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Notes of a Desolate Man
Winner of the coveted China Times Novel Prize, this postmodern, first-person tale of a contemporary Taiwanese gay man reflecting on his life, loves, and intellectual influences is among the most important recent novels in Taiwan.
The narrator, Xiao Shao, recollects a series of friends and lovers, as he watches his childhood friend, Ah Yao, succumb to complications from AIDS. The brute fact of Ah Yao's death focuses Shao's simultaneously erudite and erotic reflections magnetically on the core theme of mortality. By turns humorous and despondent, the narrator struggles to come to terms with Ah Yao's risky lifestyle, radical political activism, and eventual death; the fragility of romantic love; the awesome power of eros; the solace of writing; the cold ennui of a younger generation enthralled only by video games; and life on the edge of mainstream Taiwanese society. His feverish journey through forests of metaphor and allusion--from Fellini and Levi-Strauss to classical Chinese poetry--serves as a litany protecting him from the ravages of time and finitude.
Impressive in scope and detail, Notes of a Desolate Man employs the motif of its characters' marginalized sexuality to highlight Taiwan's vivid and fragile existence on the periphery of mainland China. Howard Goldblatt and Sylvia Li-chun Lin's masterful translation brings Chu T'ien-wen's lyrical and inventive pastiche of political, poetic, and sexual desire to the English-speaking world.
The narrator, Xiao Shao, recollects a series of friends and lovers, as he watches his childhood friend, Ah Yao, succumb to complications from AIDS. The brute fact of Ah Yao's death focuses Shao's simultaneously erudite and erotic reflections magnetically on the core theme of mortality. By turns humorous and despondent, the narrator struggles to come to terms with Ah Yao's risky lifestyle, radical political activism, and eventual death; the fragility of romantic love; the awesome power of eros; the solace of writing; the cold ennui of a younger generation enthralled only by video games; and life on the edge of mainstream Taiwanese society. His feverish journey through forests of metaphor and allusion--from Fellini and Levi-Strauss to classical Chinese poetry--serves as a litany protecting him from the ravages of time and finitude.
Impressive in scope and detail, Notes of a Desolate Man employs the motif of its characters' marginalized sexuality to highlight Taiwan's vivid and fragile existence on the periphery of mainland China. Howard Goldblatt and Sylvia Li-chun Lin's masterful translation brings Chu T'ien-wen's lyrical and inventive pastiche of political, poetic, and sexual desire to the English-speaking world.
184 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1994
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1216 people want to read
About the author
Chu Tienwen
3 books13 followersChu Tien-wen (Chinese: 朱天文; pinyin: Zhū Tiānwén; born August 24, 1956 in Taipei, Taiwan) is one of Taiwan's most prominent writers. She is the daughter of Chu Hsi-ning and the older sister of Chu Tien-hsin. Some of her literary works include "Fin-de-Siècle Splendour" (1990) and Notes of a Desolate Man 荒人手記 (1994). She wrote many of the scripts for the famous Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-hsien. Her screenwriting credits include movies like Taipei Story, The Puppetmaster, Goodbye South, Goodbye, Millennium Mambo, City of Sadness 悲情城市 (1989) and many more.
(from Wikipedia)
(from Wikipedia)
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December 6, 2021I'm very interested in queer Taiwanese lit, though I was a little wary of a novel with a gay male narrator that was written by a female writer, who's known for more mainstream non-queer writing. I had a lot of trouble with this, and frankly didn't get very far (hence no rating). There are the usual stylistic quirks that are some of my pet peeves, but seem to be common practice in late 20th century Chinese language fiction. Also, we are inundated with a wide range of oddly chosen cultural references. By p. 40, there is an extended account of Michael Jackson's possible misdeeds, a discussion of skin care and facials, a conversation about Tristes Tropiques with a substantial quote, a quote attributed to Faustus (!), among others. And the narrator declaims with (as far as I can tell) a straight face:
So I don't know what to make of all this. I certainly don't have comparable conversations with queer Taiwanese men. Sorry.
