Grand unified books thread

[Savonarola]

I read EM Forster's "Howards End."  It took me a long time to get through because, about 100 pages in, I realized that the Schlegel sisters were about a silver cow creamer shy of being a PG Wodehouse novel and I took a break to read the Psmith stories.   

 

While I can understand the disdain Forster feels for the Wilcoxes; I found his admiration for the Schlegels (even if it's couched in ironic terms) baffling.  I think that's a common sentiment among Americans, the aforementioned PG Wodehouse was much more successful here than he was in the United Kingdom.  Still a fine portrait of Edwardian England though.  I liked the way that suburbanization plays the same role in this novel that industrialization does in the works of Hardy and Eliot; the unstoppable force that remakes rural England.

[grumbler]

I've been struggling for months trying to get through The Three Body Problem.  I'd have totally given up by now, but it did win the Hugo award, so there must be a pony under there somewhere.  The problem isn't the writing style, it is that none of the villains are believable in terms of motivation and the plot has massive examples of improbably coincidences.

I will say that the elements of the story involving the play of the game within the story was well-done and fun.

[crazy canuck]

I've been struggling for months trying to get through The Three Body Problem.  I'd have totally given up by now, but it did win the Hugo award, so there must be a pony under there somewhere.  The problem isn't the writing style, it is that none of the villains are believable in terms of motivation and the plot has massive examples of improbably coincidences.

I will say that the elements of the story involving the play of the game within the story was well-done and fun.

One of those rare instances where the screenplay was better than the book?

[Sheilbh]

I remember the books having very variable quality - and I can't remember which I liked and which I found quite dry. So I think it's a translator/translation issue.

[Gups]

the 2nd and 3rd books are better I think, though I can't remember in detail now. Characterisation is weak but that's not unusual with plot-driven novels

[Jacob]

Yeah, the characterization was a bit archetypical or 2-dimensional in places.

The reason I found it compelling reading is that I saw it as a reflection of (Communist) contemporary China - both in terms of a critique and in terms of the concerns the novels were grounded in. I found that fascinating and it contributed to me having low confidence in my predictions of what happened next (which I value).

It's not that I loved the books so much that I want to read everything by that author, but the change of pace from familiar formulas (and references to formulas that I'm not familiar with - like Chinese online fiction) was part of the appeal for me, enough that less than multidimensional characters and the like became palatable.

[Sheilbh]

I think I've mentioned it before but The Subplot by Megan Walsh is really interesting. It's a very short book (about 100 pages) basically about what China is reading. It's not in-depth and I think it flags Three Body Problem as something raising interest in the West into contemporary Chinese writing.

But lots of interesting stuff about the 80s and 90s generration, books about urban life in China, online literature (which was eye-opening), Chinese crime novels (how do you do that in a Communist society?) as well as both trends of sci fi and historic-ish fiction. Really interesting.

[Jacob]

Yeah, I have a bit of exposure to that world 2nd hand via my wife.

There's a massive massive ecosystem of online, serialized writing in all sorts of genres. It's pretty fascinating, and I think most Chinese fiction these days references that in some way. If the fiction isn't from that ecosystem, it still - I think - responds to it simply because that ecosystem is significant in shaping the tastes of the audience.

In some ways, there's a similar ecosystem (or multiple) in the West, but I think it's considered less culturally significant. Sure we have reams of online fan-fic or original self-published fiction, but it doesn't really go anywhere. In China, on the other hand, a large number of popular shows (and films) are  based on popular online fiction series, which we don't really see in the West.

I speculate it might have something to do with the party's relative lack of control over online publishing, but I don't know.

Related by separate subtopic: One book I enjoyed (though not from that ecosystem, I don't think; I believe it predates it) is Death of a Red Heroine by Qui Xialong.

[Sheilbh]

Yeah it's extraordinary I think the stats in this book (which will be out of date) is that online platforms in China have 24 million fiction titles and over 400 million subscribers. It's probably the largest literary ecosystem in the world - and it's run with metrics and popularity and also factory style conditions for writers who are expected to write up to 20-30,000 words a day to keep their story near the top, keep it moving.

Fair to say, from what I understand, it's not really noted for character development etc. It is quite repetitive and, from the description, it sounds a bit like grinding in a game. The character does the same thing many times and acquires more skills, powers etc (especially because a lot are fantasy stories, I beelieve).

There's really fascinating points from a Chinese critic about a cultural bourgeoisie (who turn culture into capital) v a cultural proletariat (who convert it into labour) - for example because of those TV shows with one of these platforms suddenly changing their terms to say that they (the platform) owned the IP rights of anything posted on their platform for the lifetime of the author plus fifty years. Obviously that caused a huge backlash which I think ultimately led to a climbdown from the platform.

I think you're probably definitely right that the relative freedom is why it's boomed - but I think its popularity probably makes it inevitable that the party will seek to control and manage that.

