Posts filed under 'interiority'

Asymptote at the Movies: Love in a Fallen City

A literary style that lends itself so naturally to cinema has its pleasures and, in some cases, its perils when it comes to adaptation.

The allure of Eileen Chang’s prose is a bewitching combination of insight and precision—sensual acuity married with an editorial scrupulousness. Earning widespread renown with renderings of the delicate, tenuous relationships in the volatile societies of her time, Chang has become known for her ability to create vivid, lasting images. It’s no wonder, then, that her works have served as the material for several celebrated films; today, our blog editors are taking a look at Hong Kong director Ann Hui’s adaptation of Chang’s rich novella of courtship and compromise, Love in a Fallen City (1984). What follows is a discussion on the transposition of Chang’s “cinematic” language, the pitfalls of overly faithful adaptation, and the difficulties of portraying interiority.

Shawn Hoo (SH): I have always thought of Eileen Chang’s prose style—her montage of overlapping timelines; her patient, exquisite visualising of scenes; her keen ear for dialogue—as having an affinity with the language of film. That is, her stories come to me almost ready-made for film. Unsurprisingly, Chang herself did write fourteen screenplays (a neglected part of her oeuvre), and several of her stories have been adapted by celebrated Sinophone filmmakers such as Stanley Kwan, Ang Lee, Hou Hsiao-hsien, and of course, Ann Hui (all of whom have no doubt disseminated Chang’s legacy to new audiences). A literary style that lends itself so naturally to cinema has its pleasures and, in some cases, its perils when it comes to adaptation. Just hear what Hui admits when asked about her interpretation of Chang’s story: “There is no interpretation at all,” she says, “It’s more a representation. The novel is so good that adding anything at all seems impossible.” If by “representation” Hui means to hew close to the original text, then this bears out in the film’s dialogue, which is used almost verbatim in its Cantonese translation, as well as in its rendering of key scenes which appear largely unmodified on screen. Consequently, what is arguably Chang’s most loved story has had a relatively lukewarm reception in its filmic context (and in Hui’s otherwise prolific oeuvre). Faithfulness—that contested word so frequently used to discuss translation—it seems, does not always reward.

This for me raises questions about the merits of transferring what is ostensibly cinematic writing onto the film medium, and how their relationship—as well as mutual realisation—can be understood beyond a scene-for-scene, image-for-image correspondence, which is at least how I conceive of Hui’s approach: too faithful. To be clear, there is much to admire in this film, especially Hui’s treatment of early 1940s Shanghai and Hong Kong. Whereas the former has the camera concentrated on the decaying, claustrophobic Bai household and moves between adjacent rooms only to hear Liusu’s relatives badmouthing her, the latter moves liberally between the historic Repulse Bay Hotel, couples dancing to a jazz number at the Hong Kong Hotel, outdoor Chinese opera, and a rendition of Greensleeves all heard while Liusu and Liuyuan walk the city. The film’s construction of these two settings dramatises the shifts in Liusu’s psychology, one that liberates her from the sad huqin of an insular household into the cacophonous colonial cosmopolitanism of British Hong Kong which signifies new beginnings. Or rather, three settings: if we distinguish Japanese-occupied Hong Kong for its distinct aural and visual qualities. Here, I think Hui successfully leverages on the medium to elaborate on Chang’s vision, that is the role of contingency—of situated time and place—to precipitate love.

At this point, I wonder if either of you might have a different take on the relationship between representation and interpretation, to borrow Hui’s own distinction?

Allison Braden (AB): The film did strike me as a fascinating testament to the idea that extreme faithfulness can be, paradoxically, a detriment to adaptation. Conventional wisdom holds that books deal in emotions, plays in dialogue, and films in images. The limited visual scope of the first part of Love in a Fallen City—the repressively close Bai home, the tight shots in various hotel settings—calls to mind a teleplay, with more reliance on dialogue than images. This approach shortchanges Liusu’s interiority and writer Eileen Chang’s careful attention to emotional nuance. I spent the initial Hong Kong portion of the movie baffled by Liusu’s ambivalence. She clearly needs to escape her family but also seems determined to make a match for herself rather than meet anyone else’s expectations. “The first marriage is for your parents,” she says, “the second is for yourself.” But can she afford to dawdle? To repulse a supremely eligible suitor? Sure, Fan represented a foreign sensibility and exhibited domineering and misogynistic traits, but Liusu’s alternate reactions—charmed and put off—and quiet (is it too much to say sulky?) responses to his overtures didn’t offer a sufficient window into her feelings. The viewer is left to project her own interpretation on Liusu’s mystifying reticence, which I see less as intentional ambiguity and more as a failure to adequately adapt the interiority of the novel to a medium that relies on a different form of exposition. READ MORE…

Coming Home to Everywhere: On Sanmao’s Stories of the Sahara

Closing the book, we are not left with the knowledge of what it was like to be there; we do so, knowing that she was there.

