"The only thing Luo was really good at was telling stories. A pleasing talent to be sure, but a marginal one, with little future in it. Modern man has moved beyond the age of the Thousand-and-One-Nights, and modern societies everywhere, whether socialist or capitalist, have done away with the old storytellers-more's the pity."
This passage is an ironic and important one to the story because storytelling is what gives Luo so much success in his life. His ability to retell a story in such vivid detail and with so much emotion is the cause of the narrator's jealousy. The narrator believes that his musical talent will benefit him more than Luo's knack for recounting movies and books to audiences. In the end, however, the narrator finds that Luo's talent is much more appreciated than he first thought. The entire town immensly enjoys listening to Luo tell his stories, and they even allow the two boys the chance to go into town to watch movies and then relay the entire storyline. Luo gives both himself and the narrator a chance at a more pleasant life than the ones they are living and working at the Mountain of the Phoenix of the Sky. Even more ironic is the fact that his capabilities get Luo the girl in the novel. The seamstress, like the rest of the town, is taken by Luo's stories and the two almost immediately are taken with one another. This relationship causes much jealousy on the narrator's part and makes him rethink his earlier statement about Luo's "marginal" talent.
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