Modern Chinese Writers: Self-portrayals

by Helmut Martin, Jeffrey C. Kinkley

Overview

This volume gathers personal reflections on life and literature by 44 of China's leading authors. It aims to illustrate how Chinese society and its creative writing have supported, competed and fought with each other for the past 40 years and more. Much of what is revealed here is mundane, but the pressure of bringing art to social and political causes, indeed the universal pressure to survive, forges this collection into a very human document. The strengths and weaknesses of these essays offer a window on those of modern Chinese literature itself. Realism was the favoured literary doctrine of the day, and, reflecting this, most of these essays speak for themselves - about war, revolution, betrayal and commitment.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780873328166
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	07/31/1992
Series:	Studies on Modern China
Pages:	424
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)
Lexile:	1150L (what's this?)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Martin, Helmut; Kinkley, Jeffrey C.

Table of Contents

Overview: Chinese Writers on Writing, Retrospective Introduction, Enforced Silence or Emigre Uncertainties: Options for Chinese Writers after a Decade of Experiments and Growth, Contributors, I. LITERATURE FROM THE PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC HISTORICAL BLUNDERS, The Enigmatic Laughter oflnsanity: A Modern Love Story, A Written Testimonial: About the Cultural Revolution, I Am Not Solzhenitsyn: From an Eyewitness of the Labor Camps, On Behalf of Humanism: The Confession of a Former Leftist, FURTHER VICTIMS OF POLITICS IN THE EIGHTIES, Against Those Who Wield the Scissors: A Plea for an End to Censorship, China's Contemporary Literature: Reaching Out to the World and to the Future, Reflections in the Hot Springs of Hakone: China, Our Impoverished, Tmuble-Ridden Motherland, PATTERNS OF THE NEW LITERATURE, Banished to Xinjiang: Or, About Bestial Hatred of Literature, Novels Strangled in the Cradle: My Senseless Literary Battles, Spokesman for a Victimized Generation: Can There Be Progress after Midlife?, After Twenty Years of Silence We Lick Our Wounds: Our Battle for a Place in World Literature, ACCOUNTS OF RURAL REALITIES, Thrusts of Violent Creativity: ''I Returned with My Hands Empty and Shame on My Face, The Slow Maturation of My Craft: Tea in Cold Water Steeps Slowly, Life Is Changing, Even in Hilly Shangzhou, RISING IN PROTEST: A NEW GENERATION, The First Half of My Life: A Boy from the City Struggling for Survival in Far-Away Yunnan, AGAINST COMPLACENCY: WOMEN WRITERS, The Boat I Steer: A Study in Perseverance, Needed: A Spirit of Courageous Self-Examination, DOCUMENTARY LITERATURE, Is Reportage to Be Excluded from the Realm of Literature? The Function of Warning Bells, A ''Bengal Tigress'' Interviews Herself: A Panorama of Our Times from Within, THE SEARCH FOR ROOTS, After the Literature of the Wounded: Local Cultures, Roots, Maturity, and Fatigue, COMBINING PAST AND PRESENT, We Must Not Forget Our Historical Roots: Popular Literature, Peking Opera, and Modern Prose, AN ABRUPT END TO PRC LITERATURE OF THE EIGHTIES, The June 4 Syndrome: Spiritual and Ideological Schizophrenia, II. WITHOUT A REGIME OR A REGIMEN: ENTERTAINMENT FICTION ADVENTURE NOVELS, Against the Authors of Foreign Books in Chinese Language: An Interview with China's Most Popular Writer of Adventure Novels, III. CHINESE LITERATURE FROM TAIWAN MODERNISTS AND SEMI-EMIGRES, The Chinese Student Movement Abroad: Exiled Writers in the New World, On the Miseries of Writers in American Exile: Sanitized Versions for Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the People's Republic, Such a Symphony of Written Characters One Must Not Allow to Disperse, THE NATIVE REALISTS: BLACK HUMOR AND OTHER EXPERIMENTS, How Love Scatters: On the Publication of the First Collection of My Works, Father's Writings Have Been Republished: Or, The Sexuality of Women Students in a Taibei Bookstore, Things Chinese and Foreign, Ancient and Modern: An Absurd Comedy, IDEOLOGISTS, Against Taiwan's Orphan Mentality: The Author as His Own Critic, Native Literature as a Stimulus for Social Change: From a Writing Career to Political Activism, ALIENATION, WITHDRAWAL, AND DISSENT, Cold Ashes in the Heart: The Tragedy of Taiwanese Literature, Concern About the Native Land: On the Taking of a Pseudonym, NEW GENERATIONS, From Taibei's Suburbs: Into the Hubbub of Taiwan's Economic Miracle, Protest of a Woman Author Against Reckless Accusations: Another Self-Interview, This Time from Taibei, Vanished Virility: Stories-My Last Remaining Castle, IV. THE REPUBLICAN ERA REVISITED CHANGING TIMES, Suppressed Furor Against Foreign Troops: An Unwritten Novel and a Play about the Boxer Uprising, A Literary Outcry: Awakening from Unconsciousness, My J'accuse Against This Moribund System: Notes on a Crumbling Landlord Clan of Western Sichuan, Shanghai's Silk Industry: World Economic Crisis, Workers, and Civil War, NEW FORMS OF SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS, Fiction and Society: Changes and Continuities in Mass Audiences, International Shanghai, 1941: Coffee House Chat about Sexual Intimacy and the Childlike Charm of the Japanese, Foolish Dreams: Like a Blind Person Going Fishing, Early Autobiographical Fragments: A Young Sojourner in a Foreign Land, Glossary, Translators and Writers Translated, Bibliographies, Index

Editorial Reviews

A collection of 44 essays by 43 leading 20th-century Chinese writers, this volume presents unprecedented insight into the writer's mind through personal reflections on literature, the craft of writing, censorship, life, and politics as it influences litera ture. Divided both geographically (People's Republic of China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong) and chronologically (the last eight essays date from the Republican Period), the pieces are often both moving and enlightening. Especially poignant are essays by writers who suffered imprisonment or banishment for their ideas and publications, mostly in China during the Cultural Revolution and following the Tiananmen Square incident but in Taiwan as well. While many of the writers are well known here (e.g., Liu Binyan, Chen Ruoxi, and Lu Xun), others have never been translated. To deal with the problem of competing romanizations, transliteration uniformly appears in pinyin . Recommended for both lay readers and scholars.-- D.E. Perushek, Univ. of Tennessee Libs., Knoxville

Library Journal

Writing about writing is a recognized and respected genre in Chinese literature, usually taking the form of autobiographical essays in which writers explain how they pursue their craft amidst the political, economic, emotional, and artistic conditions of their world. Selected for their varying perspectives, 44 such essays reveal personal insights on the past 40 years of Chinese life. Paper edition (unseen), $22. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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