“Paris Friend”
by Shuang Xuetao
translated from the Chinese by Justin Tiang
from the December 2, 2024 issue of The New Yorker
I had never heard of Shuang Xuetao before this week’s New Yorker story popped up. He is a Chinese writer who has, I believe, just one book translated into English: Rouge Street, a collection of three novellas translated by Jeremy Tiang. It looks like there is another, a collection of stories called Hunter, coming out early next year from Granta, also translated by Tiang. As is this week’s story, so, though I’m not sure, I think its probable “Paris Friend” is a story from Hunter.
I do note that this is not the first time one of his stories appeared in The New Yorker. Last October, when I wasn’t posted much here, they published his story “Heart.” I will start with this week’s story and then work back to that one.
Here is how “Paris Friend” starts:
Xiaoguo had a terror of thirst, so he kept a glass of water on the table beside his hospital bed. As soon as it was empty, he asked me to refill it. I wanted to warn him that this was unhealthy—guzzling water all night long puts pressure on the kidneys, and pissing that much couldn’t be good for his injury. He was tall, though, so I decided his insides could probably cope.
I hope you’re all about to have a great final week of November. For those celebrating Thanksgiving, I hope you have a festive and restful holiday!
I read this story back in October 2023 and liked it very much — especially after reading the interview with the author that the NYorker often does — the cultural perspective helped. So very different from our lives. A young man rides n an ambulance with his father as they head to an ER in Beijing. It’s pitch black on an unlit highway. There are some magical elements — or are they hallucinations! It’s very much a father son story set against the political climate– the son has gone to University. The father was a factory and tells his son, “Your existence devours mine!” I actually read this story twice.
The story Margaret Mc described above is the previous one by Shuang Xuetao, from the October 2, 2023 issue, called “Heart”. That’s a strange one. The non-realism of dreams. I take it to be symbolic/allegorical, about lives and relationships. I’ll wait for someone else to interpret it.
This current story, “Paris Friend”, is a clever mystery. You may guess where it’s going at some point. Interesting characters. Chinese, but needn’t have been. Amusing, but more than that. Ultimately moving. A good little read. Again, maybe someone else will have more to say.
While I’m here, I want to recommend a super great 2024 novel I just read:
_There are Rivers in the Sky_
by Turkish-Brit author Elif Shafak.
I’ve read 5 of her 10 previous novels, mostlly recent, some of them so good I felt I must read every next one I live to see. So far, I’m right: this one is her best yet!
You can find reviews, so without going into detail: It’s largely about ancient Mesopotamia, although only the first chapter is set there. The rest is chapters alternating the separate stories of three separate characters (one based on a real person), in the 19th or 21st Century, mostly in England or Iraq. It’s like reading a chapter each of three short novels in succession, round and round—but it works! Have faith, it comes together. Richly drawn on multiple levels. A must read to the end.
The amount of research the author did for the historical aspects is impressive. Fascinating! But delicate readers, be forewarned: there are some horrific scenes.
There’s a brief video review by a woman who says it’s the best book she’s ever read:
www dot tiktok dot com at
randleauthor/video/7400391596031741217?is_from_webapp=1&sender_device=pc
click “not now”
I only read New Yorker stories sporadically but I had also read the story Margaret describes. I am super impressed with Paris friend and also with the earlier story. Such a clever ending. I really like the tone.
I think the key to Shuang Xuetao’s short story, “Paris Friend” might be this sentence; “The words that come out of his mouth just tell what’s on his mind, not what’s in his heart.” In this story there is kind of a feeling that we are seeing “heart” and “mind” separately posed in front and side profiles like in a police mug shot.
There is excellent use of duality contrast in the comparison of the protagonist, Li Mo, with his new friend, Xiaoguo. Then there’s the comparison of Xiaoguo’s mother with Li Mo’s mother.
And which is more important; living by the mind or living by the heart? That doesn’t seem answered at the end unless I missed it. The truth is everyone ends up having to interact with both sorts of people. And there aren’t necessarily any absolutes in terms of overall how any one person acts or what they say.
The main plot point is Li Mo looking for a mysterious friend, Li Lu, who he has discovered on MSN online. Everyone seems to ask him if she is his girlfriend and he doesn’t know. She is very vague and he doesn’t know or want to say. She seems to know of him.
Both are Li Mo and Li Lu are writers and there is the implied duality of how in fiction their characters perceive and interact with each other contrasted with the same within how they interact with each other.
The story culminates in a twist that is unexpected and at odds with how the story seemed to be going. But it seems, from a certain perspective, to dangle that question of which is the better, heart or mind, that one should use to live achieve a desired goal.
Compassion is a heart characteristic that often seems questioned with indifference directed towards it. Or, a person just wants to disengage from offering it. Maybe contracting others to offer it in their place. The validity or reason for pursuing any sort of relationship is questioned in this gently told story.
“Being close to people, being separated from them, it’s too much hassle–that’s the worst thing . . .”
The mind sometimes can never see what the heart is feeling. But the heart sees what the mind misses especially when it is a mind that doesn’t think it ever misses anything.
This is an awesome short story.
On the first page the narrator describes “some confusion I’d had with personal pronouns…” which struck me as self-reflexive because this story often confused me. There are no quotation marks and many of the conversations shift from speaker to speaker, from “he” to “she” or “he” to “he” to the point of it sometimes being confusing although untilmately comprehensible. The translator is presumably following the style of the original.
I liked this, but read it a second time as the first time was late at night and it was much more confusing then. The writer shifts gears a good amount which is tricky, along with the pronoun shifts, when one is tired. 11:00 AM full of caffeine, I found it breezy, delightful and subtly sad, the heart barely visible under the clever mind.