Notes of a desolate man
By: by Chu Tʻien-wen ; translated by Howard Goldblatt and Sylvia Li-chun Lin
Contributors: Goldblatt, Howard, 1939-; Lin, Sylvia Li-chun
Series: Modern Chinese literature from Taiwan
Publisher: Columbia University press
Published: 1999
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 169
Subjects: Gay men -- Family relationships -- Taiwan -- Fiction; Gay couples -- Taiwan -- Fiction; Cinematographers -- Taiwan -- Fiction; Male friendship -- Taiwan -- Fiction; AIDS (Disease) -- Taiwan -- Fiction; Taiwan -- Fiction
Genres: Fiction
Work titles: Huang jen shou chi.
Description: "The narrator, Xiao Shao, recollects a series of friends and lovers, as he watches his childhood friend, Ah Yao, succumb to complications from AIDS. The brute fact of Ah Yao's death focuses Shao's simultaneously erudite and erotic reflections magnetically on the core theme of mortality.

By turns humorous and despondent, the narrator struggles to come to terms with Ah Yao's risky lifestyle, radical political activism, and eventual death; the fragility of romantic love; the awesome power of eros; the solace of writing; the cold ennui of a younger generation enthralled only by video games; and life on the edge of mainstream Taiwanese society.

His feverish journey through forests of metaphor and allusion - from Fellini and Levi-Strauss to classical Chinese poetry - serves as a litany protecting him from the ravages of time and finitude."--BOOK JACKET.