Huh?
Lurking within this memoir is a seemingly interesting story about Lee's father--a Christian preacher, once Mao's physician, he fled with his family to Indonesia, where Li-Young was born, but was imprisoned there by Sukarno. He managed to escape and the family eventually ended up in Pennsylvania where he ministered to an all-white congregation. A combination of strict religious beliefs and traditional Chinese views on filial duty, apparently made for a Father who kept great emotional distance from his children and became something of a Godlike figure himself--all powerful but unknowable. That's what I gather anyway; but the story is told in such obfuscating prose that it's almost impossible to know for sure.
Here's a sample paragraph:
And then he set out on an unnumbered wave and, being
right-handed, pulled the boat opposite the
clock, which reads 5:04 A.M. And as long as
my father rows ahead of me, there can be no place.
Place there is none. And rest is the interval
between my woman's eyes, or my dark hammock slung
between her and China, where I walked once after
dark, and stepped into a clue the roses were
leaving, for I was in the city of roses, Tientsin.
So I stood there a while, the perfume fanned gently
by bicycles passing from dark to dark. A while
ago, I wept in my dream like a heartbroken child
for my father's shoes, and now I see there is no
boat abandoned that the sea does not take back, haft
to haft, and every gunwale, board, nail, each shape
of departure Chinese boatbuilders I come from
planed into the timbers.
Granted, some context would help a little, but that series of words simply does not make sense. At first I was willing to cut Lee some slack, for one thing he's a poet, so you don't really expect straightforward narrative, and then English isn't his native language; I guarantee I would make less sense than that if I tried writing in Chinese. But ultimately authors have some minimal responsibility to communicate their ideas and, unless his ideas are actually this confused, he fails to do that here.
Then I started looking for links to add to this review and I found an interview where he was asked about the writing style he used for the book:
IB: Was it something that evolved then?
LYL: Yeah, it was my fascination with the possibility
of writing an extended prose poem without
revision. Trying to be as naked as possible in the
language, you know. Mistakes and everything.
You know, I was noticing, Kara, that a lot of times
when I write my mind drifts and I used to like
revise and revise all the drifting quality out of
the writing. The longer I wrote, the more I felt what
if that drifting quality was a very natural and
good thing? That book was a kind of experiment for
me just to see if I let my mind drift, wherever
it went, what would take shape? To find a natural
shape and form, or shapeliness, to my mind - without
revision. I was just letting my pen go.
IB: So, you did not revise The Winged Seed at all?
LYL: No. I'm very embarrassed about some of it because
it seems too raw, too naked at places. And
yet it seems like that was part of the enterprise.
That was part of the risk I was taking just to see
how...you know, to not edit myself.
IB: Why did you make that decision? Was it just the experimentation, or...?
LYL: The longer I wrote, the stronger my editorial
voice became. So sometimes even before I
wrote a sentence down, my critical and editorial
voice would say, No, that's not good enough. I
wanted to get rid of that. I wanted to get past,
or under it, or around it somehow. That editorial
voice was killing, I think, creativity. It was killing
the impulse to take risks, to say something
stupid, to say something too...to disclose too much.
You know, that editorial voice was so
constricting and controlling, I needed to really
just break free of it, you know, and allow myself to
say whatever came to me. So, it really is a struggle
inside of me for freedom and control.
IB: Do you feel that you were successful in getting rid of that editorial voice?
LYL: No, because even as it reads, when I'm reading
The
Winged Seed, I keep thinking: No, I
should have edited this part, I should have translated...
And I feel like I'm still working on it.
Okay, for future reference, here are three things I don't want when
I pick up a book: I don't want an author who decides not to listen to that
nagging "editorial voice"; I don't want a story that purposefully includes
writing with a "drifting quality"; and I don't want reviewers telling me
that the writing is "lyrical."
(Reviewed:27-Jun-00)
Grade: (D-)
