A Spokeswoman for Marginal Groups--Chu Tien-hsin

Q. From the perspective of readers familiar with such books as Days Aboard the Square Boat, "Chi-jang" Song and all the way down to I Remember, which was published in recent years, Thinking of My Brothers of the Military Dependents' Village seems suddenly to evoke a "middle-aged mood." When writers who were famous as youths approach middle age, they often fear they won't be able to break new ground, or else they become self-satisfied and give up writing. How have you handled the heart's bumpy road from youth to middle age? Have you had struggles and vacillations?

A fear of repetition

A. The problem of breaking new ground has never existed for me. I am someone who fears repetition and thus have been afraid of being conscious of the reader's existence or of postulating why readers liked my work. If I became conscious of all this, I couldn't keep writing. I'd feel like I was "manufacturing" an object to please the readers. Commercial writers, on the other hand, precisely seek after the elements that the readers like, thinking that these are the keys to success. They use this knowledge to create similar work over a stretch of time.

My situation isn't like this. When the autobiographical work I wrote while at Taipei's First Girls' High School, "Chi-jang" Song, was published, it sold quite well, and there was still a lot of stuff to write about. The various thoughts and emotions of teenagers hadn't been exhausted. But as soon as I was conscious about how much the readers liked it, I felt that no matter how I wrote, it would be repetitive, and I wasn't willing to do it again.

My predicament is that I hate repetition, but this doesn't mean that breaking through is any easier. Perhaps writers have deeper feelings for life than others, but if you aren't especially diligent, just like anyone else, you'll have your problems and breaking through won't be easy. It can come to the point where you are trapped by the problems of life or by doubt about society, and for two or three years you won't be able to write at all. When some writers face such a crisis, they may turn around and write the same kind of stuff they had been writing earlier. But I think that repetition is the most horrible fate of all. There were one or two long stretches of time when I stopped writing because I was unwilling to write on old themes and new themes were as yet unformed.

Observing society over the long term

Q. In that case, what was this book distilled from?

A. I'm not in the habit of having a grand plan when I write. I don't first plan the themes for an entire book. The idea of these characters being from six marginal groups was something entirely gleaned by the publishers. I didn't consciously seek out six groups so I could act as their spokeswoman. Rather I am full of interest about every-day life and made detailed observations. I think that this comes from living. Even if I hadn't written these six stories, my life would be no different. It's not as if because I want to write something today, I will live differently and will care less or more about people.

Q. This "record of contemporary life" is practically a reflection of society in miniature. The stories lets us contemplate various problems, such as why the older generation from military dependents' villages lived on through the difficulties of war, whereas those of the modern generation like A-li-sa, with their material needs answered, decide against life.

A. The question of survival is very thought provoking. We often think that human problems equal economics, and hence some people believe that solving political and economic problems would solve all of the problems of humanity. I have always felt this to be a fallacy. The social welfare policies of the Scandinavian countries, where the government looks after people from cradle to grave, are the best in the world. But the rates of suicide there are also the world's highest. Unlike other animals, getting one's fill of food and drink and being able to procreate easily is not enough for mankind. We also have great spiritual needs. An easy life in which nothing much happens is enough to make some people happy, but others need curiosity about an uncertain future to have the will to live on. With the knowledge that their future is stable, the former will live on happily, whereas the latter, knowing that they can live on in the same way until they are 70 or 80, may lose the will to live, feeling they are merely on a march to the grave. They fear a future that is certain and without mystery. I think A-li-sa is one of these kind of people.

An anxious generation

Q. What is your view of the so-called "spenders," the young people who spend their salaries on dressing up, buying name brands and traveling abroad, while renting a studio apartment?

A. My feelings are complex. I envy them in some ways but in other ways find them hard to stomach. Who was it that said our frequent complaints about this generation being spendthrift and ungrateful aren't really very fair since our and the older generation's hard work was done in the hope that the younger generation could enjoy precisely this kind of life? As soon as they are living such a life and enjoying the fruits without burdens, we worry about their attitude toward life, feeling anxious and ill at ease and hoping that they know what struggle is. It's a dilemma. I'm not sure how I think about them.

Q. The "Brothers of the Military Dependents' Village," "A Kangaroo Mother," and "A Record of Death" are all to some degree or another reflections of yourself, but how did you think of writing a political story like "Putao Tailang."

