Notes of a Desolate Man

"I am a sick man ... I am a spiteful man," cries the narrator of Dostoyevsky's Notes from the Underground. The narrator of Chu Tien-Wen's Notes of a Desolate Man might amend that to "I am not a sick man ... but I am by no means well." Xiao Shao has reached the age of 40 only to feel that his life has run its course. His close childhood friend has recently succumbed to AIDS, and while he remains "unbelievably, amazingly" free from infection, Ah Yao's death has sent him spiraling into depression. Like Dostoyevsky's hero, Xiao suffers from a profound alienation--as a Chinese deeply engaged with Western thought, as a gay man still coming to terms with his sexuality, and, by extension, as a Taiwanese citizen both cut off from and bound to the mainland. T'ien-Wen's narrative intercuts his reflections on the nature of desire with ruminations on culture both high and low--from Fellini and Goethe to Michael Jackson and Barbra Streisand. The result is a remarkable chronicle of life on the artistic, political, and sexual margins. A 1994 winner of the China Times Novel Prize, this dense, intelligent, deliberately paced novel is no less insightful for having been written not by a gay man, but by a woman: an author of 15 previous books and one of Taiwan's leading intellectuals. Her convincing account of Xiao's inner life is a testament to the powers of the creative imagination to transcend difference. --Chloe Byrne