Gao Xingjian: Soul Mountain

This book treads a very thin line between brilliant metaliterature and slovenly experimental trash. It ends up coming out slightly on the former side, but it was a close contest all the way through. I enjoyed it greatly, but I am a literary masochist. I love books that hold up to and demand deep scrutiny. And, while I enjoyed it, I can't think of a single person to whom I would recommend it.

Anyone wishing to read this book would be well served to read chapter 52 before diving in. It is not until this point that Gao's gimmick becomes clear, namely that, although parts of the book are narrated in the second person, "you" is really an extension of "I," the author. It is chiefly this literary conceit which gives the novel its weight. With this understanding, the book transforms from an asymmetric jumble of vignettes into a treatise on the nature of the self. It is especially beautiful that the idea holds up to multiple perspectives. At times Gao seems to be saying that memory is so fickle as to make all but the most poignant moments in our lives seem as though they are happening to someone else. At other times, he seems to be pursuing the Buddhist idea that the self is to blame for all suffering. And elsewhere Gao clearly intends to foster the idea that each man is every man, a la Emerson. All of these ideas work simultaneously, and this is not even to touch on the inticacies of his play with gender.

The problem is that Gao's central idea is not strong enough to carry a book of this magnitude. At 506 dense pages, the book cannot help but seem to belabor the point a bit. The blurry scraps of stories which make up the bulk of the book run together, are unmemorable and do little more than provide an arena for Gao to shuffle pronouns in. He could have gone so much further than simply to play around with point of view. I, for one, would have liked to see him develop the theme of being trapped in the mountains by so-called "Demon Walls," or the meaning of the eponymous Lingshan.

What finally tips the scale in Gao's favor is his wonderful patterns of imagery, which are, at times, the only thing holding the book together. It is a delightful confluence that Gao is also a visual artist specializing in black and white ink drawings. This book was truly written in black and white. Everywhere the reader turns there are patterns of black shingles, black scales, black feathers, and, especially, black footprints. It is not simply that many things in the book are black; black is quilted into the book. There are rhythmic sequences of black shapes all over it. It is only this thematic consistency, in fact, which can convince me that Gao didn't accidentally send his publisher a shuffled manuscript.