Modern Chinese Writers: Self-portrayals [Hardcover]

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.Gathers personal reflections on life and literature by 44 of China's leading authors, aiming to show how Chinese society and its creative writing have supported, competed and fought with each other for the past 40 years. The essays cover war, revolution, betrayal and commitment.Martin, Helmut; Kinkley, Jeffrey C.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 Generatl³$