Stories of the Sahara by Sanmao, translated from the Chinese by Mike Fu, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2020

Around ten the night is wine-inspired, and even the most tight-lipped Chinese émigrés, bruised from decades of survival, come around to reminiscing. Shenzhen and Xiamen and northeastern accents collide, comparing childhood hardships, fears, regrets. Sunflower shells are cracked and peanut skins snow the table, and the dialogue coheres at a single incredulous certainty: how lucky. How lucky we are to be here, because how easily it could have been otherwise.

One of the most beloved characters of most Chinese children born after 1940 is the infamous Sanmao (三毛 / Three Hairs), a pitiful orphan so impoverished he could only manage to grow, well, three hairs. Set largely in nationalist Shanghai, the narrative of Sanmao detailed his nomadic wanderings, involving most often ignominious miscarriages of justice, teetering hunger, and desperate, one-yuan schemes. Round-headed, ribcage-baring, picking up cigarette butts on the street, Sanmao was adored by children like myself—poor but not destitute, bred with an uncertain yet determined idea of the world’s cruelties, cultivating a helpless, weary sort of empathy for a two-dimensional friend.

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The Voice of Interiority: Lytton Smith on Translating Sigrún Pálsdóttir’s History. A Mess.

[The inward-looking quality] structurally and stylistically governs how the novel is written, its very form.

Sigrún Pálsdóttir’s profound and inward-looking saga, History. A Mess., was July’s Asymptote Book Club selection, translated from Icelandic to English. Callum McAllister speaks to the novel’s translator, Lytton Smith, on the process of translating this sweeping and intuitive work. In this conversation, the two discuss the intricacies of translating the evasive language of space and the even more mysterious language of the inner self, and Lytton gives as well some much-appreciated recommendations of Icelandic literature.

Callum McAllister (CM): Iceland is well-known for its impressively high literary output and vibrant creative culture, but Icelandic isn’t a widely spoken language. Are you daunted by how much Icelandic literature has yet to be translated into English, or do you think it gives you more freedom to opt for your favorite texts? Is there anything you’d love to see in English or work on next?

Lytton Smith (LS): Definitely daunted, even as I’m excited by the opportunity! There are wonderful translators from Icelandic working to bring more books into English (which can then also be a gateway to other languages), but there’s a limit to how many presses are willing to do what Open Letter does and take a chance on publishing titles—especially when translations are hard to sell to readers. I’m looking forward to Sigrún’s next novel, which is in part about the theory that Icelanders “discovered” America, and Ófeigur Sigurðsson, whose novel Öræfi / The Wastelands I translated last year (Deep Vellum), has another two novels that center on volcanoes that I’d like to translate. And I’d love to translate another book by the amazing, singular Kristín Ómarsdóttir. Next up, I’m lucky to be translating some of Andri Snær Magnason’s work.

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Rawness and Taboo: Kono Taeko’s Toddler Hunting and Other Stories in Review

There’s a rawness in these stories that leaves the reader feeling bare, visible, and reflective.

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Toddler Hunting and Other Stories, collection written by Kono Taeko, translated from the Japanese by Lucy North and Lucy Lower, New Directions, 2018

Reviewed by Clayton McKee, Copy Editor

Interior and exterior, public and private, Kono Taeko explores constructed façades in social situations and crashes them down in intimate settings. Each of the narratives in Toddler Hunting and Other Stories delves into the feminine psyche and investigates themes of motherhood and family. Shifts from exterior persona to interior desire rupture Kono’s cold prose, shocking the reader out of socially normative interactions and thrusting them into the taboos lurking deep inside, followed by a quick return to her straight-faced writing. This keeps readers on their toes, not knowing when the next rupture will occur. Contrasting the interior with the exterior and social expectations with personal desires has the effect of enrapturing, sometimes shocking the reader, plunging them into the depths of her/his own imaginary and propelling each story forward.

Kono Taeko is considered amongst the most influential Japanese women writers that first made an appearance in the 1960s. Her impressive portfolio includes over a dozen works in Japanese, all centered on unexplored aspects of human character—female characters in particular, further pushing the envelope not only on these unexplored aspects but also on a gender that was underexplored in Japanese literature at the time. Kono comes to the English-speaking world in this translated collection published by New Directions, which includes a lot of her short fiction written during the sixties. Not only was she the first woman to be on the committee for the Akutagawa Literary Prize, but she also received that prize in 1963, followed by the Yomiuri Prize in 1969 and the Tanizaki Prize in 1980. Before dying in 2015, she was also awarded a Bunka Kunshō, or Order of Culture, which is presented by the Emperor.

The titular story, “Toddler Hunting,” delves deep into the psyche of Akiko, a character with a strong distaste for little girls and a strange attraction to little boys. Her disgust for female children led her to not desire kids at all, and knowing that her “fear” is not logical, she hides behind a façade of disgust for all children. This disgust is contradicted, however, as she impulsively buys lavish clothing for young boys, only to gift them to her acquaintances’ boys in hopes to watch them “crossing [their] chubby arms over [their] chest, concentrating with all [their] might . . .”  just to take the shirt off by themselves. Akiko describes such things as an “intensely pleasurable.” READ MORE…