Delusiastic!

Boy by Zhang Xiaogang Have you ever listened to a podcast and gradually realized that it was all about someone you know? That happened to me in 2020. You see, I had belatedly discovered the Invisibilia podcast and was working my way through their archives, when one day I found an episode with a kind of intriguing title “What Was Not Said” and decided to give it a try. (See www.npr.org  for a transcript.) After a short introduction about a woman whose father had stopped mentioning her and her family in his Christmas letters without ever explaining why (the first thing that "was not said"), the host introduced the featured story with this sentence: “It involves a very complicated love-triangle centering on a mother and trying to win her love.”   That sounded like it might be something I would like, so I decided to I’d listen to the whole episode. The host went on to say that the story involved two Taiwanese brothers—one with a Chinese given name and the oth