Opinion

A Narrow Path to Perfection: Reading Lin Ge’s Out of Tune

 
Every era has its own literature, and its own literary practitioners. In the long course of history, generations of creative talents ebb and flow like the waves of the sea, and streak through the night sky like shooting stars. “Obscure are the brilliant minds of yore”, as the ancient poem says. Writers have left behind only the works they so painstakingly created, adorning the world with the beauty of words and leaving a unique mark of an era.
 
Although Macau is a small city, it has witnessed a growing number of creative talents in different fields in recent years, thanks to the rising level of education, broader horizons of its residents, and the advancement of science and technology. The spectrum of literary writing is becoming wider, and the channels and forms of publication are also increasing. There has not only been an increase in the number of creative artists, but also a surprising expansion in the variety and genres of their works.
 
The book Out of Tune, well represents the excellence of emerging local talents. The author, Lin Ge, is a “post-80s” native of Macau, and holds a bachelor’s degree in Design from a local college and a master’s degree in Cultural Industry Management. He is one of the few freelance artists in Macau known for his illustrations for newspapers and magazines; he also works as a graphic designer. 
 
Perhaps because of this background, his literary endeavours are also diversified, covering poetry, fiction, and commentary. He has published a collection of poems, Peacock’s Whisper, under the pen name Soeng Mun Lam, and two picture books, Little Sparrow and Acts and Deeds. 
 
Out of Tune, a collection of short stories, was published in 2020. In the book, stories weave between reality and fantasy, day-to-day life and unheard voices of the heart. The book is hard to define, as it is more like poetry written in a “fictional” style than fiction in the literal sense. 
 
At last year’s Macau Literary Festival, I had the privilege of having a conversation on “Cross-Generation Writing” with Lin Ge and another local writer Lawrence Lei.  It appears that unlike their elder generation who struggled to survive in turbulent times, young people today live a leisurely and comfortable life, with no earth-shaking events or changes. But those who want to write can differentiate the big from the small and depict a whole new landscape from a seemingly uneventful life. 
 
In Macau, where conformity with the majority is the prevailing doctrine, people with independent judgement and ideas and the audacity to take a different path are often not encouraged or supported by society. But to prompt real changes, our society needs more and more people of this kind. I particularly like the line in the afterword of the book: “If people can accept a rooster that crows at dusk, they can probably accept a person who sings out of tune too.” 
 
I would like to make a sincere appeal to readers who are willing to look beyond the bestselling books to pick up Out of Tune; you may be rewarded with a wonderful surprise.
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