I had vowed never to go to China until my friend, the exiled poet Bei Dao, was able to travel freely there, but when I received a sudden invitation to the Century City First International Poetry Festival in Chengdu, he urged me on: 'If you wait for me, you'll be too old to enjoy it.'

The international dimension of the festival was to be limited to two Americans. Luckily, they asked me to choose my compatriot, and I had no trouble picking Forrest Gander - excellence and congeniality being a rare combination in American letters. Tracking him down in an artists' retreat somewhere in the Texas desert, I fulfilled a lifelong dream of re-enacting Eric Newby's famous telegram to his friend in Buenos Aires: 'ARE YOU AVAILABLE NURISTAN JUNE.' I had rehearsed the casual tone: 'Hi Forrest, want to go to Sichuan Province next week?'

LRB 22 September 2005 | PDF Download