A Good Fall: Stories / by Ha Jin

Chineses-American author Ha Jin was born Jin Xuefei in the northeastern Chinese province of Liaoning in 1956. During his teen years, he volunteered with the People's Liberation Army, spending the majority of his time stationed along the Soviet border. Higher education was largely restricted during the Cultural Revolution (~1966-1976) and much of Jin's schooling during this period was informal, reading as much as he could and learning English through the country's fledgling institutional program. With the reopening of the Chinese colleges in 1977, he enrolled at Heilongjiang University and ultimately received a B.A. in English and thereafterwards an M.A. in American Literature. In 1985, he emigrated to America under a student visa where he studied at Brandeis University, eventually earning Ph.D. in English. With the culmination of events in China leading him to believe that his writing could never properly flourish in a country where both the language and the censorship regulations were obstacles to universal readership, he stayed in America where he began to publish poetry and short stories in English. He has since published two volumes of poetry, numerous short stories and several novels including one, Waiting, which won both the 1999 National Book Award and the 2000 PEN/Faulkner Award for best book. A Good Fall chronicles of the lives of Chinese immigrants in America doing their best to cope with disorientation and social unease.

A young recent Chinese immigrant can barely make ends meet and yet she's hounded by her younger sister back home about money to pay for a new car. A lonely, isolated musician takes comfort in the antics of his girlfriend's parakeet, a bird he later rescues to the surprise of everyone. Meanwhile in a contemporary Chinese-American family, young children decide to change their names so that they might sound more "American", largely ignorant to how their decision offsets generations of cultural heritage. At a small liberal arts college, an Asian professor of English, though of Chinese nationality, attempts to formally defect into the US with the reluctant aid of a student. And in the cramped quarters of an urban city dwelling, a young male sweatshop worker tries to get along with his three female roommates, all prostitutes.

Everyone struggles in Ha Jin's world. Some struggle with a desire to remain loyal to tradition and stave off the temptations to indulge in the more opportunistic freedom while others fight just to keep their newfound 'freedom' their own. Of course the ideas of tradition and liberty are themselves dubious constructs in Jin's world where freedom often implies abandonment and opportunity can just as easily mean hopelessness as it does aspiration. Jin's style is fairly minimalist, given to describing people and places with limited characterizations and without elaborative descriptions and his stories are sometimes more snapshot images or sparse vignettes of characters than scenarios with actual story-archs. His overarching premise is telling though. All his characters seem to exist in permanent disillusionment, not only from their difference in physical location but from their very sense of self and identity where their emotional universe has become as limited as their physical surroundings and their living conditions as disorienting as their inner conscious. (FIC JIN)

Paris, Texas (1984) DVD / a film by Wim Wenders; starring Harry Dean Stanton, Dean Rockwell, Nastassjia Kinski, Auroré Clement & Hunter Carson

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Somewhere in the American Southwest, a man walks alone across the parched desert not knowing where he's from, where he's going or even his own name. Dissheveled and weatherbeaten, he continues on, trance-like in one direction across the sun-baked terrain finally stopping at an isolated outpost where, in a small general store, he passes out. Upon waking, the attending doctor can get neither word nor reaction from his severely malnourished but docile patient and, finding only a worn piece of paper with some contact info, calls the number which turns out to be the brother of the mute, who's finally identified as Travis Henderson.
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Brother Walt Henderson arrives to meet Travis whom he hasn't seen for four years and, following an awkward period of greeting and reaquaintance with Walt basically having to talk Travis out of his suspended catatonic state, the pair travel back to Walt's Southern California home. Awaiting them are Walt's wife Anne and 7-year-old Hunter, Travis' biological son who's lived with his aunt and uncle ever since the dissolution of Travis' marriage, his mysterious disappearance and subsequent four-year stint spent wandering alone. Though wary and tentative of his father initially, young Hunter quickly warms to Travis who swiftly regains his bearings with the help of some old home movies and photo albums. After learning of the whereabouts of his (Travis') former wife Jane--also Hunter's mother, also estranged of late--the newly reunited father and son pair embark on a their own journey, one intended to reconnect with the third member of their formerly dissolved family unit living somewhere in Houston.
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Paris, Texas isn't actually about the real-life town in the northeast corner of the state. Yet the title's paradoxical ring is well-understood through the movie's context. It's a film which is acutely conscious of reality, exploring emotions and relationships, families and obligations; observing the price of passion, the burden of existence and the saving grace of love through motifs of travel, architecture and geography. As much can be said about the movie apart from the spot-on acting, which is impeccable really in its simplistic approach. The visual scenes are rich in symbolic imagery and American iconography as perceived by an outsider; it's a French/German co-production headed by German director Wim Wenders (Wings of Desire) who does some of his best work here. Images show characters surrounded by vast, impersonal forms of modern skyscrapers and looming natural landforms, the cities perceivably as empty and dispassionate as the desert. Wenders' use of over 25 individual filming locations is one truly remarkable, if unorthodox, feat. All scenes were shot chronologically beginning in Texas' Big Bend country, running through Arizona and New Mexico and finally to the San Fernando Valley before returning to Houston for the final act. The effort and expense was, of course, well worth it: Paris, Texas won the Palme d'Or prize awarded at Cannes that year and is a timeless example of the power of independent cinema. (DVD PARIS)

