A yet-untranslated essay collection on the importance of critical thought, from one of the foremost Chinese intellectuals of the 1990s. Wang Xiaobo’s Pleasure of Thinking is an essay collection as riotous as it is contemplative. Between rollicking anecdotes about living between the East and West and serious musings on the intellectual situations at home and abroad, Xiaobo examines modern life with the levity missing from so much of today’s politico-cultural discourse. In “The Maverick Pig,” he considers the existential differences between humans and livestock. In “Tales From Abroad: Food,” he recounts the culture shock of discovering American diets while studying at Carnegie Mellon. Several pieces focus on literature, with notable essays devoted to Italo Calvino, Bertrand Russell, and Ernest Hemingway, whom Xiaobo admired greatly. Others are more personal in nature, ranging from a meditation on getting mugged, to the consideration of the question: why do I write? Controversial, hilarious, and inimitable, Pleasure of Thinking is a delightful celebration of Wang Xiaobo’s unique critical perspective.
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Reading Xiaobo visualised in me a seahawk that flies far above the ocean, observing it closely and once in a while plunging into it and rising again with a fish on the beak. He gives us a general description of the subject and, when we least expect it, takes the plunge and throws towards us a surprise observation that is consistently profound and witty.
