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When I got out of Andover in the 1950s I suffered from fairly severe depression, but this was back when the only such term recognized by the medical profession was “depressive” following “manic” which was one bad gig until some genius renamed it “bipolar disorder” and after that it couldn’t harm a fly. Since I wasn’t lucky enough to qualify for manic and clinical depression didn’t exist they diagnosed schizophrenia and packed me off to a booby hatch. (Which was not entirely a bad thing. Man, the scene at Kings Count Psychotic Ward was like awesome!) Then I was promoted to a slightly less odorous asylum where Doctor Oscar Diethelm expounded upon the delights of going snickety-snick on my frontal lobes, and while it would take too long to explain I managed to escape to Columbia University. There I found myself groping through weird landscapes obscured by clouds of pot behind which pimpled prophets of the Beat Generation shrieked, “Our minds destroyed by madness, starving, hysterical, naked, dragging through black streets at dawn looking for an angry fix, or what the fuck, something like that. Yo, daddy-o!” and I said to myself, “Barry, you have found a home.”
When I wafted back into the world a few years later my depression was still there but I was allowed to prove my sanity by blowing things up for the U.S. Air Force. No, not Vietnam. Planting ingenious and mostly illegal mine fields around the eternal DMZ in Korea. Time passed but not much else. I moved to the Arizona/Sonoran Desert where I could live quietly, surrounded on all sides by prickly pear, cat’s claw, devil’s horns, barrel cactus, jumping cactus, and illegal immigrants. I still occasionally dreamed of bright flashes followed by BOOM! which was a shame because I had other memories of the Far East: good memories, warm memories, and in 1977—ten years before Prozac—I decided to use those and whatever else I could come up with to create an alternate world into which I could creep on dark and stormy nights and pull over my head like a security blanket. So I read a lot and scribbled a lot and gradually the land of Li Kao began to take shape. But the first draft of Bridge of Birds didn’t really work and I couldn’t see what was wrong, so I dumped it into a drawer for a few years. Then one day I read Lin Yutang’s The Importance of Understanding and found the prayer to a little girl that I mention in a footnote in the final version. It made me realize that while I’d invented good things like monsters and marvels and mayhem the book hadn’t really been about anything. I opened the drawer. “Okay!” I said to myself. “This book is going to be about love.” And so it is, and so are ones that followed.
Will there be more? I doubt it, and it’s not because of bad sales and worse publishers. It’s simply that I’d taken it as far as I could. Oh, I could come up with more ingenious plots and interesting characters and so on, but the Ox/Master Li format had become just that, a format, and no matter how well I wrote I’d just be repeating myself. Many writers are content to settle down with an endless if predictable series, but I’d be miserable, and so it was like deciding to quit smoking: cold turkey or forget about it, and I chose cold turkey. Anyway, it was a lot of fun while it lasted, and I hope Ox and Li Kao can continue to give fun to readers, and I most particularly hope that on dark and stormy nights some of those readers will be able to crawl into my alternate world and pull it over them like a security blanket.
Farewell.
- Sales Rank: #74363 in eBooks
- Published on: 2011-08-22
- Released on: 2011-08-22
- Format: Kindle eBook
From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Reading Hughart's endearing historical fantasy trilogy, first published almost 20 years ago, is much like wandering blindfolded through a myth devised by a maniac, in the words of Master Li, the greatest and most frequently intoxicated wise man in a colorful seventh century China that never was. Slow, strong and good-hearted peasant Number Ten Ox initially seeks Master Li's help to cure a bizarre plague and soon becomes his sidekick. Their rollicking adventures pit them against everyone from murderers and thieves to emperors and gods. Numerous Chinese legends, filtered through Ox's simple perspective, blend seamlessly into tales both lighthearted and heartrending. Hughart's many fans will welcome this modest alternative to the 1998 omnibus published by The Stars Our Destination bookstore, which commands high prices when it can be found at all. (Oct.)
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Most helpful customer reviews
62 of 63 people found the following review helpful.
Wickedly sly and unexpectedly moving
By J. Fuchs
For years "Bridge of Birds," the first book in the chronicles of Master Li and Number Ten Ox, was my Christmas gift of choice. I must have purchased at least three dozens copies for friends over the years. When the entire Chronicles was published together about ten years ago, I happily bought the edition to have a hard cover copy of all three stories in one place, even though I still had each of the original books separately. Simply put these books are hilariously funny, heart-achingly moving, and superbly and beautifully written.
The Chronicles consist of three books based on folkloric Chinese ghost stories. In Bridge of Birds we meet the two main characters. Number Ten Ox is a strapping young man from a peasant village in which all the children between the ages of eight and thirteen have fallen into a coma-like stupor. He travels to Peking with the collected savings of the village to find a wise man who can figure out how a plague can learn to count. Unfortunately, or so it seems, his village is a poor one, and all he can afford is Master Li, a 100+year-old, alcoholic sage with, as he describes it, a slight flaw in his character. The two set off on an adventure that takes them all over China and brings them into contact with such wonderful characters as Miser Chen, Doctor Death, Pawnbroker Fang, Ma the Grub, One-Eyed Wong, the Ancestress, Henpecked Ho, Cut-Off-Their-Balls Wong and Lotus Cloud.
Bridge of Birds is at once a clever mystery, a beautiful love story, and a wickedly funny farce in which the same crazy and wonderful characters keep popping up in amusing new situations. Barry Hughart has taken some of the most popular myths and stories of our time and anachronistically transported them back to a fantastical ancient China to create a simply delightful book. Think of a dungeon and dragons game for intelligent and well-read adults. It not only makes me laugh out loud every time I read it, its exploration of the true meaning of love and generosity also makes me cry.
The next two books in the series, The Story of the Stone and Eight Skilled Gentlemen aren't as strong as Bridge of Birds, but they are still wonderful and playful explorations of Chinese mythology and any book that contains characters like Number Ten Ox and Master Li is alright by me. I've finally reluctantly accepted that Barry Hughart isn't going to write any more books about these two characters, but at least we have these three and that is no small blessing.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
A wild romp through a fictional Chinese landscape
By JAK
The Chronicles of Master Li and Number 10 Ox is one of the most enjoyable works of fiction I have read in the last few years. Taking place in the middle of the 7th century AD in imperial China, anything can happen. I'm no historian so I can't say how closely the book adheres to actual history but the fictional aspects are fantastic indeed.
Spirits, ghosts, and demons abound but Master Li has things under control with the help of his traveling companion Number 10 Ox.
I would recommend this book to anyone who could use a good chuckle. The tongue-in-cheek humor is delightful.
22 of 22 people found the following review helpful.
Utterly superlative
By Alice K. Conway
I rarely review books, however.... Mere words fail to describe the sheer genius that are the Mr. Hughart's efforts on Master Li and Number Ten Ox. The three books in this omnibus are so cleverly written, so unfailingly humorous and so totally poignant that other works will hereafter be spoiled for me. The author does state that he could have written more adventures for these characters after these three, but that they would have been formulaic, and what would be the point in that? As accurate as that may be, I mourn the fact that the world has no more to look forward to from this amazing author and his two phenomenal characters. Should he write anything else, I will snap it up. I also know that I will re-read these books in the future and approach that task with absolute glee, that I am given the chance to do so.
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