Buying a Fishing Rod for My Grandfather: Stories

A short book, with stylized Chinese fish on its cover, Buying a Fishing Rod for My Grandfather was an intriguing foray into foreign short stories for me. The author is a Nobel prize winner, so I knew at the outset that this wouldn't be light reading. But the stories are truly fascinating. In the first tale I feel like a fly on the wall, listening to someone speak; is he remembering the past? Is he talking to his family, or to his wife, or to the pictures in his mind? The stories each left me slightly off-balance, not quite sure what I was reading. But the title story, Buying a Fishing Rod for My Grandfather, suddenly centered me as the narrator looks into memories of his past and finds himself lost in change. The final story, In an Instant, fills most of the second half of the book. It is a beautiful piece, reminding me of a Chinese plate my grandmother had. I don't remember much about the plate, except that there were blue pictures, a temple and a bridge, trees, and a feeling that the closer I looked at one image the more likely I was to find myself in another. The writing flows in the same way between scenes, adding imagination to each and drawing the reader on with the movement of the prose. There's no story as such, but there's reflection and change; it's oddly mesmerizing, like that moment of falling asleep or of waking up, when objects take on meanings that really belong to something else. It takes much more than an instant to read, and stays longer than an instant in the mind, but it's beautiful in the same way as that plate. So now I'll go back and reread them all, in light of the mysteries of memory and time, and in appreciation of something truly different and impressive.

This book contains six beautifully crafted short stories built on ordinary events. Crafted more to evoke emotions than tell a tale, these stories range in style from sparse dialogue to rich description of detail. The dream-like imagery in the last two stories, "Buying a Fishing Rod for My Grandfather" and "In an Instant", carries you along in a hypnotic stream. "The Temple" starts as a charming journey into the country with newlyweds and slowly turns melancholy. "In the Park" takes place almost entirely in dialogue that is surprisingly effective at conveying nervous regret. "The Cramp" skillfully turns danger into triumph into insignificance. "The Accident" is a masterful demonstration of how a tragic death is a mosaic of different events based on point-of-view. The stories are different in style, but the same themes can be seen running through each: memory, change, loss, and family. These short stories are not going to be everyone's cup of tea - if you need a plot, this isn't for you. But if you appreciate beautiful use of language to paint a picture, you'll probably savor this small collection. The translation seems very unobtrusive - you never get jarring feelings of disconnect from the language.

A great book that carries six great stories. Each story has it's own character and charm. Gao Xingjian style is simple and reflects some of the Chinese proud culture...Gao Xingjian is able to make you live the detail of each story, make you wonder on the events and worry about the situation of some of the characters. The book (even being 120 pages) has so much to offer, a very entertaining book, and the stories are so different and so amazing, it all adds up to being a great product of a Noble prize winner... Easy, great reading.

Reading the six short stories in Gao Xing Jian's BUYING A FISHING ROD FOR MY GRANDFATHER is like wandering into a small gallery containing six Impressionist paintings. Each story paints a quiet verbal picture of loss and gain, of change, of solitary existence and the consolations of love and family. Gao's works seem nearly plotless, vignettes which create scenes and atmosphere more than story lines. Then again, life consists of such brief moments and experiences; stories are the fictions we create to connect and give personal meaning to these separate moments. Gao's technique varies from story to story. His opening work, "The Temple," describes the spontaneous actions of a honeymooning couple as they disembark from a train to explore a decaying hillside temple. The story, written in standard prose form, speaks achingly of history and loss, of life moving forward in spite of past tragedies. The second story, "In the Park," switches almost completely to dialog between two nameless acquaintances who meet by coincidence in a park and reclaim their childhood memories as another young woman sits crying on a nearby park bench. The third story, "The Cramp," gives a harrowing account of a casual swimmer who nearly dies alone within sight of the shore, only to discover when he makes it ashore that no one has noticed. The next story, "The Accident," tells nearly the same story in a moment by moment account of a fatal traffic accident on a Beijing street. The police arrive and take care of the situation, street cleaners come to remove the broken bicycle and wipe the blood from the streets, and life continues on anonymously, as if the death never occurred. The title story follows, offering a powerful account of a neighborhood no longer recognizable to its main character who had lived there as a boy. The story conveys a sense of loss and disorienting change, of a simple way of life no longer to be found. The stories in this collection were written between 1983 and 1990, about the same time Gao was completing his novel SOUL MOUNTAIN. The writing is simple and direct, yet it creates memorable images and a strong sense of atmosphere. Despite being written by China's first Nobelist in Literature, these are not stories about China or Chinese culture. Several of these stories offer no sense of place or culture - they could be taking place anywhere in the world. Perhaps this is a reflection of Gao's status as an expatriate in Paris. For those who enjoy modern Chinese and Chinese-American literature by the likes of Mo Yan, Su Tong, Ha Jin, and Liu Heng, Gao Xing Jian's BUYING A FISHING ROD FOR MY GRANDFATHER stands out for its daring style and its sublimation of Chinese culture to more universal settings and themes. In that respect, Gao is stylistically closer to Japanese writers like Kenzaburo Oe and Haruki Murakami than any Chinese writer I have yet encountered. Anyone who reads this book will likely be motivated to pick up a copy of SOUL MOUNTA

A book for those who know China, and those who still have that pleasure to come. "The Accident" takes us onto a pulsing but anonymous Beijing street for one small moment of death and life. Gao puts us in the crowd of curious onlookers, and then magically into their minds and lives. "The Temple" takes us by the hand through rural small town China as a young married couple enjoy their one week of honeymoon. Gao writes sparingly but with a precise and human touch, much as China's landscape painters misted their scenes onto canvas. Serene and raucous, immense and private, like China itself Gao's writing gives great, simple pleasure. After these Chekhov-like short stories, you will immediately want his Nobel winning novel "Soul Mountain", if you haven't yet encountered that great work.