Day 30: Fenton Johnson, Lu Xun, Joan Acocella
Poem: Fenton Johnson - Tired
I am tired of work; I am tired of building up somebody else’s civilization.
Let us take a rest, M’Lissy Jane.
I will go down to the Last Chance Saloon, drink a gallon or two of gin, shoot a game or two of dice and sleep the rest of the night on one of Mike’s barrels.
You will let the old shanty go to rot, the white people’s clothes turn to dust, and the Calvary Baptist Church sink to the bottomless pit.
You will spend your days forgetting you married me and your nights hunting the warm gin Mike serves the ladies in the rear of the Last Chance Saloon.
Throw the children into the river; civilization has given us too many. It is better to die than to grow up and find that you are colored.
Pluck the stars out of the heavens. The stars mark our destiny. The stars marked my destiny.
I am tired of civilization.
I love this poem as an expression of utter absolute hopelessness. It wounds me to read this every time.
Story: Lu Xun - The Real Story of Ah Q
A comic novella about the misadventures of a really dumb guy who continuously gets beat up for harassing and taunting people, yet in his own eyes he wins every time.
In China, this is commonly referred to as the "spiritual victory". Says Wikipedia:
Method of spiritual victory is a technique used to regain self-esteem by making oneself feel good through self-hypnosis, and self-anesthesia. Briefly, it is to describe those who have actually suffered losses, but can only shift to seeking self-comfort in spirit.[8]
Lu Xun criticises the penchant for spiritual victory, which in his time was believed to be a negative characteristic of China's people in the same way that "tall poppy syndrome" is a characteristic of Australians. Lu Xun blows it up into absurdity.
For example, Ah Q has several unpleasant ringworm scars on his head, for which he is often taunted:
Ah-Q struggled to find an appropriate riposte.\ ‘You’re not worth a…’ At moments such as these, Ah-Q’s ringworm suddenly struck him as a badge of honour for which no sacrifice was too great; far superior to your average, run-ofthe-mill dermatological defect.
There are various other battles and scrapes, structured similarly to Voltaire's Candide.
The character Ah Q reminds me a lot of Ignatius J Reilly from A Confederacy of Dunces. They are both contemptible grotesques with indignant claims to spiritual victory in any circumstance.
While the story is entertaining, I do find the moralising of Lu Xun's tales to be slightly deflating in terms of literature, but interesting in terms of learning about another culture's history.
I am almost finished with his first book of stories, which I have all enjoyed more than I thought I would. Julia Lovell's translations are always so good.
Essay: Joan Acocella - Art Wins: Elena Ferrante
Acocella is a really great American literary critic and I have been enjoying her essays in The Bloodied Nightgown. Although I am breaking the CaLD writer theme now, she is writing about the Italian writer Elena Ferrante here, who Neapolitan novels were some of the most enjoyable books I have read in a very long time.
The essay is a wonderful review of the four books, bringing them all together. I was a bit lost with the structure and themes of the books, especially by book 4 and its ending. Acocella's writing really explains their form in a beautiful way, and draws out some of the best highlights. However, if you have not read the books, this review will totally spoil the whole series, which makes me wonder: who are long-form reviews for? They tend to be for people who have already read the book and need no convincing, yet it is cathartic to read the conclusions and judgements drawn by someone smarter than ourselves.