond the repute of the poems. I'm sure Elegant did his research, though, and it makes for an engaging tale.

The device of the acolyte/narrator is awkward at times, and the breaks away from Li Bai's voice cause the book's progression to stumble, but it does allow the tale to be told in first person and without overly rigorous chronology. Li Bai's tales, told through his perspective, witty and insightful, are what make the book.

And the book does justice to Li Bai's poetry and ethic. Reading it, one gets lost in the quiet moment, as if downing a bowl of warm Huangjiu in a boat on the West Lake at dusk. Simple, sublime. Li Bai did many things, and is enshrined in the catacombs of history, but what matters is that he knew how to be happy, how to live in the moment.

Rating:
Summary: Poetry with Perspective
Review: Elegant stays fairly close to the historical facts, such facts as can be distinguished from the many legends, in telling the life of the great poet and Taoist Li Po. Li tells the story in this novel to a young boy, Wang Lung. The story is fun, and is the same sort of mixture of truth and myth that Li himself probably would have used had he really written an autobiography. There are numerous intriguing and believable details about the daily lives of people at various social levels, from the Imperial Court to poverty, in T'ang China.

The main weakenss in the book for me was that only Li Po really emerges as a character. The others who show up, either in the story of Li recounting his life while going into exile or in the story of Li's life, are poorly developed. Elegant works several poems by Li into the text, but I would have liked to see more.

It is worth noting that I have seen several translations of many of the poems here. I can't comment on the accuracy of Elegant's versions, but they are generally delightful, more enjoyable than other translations into English of the same poem.

I recommend it on the whole, for the charm of the story and of the poems translated in it, but I can't do so with great enthusiasm. A better novel with some similar material is 'Bridge of Birds' by Hughart.

Rating:
Summary: Good, not great.
Review: I read this book about six months ago. I return to it now because I have just been out on my balcony at night, decanting a bottle of bourbon. Quietly intoxicated, looking at the stars, naturally I think of Li Po.

Unfortunately, there is nothing awe-inspiring in Simon Elegant's capable, diverting book. Like another reviewer, I came to the work expecting something grand out of the subject. There is much to mine in the rich poetry of Li Po, and the poet just waits for some interpreter to bring him to the West as a flesh and bones human being. Ezra Pound did something toward that end in the several poems he wrote involving Li Po; Simon Elegant has chosen a different path in the same direction. But with Elegant I think its not enough. Too much adventure, not enough serious, ambitious literature--for me. Other readers will undoubtedly feel differently.

I read the book to try to approach Li Po himself, from an angle. I don't think it works that way. This is more like a good movie made about the poet...its watered down and concerned to tell its own amusing story.

Rating:
Summary: Good, not great.
Review: I really wanted to love this book. I was ready. And early moments of it were rewarding, including the teaching of mynah birds to say conflicting Confucian and Taoist philosophies. But too much of the story was the youth of Li Po, with excruciating detail about life in a well-to-do household in ancient China, and too little about Li Po's development outside of that house. The story, which is based very solidly on the historic facts of Li Po's life, glosses over in very little space Li Po's time in a Taoist monastery, despite the fact that this experience was critical to his development and focus as a poet. Second, what turns out to be the plot is Li Po's desire for acceptance by the court of the Emperor, but this is badly developed by the memoir: Li Po's recounting of his past mostly explains why he does not want to participate in the court, but by the end, with a shift of such subtlety that it seems illogical, it turns out that to be part of court is what he desires most of all. The author's choice to use a narrated memoir - Li Po talking to his amanuensis, a teen-aged boy - may help us hear Li Po with his own voice. But it's really just the easy way out: Li Po could have just as easily spoken within a third-person narrative. Lastly, the author writes entirely in a form which is standard 20th century English, and the characters speak in the same. Given an audience understanding such a language, this is more than reasonable. However, other authors handling similar material (Barry Hughart, Ernest Bramagh) have managed to use English's infinite malleability to project the mindset and language of ancient China, even in English. Elegant's choice may have been more culturally sensitive, or better than writing idiomatically badly, but the result is very thin.

