The Ten Thousand Things

John Spurling's fictionalized life of Wang Meng, one of the four artistic masters of the Yuan Dynasty, begins with the artist languishing in prison, finally subject to the forces of the complex political world he spent much of his life eschewing. Declaring life to be "much simpler than one imagines to start with" – it is merely a question of following one's nature, he asserts – the 78-year-old Wang goes on to recount a personal narrative marked by complexity and profound existential uncertainty. The seeming contradiction is characteristic of Wang, who – after his years of willful isolation and intense artistic pursuit – has come to understand his craft, but not himself.