#elsewhere (ge)

[smokefalls]

Title: Elsewhere Author: Yan Ge Publication Year: 2023 Publisher: Scribner Genre: fiction, short stories

This is the third work by Yan Ge that I’ve read now, and I think it’s safe to say that I’m just not a fan of her writing. I admittedly struggled to stay engaged with a few of these short stories (especially the final and longest one, “Hai,” which made up about a third of the book) and found most of them rather detached and distant. I do think that I’m missing something crucial here, and it’s why Ge’s prose never quite made sense to me and often read as disorienting and ambiguous. There’s no doubt that this collection has an interesting theme, which is this sense of being elsewhere and feeling like an outsider in more ways than one. I think this was more apparent in the short stories set in more modern times, but I honestly wouldn’t be able to tell you what role the historically rooted stories had in this collection. Perhaps the short story that I found most compelling was “How I Fell in Love with the Well-Documented Life of Alex Whelan,” which was a fascinating deep dive into a parasocial relationship and social media.

Again, I think I’m missing something crucial about Ge’s works, because other readers seem to have gotten a lot out of this collection (and other books by her) that didn’t click for me at all. I’m glad to have given her short stories a shot (and finding at least one that I enjoyed), but it was a bit disappointing that they largely didn’t work for me.

Content Warning: death, suicide, racism, eating disorder, references to miscarriage and cancer

[smokefalls]

It was Zilu who told him that he should never listen to the words people say. Because phonetics are merely garments to conceal what’s beneath. Only the characters, carrying the wisdom of our ancestors, were created to reveal.

Yan Ge, "Hai" from Elsewhere

[smokefalls]

To a certain extent, everybody in my life, the ones I deeply love and the ones I pass by on the street, is the same. We are objects in this universe, confined by our epistemological limits. We brush against one another for an exceedingly short moment and drift apart. We will never be able to understand ourselves, let alone one another. I bow down to the sublimity of the impossible.

Yan Ge, "No Time to Write" from Elsewhere

[smokefalls]

Our lives exist on the constant movement of atoms and subatomic particles. And our thoughts are trapped within the structures of language. I’m baffled both by the profundity of the former and the limitations of the latter. And the distance between them makes me feel sick every time I think about it.

Yan Ge, "No Time to Write" from Elsewhere

[smokefalls]

The past has everything to do with the present. In fact, the past and the present are a set of interdependent notions. The past only establishes itself as the past of the present. And the present needs the past as its reference so it can be defined. We can only determine whether today is the present if we check it against yesterday, or if this minute is the present based on the minute just gone. In other words, the past and the present are inseparable. The line between them is only relative and always in flux.

Yan Ge, "No Time to Write" from Elsewhere

[smokefalls]

The way Zhuangzi saw it, we don’t really live our lives. Instead, life is just a brief stop on our long, infinite journey. Our transformation into life is merely an accident and it is our ultimate destiny to be released back to nature by our death.

Yan Ge, "Free Wandering" from Elsewhere

[smokefalls]

We are all deeply manipulated, in each culture, language, and society. The more marginalized we are from the center, the less we are allowed to talk, write, and think as ourselves. Even you would like to consider yourself an unbiased individual but you are perpetually negotiating with the coercions of collective identities.

Yan Ge, "Stockholm" from Elsewhere

[smokefalls]

All writing is political, she said. To narrate is to make choices, to cut out the insubstantial and to inaugurate order. Essentially, those who are written onto the page and therefore dominate the narrative hold the power.

Yan Ge, "Stockholm" from Elsewhere