The Banished Immortal: A Life of Li Bai / Ha Jin / 2019
I trusted that this book would be the right window into Li Bai, known in the West primarily as Li Po, because Ha Jin is a Chinese born and bred author who writes novels in English that have been highly successful and retain a foreigness in my readings at least. Thus, I trusted him to be an adequate cultural translator of sorts, who wouldn't dumb down to many details for my American brain. I was grateful for his deft breakdown of Li Bai's multi ethnic origin and his class position in feudal society, as well as the concise and gripping summaries of Chinese history. I was disappointed by Li Bai as a character, as his commitment to Daoism was much more flaky and self interested than I hoped. While I expected some drunkenness and sexism, I was impressed to learn just how much of a rapper he was. His early work bragged about his deadliness with the sword with a swag that made me think of drill rappers. It was a favorite pastime of his to get drunk and improvise verse like a freestyle rapper. His arrogance was yeezy-esque. It's a pity he was so dissatisfied with being a poet and mystic that he spent his life chasing political aspirations really foolishly. Ha Jin had this hilarious narration style where he would mention a major shortcoming, such as Li Bai absentee fatherhood, and raise a pitifully weak defense of Bai's behavior in an ostensibly unbiased, academic, and unmoved tone. At first, it seemed like Jin was biased towards Bai, but he doesn't blink away any of Bai's failures and shortcomings and his defenses are so meager, it seems as if he's trying to speak the truth without offending the legions of Bai fanatics that surely must be out there. Feudal society sounds like a shitty place to attempt to class ascend and Bai was ultimately a disappointing figure. That said, Jin's research and narration are skilled and enjoyable. He did a great job contextualizing Bai's work in relationship to his peers. As a work of biography, I'd argue this book is 4/4. More poems would've made it 5/5. I enjoyed it at a 3/5 level.