2019-04-20 ☼ writing
Talking about the plot of a Can Xue novel is a futile exercise. Plot means a hierarchy of importance, but dramatic significance is spread evenly across Love in the New Millennium: a chance encounter with an acupuncturist on a plane carries the same weight as a traffic accident, and an encounter with a pair of angry pigs is no more or less meaningful than an attempted murder. Plot means suspense, but the only reason to keep turning these pages is to discover the next discrete moment of delightful absurdity. Plot means a relationship between cause and effect that does not exist in Can Xue’s fictional universes, where the reigning paradigm is the nonsense logic of dreams.
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