Sunday, November 28, 2010

Dream of Red Mansions

I was moderately humiliated after teetering to Central Library to pick up some materials related to Louis Cha for a piece I'm working on - everything I'd hauled from the Hong Kong Literature room was reference, and I was left checking out an illustrated version of Dream of Red Mansions that caught my eye among the children's books. Jing Yong FAIL, however I think I'm going to start collecting some key works from this genre of comic book literary canon classics and posting critical "stills" here."

Second note is I was browsing through an excellent volume on the guaizhi (怪志) genre - a mostly Qing era short story genre employing Kafka-esque tales of the strange, Pu Songling being the most famous of this set - and came across this awesome improbably phrase:

"A WAGON FULL OF GHOSTS GATHERED IN DESULTORY JOTTINGS."

Thirdly I'm trying to note some of the hideous deployments of sort of literary theory jargon, sort of butchered Carl Sagan half-thoughts that design stores around Hong Kong are especially guilty of. On the way from TST to East TST, there is a key one for K11, featuring a confused looking reindeer robot among plastic trees.
"CHRISTMAS SALE..... BUT WHO IS THE ARCHITECT OF GOD?"

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