Trimming the Book List

There's just too much to read. How to narrow down what is worthwhile, what a waste? As I go into a more leisurely reading mode in the next week, I'll record some of my experiences choosing what I read, and what I don't.

Narrowing Your Scope With Reviews

Jeffrey Kinkley's translation of a memoir with similar themes and tropes as Yang Jiang's Six Chapters of a Cadre School immediately strikes this reader as a useful exercise in examining the technique of choosing, translating and introducing a Chinese autobiography. But the only review I've seen so far of the book convinces me that I should begin by looking at the book as mistake to ever have translated; quite possibly I'll only need to read the introduction and a few short excerpts to get all that I'll need from this volume. A better choice for full-scale study is Traveler Without a Map, a similar memoir Kinkley translated just the year before. More on that later.

Chen, Xuechao 陈学昭. Surviving the Storm: A Memoir. Translated by Jeffrey Kinkley. NY: M.E. Sharpe (Foremother legacies: Armonk), 1990.

Chen Xuezhao : Intellectually Dull?

Reviewer Sylvia Chan could hardly have harsher words for this book and its author:

The book is dreary, emotionless, and an unreflective account of all the events experienced by Chen since the early 1950s. So intellectually dull is she that she had nothing interesting to report even about the visit to China by Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, whom she escroted around. Even the most outrageous injustice done to her seems to have provoked in her no emotions or thoughts other than a resolve to study even harder the works of Marx, Lenin and Mao!

And in conclusion,

It stands as a testimony to the inhuman process whereby one of China's most spirited and talented artists has been driven to a 'slow self-willed death'. This would be the only plausible reason why the editor and translators should have wanted to introduce this otherwise dull and worthless book to English readers.

Ouch. But wait, don't forget my favorite part:

Chen Xuezhao....lacks the talent of a Yang Jiang.

Yay! Win. So it seems considerable skill is necessary to find memoirs that work for the target readership. What exactly is necessary? Once again, Ms. Chan:

A familiar story such as this would be well worth reading if the author could convey her complex inner feelings and personal reflections during the years of trials and tribulations.

How do we grade a work for conveyance of inner feelings? This is a much more complicated question I'll address in 'baby steps' in the next few weeks.