Rating:
Summary: How life was and how men are
Review: Li Po was the best poet in China during a time that poetry was as important as religion. This book paints the vast kingdom, from it's eclectic mix of different people, their lives dreams and aspirations from the peasantry to the court.

Simon Elegant has written from the point of view of the poet, showing him at once to be a genius and a petty, foolish drunk. This leads the reader into a fable like tale of one man so much loved and so equally reviled because of his character. You are also given a sample of the great man's work - and I challenge anyone after reading this novel not to strat looking for more!

A floating life is picture of how life was and how men are. And it is delivered beautifully.

Rating:
Summary: There is another heaven and earth beyond the world of men.
Review: Simon Elegant's first fictional work is one of the best historical and/or biographical novels I've ever read! Li Po is many things, but bashful is not one of them. He tells his adventurous "life story" to a young boy named Wang Lung, who dutifully copies it down as an excercise in learning to write. As they sail together, banished, and waiting for a "reprive", the reader learns how Li Po has come to his banishment.

Li Po was a poetic genius. Elegant treats the reader to his wonderful verse amid his drunken-ness, his love affairs, and his honored time with the Emperor. Li Po is brought to one's eyes as a man so fully human, it is hard to believe he lived almost 1300 years ago.

Rating:
Summary: Fun to Read and Entertaining
Review: _
Reviewed by Randy Farnsworth, author of "A Stand Yet Taken".

As a longtime student of Chinese history, I was intrigued when I came across this book. Chinese history, particularly ancient China, has always fascinated me, and this novel didn't let me down. However, it started out a bit slow, and after 20 pages or so, I almost put it aside for something more interesting. The topic may not appear too exciting at first - the life story of a poet in eighth-century China - and it does have a slow start, but A Floating Life is actually a fun book and quite exciting at times.

Li Po is a real person, and has had a great influence even to this day. When my Chinese-born wife saw what I was reading, she immediately quoted some of Li Po's poetry and told me how he was always drunk. Simon Elegant takes some liberties with the story, but this is a novel after all, not a history book, so don't expect everything to be totally accurate.

The writing style is interesting: Simon Elegant uses present tense, third-person omniscience for the "present" time of the story, where Li Po is interacting with a young student who has agreed to write down the poet's story in return for instruction in the classic arts. Elegant then switches to past tense, first person limited viewpoint as Li Po relates his adventures. The reader is taken back and forth between the present and past and in a few places it's somewhat awkward, causing me to stop and figure out where in the timeline I was. But most of the transitions are smooth, and the present story fits in well with the past, especially as the two stories meet in the end.

As Elegant tries to convey a sense of setting and background, he describes with elegant (sorry :-) ) details the life, customs and culture of the time he is writing about. At first I thought he was really going overboard, just trying to show off his knowledge of the era with all the minute facts he could include, whether or not they added to the story. But the problem with my complaint is, they really do add to the story and hurl the reader back in time to Imperial China.

The book isn't perfect, though, as no book is, and if you're not into historical novels in general and Chinese history in particular, you may not find this too interesting. For example, Elegant spends a whole page or more just describing what the emperor served for dinner. I enjoyed reading that; it reminded me of some fancy banquets I attended while living in Asia. But some readers would just scan through that in an effort to get to the real story.

Also, I still don't see the need for any author to offend the reader with vulgar language. We all know that some people talk like that in real life, but we don't need to read it. It really adds absolutely nothing to the book and in reality, detracts from it. That said, however, I appreciate the fact that Elegant doesn't dwell too long on sex and violence. He lets us know that the world of Li Po was a violent place and briefly mentions some of the brutality, but doesn't disgust the reader with a play-by-play. Ditto on the sex scenes.

Lastly, I don't know if Elegant has downloaded a dictionary into his brain or what, but he sure uses some obscure language in places. I didn't mind that, but I had to keep a dictionary handy to look up some of the words.