"Vertical Motion" by Can Xue *****

> Originally published in 2011, Open Letter translation, short stories
> Chinese author

> Bio:  Can Xue

(née Deng Xiaohua)

b. 1953, Changsha, Hunan

Writer

Can Xue is one of the first avant-garde writers to have emerged in the 1980s, and is the only female author attributed to this group. She began writing in 1981 and is best known for her two novellas, Old Floating Cloud (Canglao di fuyun) and Yellow Mud Street (Huangni jie), as well as many short stories. Her writing emphasizes the hallucinations of largely female protagonists who have turned the violence of a socially ordered world into mental and fictitious images. Her work constructs and deconstructs language, evoking a surreal and strangely disordered world that has no grounding in real-life experience or history. Her characters thus speak in abstract dialogue, provide non-sensical or irrelevant answers, and ultimately fail to communicate. Her work has been compared to that of Franz Kafka because many of her protagonists suffer from paranoia. She has written commentaries on the work of Franz Kafka and Jorge Luis Borges. She is also an outspoken critic of the male-dominated literary world that has narrowly defined what the literary content of a woman’s text can be. Can Xue is an honorary member of the International Writing Programme at the University of Iowa.

> Vocabulary:

• acetabulum:   Anatomy, the socket in the hipbone that receives the head of the thighbone.  Zoology, any of the suction appendages of a leech, octopus, etc.
• bosk:  a small wood or thicket, especially of bushes.

 > "Vertical Motion":

•  "I was a little critter submerged in the desert.  This was the outcome I had pursued.   In this mid-region, I was envisioning the phoenix leaves on Mother Earth.  Yet I didn't forget my kindred in the dark.".......allusion to speaking out in China?

 > "Red Leaves":

• Gu......dying...maybe already dead in the hospital....
• visited by "catmen"
• "Autumn is so long - like eternal live."

> "Night Visitor":

• Elderly father being visited by his soul deep in the night
• "As I see it, when one is old, one should know one's place and retreat from life.  Paternalistic behavior won't do him any good in the end."........another subversive political statement?
• "His actions made me feel extremely tense, like an arrow held in a bowstring....great metaphor

> "A Village in the Big City":

• Dreamlike visit to see Uncle Lou
• "I felt like my innermost soul had been enriched."

 > "Elena":

• Very dark dream of visit to friend's world
• "We could perform a moon-walking dance together, or we could embrace and kiss one another in the sweet scented air current."......lovely

> "Moonlight Dance":

• Night creature and the lion
• "I belong to the moonlight; the lion belongs to the darkness.  The strange thing is that the lion is always walking back and forth, bathing in the moonlight in the wasteland, and I am generally tilling the humus soil with the earthworms.".....returning to creature from first story?

> "The Roses at the Hospital":

• dream/nightmare of roses growing over buried bodies......reference to cover-ups?

> "Cotton Candy":

• "No matter how much energy you put into your work, the hungry ghosts will eat everything you make."
• "Something I hadn't seen was real."...understanding
• "I felt utterly content.  Little Zheng, the children, and I were immersed in daydreams about the multi-colored cotton candy.  One after another, the honey jars in the depths of our memories were opened up:  the strong fragrance overflowed into the air."...the power of dreaming

> "The Brilliant Purple China Rose":

• seeds to be buried underground, growing downwards
• seemed like an ode to efforts to control and placate
• "You're really stubborn and deluded.  Some people are still really pleased to live this way."
• "In the past, when the setting sun could be seen, the future was still hidden entirely in confusion."....deliberately perpetrated confusion

> "Rainscape":

• "A little faint light shines through from only two or three windows, giving people an unfathomable feeling."........glimmer of hope

> "Never at Peace":

• "When a person disappears like a ray of lght into the wall, what does time mean to him?"

> "Papercuts":


> LibraryThing Review:   Open Letter translation......Think subconscious, subterranean (literally and figuratively), and subversive!  Think lyrical dreamscapes! Think brilliant!  This is an absolutely outstanding collection of short stories.  Can Xue's writing is breathtaking! Her writing makes me think of Kafka.....of Rushdie.....and David Foster Wallace.  This is a collection of stories into which the reader must give themselves over and ride the tide of language, imagery, and power.  Not for folks who need clear-cut plot......otherwise, a must read, perhaps multiple times, like a good poem.  I would love to hear these stories read aloud!