The short story genre is hard to master. Many try, and many fail in crafting the perfect short story. It is, in some ways, a more challenging genre to work with than say, a novel. Short stories demand brevity and complexity, and unlike novel writers who have the luxury of time and page count in developing thoughtful characters, the short story author must define the narrative stakes quickly, compellingly, all the while maintaining and cultivating the reader’s sense of investment. And then of course, there are short story collections where only a few of the stories truly shine; with the strongest stories book ending the collection, a reader may be forced to wade through the chapters in the murky middle, wondering if it’s better (and less of a crapshoot) to just skip to the end.
If you’re reading a good but not great collection, maintaining the momentum to read it front to back is something of a rarity, an accomplishment not unlike making it to the gym everyday for a month. It requires stamina, interest, and willpower to keep turning the pages, so it seems to me that reading short stories more often than not turn into a test of endurance, rather than an exercise in willful enchantment.
But not so in Can Xue’s dazzling new collection,
Vertical Motion. As far as short story collections go, this one displayed a consistent craftsmanship, and the wonderfully rich translation by Karen Gernarnt and Chen Zeping nicely reflects the poetic minimalism that defines Can Xue’s dream like style. Every story is startling. Every story is seductive, bewitching, restless. Every story is worth it.
Vertical Motion, a collection of short stories from the Chinese author
Can Xue, re-imagines the short story genre in this extraordinary new set of stories. Can Xue is a pseudonym for Deng XiaoHua, a self-taught woman who lost the opportunity for a high school education thanks to the Cultural Revolution. So, she devoured classic literature as a child, particularly Russian literature and Western classics. Today, she is considered one of the most experimental writers in the world. Her moniker, Can Xue, is a thoughtful pun, meaning the dirty snow that will not melt and also, the purest snow on a high mountain.
Her stories are ruthlessly consuming, bordering on the fringe of frightening. Although her stories are informed by familiar settings of an older China, they do not immediately read as postcolonial commentaries, which is refreshing given the lingering postmodern question of whether all “third world literature” are national allegories. Instead, the collection delves deep into each protagonist’s psyche; very little of the plot, if any, is ever resolved. Although they can be allegorically, they generally refuse to be distracted by the political and cultural baggage of China’s tumultuous history. Instead, her stories are precise and intense, open in its layers of meanings.
The surreal strangeness of her stories makes it slippery to characterize or categorize her work. Magical realism? Experimental? Classical realism? Although they clearly possess paranormal attributes, it’s unclear if the unrealistic events in the story – a stairwell that disappears, a demonic owl, roses that bloom underground – are actually happening, or if they are a reflection of the protagonist’s troubled psyche. Her stories deal with old themes in new ways – mobility, aging, the other, death – leading readers down dark, spectacular roads.
It has been said that Can Xue represents a “
new space” for literature, but she herself refutes this claim. Instead, she characterizes her work as “
soul literature”: in a recent essay, she writes, “I do not tell plane stories; I tell stereoscopic stories. …. when we are reading, we should regard a work as a medium that can start the a priori ability—an ability for prior direct-viewing in our soul. We use the work to stimulate that ability, and let the structure of time and space in our heart appear. Then we use the direct-viewing to watch the beautiful scenery in the work that belongs to oneself at last.”
This collection definitely offers a subtle set of stories that peer into the troubled souls of its characters. These stories explore the vexed, yet necessary relationship between self and other. Reading them is like entering a room of broken mirrors – her stories fracture, disorient, and disrupt, often inducing the protagonist’s psyche to slip and tumble towards an ominous rabbit hole. Can Xue’s uncanny ability to effortlessly de-center and disturb her characters down to their very core is why these stories take on an unnatural, if not chilling tone – after all, what else is more frightening than the inability to see oneself as oneself, as a whole person?
The narratives draw upon on ghostly figurations in distorting the boundaries between the natural and supernatural, creating the sense of a lush, albeit troubled hallucination. In one of the first stories, “Red Leaves”, Gu, an ailing teacher, hears that a fellow patient has inexplicably called out his name as he leapt out the window. While looking at the reddening maples outside, he wonders why a non-terminally ill patient would commit suicide.