The greatest archetypes for people like me are Jesus and his twelve disciples.
So I don't know what to make of all this. I certainly don't have comparable conversations with queer Taiwanese men. Sorry.
February 3, 2021
Have mixed feeling about this book, it’s aesthetically good and refined, BUT psychologically not gay at all, it’s more like a BL nouvel written by an otaku woman in a serious literary way.
October 8, 2017
"Notes of a Desolate Man" concerns the ruminations of Shao, a gay Taiwanese lecturer in film studies. His childhood friend Ah Yao has died of AIDS, and this causes Shao to think about life, death, and what it means to be gay in modern (1990s) Taiwan. The novel does not have much of what one could call a plot. It is structured more like Proust's "In Search of Lost Time" than any other fiction. A memory of an event causes an avalanche of abstruse and theoretical reflections, moving associatively. Shao, for instance, starts a chapter with his private marriage (agreed upon with his lover but sanctified by neither church nor state) to Yongjie and moves to a discussion of Yongjie's physical beauty, which then leads toward memories of old American films, which then gets Shao thinking about Ah Yao, with whom he used to watch movies, and a memory of a drunken phone call, and so on. Thus, what one gets by reading this as a work of fiction is a broken mosaic of the narrator's life, which the reader can slowly reconstruct. The novel also operates as a study in the metaphysics of death, Buddhist versus Christian ethics, the politics of gay identity, postmodernist theories of Levi-Strauss and Foucault, the aesthetics of filmography, and the perceived dissolution of Taiwanese culture after the death of Chiang Kai-shek. It is all told in a scintillating, poetic style beautifully rendered by the English translators. If there are some deficits, they are that Chu is perhaps overly fond of her poetic abilities, laying it on too thick at times, and that the book packs quite a bit of erudition and speculation in a small space without providing a clear way for the reader to sort it all out. Nevertheless, it is a very interesting journey contemplating all the matters that Shao contemplates as he confronts the death of the person who means the most his development as a person.
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February 24, 2009Hmm. This took me a while. The narrator was so tiresome, so pedantic, so tortured. The other characters so sketchily drawn. And yet as he thrust himself into pretentious philosophy, pretentious art, and meaningless sex I started to empathize more and more. And I was really impressed that a female Taiwanese writer was able to capture this so vividly. I don't think it's a great book. I wouldn't necessarily recommend it. But I'm glad I read it.
August 23, 2023
I toggled between 2 and 3 stars. Eventually I think it was 2, but perhaps it was due to translation.
May 8, 2024
Chu T’ien-Wen, "Notes of a Desolate Man." Howard Goldblatt and Sylvia Li-Chun Lin, translators. Columbia University Press, 1994/1999.
As I have pulled books out of boxes and off shelves, I wondered if I would encounter a book which, at the time I bought it I considered contemporary realism but now seems a historical artifact. Chu T’ien-Wen is a Taiwanese writer, and "Notes of a Desolate Man" is an AIDS novel that takes place primarily in Taiwan and Tokyo. As I began reading, I was actually surprised–”Wow, an AIDS novel. I don’t think that I’ve read one of these before.”--and was curious how the novel would use AIDS. The narrator is Xiao Shao, a gay man who is writing about his friend Ah Yao, who is suffering from end stage AIDS at the beginning of the novel and dies in the second chapter. Shao’s narrative initially seems to be an exercise in nostalgia, as he uses the dying man’s diseased body as a memento mori for his once energetic, active, rule-breaking, sensual self, and who acted almost solely on his passions. Ah Yao is a lightning rod of authenticity that Shao admires yet about whom he clearly has doubts, given the outcome of his behavior.
