Craft in the Real World by Matthew Salesses

Author:Matthew Salesses
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781948226813
Publisher: Catapult
Published: 2020-10-29T00:00:00+00:00

For historical help, I will rely on the book Chinese Theories of Fiction, by Ming Dong Gu, which is the rare book that attempts a systematic classification of Chinese narrative theory—in English, by a scholar of Chinese descent. Most of the field of Chinese narrative theory is written by white scholars. Scholars of the Chinese diaspora have tended to focus on historical perspectives and/or studies of individual classic works. Gu himself is forced to spend chunks of his book pointing out this lack. In order to move his field forward, he first has to take it apart by showing that many leading white scholars have misunderstood, or even ignored, Chinese narratological tradition. He quotes Western scholars’ claims that Chinese fiction includes an “undefinable inadequacy” and is “vaguely wanting.” Gu argues that what Western scholars see as idiosyncrasies are not inadequacies; rather, “they are characteristic features that grew out of the philosophical, social, cultural, and aesthetic conditions” of a distinctly Chinese narratological tradition.

Gu is fantastically categorical. He lists ten ways in which Chinese tradition is different from Western tradition: (1) Chinese fiction comes from street talk and gossip, not the epic or the romance; (2) the main narrative might be accompanied by commentary from another fictional character included or not in the story; (3) the narrator or author can interrupt at any time and point out the fictionality of the work (as in metafiction); (4) the author and reader may show up within the story as themselves (sometimes associated with postmodernism); (5) the inclusion of multiple unreliable narrators; (6) the fantastic is a part of the everyday world (as in magical realism); (7) intertextuality, especially the inclusion of poems and songs; (8) multiple conflicting points of view; (9) episodic structure; and (10) a mix of formal language with vernacular or even vulgar language.

Some of these characteristics are found in Western fiction but have been anticipated by Chinese writers hundreds of years earlier. The foundational difference is that Chinese fiction has always existed in opposition to historical narrative. History recorded the official versions; fiction, when it was recorded, were the stories common folk told each other, the unofficial versions, and reflect this in their craft. In this context, for example, it makes sense for Chinese fiction to insist that any narrative has a teller and that the teller may or may not be reliable—and to include multiple tellers. The vulgarity and vernacular may also be meant to disrupt official storytelling.

Asian American fiction often contains a similar challenge to official history. When I teach Asian American literature or Asian American Studies, there are always some students who have never heard of the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II (I have stopped being surprised by this), and if they have heard of it, the narrative they know is usually that Japanese Americans went smilingly into these camps as a way to prove their Americanness. In fact, there was resistance, including violent resistance, and extreme internal and external conflict. Japanese American fiction often records stories of deep struggle before, during, and after the incarceration.

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