Classics Review: The Good Earth is one of those books I've often heard about, but the comments always seemed a trifle condescending. Even in our ironic times, I don't believe this book ever needs to take a back seat. This is the honest voice of someone who grew up in China, went to school there, speaks the language, and was part of Chinese culture in the early 20th Century. All of the characters in The Good Earth are flawed, with varying amounts of decency; there are no cloying model or ideal examples of the folk. Pearl Buck (1892-1973) was ahead of her time in describing the difficulties of (endlessly repressive) women's roles, disability, foreign incursion, communication, war, dislocation, and economic inequality in that time and place. She shows instead of tells, all without making cultural judgments or trying to impose Western views on Chinese society. Rather, she lays out vital descriptions so that readers can then evaluate custom, tradition, and heritage for themselves. Even what might seem to modern readers as horrors told by a Toni Morrison, are laid out dispassionately, seen through the eyes of the people. The description of revolutionary looting are stunning. A minor complaint is that it's written in a somewhat stilted "translationese" or bygone style ("men do not take good iron to make a nail nor a good man to make a soldier"). It's a minor hiccup that I grew used to in my reading. Despite the seismic issues that Buck addresses in The Good Earth, it also remains the simple story of a hard working man of the earth, whose desires fail to please him, and finds that life has no happily ever after. [4★]
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