Book completed

Red Dust, by the Chinese writer Ma Jian. On the cover it's compared to On the Road, and I suppose it's similar in that it's a memoir of a rather counterculture guy who goes travelling all around his country. Kerouac was on a quest for encounters with amazing people (as defined largely by the degree of awe he felt in their presence), though, and did a lot of drugs if I remember correctly, whereas Ma Jian was more just exploring while laying low, as he wasn't doing well with Beijing authority, and he generally stayed sober. On the other hand, he sure told a lot of casual lies and engaged in a lot of petty theft, especially in the first half of the book.

I had been reading this book a few pages at a time for months, and it was really dragging, but it's due on Friday so I resolved to get it read, and today I read it for several hours until I was done. I did enjoy the second half much more than the first. (Which is fortunate!) And Ma Jian did attain more maturity by the end (unlike Kerouac, I'd have to say), and it's not surprising that he later emigrated to the U.K.

Happy Fourth

As usual, we joined our neighbors for a potluck at T's house. We were the first there, arriving at 5:45, and S. and her mom came next, then lots of other people. J. talked to the other Magic player there, while I talked with S's mom, then I talked a bunch with A's partner, who had recently gotten an NSF grant that he thinks will happily close out his career, then J. and I talked quite a while with our new friend JS and her husband, who J. was meeting for the first time. They are seriously into board games! Eventually we moved out to the street to watch the fireworks, which were mostly small, except for a moderately big one called "Revolution" and a fabulously extravagant one called "Wild Side," which we all loved.