Novels Needn't Save the Nation--an Interview with David Wang

Q: Comparing Novel China with your three previous collections of literary criticism, your past books mostly concentrate on an individual work of a single author, but this time your new book talks about the literary developments of a period, such at works about the life of students studying overseas, or anti-communist literature. Could we start by talking about your orientation as a critic?

A: What I wrote initially really did tend to be introductions to single works, and their methodology and structure were not yet very clear. But I already had two ideas. Firstly I felt that the slogan that "literature reflects human life," which has been trotted out in modern Chinese literary history from the "May 4th" movement to the present day, had become stale, and so I had many criticisms of the concept of realism.

Seeing China through the novel

My other starting point was that compared with the former Chinese literary tradition of "sympathy for the time and concern for the nation," I was promoting an "orientation away from tears and towards more differentiated emotions." Actually there are many directions within Chinese literature and Chinese fiction, they needn't be confined within past traditions.

My new book is basically made up of long essays. Starting out from the point of view that "novels reflect human life" and from looking at China through novels, I aim to develop a discussion on two other planes. One is how contemporary Chinese novels speak about "China." Can this China as a symbolic cultural, historical and political entity always really be genuine?

The novel has always been an indispensable element in constructing China's sociopolitical system, its image and its history; writing literary history is basically using one's imagination to thread together literary works into coherent strands. Isn't writing history just the same? Never mind whether it's the history of the Kuomintang, the Chinese Communist Party, or even the Taiwan independence movement. The material is all there; it's just a question of using various methods of systematization and narration to take the disorganized, complex source materials and thread them together. And among all the forms of narrative activity, what in the 20th Century has been more important and more full of self-awareness than the novel?

Novelists have made it clear that their works are a space in which they create a fictional, imagined China on the basis of real history. I want to emphasize that in fact this imaginary construct is a part of the real China. To insist on drawing an artificial line between the imagined and the real is to underestimate the power of fiction. The novel's great power to narrate history will continue in the future to be a very important way for us to imagine China or to imagine Taiwan.

Another level of discussion which I would like to develop is the incredible power to save the nation and to change people's lives which was ascribed to fiction by writers in the period from the late Ching dynasty to the time of Lu Hsun. This tradition of sympathy for the problems of the time and concern for the fate of the nation has continued unbroken to the present day. There are so many people who wish to use novels to quickly establish and describe party and state history, but this overestimates the power of fiction. The age of "grand writings" is over, and in the nineties with its clamor of myriad voices, fiction is just fiction. Novels can't save the nation, nor can they change people's lives.

Relative to the situation of Taiwan today, looking at China on a smaller, less serious scale may be a necessary strategy, and the same goes for literature, history and politics. The changes the novel has undergone can teach us a few lessons.

Leaving behind literature's traditional role as a vehicle for ideology

Q: Although critics believe fiction should not be allotted such a solemn role, from the standpoint of authors or readers, right from the anti-communist literature of the 1960's to the local-flavor literature of the 1980's, novelists in Taiwan have constantly wrestled with the meaning of a person's geographical roots, and have written under great outside pressure. It has been difficult too for readers to approach their works with a relaxed attitude, so wouldn't it appear that there is a variance between writers', critics' and readers' views on whether fiction should be strongly tinged with "concern for the nation"?

A: Ever since the May 4th Movement, our concern for modern Chinese literature has maintained a tradition of literature as a channel for moral instruction, or to use Hsia Chih-ching's words, "sympathy for the time and concern for the nation." The time we have been in sympathy with is the May 4th period, and the nation we fear for is the Republic of China.

This special characteristic has given 20th Century Chinese literature an intensely moral tone, which is something that perhaps the literatures of other nations are not burdened with. The anti- and pro-communist novels of the 1960's represent just one upsurge of this phenomenon, but even today if some author writes a bizarre piece, there will be some critics and readers who draw themselves up to great heights of indignation to blast it with criticism. For instance, just recently the film Farewell to my Concubine was banned in Mainland China as well as here. The climate of sympathy with the time and concern for the nation is even more fervent on the mainland than it is here. In fact it goes beyond that and reaches the level of a "literary inquisition." So this kind of tradition has its good side, but also has a negative influence.

