Gao Xingjian

An unsuccessful experiment--for me anyway. He may have something to say, but this collection of six short stories left me unconvinced. In fairness, I only read five and a half. The first four simply didn’t amount to much: simple, straightforward stories, the point of which escaped me in every instance. I don’t mind that nothing much “happened.” I don’t need an intricate plot or story, though I will admit that I do enjoy a narrative of some sort. The first four stories provided that. However. I’m not especially good at delving deep into the structure or text in order to come up with its substance/meaning/significance. But these all require that to one degree or another. The fifth story I finally just gave up on. It lacked narrative, it lacked sense, and finally, even the structure fell apart. As I wrote elsewhere, I quit when I got to this: "'What is not to understand and 'what' is to understand or not is not to understand that even when 'what' is understood, it is not understood, for 'what' is to understand and 'what' is not to understand, 'what' is 'what' and 'is not' is 'is not,' and so is not to understand not wanting to understand or simply not understanding why 'what' needs to be understood or whether 'what' can be understood and also it is not understood whether 'what' is really not understood or that it simply hasn't been rendered so that it can be understood or is really understood..." and so on for another six lines. The prose in the first five stories is comprehensible even if not engaging. I am too lazy to bother with this. I don’t know whether he writes for readers to read or for himself. I will try Soul Mountain at some point, but at least I’ll have a notion of what to expect. I think.… (mere)

Soul Mountain won the nobel prize for literature, so naturally, I assumed I would be reading a great work of fiction. I was wrong. There's a sentence late in this "novel" in which Xingjian sums up his own thoughts about this book and it pretty much sums up my opinion of this book as well

"You've slapped together travel notes, moralistic ramblings, feelings, notes, jottings, untheoretical discussions, unfable-like fables, copied out some folk songs, added some legend-like nonsense of your own invention, and are calling it fiction."… (mere)