The Big Sort: Why The Clustering of Like-Minded America is Tearing Us Apart / by Bill Bishop

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In his first book, Bishop, a free-lance reporter from Austin, states that while American demographics may reflect increased diversity, sociological trends over the past few decades imply a wholly different landscape. In recent years, lifestyle choices among Americans have been leading "like-minded" groups to live together within exclusive, largely homogenous communities, a symptom of society Bishop refers to as "The Big Sort".
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In an interview with Matthew Dowd, a chief campaign strategest for both George's W. Bush's 2000 and 2004 campaigns, Bishop reveals that it was clearly understood by the mid-nineties that American communities growing in their uniformity and that, to a large degree, this 'clustering' trend was a defensive reaction to a society and world which were beyond the control of the individual. In previous decades, people's lives and sense of well-being were linked to memberships to their clubs, their trust in their local and federal governments, religions, etc. Yet these older, more established institutions were no longer providing the stability Americans wanted.

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Bishop states that, within the last few decades, personal wealth and prosperity had disintegrated these social institutions. Individuals with financial freedom were choosing where they wanted to live irregardless of church, social organizations and even family units. Americans were now seeking refuge among people and places who share their "lifeworlds", or situations in which more fundamentally segregating creeds such as race, class or political orientation are the norm. Now, more than ever, personal tastes, beliefs, styles, opinions, and values are becoming important in choosing where and how persons want to live. Not only is this trend an alarming reflection of modern times, it could have significant impact and negative ramifications for the future of the country. Bishop backs his claims through the theory that uniformity breeds like-mindedness, a frightening sociological symptom which produces polarizing ideas and radicalism.
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Bishop manages to deal with his subject comprehensively, even providing a somewhat even-handed approach to the topics of gender, class, race and political agendas. For the more politically minded, it's a book which investigates some of the key reasons for bi-partisanship in America today. Overall, it's an important book covering an important topic which will be sure and catch on with readers.

Happy Feelings

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Norman Rockwell: Pictures for the American People / Maureen H. Hennessey, ed.

If ever an artist defied convention, it was not Norman Rockwell, whose ultra-contemporary portrayals of everyday life seeped into the national conscious during the ‘Greatest Generation’ era. A man whose work rarely featured anything but scenes from an idyllic mainstream, Rockwell’s art basically hinged on two things: nostalgia and charm. Children especially and family life in general were a favorite of Rockwell's whose representations of boyhood pastimes, little girl tea parties, and patriotic sympathy could hardly fail to bring a grin.
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It was "The Saturday Evening Post" magazine which so readily delivered his artwork to the masses, the publication's covers featuring his clever caricatures for decades. Likely no other individual did more to secure the “good ol’ days” for those whose experiences during that time (1920-1960?) were at all worth remembering. Fans of the visual arts can't go wrong with this sample of his work, or any of the library's other seven Norman Rockwell books.