Yu: The Past & the Punishmt Paper

Yu is best known in this country for his novel Lifetimes, or more precisely for the moving film adaptation of it, the 1994 Cannes Film Festival-winning To Live. This collection of stories is marked by scenes of jarring brutality that may discomfit American readers. None of the violence is extraneous, though; juxtaposed with passages of exquisite grace and layers of symbolic meaning, it creates a subtle reading of the harshness of contemporary China. In ""On the Road at Eighteen,"" a young man finds out what life is truly like while walking down a deserted country road. ""Classical Love"" parodies the traditional Chinese love tale, setting it against the chaos and violence of ancient Imperial China. In the title story, the past catches up with ""the stranger"" in the form of an ultimate punishment. Yu's style is somewhat detached, and Jones's stately translation preserves that quality, but that only makes the barbarity more noticeable. (Aug.)