One red leaf floated in the air about the forest of his thoughts – a forest that was totally bare, for it was winter now. Gu had been considering a question for several days: Did a leaf start turning red from the leafstalk, the color gradually spreading throughout he entire lead, or did the entire lead gradually turn from light red to deep red? Before falling ill, Gu hadn’t observed this phenomenon, probably because he missed the chance every year. In front of his home were hills were maples grew. But it was only after he fell ill that he had moved there.
After the cleaning woman left, Gu bent his legs and lightly massaged his distended belly. He thought: perhaps one’s body is most vibrant when one’s disease reaches its last stage. His poor liver, for instance, must have reached this stage.
The red leaves that mark the progression (or perhaps regression) of Gu’s investigations ultimately take on intricate layers of meanings, suggesting not only a final moment of vibrancy before death, but a lurid red trail towards a long forgotten buried guilt. Death looms in every room in the hospital as it does on every page of Gu’s story. Yet death is treated not as a final destination, but as a form of catharsis. There is the insinuation that his encounters with death are in fact encounters with his lost memories. In his old age, Gu is depicted as having lost his most precious memories, and this loss catalyzes a subconscious search into his own past. The reader sees how the hospital itself slowly transforms into a psychological map of Gu’s interior self, and much like Edgar Allan Poe’s
The Fall of the House of Usher, the disinfected hospital, its rebellious patients, whispering doctors, and ghosts, become a reflection of Gu’s tormented subconscious. Alternatively, Can Xue leaves the hospital and its people as an open question in whether they function as a totalizing force of alienation and difference, an other to Gu’s sense of self.
And like the unnamed narrator in Poe’s short story, Gu is only vaguely aware of the true nature of those he meets on the hospital’s higher levels. As he makes his way towards the ninth floor in search of strange “cat sounds”, he encounters an increasingly unnatural series of characters. From the eerily quiet lady disinfecting the rooms, to the crazed patient attempting to escape the hospital, it’s not clear if Gu is ascending or descending into the spiritual realm.
Gu ultimately comes across Ju, a specter of one of his favorite students. Cloaked in black robes, Ju appears wearing a Chinese opera mask and excitedly exclaims himself to be the “one who jumped into the icy river to save someone. Have you forgotten?” It’s an ominous introduction, and Gu finds himself unable to ask how Ju died, his afterlife, about what he has seen and where he has gone. Instead, they lie on a hospital bed together for awhile, taking naps. As the red leaves continue to fall, Gu finally witnesses a moment of truth he cannot understand, compelling him to flee to his room on the fifth floor to the “drowsy” smell of Lysol. The red leaves serve as a visual ticking clock, ominously counting down to Gu’s impending death, an ultimately vibrant transformation, or transcendence, of life.
The question of whether characters are participating in a kind of vertical movement extends throughout the entire collection. In the titular story, “Vertical Motion”, worm like creatures live a stagnant life until one of them decides to burrow upwards towards the surface, where he resolves to never forget his “kindred in the dark”, and in “Village in the Big City”, a man visits an old uncle who lives in a skyscraper with disappearing stairs. Can Xue uses movement as an ironic trope as usually nothing changes in her stories. People stay in the same places, go in circles, or turn inwards. Yet the flatness in plot belies the intense internal movement of her characters. By the end of each story, the characters sense some meaning has accrued in their circular journeys, even though it’s not always completely clear or understandable. The ending of “Village in the Big City” captures this extended sense of estrangement. The protagonist, confused as to why his uncle had called his nephew ugly, and why his gaze upsets others, leaves shaken, albeit “enriched”. After setting off from his house to visit his uncle, he ultimately comes home musing on the day’s peculiarities and suprises. “I transferred to another bus and went home. The first thing I did when I went inside was to see if the small mirror was still under the pillow. It was. I looked in the mirror several times. Nothing was wrong. I sat at the table and recalled today’s adventure. I felt that my innermost being had been substantially enriched.”
It’s a captivating notion – after all, aren’t all stories a kind of “small mirror” of ourselves? We read fiction to get into the heads of others, to get into our own, and when the task is done, we leave as changed individuals, even though the change isn’t written on our faces. That change, progression, movement, only becomes apparent in how we see ourselves, see others. Can Xue sets up these stories as a mirror to not only reflect the character’s souls, but the reader’s “innermost being” as well; what is ultimately reflected (or deflected) is an alienated, or enriched, image of ourselves.
