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Overview
From the National Book Award-winning author of Waiting, a new collection of short fiction that confirms Ha Jin's reputation as a master story-teller.Each of The Bridegroom's twelve stories -- three of which have been selected for inclusion in The Best American Short Stories -- takes us back to Muji City in contemporary China, the setting of Waiting. It is a world both exotic and disarmingly familiar, one in which Chinese men and women meet with small epiphanies and muted triumphs, leavening their lives of quiet desperation through subtle insubordination and sometimes crafty resolve.
In the title story, a seemingly model husband joins a secret men's literary club and finds himself arrested for the "bourgeois crime" of homosexuality. "Alive" centers on an official who loses his memory in an earthquake and lives happily for months as a simple worker; when he suddenly remembers who he is, he finds that his return to his old life proves inconvenient for everyone. In "A Tiger-Fighter Is Hard to Find," a television crew's inept attempt to film a fight scene with a live Siberian tiger lands their lead actor in a mental hospital, convinced that he is the mythical tiger-fighter Wu Song.
Reversals, transformations, and surprises abound in these assured stories, as Ha Jin seizes on the possibility that things might not be as they seem. Parables for our times -- with a hint of the reckless and the absurd that we have come to expect from Ha Jin -- The Bridegroom offers tales both mischievous and wise.
Synopsis
From the National Book Award-winning author of Waiting, a new collection of short fiction that confirms Ha Jin's reputation as a master storyteller.
Each of The Bridegroom's twelve stories–three of which have been selected for inclusion in The Best American Stories–takes us back to Muji City in contemporary China, the setting of Waiting. It is a world both exotic and disarmingly familiar, one in which Chinese men and women meet with small epiphanies and muted triumphs, leavening their lives of quiet desperation through subtle insubordination and sometimes crafty resolve.
In the title story, a seemingly model husband joins a secret men's literary club and finds himself arrested for the "bourgeois crime" of homosexuality. "Alive" centers on an official who loses his memory in an earthquake and lives happily for months as a simple worker; when he suddenly remembers who he is, he finds that his return to his old life proves inconvenient for everyone. In "A Tiger-Fighter Is Hard to Find," a television crew's inept attempt to film a fight scene with a live Siberian tiger lands their lead actor in a mental hospital, convinced that he is the mythical tiger-fighter Wu Song.
Reversals, transformations, and surprises abound in these assured stories, as Ha Jin seizes on the possibility that things might not be as they seem. Parables for our times–with a hint of the reckless and the absurd that we have come to expect from Ha Jin–The Bridgegroom offers tales both mischievous and wise.
About the Author:
Ha Jin left his native China in 1985 to attend Brandeis University. He is the author of two books of poetry; two previous collections of stories, Ocean of Words, which won the PEN/Hemingway Award, and Under the Red Flag, which won the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction; and two other novels, In the Pond and Waiting, which won both the National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award. He lives in Atlanta, where he is Young J. Allen Professor of English and Creative Writing at Emory University.
