Dana Standridge's style is especially notable. She's capable of several varieties, including the sophisticated delineation of character through speech patterns, something more to be expected from the traditional, plot-and-character-driven novel than in a ruminative book of this kind. Sometime she goes into brain-frenzy mode, pouring out imaginative fantasies or verbal spirals sparked by a particular topic. But it isn't only the expression in this book that's subtle and sophisticated. So too, almost invariably, is the thought behind it.
There's comedy here as well — indeed, the hint of comedy is rarely absent, and this novel is by no means heavy-going. A former colleague of Li, the flamboyant and super-confident Dr. Gao, is introduced late in the story, possibly to allow for more narrative vigor than had been possible when it concerned only the lovable Li. But there have been earlier comic eruptions, notably the wonderful taxi driver who first brings Li to his mountain home, desperate to offer him a cigarette in what the author calls "a Taiwan tradition now legislated into extinction."
Samuel Johnson said that all books are the products of other books, and many celebrated titles indeed appear here, among them Crime and Punishment, David Copperfield, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and To the Lighthouse. Occasional laments for the current state of academic life also occur — the increasing specialization of education and the disappearance of the apparently once-loved card catalogue.
But this marvelous novel is sensual as well as highly intelligent. The women in it are often viewed erotically — quite something from a 40-year-old married female novelist. An old Chinese catalogue of sexual positions makes an amusing appearance in Teacher Li's reveries, and the author herself has no reservations about treating sex graphically where necessary.
The title is one of this book's best jokes. It's what Teacher Li plans to call his great work on aesthetics, prompted by the name of the route on which his upland retreat stands, Essence Mountain Road. Standridge has one of her characters observe in desperation, "Who'd read a book called Lessons in Essence? Honestly ... ."
Above all else, though, Lessons in Essence combines exuberance with poise. It's a book to make you happy, and happy, too, to be living here. It's also the closest thing to an English-language literary masterpiece about Taiwan we're ever likely to see.
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