Writers, critics and readers are always interdependent. Of course it is all right for an author to be moved by sympathy for the problems of his time or by concern for the good of the nation, but there is no call for critics or readers to try to prescribe the kinds of works authors should or shouldn't write. If writers have strong ideological convictions, then ideally they should be the to write about them whatever they are.

The role of the critic, from a traditional point of view, arises subordinate to the literary work. The book critic treats the work as a real-world phenomenon and expounds his own thoughts in the course of discussing it.

In the past, literary critics have given themselves far too elevated and authoritative a status, believing that it is incumbent on them to guide and correct literature's and readers' morality. Perhaps they do have such a responsibility, but then again perhaps not. Sometimes readers' ability to judge works of literature is greater than that of the critics.

This is why if a critic does not have quite an open mind and the ability to accept the constantly changing phenomena of literature, he will be imposing boundaries on himself.

"China" as a token to be tossed back and forth

Q: When discussing the literary phenomena of the late 20th Century, you have expressed the opinion that Chinese authors of the 1990's have a tendency to "make fun of" and "deconstruct" the myth of China, and you took the Taiwan author Chang Ta-chun and the mainland author Wang Shuo as examples. But Wang Shuo's "riffraff literature" only makes fun of the social system over there; isn't there a difference between the messages the two writers are putting across?

A: I agree When I proposed that argument, I had in mind Chang Ta-chun's The Big Liar, but from his Chicken Feather Picture and The General's Stele to his Ssu Hsi Worries for his Country, the China depicted in his works has started to break down more and more.

But Wang Shuo's works have basically not rattled at the system of Greater China, nor have they questioned the legality of political power within China. Seen from this angle, we naturally have to say that the Taiwanese writer is more advanced. Of course this also has to do with the environment for literary creativity; in the mainland's highly closed society with its extreme censorship of the written word, such works are not allowed to appear.

Wang Shuo's writing strategy is basically extremely market oriented, but we have to admit that he has caught the likes and dislikes of a wide readership. He expresses the helplessness of Chinese people in that kind of environment, and how they muddle through with an attitude of just passing the time. It's quite true that he does not go so far as to "deconstruct" China.

When I say "make fun" or "deconstruct," it's in contrast to "sympathy for the time and concern for the nation." That's the current generation of authors' approach to writing, and perhaps "China" is a selling point, something to be tossed back and forth in the writers' hands. Seen from this angle, actually both Wang Shuo and Chang Ta-chun have this tendency. But I would also agree that even though one can apply the same general description to both of them, their strategies are still different.

"Roots" and "home"

Q: Discussing the theme of "leaving one's country and nostalgia for one's roots," you have said that novelists wrestle excessively with the question of "where is my real homeland," and this topic becomes a major theme of their writings. Just recently many people have voiced their opinion on this, with some saying that if the issue of how to describe one's country is not resolved, if one doesn't first define the status of the place where one lives, works and has one's being, then this will severely hamper one's subsequent literary and artistic work and the collation of material. What's your view?

A: How a creative artist relates to his or her country naturally influences his or her ambitions, moods and goals. But today, on the level of discourse of Chinese culture in the broad sense, we already have this tradition of sympathy for the time and concern for the nation, and we have inherited its worst consequences. Of course, those writers with an extremely strong local consciousness can, according to their mental image of the nation, create a work which they think best expresses that nation. But this will not guarantee whether their work will be good or bad.

To give an example, the eight years of the War of Resistance against Japan were filled with blood and tears, and so that era ought to have produced some epic works of literature; or again a period like the Cultural Revolution should perhaps have spawned an epoch-making novel. But the best works written since the Cultural Revolution have not been the tear-ridden "scar literature."

In our present political environment, of course how we define our country has its importance and imperceptibly influences the direction of many people's creative work, so we can quite understand it if some people feel that if they don't first sort out this question, then they just can't sit down and write.

