Read the excerpt from “the fall of the house of usher” by edgar allan poe. suddenly there shot along the path a wild light, and i turned to see whence a gleam so unusual could have issued; for the vast house and its shadows were alone behind me. the radiance was that of the full, setting, and bloodred moon, which now shone vividly through that once barely discernible fissure, of which i have before spoken as extending from the roof of the building, in a zigzag direction, to the base.

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serve the people! ,” smoothly translated by julia lovell, offers an initial sample of yan lianke’s writing to an english-speaking audience. a bluntly drawn, mildly erotic fable, it teases mao zedong by poking fun at a true believer who obeys the chairman’s precepts too literally. to a western sensibility, the broad strokes of yan lianke’s humor would seem to pose little risk of inciting rebellion, whether of the flesh or of the body politic. but then, part of the book’s attraction is that it doesn’t have a western sensibility. it lets the reader see — or rather, intuit — what jokes chinese officials don’t consider funny, and how very little it takes for a writer to be branded an incendiary in 21st-century china, more than three decades after the death of mao, a decade after the death of deng xiaoping and seven years since china entered the world trade organization, a move that would seem to signal a willingness (however wary) to mingle with the rest of the world.

cause they were to dumb to get their college education to become a real   : )

yes tht is good is it a promisis