Ask the Author: James Lande
Answered Questions (3)
James Lande
Hello James,
Thank you for your continuing interest in Yang Shen.
At the rate I’ve been going on Book II it will need at least several more years. Book I takes the story up to the first defeat of the Foreign Rifles in early July 1860; Book II then continues on through 1861 into the first part of 1862 when the Imperial general Li Hung-chang brings his Huai Army to Shanghai; Book III takes up with our hero’s association with General Li and ends in September 1862 with our hero’s final campaign.
Over the past year or so my steam engines have been throttled down to low ahead in order to navigate around obstacles like old-age and ill health and dwindling enthusiasm for a book in which very few people take an interest. When I haven’t the moxie to work on Yang Shen, I fill in with other projects for Old China Books, editing the memoir of a 95-year-old lady who grew up in Southern California in the 20s, 30s and 40s, and editing my Yang Shen journals for publication. These distractions cause further delay.
Like Harry under Kilimanjaro, I have, if not entirely destroyed, at least compromised my “talent” by not using it and at this late date am scrambling to make up for the loss. I might live long enough and join the roster of Artful Codgers. Maclean wrote River at 74; Doerr published her first novel at 74; Updike was still scribbling at 76, Marquez at 81, Bellow at 85. Elmore Leonard is 87, Doris Lessing is 94, and Herman Wouk is 96, and they’re still writing. Will-o'-the-wisps? Maybe, especially if I don’t find a way out of the doldrums. Square-riggers were becalmed in the Horse Latitudes for weeks, occasionally a month or more, but with luck found wind in their sails before they starved. Dismasted and weather-worn, I may still be able to get up some wind that would take me into a current.
Look for a review and lengthy Q&A of Yang Shen from Isham Cook (Lust and Philosophy) in the coming weeks.
Best regards,
James Lande
Thank you for your continuing interest in Yang Shen.
At the rate I’ve been going on Book II it will need at least several more years. Book I takes the story up to the first defeat of the Foreign Rifles in early July 1860; Book II then continues on through 1861 into the first part of 1862 when the Imperial general Li Hung-chang brings his Huai Army to Shanghai; Book III takes up with our hero’s association with General Li and ends in September 1862 with our hero’s final campaign.
Over the past year or so my steam engines have been throttled down to low ahead in order to navigate around obstacles like old-age and ill health and dwindling enthusiasm for a book in which very few people take an interest. When I haven’t the moxie to work on Yang Shen, I fill in with other projects for Old China Books, editing the memoir of a 95-year-old lady who grew up in Southern California in the 20s, 30s and 40s, and editing my Yang Shen journals for publication. These distractions cause further delay.
Like Harry under Kilimanjaro, I have, if not entirely destroyed, at least compromised my “talent” by not using it and at this late date am scrambling to make up for the loss. I might live long enough and join the roster of Artful Codgers. Maclean wrote River at 74; Doerr published her first novel at 74; Updike was still scribbling at 76, Marquez at 81, Bellow at 85. Elmore Leonard is 87, Doris Lessing is 94, and Herman Wouk is 96, and they’re still writing. Will-o'-the-wisps? Maybe, especially if I don’t find a way out of the doldrums. Square-riggers were becalmed in the Horse Latitudes for weeks, occasionally a month or more, but with luck found wind in their sails before they starved. Dismasted and weather-worn, I may still be able to get up some wind that would take me into a current.
Look for a review and lengthy Q&A of Yang Shen from Isham Cook (Lust and Philosophy) in the coming weeks.
Best regards,
James Lande
James Lande
What are you currently working on?