Sometimes this kind of resolve brings out the strength to resist an existing political power or ideological tradition; but now I'd like to point out a paradox: this kind of resolve can also turn into a laughable parody. For conversely, our original tradition has been taken hostage by our attempts to define the nation. If a writer does not have a lively approach and a broad imagination, he will do no more than conduct a dialogue with the existing discourse, repeating it within the very mold from which he had sought to break free. I don't think that will take us very far.

Is there a "pure" Chinese literature?

Q: So, as you mention in your book, when promoting Taiwanese novels, interpreting Taiwan's literature and introducing Taiwan's image, does the question of how we define our country create any practical difficulties for you as a professor of contemporary Chinese literature at a foreign university?

A: I was born and raised in Taiwan, and so of course I tend to present literature from Taiwan, and in fact I do so on principle. But I'm not so radical as to want to cast down all other Chinese literature.

When introducing or promoting Taiwan abroad, one immediately and very clearly runs up against the fact that literary and political geography are inextricably intertwined. For my Western students, "China" is the other China. Overseas there is no need to reject the other China, and to do so too vehemently would be pretentious. Basically, the principle we can accept is that we are all Chinese. This is one of my starting points for discussion when teaching Chinese literature in the USA.

How do we define what we call Chinese literature today? Especially contemporary Chinese literature? A Cheng's works are wonderful; but if you enquire where they have gained readers' attention, it's Taiwan; ask people in mainland China and they may well ask in return: "Who's A Cheng?"

On the other hand, is literature from Taiwan or Hong Kong Chinese literature? Basically perhaps they all fall within the concept of a cultural China. It would be really pathic if at the end of the 20th Century there are still some people who want to haggle over what is "pure-bred" Chinese literature.

I hope that in the States I'm not deliberately selling only literature from Taiwan. I also teach the Chinese works of Hong Kong authors and Chinese language authors living overseas. For me, Chinese literature is a concept developed through continuous dialogue, and its meaning is constantly changing.

Naturally I'm not a pure idealist either; we have to be clear about the interlinkage between the literary and political landscapes and about where we ourselves are located. There are many things which we can do little about, but the impediments are not so great that they can be used as an excuse. Sometimes I say to my students: If you study only mainland Chinese literature, you will misjudge the direction of modern Chinese literature. Anyone studying the development of Chinese modernism who has not thoroughly read around the literary tradition of the 1940's, or the Taiwanese works of the marvelous decade of the 1970's, will be missing out, and if one does not broaden one's view of China, one will be too narrow in one's outlook.

In today's international environment, the political landscape cannot be ignored. If we look at Taiwan's literature calmly, we needn't deliberately exaggerate its importance, but neither do we need to be unduly self-deprecating.

When no-one reads novels any more

Q: You believe that the evolution of the novel as a literary genre has links with the fate of China itself. Many people believe that the number of people reading and writing prose fiction today is gradually declining. What's the message in this?

A: When the image of China has broken down, perhaps the novel as a literary form will have fulfilled its historical mission. When the Chinese novel first appeared, writers of Liang Chi-chao's and Lu Hsun's generation called passionately for literature to be used to save the nation, and later politics has given either pressure or encouragement to novels and literature. These phenomena have continued right into the early 1990's.

What other country on the one hand so looks down on literature and on the other attaches so much importance to it? Where is this kind of love-hate relationship, or one might say the sense of mission which writers have taken upon themselves, stronger than in our country?

The universal craze for reading novels which was seen in mainland China in the early 1980's is now also gone. There's no denying that the novel is no match for the audio-visual media. Looking from another angle, perhaps the novel has to change from a mass medium to a "minority medium."

As a scholar of modern literature, I don't need to predict the death of literature, although from an academic standpoint the death of literature could also be a subject of research.

On the other hand, we have great respect for those people who still shut themselves up and write. Nowadays literary criticism is probably not written for the readers, but for writers, who are in the minority. From the standpoint of an observer of literature, this is a change in the literary environment which I can do nothing about. It was only a hundred years ago that the novel became a genre read by the masses; if you go back 200 years, Tsao Hsueh-chin's Dream of the Red Chamber was not written for the whole Chinese populace to read. And the development of literary genres does not necessarily need novels and drama, does it?

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(photo by Cheng Yuan-ching)

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(photo by Cheng Yuan-ching)