The Fat Years by Chan Koonchung; Moonwalking with Einstein by Joshua Foers

Oh, my head: Reading Chan Koonchung's The Fat Years (translated by Michael S. Duke) revealed to me that I know nothing about China (or Taiwan or Hong Kong), its current state or its history. That made it pretty difficult to follow the string of political, cultural, geographical, and historical references that are tightly woven into the fabric of the novel. But that didn't prevent the portrait of a totalitarian regime from emerging and a sort of understanding how what would seem from an outside view to be a great loss (political liberties) could be complicitly compromised compromise for a perceived greater gain (economic prosperity and stability). The Fat Years has shades of Brave New World and 1984--and pushes some of those parallels in ways that are, I think, even more frightening. Mostly, I think, that uncanny feeling comes from thinking about such a state of affairs already existing (the acceptance of injustices and censorship, the thought of history being rewritten not just literally in texts but by the willful and unconscious act of forgetting through silence) and the ambivalence in the novel itself, this unanswered question of whether it's better to live in a "good hell" or a "counterfeit paradise," the former being an existence of awareness and the latter believing the in a state of benefits and social harmony that might not exist. That this type of insular propaganda thinking isn't restricted to totalitarian states and is, perhaps, more damaging in contexts of that believe there is "freedom of speech." And though the epilogue of the novel reads like a lecture (and mostly went over my head), it was a fascinating breakdown of political goals and motivations.

The preface, the afterword (translator's note), and the end notes (which I discovered only when I finished the novel, of course) are very helpful in understanding and contextualizing the novel. I was more particularly caught by the idea of The Fat Years circulating the mainland as an under-the-radar book. The novel isn't an accurate reflection of Chinese society as it is today--the amount of power that the CCP possesses in the novel is beyond the degree of control and censorship it really does possess (but perhaps would like to possess)--and so I wish there had been a wider sampling of the book's discussion in the mainland.

I did kind of snicker every time the word "netizen" came up. I'm not as used to seeing it outside of a fandom context. XD

Not too long ago I also got around to reading Moonwalking with Einstein by Joshua Foers. Though not as tongue-in-cheek as Mary Roach's nonfiction style, I found the novel really accessible, informative about matters of the brain and memory, and entertaining in watching Foers' journey acquiring competitive memory skills--and what some of those skills required and produced. XD It made me wish I were a more "visual" person and able to construct my own memory palaces. (I'm much more a "word"/"text" person.)

I did, however, look into the Major System and have memorized a few phone numbers with it. Arbitrarily. In fact, they are phone numbers I'd probably never need to recall in any instance. No, wait, maybe one would be helpful in the future if I ever lose my cell phone and need to desperately call someone. (And since I mentioned that, I just checked if I still remember them. I do. The images/words are still in my mind; it's the translating them and remembering which sounds correspond to which numbers that can trip me up.)