The sixth chapter of Book II, which describes the foreign rifles assault on the city of Tsingpoo in August of 1860, is proving particularly difficult because of a change in style. In Book I and the earlier chapters of Book II the thought of many characters in the story has been liberally depicted to offer readers a perspective of the hearts and minds as well as the words and deeds of these people. The style has been mostly indirect interior monologue set off with “he/she thought” tags, and less often direct interior monologue in which thought is not set off with tags and weaves in and out of dialogue and narrative. In the current chapter there is no narrator at all – only the thoughts of the characters, slipping between direct interior monologue and more chaotic stream of consciousness (not so chaotic however as, say, Faulkner). The chapter has five sections:
1. Foreign Rifles guard boats on the canal to Tsingpoo
2. Landing at Tsingpoo and deployment of the force
3. Climbing the wall of Tsingpoo under fire
4. Fletcher Thorson Wood shot in the jaw
5. Foreign Rifles retreat to Kuangfulin
Each section has four streams of thought:
Fletcher Thorson Wood
Vincente Macanaya
Hannibal Benedict
Delevan Slaughter
These streams of thought occur simultaneously but with shared events that serve as markers to help the reader follow their sequence. Work on the chapter progresses slowly due to the necessity of working up backstory for Hannibal and Slaughter. Fletcher and Vincente the reader already knows pretty well from Book I, but little has been said about Hannibal’s origins in North Carolina, and nothing about his experience as a Senate page in Washington DC, or the time he spent in India, all of which must be researched and then assembled as plausible experience that will crowd into his stream of thought. It does not help that the author’s advancing age effects a waning of vitality that also slows progress.
The sixth chapter of Book II, which describes the foreign rifles assault on the city of Tsingpoo in August of 1860, is proving particularly difficult because of a change in style. In Book I and the earlier chapters of Book II the thought of many characters in the story has been liberally depicted to offer readers a perspective of the hearts and minds as well as the words and deeds of these people. The style has been mostly indirect interior monologue set off with “he/she thought” tags, and less often direct interior monologue in which thought is not set off with tags and weaves in and out of dialogue and narrative. In the current chapter there is no narrator at all – only the thoughts of the characters, slipping between direct interior monologue and more chaotic stream of consciousness (not so chaotic however as, say, Faulkner). The chapter has five sections:
1. Foreign Rifles guard boats on the canal to Tsingpoo
2. Landing at Tsingpoo and deployment of the force
3. Climbing the wall of Tsingpoo under fire
4. Fletcher Thorson Wood shot in the jaw
5. Foreign Rifles retreat to Kuangfulin
Each section has four streams of thought:
Fletcher Thorson Wood
Vincente Macanaya
Hannibal Benedict
Delevan Slaughter
These streams of thought occur simultaneously but with shared events that serve as markers to help the reader follow their sequence. Work on the chapter progresses slowly due to the necessity of working up backstory for Hannibal and Slaughter. Fletcher and Vincente the reader already knows pretty well from Book I, but little has been said about Hannibal’s origins in North Carolina, and nothing about his experience as a Senate page in Washington DC, or the time he spent in India, all of which must be researched and then assembled as plausible experience that will crowd into his stream of thought. It does not help that the author’s advancing age effects a waning of vitality that also slows progress.
James Lande
Where did you get the idea for your most recent book?
The sources for the idea of the novel Yang Shen are my readings in Chinese history and to a lesser extent my own experience as a foreigner in China. Having a thought about writing novels when very young, and then living in China and learning the language, novels about Westerners in China seemed interesting. From the many examples of such people I selected Frederick Townsend Ward who, I believe, made a lasting contribution to the Chinese people of that day, and that he was able to do so by learning to work together with the Chinese in mutual respect. His experience was significant because of his initiative in establishing an army to protect Shanghai from the Taiping rebels, his genius in sweeping aside the local prejudice that held Chinese to be inferior soldiers, and his contribution to the military thinking of key Chinese officials of the era.
The sources for the idea of the novel Yang Shen are my readings in Chinese history and to a lesser extent my own experience as a foreigner in China. Having a thought about writing novels when very young, and then living in China and learning the language, novels about Westerners in China seemed interesting. From the many examples of such people I selected Frederick Townsend Ward who, I believe, made a lasting contribution to the Chinese people of that day, and that he was able to do so by learning to work together with the Chinese in mutual respect. His experience was significant because of his initiative in establishing an army to protect Shanghai from the Taiping rebels, his genius in sweeping aside the local prejudice that held Chinese to be inferior soldiers, and his contribution to the military thinking of key Chinese officials of the era.
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