On the other hand another interesting online world, which was immediately policed, is poetry on platforms that aren't specifically literary often by migrant workers that can have millions of shares before its taken down - which is, again, probably the most important and read contemporary poetry in the world.

[Jacob]

Oh the party is already on it. I think it's mainly that their resources compared to the volume of material, and the nature of Chinese political criticism makes it very hard. Perhaps they can lean into AI (I expect they will), but it'll still be a challenge....

To give an example, Hebe (a Taiwanese pop star) posted a picture of herself eating pasta on her social media when Blinken first arrived in Shanghai. Online nationalists (not the gov't) reasoned:

• Pasta is Italian.
• Nancy Pelosi is Italian(-American).
• Nancy Pelosi is very anti-China.
• Therefore Hebe is making an anti-China (and pro-Taiwanese independence) statement.
• Therefore Hebe's upcoming concerts in China should be cancelled, and some of her songs banned from play.

Now, I don't think any of those consequences happened and there was no official reaction - but that's the shape of the discourse. You can bet that because of the furor, people will be using language referring to pasta to take the piss out of the Chinese government (and nationalists). It might be a brief flash in the pan, or it might stick around for a bit.

Symbolism, homonyms, and sly references are the mainstay of expressing dissent in public in China and it's ever evolving. If there are 24 million (and growing) titles - and there's all the discourse on social media - it's going to be non-trivial to keep on top of all of it - even with AI, I expect.

Incidentally, that was part of what was interesting to me in The Three-Body Problem - how the concerns about symbolism and the risk of being seen as critiquing the regime was a major influence on the plot during the Cultural Revolution.

[Sheilbh]

Yeah - obviously I don't sympathise much, but even with AI it must be an absolute nightmare being a censor for the Chinese state. You've got a language that seems to offer so many flexible avenues for expression - homoonyms, (I don't know the word but) character-nyms-ish, splitting characters or re-ordering them, or representing them with an actual image (e.g. Ai Weiwei's river crabs). Plus all the resources of Chinese culture from traditional and modern literature, history etc - with modern internet meme culture. And an incredibly creative set of online citizens.

To be honest I was surprised Three Body Problem had been published in Chinese in China.

[Jacob]

Didn't Three-Body Problem come out before Xi took over? In the period prior to Xi, criticizing the Cultural Revolution was okay, as I understand it. Xi's regime has significantly tightened its control over media and art (and many other spheres) relative to the preceding leaders.

[Sheilbh]

Fair - although the big Tencent adaptation was only in the last few years and my understanding is that it included the Cultural Revolution section.

Plus I think that's still in the 30% bad bit of Mao, even in the current regime perhaps given Xi's experience. But also I just don't think the rest of the CCP has ever really wanted to embrace Mao's fondness for revolutionary enthusiasm and unleashing things to see what happens. Even the most conservative (red) forces, I think, would want more control.

Although The Subplot mentions a few other sci-fi books that sound very critical of the Chinese state on a very simple metaphorical reading or in some cases directly critical now (a few eco-sci-fi books are mentioned). I know nothing but it sounds like the censors basically don't think of sci-fi as particularly political so it seems like you can get away with more (not that that's the only criteria for a good or bad book).

Edit: I suppose thatthe  Three Body Problem also becoming a massive cultural export helps insulate it. It ended up on Obama's books of the year list etc. But what came through in the book was just how unpredictable the censorship can be which is probably exactly how it keeps writers on their toes - things that seem clearly problematic somehow get through, while things that seem innocuous attract a lot of scrutiny, things that are published in foreign languages only basically has zero interest for the censors  (which makes sense I suppose - except there is a market once in Hong Kong and now Taiwan to re-translate them back).

[Jacob]

Yeah, I'm no expert but the foreign language thing makes sense to me because I think the censorship is primarily about controlling the Chinese population - first politically, and secondly in a "kids these days, let's make sure they don't consumer stuff that undermines their moral fibre" in a paternalistic sense.

I suppose you're right about them not slotting sci-fi in as something overtly political (and I'd expect they consider it more wholesome than fantasy or romance, because sci-fi has an implicit "do your science homework" message).

I think another factor is that they probably still have a threshold under which they don't act for reasons of practicality  or - I suspect - because it doesn't cross their radar. The online fiction that has had the biggest crackdown - as I understand it - is romance, especially romance that veers into erotica and/or LGBTQ themes. My impression is that it's either driven by "netizens" making a big deal about it, it leaking into the regular media, and/ or it pushing the "kids these days" button for the old men elite cadres of the CCP. And I think sci-fi just doesn't hit too many of those criteria.

But yeah, I think it's almost always reaction rather than proactive censorship - they care if they can see a big (negative) impact in China. Anything else doesn't really matter, until it's part of a trend (that has a big negative impact in China).

[Gups]

I read that the show trial part at the beginning of the English translation is buried in the middle of the Chinese version as a flashback