Those seeking Miltonic high seriousness, Tolstoyan world historical generalization, the mimetic holding of mirrors up to nature or even truths of the human heart won’t find them here in these somewhat perverse, sometimes disturbing entertainments. The China depicted here is not the real China, it is the China of Gene Damm’s warped, decadent imagination. If there are precursors or influences to be cited, one might mention those sex obsessed poets Thomas Hardy and D.H. Lawrence, victims of censorship when they turned to prose and, among more recent writers, the fabulist Italo Calvino and the whimsically strange Haruki Murakami.
All proceeds from the sale of this book will go to benefit the Lijiang Teachers College Scholarship Fund, a not-for-profit corporation based in the United States.
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Gene Damm is Founder and Executive Director of the Lijiang Teachers College Scholarship Fund and President of the Friends of the Albany Public Library. He is also the author of Guanyin and Other Poems.
