"Life is full of doomed quests—and then it tosses up the weird happy ending, with naked children wandering around on the dinner table. See for instance Wyatt Mason’s amazing profile of Ai Weiwei, now an e-book from GQ." —Lorin Stein, The Paris Review
It is an amazing profile, one of the best in recent memory, and the weird happy ending is perhaps the most amazing of its many amazements. Here's how Mason's amazing profile begins:
In late July, I flew to China not knowing what to expect, with one exception: I was sure, regrettably sure, that I wouldn't be able to speak with the person I needed to speak with, a man named Ai Weiwei. Who he is—and there's no shame in your not knowing; I was among the unenlightened until recently, too—it was my ambition to comprehend. And if I failed to meet the man himself, I hoped, at least, to see enough of the world he called his own to make sense of a matter of no small interest: why it is that not a few people of discernment now consider him to be one of the most significant artists working today; and why it is that the People's Republic of China considers Ai Weiwei to be, without question, a very dangerous man. . . .More for free here. E-book here.
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