Publishers Weekly
It's difficult to think of another writer who has captured the conflicting attitudes and desires, and the still-changing conditions of daily life, of post-Cultural Revolution China as well as Ha Jin does in his second collection, which follows his NBA-winning novel, Waiting. These 12 stories attain their significant cumulative effect through spare prose penetrated by wit, insight and a fine sense of irony. One realizes in reading them that while human nature is universal, China's cultural and political repression exacerbates such traits as fear of authority (and the desire to circumvent it), male chauvinism and suspicion of outsiders. In "The Woman from New York," a young wife and mother who goes to the States for four years finds, on her return to Muji City (where most of these tales are set), that her child, her marriage, her job and her honor are forever lost. American business methods clash with Chinese traditions in "After Cowboy Chicken Came to Town," in which Chinese workers' anger about the behavior of their boss, Mr. Shapiro, is redoubled when they discover one of their own countrymen practicing the strange ethics of capitalism. Such varied protagonists as college professors, a factory worker, a horny cadre member, two uneducated peasants and a five-year-old girl illustrate the ways in which hardship, lack of living space, inflexible social rules and government quotas thwart happiness. The title story is perhaps the most telling indication of the clash of humanitarian feeling and bureaucratic intervention. The protagonist, who has been taught to believe that "homosexuality... originated in Western capitalism and bourgeois lifestyle,'' is unable to credit his own sympathy for his son-in-law, who is sent to a mental hospital to cure his "disease." Ha Jin has a rare empathy for people striving to balance the past and the future while caught on the cusp of change. (Oct.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.|
Editorials
Publishers Weekly -
It's difficult to think of another writer who has captured the conflicting attitudes and desires, and the still-changing conditions of daily life, of post-Cultural Revolution China as well as Ha Jin does in his second collection, which follows his NBA-winning novel, Waiting. These 12 stories attain their significant cumulative effect through spare prose penetrated by wit, insight and a fine sense of irony. One realizes in reading them that while human nature is universal, China's cultural and political repression exacerbates such traits as fear of authority (and the desire to circumvent it), male chauvinism and suspicion of outsiders. In "The Woman from New York," a young wife and mother who goes to the States for four years finds, on her return to Muji City (where most of these tales are set), that her child, her marriage, her job and her honor are forever lost. American business methods clash with Chinese traditions in "After Cowboy Chicken Came to Town," in which Chinese workers' anger about the behavior of their boss, Mr. Shapiro, is redoubled when they discover one of their own countrymen practicing the strange ethics of capitalism. Such varied protagonists as college professors, a factory worker, a horny cadre member, two uneducated peasants and a five-year-old girl illustrate the ways in which hardship, lack of living space, inflexible social rules and government quotas thwart happiness. The title story is perhaps the most telling indication of the clash of humanitarian feeling and bureaucratic intervention. The protagonist, who has been taught to believe that "homosexuality... originated in Western capitalism and bourgeois lifestyle,'' is unable to credit his own sympathy for his son-in-law, who is sent to a mental hospital to cure his "disease." Ha Jin has a rare empathy for people striving to balance the past and the future while caught on the cusp of change. (Oct.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.|Library Journal
Ha Jin follows up his National Book Award-winning novel, Waiting, with a collection of a dozen short stories dealing with political and human relations in China. In the opening work, "Saboteur," a newly married man is imprisoned and in an act of vengeance later becomes responsible for an outbreak of acute hepatitis that ultimately affects over 800 people and kills six. In the title piece, a gay man deceptively marries a rather homely and obtuse young woman, leaving her guardian to struggle with the consequences. "Entrepreneur's Story," a tale of class and greed, tells of a temporary brick layer who recalls being told by his sweetheart's mother that "she'd rather throw her daughter into a sewer" than to let him marry her. Two pieces in which Jin intertwines humor into otherwise intense stories are "A Tiger Fighter Is Hard to Find," in which a movie company pits an actor against a fierce tiger in a quest for realism results, and "After Cowboy Chicken Came to Town," which describes how a Texas-based fried chicken franchise affects the Chinese with its capitalistic ways. Jin uses this collection to exhibit his strong writing and storytelling skills with his laconic use of words. Recommended for most larger public, academic, and Asian literature collections. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 6/15/00.]--Shirley N. Quan, Orange Cty. P.L., Santa Ana, CA Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.\Verity Ludgate-Fraser
The Bridegroom is an absorbing work by a deeply gifted writer, spare yet rich, witty yet heart-rending. Despite the pain these characters endure, Jin rejoices in the humanity he so aptly depicts.&&151;Christian Science Monitor
Perlman
Ha Jin's spare prose, subtle wit, and surprising plot twists make for a reak that is both quick and memorable.—Entertainment Weekly
Claire Messud
His literary vision, like his subjects thus far, is Chinese, and the English language not his calling but his arbitrary fate. But his eye for detail, his great storytelling talent -- these universal gifts suffuse his work and make 'The Bridegroom' a genuine pleasure.—New York Times Book Review