"Notes of a Desolate Man" is a thesis novel in which Chu T’ien-Wen explores whether, in the age of AIDS, one can learn to live with raging desire and/or loneliness, whether one can act on the former or resign oneself to the latter. For Shao, AIDS is horrible but the price of loneliness is worse: solitude is as frightening as raging desire. Today, even though there is still no cure for AIDS, there are so many drug treatments that those with AIDS can live, go on living, live the lives they’ve chosen, and, given the ubiquity of the drug commercials on television and in the media, be mainstreamed rather than excluded. The inevitable sense of tragedy and loss of the 1980s and early 1990s, the period when this novel is set, is missing today. For Shao, writing allows him to cycle through considerations of desire, loneliness, and death, because to settle in any of those positions is dangerous, inviting tragedy. A tricky maneuver.
While Ah Yao is the ostensible reason for and center of the book, Shao moves away from him pretty quickly as he worries the desire/loneliness binary. It’s not surprising why, because Ah Yao is not bothered by Shao’s existential quandary. Ah Yao has chosen desire. He is a devoted sybarite who does not change his behavior or repent. Shao shares an image of Ya Hao in his sick bed, opening the bedroom window, grabbing flowers and stuffing them in his mouth to chew. He is too weak for sex or much of anything else, but Ya Hao still wants sensuous stimulation as substitute for sensual stimulation.
The book becomes more about Shao trying to understand himself within the desire/loneliness binary in a world shaped by AIDS. He admits to “being a helpless loner handicapped by my own body language.” ←The narrator’s trap, out from which he pursues analogies as well as historical and intellectual contexts. To that end, I’m surprised how quickly Shao not only lets go of Ah Yao as central subject but even AIDS as he attempts to understand the broader contexts of his binary in a dangerous world, which he does through an ever-increasing network of analogies: for example, Shao writes about signifiers of death–starvation, tombstones, a BBC documentary on the death of an elephant–and he includes a personal story of trying to keep alive an unwanted gift of a fish, which ultimately dies. Shao’s narrative cycles tirelessly between the personal and the general. He moves, he writes, he cycles.
Shao is also an academic, working on his doctorate than taking a teaching job. Even his intellectual and theoretical references seem to tie him to the eighties and early nineties. He speaks of Levi-Strauss’ "Tristes Tropiques" and Michel Foucault’s "History of Sexuality." He also speaks of films–Fellini’s "La Strada" and David Cronenberg’s "The Fly"–as well as literature, Thomas Mann’s "Death in Venice," not a surprise. These sections of the book sound more like academic lectures than fiction, but I think that he is actually lecturing to himself. Shao reminds me of people I knew in graduate school back in the 1980s who used critical theory as a way to analyze not only texts but their own lives and life in general, since life too was textual after all. Other period specific references: the AIDS quilt, ACT UP, New Age music, Michael Jackson. Less period specific references: Buddhism, Chinese history, Cleopatra, Miles Davis, Greek mythology, the Queen of Sheba, Tennessee Williams trolling for sex in Santa Monica in WWII.
Whatever the reference, Shao returns to his fundamental concern/fear about desire and loneliness in the age of AIDS, which he then cycles back to his own life. He spends much time on his relationship with his long time lover, Yongjie, a relationship that ultimately fades, but on which Shao never quite gives up, because it provides him a thread of hope in a world dominated by loneliness and death. In a long chapter, Shao tells the story of hooking up with a much younger man who is from an affluent family, but lives a solitary, alienated, computer gaming life, reinforcing the narrator’s fears of solitude. Shao also hooks up with a lanky guy who desperately wants a relationship, but Shao walks away from it, and there is a bathroom encounter in a porn theater which just emphasizes Shao’s loneliness again. He then turns to the stories of friends who have failed to find love and are alone. It is interesting that as Shao builds his case for the dangers of solitude he almost seems to forget the threat of AIDS. He doesn’t, but solitude clearly weighs most heavily on his mind.