A. In talking about stories, I am always afraid that I'll have to explain the entire origin of the story, which shows that the story wasn't persuasive enough itself. I can only say that this was a story of one of my relatives and what he actually did is nothing more than what I described.

Of course, not all of the political prisoners in the world are of this type. I feel that in Chen Ying-chen's work, political prisoners are made either into saints or oppressed victims. As I see it, they were overlooked in their day; their political thoughts were not tolerated in their own times. There is a Western proverb to the effect that those who know first are always oppressed. Whether or not they have vision of the future, at least the vision different. After sitting in jail for decades, on getting out one will feel disconnected both from society and even from one's family. Socialism has high ideals, and if one's family doesn't understand these ideals, it will regard the prisoner as crazy. Unless you decide to have a political career, having a political prisoner in one's family won't be an asset. Unless someone plays the "victim's family member card" for a political career, a political prisoner is usually a burden for the family. Now most people mold them into heroes and want only to worship them and not to sympathize with them and understand them. Sympathizing with them isn't looking down on them and saying how pathetic they are, but rather understanding their emotions.

Changing personas

Q. Is there any particular reason that many of the narrators in this collection are male?

A. This was indeed intentional, but it has nothing to do with the equality of the sexes. My stories all use first-person narratives. If I were directly to use a woman who is a native of Taipei in her thirties, how could one distinguish this from my personal essays? In non-fiction, I use first-person narration. But I am after all writing fiction and I felt I might come off as overcautious and indecisive--uncomfortable and restrained. If I were a man, perhaps I would use a woman as the narrator as a way to temporarily leave myself and grab hold of a different point of view.

Q. As soon as it was published, this book garnered great attention and was the source of much critical discussion. One critic said that reading your stories is "an easy way to get acquainted with various kinds of characters of the age" but wondered if future readers will have the same kind of sensitivity to them when the trendy stuff and jargon becomes dated? How do you feel about this?

A. They have reason to worry. Literature, after all, is different from news. Literature chases after the eternal questions and not those that will be washed away by time. But the relationship between the two is very subtle. I think my work will have to stand the test of time. For example, we have no obstructions when reading such '30s writers as Chang Ai-ling, Shen Tsung-wen or Chien Chung-shu. It's interesting to see how all of these writers at the time were members of the "in" school of proletarian literature. Looking at Pa Chin's work today is just like watching the 8︰00 serials, exciting and emotionally jarring. But at the time, it was full of the consciousness of the era, against tradition and the corruption of the so-called "feudalistic influences." Now that contemporary literature doesn't deal with such topics, it is hard for us to imagine how much Chinese families were once burdened with dogma.

Literature chases the eternal

These writers did not make literature a tool for their own political ideologies, and hence they chased after the eternal themes--love, life and death, values--so that we can read them without obstacles created by the passage of time. There is a basis for the critics' worries, but it will take the test of time to see if they will become dated or not. It's like Gabriel Garcia Marquez's descriptions of South Americans at the end of the last century. Now we look at these works with a completely different frame of mind. It's not a problem of whether or not we accept it but rather finding the right kind of perspective to enjoy it. I can't completely immodestly say that their worries are overstated, believing that I have caught a glimpse of eternity, but I think that something that is fashionable today will not necessarily become meaningless tomorrow.

Q. There are still other critics who hold that the writing style in this book is quite special, that it makes use of both discussion and description, creating a new kind of "commentary-fiction." What do you think about this?

A. A story's form and technique are not worth fussing about. Many writers like to use appearance and profession to describe their characters. But I think that regardless of how you write, you're not going to outdo Chang Ai-ling. On the one hand, I know that my technique with words isn't particularly strong, and on the other hand, I'm not interested in detailed observations of people's exteriors. In observing people, writers emphasize different things; I'm interested in what's in their heads.

But I think it's a mistake to see my stories as expository essays. After all, I write fiction. There has never been a static definition for fiction. Its meaning changes as the general environment does. Creators are always trying to break out from the established forms. Most people are used to the mainstream forms, but I have given up on description through life history and plot and have grabbed onto thought as a way to describe someone.

[Picture Caption]

(photo by Vincent Chang)