The collection ends on this note with "Papercuts", an unnerving portrait of a desperate housewife. Mrs. Yun, a hardworking woman, feels increasingly alienated from her gloomy husband and cold daughter. She does her best to fulfill her maternal duties but becomes frustrated by her family’s lack of emotional support. She cannot determine if their lack of affection is due to the fact that her family is simply uninterested in her, or if it is because she “was only dimly aware of their worlds.” As she laments her family’s caustic nature, a gigantic owl with “round eyes” like “demonic mirrors” begins stalking her. Mrs. Yun grows terrified of the massive owl staring at her at all hours, so one night, she asks her husband to shoot it.
Now Mrs. Yun was sitting in the doorway, stitching soles for cloth shoes, and the gigantic bird was in the tree across from her. The afternoon before, it had pecked a piglet to death – a tragic scene. Mrs. Yun reminded her husband of her father’s hunting rifle. Mr. Yun took the gun in his hands, looked around for a long time, and then put it down again. He said stiffly, “It’s useless.”
“Why? Why?” Mrs. Yun said impatiently, “Nothing’s wrong with this rifle. Last year, Yun Bao killed a lot of wild rabbits with it. It’s a good rifle.”
“Is this a wild rabbit?” Mr. Yun roared fiercely.
“Then, what do you think it is? It’s going to do us in.” Mrs. Yun was furious.
“It is – it is – bah!”
Mr. Yun went to the kitchen and started the fire.
Mrs. Yun’s eyes blurred as she stitched the soles. It was as if the end of the world was coming. It took a long time for her to compose herself. She saw Wumei walk past the ditch with a basket on her arm. She was cutting pig fodder. She wasn’t the least but afraid, nor was she concerned about the family’s losses. This child was a little callous. Whenever she told her anything, she said the same thing. “Just ignore it.” … As a housewife, she knew she couldn’t make the decision in such a serious matter. She could only worry. When she looked again at the owl, it seemed bigger: It looked like a tiger sitting there.
Mr. Yun’s fierce dismissal of his wife’s fear is cruel, almost vindictive, and Wumei’s suggestion to simply “ignore” whatever troubles her mother comes off as ruthless. Their complete disregard towards her emotional distress points towards Mrs. Yun’s effacement not only to them, but to herself as well. She internalizes her inability to “make the decision in such a serious matter” as a consequence of gender roles, fostering her frustration in remaining a passive object in the decisions of others, a prey waiting to be devoured.
The lack of connection between her and her family lend to her sense of profound invisibility, and this is perhaps why Mrs. Yun fears the owl – it is the only creature who sees her, fixes her in its relentless gaze, and this induces a shock and fear of encountering herself for the first time. Mrs. Yun yearns for her family’s recognition even as she finds herself dismantled by the penetrating gaze of the owl. The other’s gaze, in its capacity to configure and disfigure a person’s psyche, is masterfully explored through Mrs. Yun’s unhappy family life, and Can Xue manipulates this familiar dialectic by granting Mrs. Yun’s invisibility with unpredictable consequences.
As Mrs. Yun becomes increasingly psychologically and emotionally invisible to her family, she begins to see characters that remain invisible to others. They reveal themselves only to her, including her schoolgirl crush, yet it becomes unclear if these apparitions are hallucinations, ghosts, or a psychological self defense mechanism produced by Mrs. Yun’s desperate ego. The narrative begs the questions: whose gaze do we crave for more? How does it configure or disfigure our conceptions of self? Mrs. Yun’s encounters with the ominous owl, invisible characters, and the stony glares of her family lead the reader to consider whether these gazes are all equal in importance, or whether certain ones are more disastrous, or rewarding, than others.
“Papercuts” is emblematic of the kind of satisfyingly pithy plots that animate Vertical Motion. Can Xue is a master of teasing the border between monstrous and magical, the familiar and strange. Every story is worth the thought and time of the reader. The surreal aesthetics of each story gleam with narrative precision, and they will cut you to the core.
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