At the end of the book, Shao returns to death. He remains troubled by Yongjie’s lingering, perhaps permanent, absence. He recounts Ya Hao’s funeral and witnessing his desiccated, shriveled corpse before it is cremated. He then intercuts descriptions of Ya Hao’s body and the rituals surrounding it with descriptions of his subsequent pilgrimage to India. For Shao, India is important, because it expands the context of what he has experienced. It is where Buddhism was born and from where it vanished after Sakyamuni’s death, and at the Ganges he witnesses a sacred god-filled space and the funerary rituals for the dead. By expanding the context, searching for analogies, Shao fights off solitude and finds solace. He is not alone in the trauma he feels at the disappearance of Yongjie and the death of Ya Hao; instead,he is part of a long, historical tradition for making sense of trauma, loss, and death. In the end, Shao cannot choose between two options, cannot settle on one side of the passion/loneliness binary because those sides cannot be separated from one another and are bound together by AIDS. In the end, Shao simply chooses to understand the world in which he finds himself: “So my writing, it continues.”
Although I feared that Shao would die by the end of "Notes of a Desolate Man," I am glad that he did not, for I think his death would have negated the intense experiences, reflections, and intellectual work that makes up his narrative. This is a novel about how to live with AIDS rather than how to die by it.
As I have pulled books out of boxes and off shelves, I wondered if I would encounter a book which, at the time I bought it I considered contemporary realism but now seems a historical artifact. Chu T’ien-Wen is a Taiwanese writer, and "Notes of a Desolate Man" is an AIDS novel that takes place primarily in Taiwan and Tokyo. As I began reading, I was actually surprised–”Wow, an AIDS novel. I don’t think that I’ve read one of these before.”--and was curious how the novel would use AIDS. The narrator is Xiao Shao, a gay man who is writing about his friend Ah Yao, who is suffering from end stage AIDS at the beginning of the novel and dies in the second chapter. Shao’s narrative initially seems to be an exercise in nostalgia, as he uses the dying man’s diseased body as a memento mori for his once energetic, active, rule-breaking, sensual self, and who acted almost solely on his passions. Ah Yao is a lightning rod of authenticity that Shao admires yet about whom he clearly has doubts, given the outcome of his behavior.
"Notes of a Desolate Man" is a thesis novel in which Chu T’ien-Wen explores whether, in the age of AIDS, one can learn to live with raging desire and/or loneliness, whether one can act on the former or resign oneself to the latter. For Shao, AIDS is horrible but the price of loneliness is worse: solitude is as frightening as raging desire. Today, even though there is still no cure for AIDS, there are so many drug treatments that those with AIDS can live, go on living, live the lives they’ve chosen, and, given the ubiquity of the drug commercials on television and in the media, be mainstreamed rather than excluded. The inevitable sense of tragedy and loss of the 1980s and early 1990s, the period when this novel is set, is missing today. For Shao, writing allows him to cycle through considerations of desire, loneliness, and death, because to settle in any of those positions is dangerous, inviting tragedy. A tricky maneuver.
While Ah Yao is the ostensible reason for and center of the book, Shao moves away from him pretty quickly as he worries the desire/loneliness binary. It’s not surprising why, because Ah Yao is not bothered by Shao’s existential quandary. Ah Yao has chosen desire. He is a devoted sybarite who does not change his behavior or repent. Shao shares an image of Ya Hao in his sick bed, opening the bedroom window, grabbing flowers and stuffing them in his mouth to chew. He is too weak for sex or much of anything else, but Ya Hao still wants sensuous stimulation as substitute for sensual stimulation.
The book becomes more about Shao trying to understand himself within the desire/loneliness binary in a world shaped by AIDS. He admits to “being a helpless loner handicapped by my own body language.” ←The narrator’s trap, out from which he pursues analogies as well as historical and intellectual contexts. To that end, I’m surprised how quickly Shao not only lets go of Ah Yao as central subject but even AIDS as he attempts to understand the broader contexts of his binary in a dangerous world, which he does through an ever-increasing network of analogies: for example, Shao writes about signifiers of death–starvation, tombstones, a BBC documentary on the death of an elephant–and he includes a personal story of trying to keep alive an unwanted gift of a fish, which ultimately dies. Shao’s narrative cycles tirelessly between the personal and the general. He moves, he writes, he cycles.
