Dyer holds a Ph.D. in English literature and has published extensively on fiction, poetry, film, and television. He is also a freelance university teacher, writer, and educational consultant. In the following essay, he discusses “The Price of Eggs in China” as a quest story, in which an artist changes his vision and finds a new art style and life.

Any artist can attest that creative vision is not static. Rather, at any one point, vision and artwork are, like one of Dean Kaneshiro’s chairs, a carefully crafted negotiation of numerous pieces “put together by joints, forty-four delicate, intricate joints.” Over time, the vision and artwork change. For most artists, the work is a process of defining one’s style in reference to tradition and also to current ideas or circumstances. An artist who aims to replicate one work of...