[Children’s Book Study] What do we talk about when we talk about love…

   
After receiv­ing the noti­fi­ca­tion let­ter for the chil­dren’s book read­ing group yes­ter­day (theme: Love, mar­riage and fam­i­ly in chil­dren’s books), this sen­tence kept pop­ping up in my mind: what we talk about
when we talk about love, so much so that I had to write some­thing to sort out my messy thoughts.
 
    what we
talk about when we talk about love
It is the title of a short sto­ry by Amer­i­can writer Carv­er and the name of the col­lec­tion of short sto­ries that includes it. There is already a Chi­nese ver­sion, “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love” trans­lat­ed by Xiao Er of Yilin Press.
, a superb trans­la­tion, very enjoy­able. But I would­n’t rec­om­mend read­ing it unless you’re men­tal­ly strong. Carver’s beau­ti­ful writ­ing is imbued with a kind of despair I’d call it—though there’s also a cer­tain warmth, yet still despair—that can deeply move even the men­tal­ly strong, unless that strength is mere­ly numb­ness.
 
   
I was prob­a­bly drawn to this book because I think it’s the polar oppo­site of chil­dren’s books. It’s incred­i­bly real­is­tic, so despair­ing­ly real, it has a bit of Kurt Cobain in it, the great singer forced to find his own way out. Carv­er was slight­ly bet­ter off; his alco­holism did­n’t kill him, and once things got bet­ter, he man­aged to quit drink­ing. But, iron­i­cal­ly, he suc­cumbed to the lung dis­ease brought on by his smok­ing addic­tion. A clos­er look at their suc­cess reveals that it was large­ly “ben­e­fit­ed” by dif­fi­cult fam­i­ly sit­u­a­tions and child­hoods; con­tem­plat­ing their ear­ly deaths also seems to be deeply con­nect­ed to those dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tions.
 
   
Love, mar­riage, fam­i­ly, child­hood, growth… Love, mar­riage, fam­i­ly, child­hood, growth… Love, mar­riage, fam­i­ly, child­hood, growth… is also a kind of rein­car­na­tion.
   
»> Con­tin­u­ing the Gos­sip Chap­ter of Love Cul­ti­va­tion — A Sto­ry of a Moth­er Who Aban­doned Her Child…
 
   
Even if the mar­riage chain is sev­ered and the next gen­er­a­tion is aban­doned, it is said that the angry ener­gy may not nec­es­sar­i­ly be cut off, but can be dis­si­pat­ed to oth­ers and passed on through oth­ers.
 
   
I seem to have strayed from the top­ic.
 
  
 The one I want to talk about most in chil­dren’s books about love and mar­riage is “The Black Rab­bit and the White Rab­bit”. It reminds me of Edward Lear’s absurd poem “The Owl and the Cat-Girl”.
Owl and the Pussy­cat). The for­mer is ulti­mate enough, the lat­ter is fun­ny enough.
 
   
The fam­i­ly in chil­dren’s books that I want to say most is Now One Foot, Now the
Oth­er (trans­lat­ed as “First the Left Foot, Then the Right Foot” in tra­di­tion­al Chi­nese) revolves around the love between a grand­fa­ther and a grand­son. It is tear-jerk­ing, very real­is­tic, and yet rich in sym­bol­ic mean­ing.
 
   
There are rough­ly two types of love in chil­dren’s books. One is pure, fairy-tale-like (or, for that mat­ter, anti-tra­di­tion­al fairy-tale-like), where “they lived hap­pi­ly ever after” is the per­pet­u­al theme, even in the end­ing where “the cat nev­er res­ur­rects.” The oth­er is a con­tin­u­a­tion of fam­i­ly ties, because the love felt in child­hood is insep­a­ra­ble from fam­i­ly ties.
 
   
At the oth­er extreme, dis­cus­sions of love in adult lit­er­a­ture are rarely pure; puri­ty can even seem equat­ed with affec­ta­tion. From the casu­al love sto­ries in Mau­rois’s “Din­ner Under the Chest­nut Trees” to those dis­cussed in Carver’s “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love,” I don’t see much dif­fer­ence in sub­stance, beyond the dis­tinc­tion between out­ward ele­gance and vul­gar­i­ty. The final sto­ry of the elder­ly cou­ple is sim­ply too pow­er­ful, yet too pure, for Carv­er to present it open­ly. He must first, like a “nor­mal” adult, stir it until it’s suf­fi­cient­ly mud­dy (enough to pique the murky inter­est of “nor­mal” adults) before sud­den­ly toss­ing it out. In fact, if Carv­er were writ­ing a chil­dren’s sto­ry, he could have eas­i­ly cut out the rest.
 
   
So what’s the biggest dif­fer­ence between adult lit­er­a­ture and chil­dren’s sto­ries when it comes to dis­cussing love? I think it prob­a­bly lies in the word “desire.” Just think about it: if it were a pure, fairy-tale love sto­ry, one that was com­plete­ly free of lust, how many adults would be will­ing to read it? And what’s the dif­fer­ence between lust and love?
I recent­ly read Tao Yuan­ming’s “Idle Feel­ings,” and I real­ized that even this serene and indif­fer­ent mas­ter had moments of “emo­tion­al expres­sion.” Whether he ever “stopped at pro­pri­ety and right­eous­ness” is unclear. Even if some insight­ful schol­ars have called it “a flaw in a flaw­less jade” and a bit “debauched,” why does this short fu poem remain so cap­ti­vat­ing and cap­ti­vat­ing­ly beau­ti­ful? I think the rea­son is sim­ple: the writer and read­er are both liv­ing adults. There’s no going back, so let’s just make the best of it. O(∩_∩)O~
 
   
In this sense, love in chil­dren’s books is fun­da­men­tal­ly meta­phys­i­cal.
 
   
How­ev­er, this meta­phys­i­cal les­son is also com­pul­so­ry and can only be learned in child­hood.
 
   
Just imag­ine, will there still be a chance to repair it when you become an adult? There is real­ly no going back!
 
   
Those who are inter­est­ed in chil­dren can also come and prac­tice, and prac­tice in the chil­dren’s book, which is a big discount^_^
 
Writ­ten on Red Mud on Octo­ber 8, 2010