Shao is also an academic, working on his doctorate than taking a teaching job. Even his intellectual and theoretical references seem to tie him to the eighties and early nineties. He speaks of Levi-Strauss’ "Tristes Tropiques" and Michel Foucault’s "History of Sexuality." He also speaks of films–Fellini’s "La Strada" and David Cronenberg’s "The Fly"–as well as literature, Thomas Mann’s "Death in Venice," not a surprise. These sections of the book sound more like academic lectures than fiction, but I think that he is actually lecturing to himself. Shao reminds me of people I knew in graduate school back in the 1980s who used critical theory as a way to analyze not only texts but their own lives and life in general, since life too was textual after all. Other period specific references: the AIDS quilt, ACT UP, New Age music, Michael Jackson. Less period specific references: Buddhism, Chinese history, Cleopatra, Miles Davis, Greek mythology, the Queen of Sheba, Tennessee Williams trolling for sex in Santa Monica in WWII.
Whatever the reference, Shao returns to his fundamental concern/fear about desire and loneliness in the age of AIDS, which he then cycles back to his own life. He spends much time on his relationship with his long time lover, Yongjie, a relationship that ultimately fades, but on which Shao never quite gives up, because it provides him a thread of hope in a world dominated by loneliness and death. In a long chapter, Shao tells the story of hooking up with a much younger man who is from an affluent family, but lives a solitary, alienated, computer gaming life, reinforcing the narrator’s fears of solitude. Shao also hooks up with a lanky guy who desperately wants a relationship, but Shao walks away from it, and there is a bathroom encounter in a porn theater which just emphasizes Shao’s loneliness again. He then turns to the stories of friends who have failed to find love and are alone. It is interesting that as Shao builds his case for the dangers of solitude he almost seems to forget the threat of AIDS. He doesn’t, but solitude clearly weighs most heavily on his mind.
At the end of the book, Shao returns to death. He remains troubled by Yongjie’s lingering, perhaps permanent, absence. He recounts Ya Hao’s funeral and witnessing his desiccated, shriveled corpse before it is cremated. He then intercuts descriptions of Ya Hao’s body and the rituals surrounding it with descriptions of his subsequent pilgrimage to India. For Shao, India is important, because it expands the context of what he has experienced. It is where Buddhism was born and from where it vanished after Sakyamuni’s death, and at the Ganges he witnesses a sacred god-filled space and the funerary rituals for the dead. By expanding the context, searching for analogies, Shao fights off solitude and finds solace. He is not alone in the trauma he feels at the disappearance of Yongjie and the death of Ya Hao; instead,he is part of a long, historical tradition for making sense of trauma, loss, and death. In the end, Shao cannot choose between two options, cannot settle on one side of the passion/loneliness binary because those sides cannot be separated from one another and are bound together by AIDS. In the end, Shao simply chooses to understand the world in which he finds himself: “So my writing, it continues.”
Although I feared that Shao would die by the end of "Notes of a Desolate Man," I am glad that he did not, for I think his death would have negated the intense experiences, reflections, and intellectual work that makes up his narrative. This is a novel about how to live with AIDS rather than how to die by it.
May 16, 2023
the most cinematic book i've ever read. it's taiwanese gay culture in the 90s, prior to the legalization of gay marriage, during the height of the aids epidemic. full of art, passion and melancholy. everything from fassbinder to rembrandt to nijinsky to tony orlando and dawn. the book ends with the death of fellini, the death of ozu and satyajit ray. you can really feel the longing and influence these filmmakers had on the author and our narrator. poetic, intoxicating and impactful. i'm so glad my friend's film professor dad gave me this book by the screenwriter of hou's movies.
