Simon Van Booy joined us Tuesday night at the Mandarin Fine Art gallery, and besides being a gentleman and a scholar (of course), his earnest demeanor and genuine interest in all of the attendees was wonderful to see.
He began the evening reading from ancient Chinese poetry. The aspect of their art he kept referring back to was how readers at the time were trained to read for the metaphor first, and then to savor the actual, physical, realistic minutiae secondly. We tend to go the opposite way: the dying flower is a dying flower first, a reminder of death second.
To close the evening, Simon read "Little Birds" from his collection The Secret Lives of People in Love. It's the story of a fifteen year old Chinese boy and his adopted French father, and it's a tender and elegant portrayal. In addition to the fine language that pervades the story is a genuine-ness and level of empathy for characters that is hard to come by. Most short stories, especially with "literary" aims, lean so heavily on irony, on mocking anything that resembles sentiment. We talked a little about this, how irony is easy but trying to be beautiful is difficult and a brave, vulnerable step to make. Simon's modesty might prevent him from saying so, but I think his book takes that step confidently and successfully.
Thanks again to Simon, and to Kim and John at Mandarin, and to everyone who turned out and made the evening such a pleasure!
-Patrick
(and we have signed copies in the store!)
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