- Paperback: 192 pages
- Publisher: Vintage (Mar 21 2000)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0375709118
- ISBN-13: 978-0375709111
- Product Dimensions: 20.3 x 13.2 x 1.3 cm
- Shipping Weight: 245 g
- Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (24 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #389,101 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Amazon
In the Pond is a slim little book about some very big issues: power, vanity, art, injustice, and politics. Where Tom Wolfe would find the makings for a doorstop, however, debut novelist Ha Jin has created a rough-cut comic gem. Set in Communist China, the book takes as its hero a small, unprepossessing man named Shao Bin, a maintenance employee at the Harvest Fertilizer Plant and also a self-taught artist. Together with his wife and 2-year-old daughter, Bin inhabits a tiny 12-by-20-foot room. Bin is desperate to move into the newly built workers' compound, and he places his name on the waiting list with high hopes. But when the plant managers pass him over, despite the fact that he's been working there for years, Bin finally cracks. "In brief, the true scholar's brush must encourage good and warn against evil," he reads in The Essence of Ancient Chinese Thought, and inspired, he publishes a satirical cartoon protesting official corruption. The consequences of this simple act snowball, and in self-defense, Bin finds himself aiming his attacks ever higher up the bureaucratic ladder. This is a book that works on multiple levels: as character study, as political allegory, as sly bureaucratic satire, even, at times, as the broadest kind of slapstick. (One memorable scene involves Bin biting his superior on the butt.) Bin himself is half persecuted artist, half self-righteous boor; readers both sympathize with him and wonder along with one of his coworkers, "Why do you enjoy fighting so much?" Even his putative victory is left in doubt. As the book ends, Shao Bin has become perhaps a bigger fish, but there's no doubt about it; he's in the very same small pond where he started. --Mary Park
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
From Publishers Weekly
Prize-winning short-story writer Ha Jin (Ocean of Words won the PEN/Hemingway Award for first fiction; Under the Red Flag won the Flannery O'Connor Award) offers a wise and funny first novel that gathers meticulously observed images into a seething yet restrained tale of social injustice in modern China. Talented artist Shao Bin has an unsatisfying job at a large fertilizer plant. After being denied a decent housing assignment, he begins a series of retaliatory satirical cartoons, which illustrate his employers' flaws and in turn earn their wrath?which in turn inspires more cartoons. When his superiors try to transfer him, they are chagrined to discover that Bin is much in demand?and that any new job he gets is likely to be a step up. So they decide to keep him on. After an occasionally monotonous sequence of attacks and counterattacks, Bin finally gets promoted to the propaganda office. He is ecstatic, although his family must still make do with the same uncomfortable apartment that started the conflict. Luckily, the characters' complexity saves the story from political overkill. The supervisors, through moments of vulnerability, come to seem like genuinely detestable human beings rather than one-dimensional villains. Bin, similarly, is both justifiably indignant and annoying in his self-absorption. Ha Jin's humor initially appears clownish but almost always has a double purpose: when Bin's supervisor sits on his face to silence him, Bin bites the boss' posterior?illustrating rather vividly his refusal to kiss ass. Through Ha Jin's gently ironic treatment, Bin's struggle both to achieve power in his community and retain his own dignity transcends its Communist Chinese setting, engagingly illustrating a universal conundrum.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
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Most helpful customer reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars
Learning about China...,
By HardyBoy64 "RLC" (Rexburg, ID United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: In the Pond: A Novel (Paperback)
Not knowing much about China and its culture, I'm glad that my book club chose this novel to read. It was enlightening and comical. 4 stars.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Simply told and exquisitely written,
This review is from: In the Pond (Hardcover)
In the Pond is the story of Shao Bin, a Chinese worker denied better housing who decides to fight against injustice and corruption in the Communist authority. Using his paintbrush as a wand and his imagination as a planner, he executes a series of actions to rankle the leaders. As each side becomes more enmeshed in the conflict, the results are more serious, and often more humorous. Jin takes a serious subject matter, the subjection of the individual to a malfunctioning system, and adds art, humor, and human passion to construct a tale that is simply told, but exquisitely written.
3.0 out of 5 stars
Ha Jin writes another hit,
By
This review is from: In the Pond: A Novel (Paperback)
I enjoyed this book. I am a fan of Ha Jin's WAITING. I struggled more with this book, but it was every bit as good. I felt frustrated with the main character at times and wanted to shake sense into him. This is well written satire and the character's actions were highly realistic and believable. Nicely done.
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