The Crazed (2002)

Huh? I remember nothing about this book. ( )

brilliant; mixes the political with the personal; narrator (Jian) is crazed, dying Mr. Yang is crazed, China is, society is; each detail of life is so personal, but each life so clearly overlaps with Tiananmen Square-era China

The Crazed by Ha Jin is a masterful book. Engaging. Carefully detailed. Excellent characterization. Well plotted. The setting is China at the time of the Tiananmen Square movement in 1989.
Briefly, it is about a college professor, Mr. Yang, who after suffering a stroke, is cared for by his star student and soon-to-be son-in-law, Jian Wan. On his sickbed, Mr. Yang recalls things from his past in a rambling disjointed way. At times he is lucid and at times, not. As Yang reveals secrets from his past, Jian Wan, the narrator, begins to see Yang's life in a new and different light, realizing that this is not a life he wants to follow.
I loved how Jian Wan's growth is revealed. As he comes to new realizations, he seeks and discovers what is true and important and what is not. He discovers his true passions do not lie in academia; he learns of the 'tricks of the academic game.' As he questions his life to that point, the reader begins to see shifts in his ideology and a transformed purpose. Jian Wan's awakening is the story of his generation and his coming of age story parallels that of China's.
In a discussion with Mr. Yang, Jian Wan's true thoughts begin to unfold:
'Have you read Dante?' he asked me in a nasal voice... 'No, I haven't.' Unable to say yes, I was somewhat embarrassed. 'You should read The Divine Comedy. After you finish it, you will look at the world differently.'So I borrowed all three books of the poem from the library and went through them in two weeks, but I didn't enjoy the poem and felt the world remained the same.' (p. 71)
I loved this quote: Yang recalling his experience as a scholar in the West says this: 'Oh, you should have seen the libraries at Berkeley, absolutely magnificent. You can go to the stacks directly, see what's on them, and can even check out some rare books. Frankly, I would die happy if I could work as a librarian in a place like that all my life.' (p. 105)
The tension that Jian Wan feels is revealed when another professor asks Yang: 'Why should we look down on ourselves so? We're both intellectuals, aren't we?' Yang replies, 'No, we're not. Who is an intellectual in China? Ridiculous, anyone with a college education is called an intellectual. The truth is that all people in the humanities are clerks and all people in the sciences are technicians. Tell me, who is a really independent intellectual, has original ideas and speaks the truth? None that I know of. We're all dumb laborers kept by the state--a retrograde species.' (p. 153) While this is a conversation between another professor and Yang, Jian Wan takes it to heart and acts on it.
The final quote from the book is this: 'Ever since I boarded the train back, a terrible vision had tormented me. I saw China in the form of an old hag so decrepit and brainsick that she would devour her children to sustain herself. Insatiable, she had eaten many tender lives before, was gobbling new flesh and blood now, and would surely swallow more.' (p. 315)

A worthy read. One of the best books I've read this year. ( )

There is much to think about in this historical fiction book with its stark hospital room setting and the confused memories of a Chinese professor recovering from a stroke. Jian is the future son-in-law of Professor Yang, who must interrupt his PhD studies to care for his mentor. As Mr. Wang sings and rants about strange things that occurred during the Cultural Revolution, Jian begins to question whether or not he ever truly knew this man at all. ( )

Ha Jin is subtle. He doesn't beat us over the head with an overview of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. So the non-Chinese reader can be a little lost here without that background. (The best preparation I can think of is Nien Cheng's horrendous LIFE AND DEATH IN SHAGHAI.) The Cultural Revolution was a world turned upside down. Anyone subject to foreign influences---intellectuals, officials, students, artists and dissidents---were labeled "rightists" or "counterrevolutionaries." They were humiliated, imprisoned, demoted and fired from their positions. They were sent to labor and re-education camps where they were tortured and killed. The impact on the lives of innocent Chinese is almost beyond imagination. In their biography, MAO, authors Chang and Halliday claim that 70 million Chinese were killed by Mao in peacetime due to his various wrong-headed policies.

In the case of the novel's Professor Yang, it is clear that his life has been utterly destroyed by the Cultural Revolution, and that the stroke he has 12 years later is merely its long term result. Sent to a re-education camp during the period--roughly 1966-76--Yang drifts away from his wife, who takes up with another man to get by in Chinese society. Yang may understand the practicality of that move on some level, but after the stroke, when we come upon him in the hospital, out pours all his humiliation and invective in an almost nonstop torrent of abuse. Narrator Jian, Yang's student, watches over him while arrangements are made for Yang's family members to care for him. During this time he pieces together the tragedy of his teacher's life, and he becomes determined not to repeat it. He realizes his own life must change after a last minute trip to Tiananmen Square. It is 1989, just before the Red Army cracks down on the the student movement. Ha Jin presents the reader with a pattern: Prof. Yang's life destroyed by the Cultural Revolution, and now the threat of Tiananmen on narrator Jian's, who becomes hunted as a "counterrevolutionary." The cycle of history repeats itself. Jian admits:

"I saw China in the form of an old hag so decrepit and brainsick that she would devour her children to sustain herself. Insatiable, she had eaten many tender lives before, was gobbling up new flesh and blood now, and would surely swallow more. Unable to suppress the horrible vision, all day I said to myself, 'China is an old bitch that eats her own puppies!' How my head throbbed, and how my heart writhed and shuddered! With the commotion of two nights ago still in my ears, I feared I was going to lose my mind."

Thus Jian becomes one of the "crazed," too. There are, Jin implies, millions like him. China has learned nothing from its own past since it possesses no genuine tradition of historical inquiry. In the Santayanan sense then it is doomed to repeat its worst mistakes. But Jian sees the pattern, and he is determined not to be devoured.