June 17, 2023
1. A straight woman writing as a gay man
2. As someone who’s primary language is Mandarin, this book makes me doubt I even know Chinese. The sentences are so polished their meanings are completely lost to me
3. Remember in THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW when people were burning library books to keep warm? This book just moved to the top of my potential fuel for climate change list
2. As someone who’s primary language is Mandarin, this book makes me doubt I even know Chinese. The sentences are so polished their meanings are completely lost to me
3. Remember in THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW when people were burning library books to keep warm? This book just moved to the top of my potential fuel for climate change list
January 16, 2016
At times I really liked the themes of this book (mortality, meaning, social connections etc) but at other times I struggled to maintain interest in what occasionally felt like rambling disconnected thoughts. 3.5 stars
September 21, 2010
Interesting, densely written exploration of a gay man's relationships with his dying friend and current partner. Very poetic/post-modern.
July 18, 2024
Wow I guess this book really lives up to its title, because it is quite literally the "notes" of a desolate man, that is to say, it is 200 pages of stream of consciousness thought about various philosophical schools of thought, films, books, songs, memories, and people. I spent a lot of the book being confused about how any of the narrator's rambling opinions had any relationship to the characters or events in the novel, but also I had low expectations, because from the very beginning I could tell that this book was not going to have a plot, and I guess not all books do assimilate to that narrative structure, or I guess have a narrative at all. Still, I don't really enjoy these types of books and really prefer for philosophical ponderings and references to art to have intention and purpose in a larger storyline structure.
There are several memories / plotlines that I do remember (even though the order of them was unclear?), mostly because of the intense reflections on homosexuality, loneliness, and sex. I found Chu Tienwen's erotic descriptions of the narrator's relationship with Ah Yao, Yongjie, and Jay to be so real, and they really exemplified the desire, yearning, and despair that the narrator felt. Many a times, the narrator expressed a deep sense of loneliness, and described various memories wherein he slept with people or tried to surround himself with people to assuage those feelings of loneliness (often to no avail). As a lesbian, I always love reading about gay desire and gay loneliness and gay tragedy, though I do think that gay male desire/loneliness/tragedy in literature/film carries a different flavor to it (compared to My Own Lesbian Life), probably shaped by the depictions of erotic male bodies and also the descriptions of hookup culture.
I read this book for my thesis, which studies art in the 90s/00s about Taipei, and hopes to situate/understand that art in the context of an urbanizing, democratizing, globalizing city. I was certainly pleased with Chu Tienwen's descriptions of Taipei, because I did notice a lot of themes of yearning, loneliness, feelings of being trapped (and these feelings being tied to queerness and place in Taipei)... and also descriptions of the MRT construction, various political protests and events, and a New Japanese Building. I will be examing these portions in my thesis, and also re-reading or skimming the book one more time so that I can conduct a more clear analysis.
Overall, I guess it was an okay book, and I liked portions of it, but mostly it was a dull experience and these stream of consciousness type novels really don't work for me. I'm not mad though, because I am studying it as a primary source and didn't feel like I needed to personally enjoy it craft-wise. However I do wonder why it is so acclaimed, given the lack of any intentional pacing, structure, plot, character development, etc. I would like to better understand "stream of conscioussnes" type literature to understand the artistic value of these types of books. That is, even if I don't enjoy it, I would still like to understand it.
There are several memories / plotlines that I do remember (even though the order of them was unclear?), mostly because of the intense reflections on homosexuality, loneliness, and sex. I found Chu Tienwen's erotic descriptions of the narrator's relationship with Ah Yao, Yongjie, and Jay to be so real, and they really exemplified the desire, yearning, and despair that the narrator felt. Many a times, the narrator expressed a deep sense of loneliness, and described various memories wherein he slept with people or tried to surround himself with people to assuage those feelings of loneliness (often to no avail). As a lesbian, I always love reading about gay desire and gay loneliness and gay tragedy, though I do think that gay male desire/loneliness/tragedy in literature/film carries a different flavor to it (compared to My Own Lesbian Life), probably shaped by the depictions of erotic male bodies and also the descriptions of hookup culture.
