As the founder of Grove Press, he made an enormous contribution to our shared ethical imagination by offering examplars of beauty and moral complexity through the medium of literature, and moreover, providing access to the rest of the world through the English language. This notion underscores the extraordinary loss in the recent passing of American publisher Barney Rosset in February last year. It obeys a more mutable and sensitive thing known as conscience, which must be entirely cultivated on the level of the individual. Freedom of speech is based on a degree of faith in the noble potential of all individuals, whose ethical development cannot take place under strictly controlled social conditions. But heaven also lets in a few dark stars, and it is best to be exposed to this fact while one is impressionable or has a tall stack of chips sitting on the table. And when you want to know how to live, you study great lives, you read Plutarch. Nobody wants to read morality plays anymore, but a lot of people still want to know how to live.

These survival lessons are intended for adults, too, for whom comfort and security come at the incremental cost of individuation, for there will be recurring moments when one feels as though life has yet to be lived, and the truth is, certain mistakes are better than nothing. All of these circumstances are inseparable from her heroism. And then, in the final act, she threw her life away. Then she escaped and started a new life on the other side of the world. She became the first writer in her society to come out as a lesbian. She went to the best private school, got into the best university.

And yet it is intended to be a survival manual for teenagers, for a certain age when reading the right book can save your life. Notes of a Crocodile is not a book that shows teenagers how to live a straight life, in any sense of the term. She didn’t think it was a good idea to donate a book that might not be a positive influence on teenagers. She couldn’t remember exactly what the book was about, she told me, but when she was cleaning out her apartment, it occurred to her that she should donate her copy. When I first started translating Notes of a Crocodile, I showed a draft to a friend from Taipei who once worked as a journalist and had read one of Qiu’s novels for her research.

The Kids Are Too Straight: Translating Qiu Miaojin’s Notes of a Crocodile The Kids Are Too Straight: Translating Qiu Miaojin’s Notes of a Crocodile.

Notes of a crocodile