SOURCE: "Obsession," in Historian of the Strange: Pu Songling and the Chinese Classical Tale, Stanford University Press, 1993, pp. 61-97.

In the following excerpt from her book-length study of P 'u's life and works, Zeitlin examines some of Pu's stories within the context of the Chinese cultural condstruct of obsession. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the development of an obscure or unusual addiction, compulsion, mania, or craving became a fashionable pursuit of the intelligentsia and occasioned many works of literature and art.

Without an obsession, no one is exceptional.

—Yuan Hongdao, A History of Flower Arranging

According to one of the apocryphal anecdotes that later sprang up around Liaozhai and its author, Pu Songling never passed the higher examinations because "his love of the strange had developed into an obsession."¹ As a result, when he entered the examination hall, foxspirits and ghosts jealously crowded around to prevent him...