I read this book for my thesis, which studies art in the 90s/00s about Taipei, and hopes to situate/understand that art in the context of an urbanizing, democratizing, globalizing city. I was certainly pleased with Chu Tienwen's descriptions of Taipei, because I did notice a lot of themes of yearning, loneliness, feelings of being trapped (and these feelings being tied to queerness and place in Taipei)... and also descriptions of the MRT construction, various political protests and events, and a New Japanese Building. I will be examing these portions in my thesis, and also re-reading or skimming the book one more time so that I can conduct a more clear analysis.
Overall, I guess it was an okay book, and I liked portions of it, but mostly it was a dull experience and these stream of consciousness type novels really don't work for me. I'm not mad though, because I am studying it as a primary source and didn't feel like I needed to personally enjoy it craft-wise. However I do wonder why it is so acclaimed, given the lack of any intentional pacing, structure, plot, character development, etc. I would like to better understand "stream of conscioussnes" type literature to understand the artistic value of these types of books. That is, even if I don't enjoy it, I would still like to understand it.
May 3, 2024
I can totally see why this novel is a hit or a miss for most people. The author is extremely embedded in the cultural, historical, and philosophical conversations around her—most of which are not easy to understand (especially in the non-linear chronology this is delivered through). I mean, this is probably the first time I've ever seen Marcuse referenced in fiction, and statements like "a negation of a negation" makes little sense to anyone who isn't at least somewhat familiar continental philosophy. There are also a plethora of references to Chinese and Japanese history, culture, theatre, and mythos that flew completely over my head, but none of this detracted from my overall reading experience.
The story has no real plot. Instead, the narrator expertly weaves together various threads of his life, interspersed with exegetical and journalistic vignettes on Foucault, the changing state of Taiwanese society over the decades, and, of course, the ruminations and reflections on love, loss, and death. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys texts that are relatively easy to read whilst simultaneously being quite structurally challenging (the book jumps around a lot). The novel always enthralled me, and I think its meandering plot only lent further to my building interest throughout.
The story has no real plot. Instead, the narrator expertly weaves together various threads of his life, interspersed with exegetical and journalistic vignettes on Foucault, the changing state of Taiwanese society over the decades, and, of course, the ruminations and reflections on love, loss, and death. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys texts that are relatively easy to read whilst simultaneously being quite structurally challenging (the book jumps around a lot). The novel always enthralled me, and I think its meandering plot only lent further to my building interest throughout.
December 6, 2018
Reflection on life+adulthood through the lens of relationships. Very intense. My favorite part was the way in which the book used stream-of-consciousness-style linking between events and pop culture/writers, though I wish there had been a little more Michael Jackson and a little less Levi-Strauss. The book is meandering and beautiful and oscillates in the way that I love, but it does get a little bogged down/repetitive around the 2/3 mark. Short book overall though so worth it.
December 24, 2023
If this book were a person, I would avoid them at all costs at a party. Written by a straight woman, this time capsule of self-hatred in gay Taiwan is occasionally interesting but mostly a stream of self-indulgent woes and posturing. The sexualisation of a certain HIV patient at the end is offensive. Do better.
March 11, 2025
THE PROSE!! Really curious to see how this is conveyed in the English translation. Absolutely stunning. The execution, whether if it’s the smooth transitions or the vivid, decorated imagery, is genuinely mind boggling.
Definitely worth the name as one of the monumental pieces of Taiwanese literature.
「是啊愛一個人時，能明確知道心臟的位置就在那兒，裂裂的，重重的，會掉落出來的，好生得扶穩。」
「是誰語焉，我享受一個故事裡的並非它的內容，亦非它的結構，而是我加在光潔表面上的擦痕⋯」
Definitely worth the name as one of the monumental pieces of Taiwanese literature.
