BOOK REVIEWS

Xu Xing: “Variations Without a Theme” and Other Stories

These stories by Xu Xing tell of the struggle that the modern individual wages against a society that increasingly demands conformity. His characters exist on the fringe and in the in-between spaces of modern life, resisting fads, fashions, civilisation and normalcy. For instance, there is the narrator of the first story, “On a Side Road”, who has been committed to a mental hospital. He remembers a picture book he had as a child whose pages were all torn out. This book had provided him endless entertainment, for if he wanted a new story all he had to do was rearrange the pages. Each time the story revealed new facets that only he could follow. The day a well-intentioned older gentleman put the pages back in their “proper” order he threw the book away. This metaphor of the unbound book serves as the guiding principle behind the organisation of “Variations Without a Theme” and Other Stories, though this is certainly not to say that they are haphazard or carelessly crafted. The stories all follow a winding path to their conclusion at their own pace, each tracing a different view of the existential struggle of their protagonists to come to terms with the absurd nature of life.

These themes come to a climax in the final two stories, the story of the title and “Story of a City”. The narrators of both these stories are extremely eccentric, and comfortable with their eccentricities. As the narrator of “Variations Without a Theme” concludes, “[In the future] I’ll still be the same as I am now, without rhyme or reason always happy and absent-minded. And when I cross the road, I’ll never look to see whether or not I’m on the pedestrian crossing….” (p. 80). He doesn’t follow conventional social norms any more than he follows the pedestrian code, and a significant portion of the story satirises those who claim to be social and intellectual leaders, showing these characters to be no more than fashion victims. The narrator in “Story of a City” too fantasises about being run over by a car because he loves to ride his bicycle past moving cars. “Everyone who has seen this bicycle of mine says it looks like me; some simply say it is me. … The main reason is that every conceivable place on the bike sticks out or has developed edges” (p. 98). Like his brother in “Variations Without a Theme” he doesn’t “fit in”. And yet, these characters nevertheless feel that their lives are somehow incomplete, and they desperately seek out meaningful and loving human contact, which inevitably leads to pain.

The collection is prefaced by a somewhat too lengthy analysis by the translators of the stories included and discussion of Xu Xing’s place in contemporary Chinese literature. This article cannot quite decide whether it wants to be primarily intended for an academic or a general audience. Thus despite some of the very nice readings of the stories offered in the article, it suffers from a certain indecision and lack of clarity. The general reader would be advised to skip it and move directly to the stories themselves, which are translated in a very lively English, with an Australian flair that rather suits these stories. This translation is an important step in bringing Xu Xing’s stories which, as the translators note, have played a key role in bridging the pre-modern, modern and post-modern in Chinese letters, to a world audience.