Word: salzman
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...warm up to a character at once high strung and low key? It takes patience, a virtue that Mark Salzman demonstrated in Iron and Silk, a 1986 account of the author's experiences in China. Now Salzman brings East and West together in The Soloist (Random House; 184 pages; $19), a novel that counterpoints Occidental self-consciousness against Oriental ego transcendence. The dissonance is played out at a murder trial where Reinhart is a juror. There is no doubt that the young man in the dock has killed his Zen instructor. He says he beat him to death after hearing...
Quite so. Reinhart's case history is sketchy, his asides about Bach and the Buddha a bit stuffy, and his melancholy monotone lacking in resonance. The noneffect seems deliberate, as if Salzman meant to suggest the sound of one note harmonizing...
...Salzman also effectively deals with the cultural differences between city and country life in China, the clash between Chinese and American life and the changing moral values of the Chinese people...
Hsun-ching, the book's main character, was born in "the seventh year of the People's Republic of China (1956)" with "extraordinarily well developed ear-lobes." With this opening line, Salzman sets the subtly humorous tone that pervades this book...
...problem with The Laughing Sutra arises not from the story, but from the writing. Salzman writes with a juvenile style but discusses adult topics. While this style attracts a younger, Adventure-hungry audience, the book's message demands a more sophisticated reading. This tension will keep the novel from finding an audience that can fully appreciate...