「是啊愛一個人時，能明確知道心臟的位置就在那兒，裂裂的，重重的，會掉落出來的，好生得扶穩。」
「是誰語焉，我享受一個故事裡的並非它的內容，亦非它的結構，而是我加在光潔表面上的擦痕⋯」
November 8, 2023
i feel that it needed more structure as i got sort of lost in the tangents/references, and a lot of them seemed a bit unnecessary. maybe now that i have a good overview of the book from reading it once i’ll revisit and see if i like it better, but as of now i don’t see myself recommending this
June 10, 2025
I’m fine with the fact that a straight woman wrote about a gay man in the 90s. I enjoyed this novel, but it was challenging to understand what kind of landing it was trying to stick (common in postmodern literature, if not intentional.) a fine novel of ideas, but not the greatest
January 6, 2018
ahhhhhh
Read
May 26, 2021Dnf
March 30, 2024
this is the greatest, fleshiest book I’ve ever read
July 18, 2025
boys' love in foucault's erotic utopia
October 25, 2015
As always, Goldblatt's translation is competent. Chu's novel itself has a promising premise, but more often than not it was a struggle to plough through it. Notes of a Desolate Man started off on a strong note, but quickly degenerated into self-indulgent quasi-philosophical prose about seventy pages in and never quite recovered until its conclusion; the text's postmodernist elements register as tiresome and unattractively obvious (and by that, I mean not in a stimulatingly self-reflexive fashion). I wish I could say that my less-than-enthusiastic reception to the text has to do with me being a reader in 2015, i.e. way too familiar with postmodernist media for my liking, but then I realized this was published in 1994/2000, which unfortunately means that Chu's postmodernist impulse itself is laughably belated, marking Man as a cliche by implication.
February 28, 2013
This is a tough read-- postmodern, drawing on a knowledge of traditional and contemporary Asia as well as the West, that perhaps few readers possess. but it is well worth the trouble. It is the story of three+ Taiwanese gay men, told by an inventive and insightful woman novelist. AIDS is there but it does not dominate the narrative-- love, of various sorts and intensities, does. Read this and CRYSTAL BOYS to get an idea of Taiwan and just how queer it is.
January 2, 2023
很失控，我同意有些評論說的發散問題，我覺得很難以敘述者本身狂亂來開脫。當然還是很同情小韶因為阿堯的死與錯過而傷感，但作為讀者還是很想看更多情節，可惜沒有得到滿足，只有更多更多看似賣弄的文字。
我還是很喜歡某些情感描述，例如小韶情不自禁回到傑的租屋處樓下，也不為什麼；例如與阿堯在瀑布底下血脈噴張的描述，但那些給的太少，其他太多，導致書本的部分內容讓我感到無關甚至有點小小不耐。或許是我的修行還不夠，所以顯得有點隔靴搔癢⋯⋯
我還是很喜歡某些情感描述，例如小韶情不自禁回到傑的租屋處樓下，也不為什麼；例如與阿堯在瀑布底下血脈噴張的描述，但那些給的太少，其他太多，導致書本的部分內容讓我感到無關甚至有點小小不耐。或許是我的修行還不夠，所以顯得有點隔靴搔癢⋯⋯
July 3, 2011
Really didn't like this when I first read it. Re-read in Chinese?
August 14, 2011
全書精髓﹕
“現在，它在那裡，一件我脫掉的青春皮囊，愛情殘骸，它狼籍一堆扔在那裡。我淡漠經過它旁邊，感到它比世界上任何一個遙遠的國度都陌生，我一點也不想要去那裡。
我使用著它的文字，正使用著。它，在這裡。
它在文字所攜帶著的它的一切裡，歷經萬千年至當下此刻源源不絕流出的，這裡。
毫無，毫無機會了，我只能在這裡。”
“現在，它在那裡，一件我脫掉的青春皮囊，愛情殘骸，它狼籍一堆扔在那裡。我淡漠經過它旁邊，感到它比世界上任何一個遙遠的國度都陌生，我一點也不想要去那裡。
我使用著它的文字，正使用著。它，在這裡。
它在文字所攜帶著的它的一切裡，歷經萬千年至當下此刻源源不絕流出的，這裡。
毫無，毫無機會了，我只能在這裡。”
June 11, 2020
會有那麼一天我會看懂的
May 1, 2007
Painfully post-modern.
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