RECENT READING: Do Not Say That We Have Nothing, Madeleine Thien
It took me an incredibly long time to read Madeleine Thien’s Do Not Say That We Have Nothing, but that’s not a reflection of quality. It’s an intense kind of book, dealing with an extended family of musicians during the Cultural Revolution in China, and the fall-out on their children’s lives afterwards. I frequently hit the end of a chapter and took a short break, coming back after a bit of a breather. It’s intense and complex and beautiful and heartfelt, and if you’re any kind of creative artist who occasionally looks towards politics and wonders how bad things can get, it’s going to be an intense read. But it should–really, really should–be read. Back in 1916, a Russian named Victor Shklovsky wrote an essay about the nature of art. In it, he argued that our perception has a tendency to become automated, and the role of art is to disrupt that automation and force us to look at things
