"This is only the beginning..."
Theory, last page, last line
Projecting a Self, With Static: Professor Zhao's rough, aggressive approach to the characters, themes and tropes of biographical writing in a world-literature context (world lit meaning English, American and Chinese, naturally). Through rough, at times relentlessly idealistic readings, Zhao derives his taste for autobiography, and launches a call for canonical, definitive biography writing in Chinese that comes with a striking top-ten list.
The book is divided into five chapters and sixteen subchapters, making a neat call for a Chinese canon according to strictly defined criteria based on readings in mostly English, with some reference to Chinese biographers from Sima Qian to Liang Qichao, Lu Xun, and at least one contemporary biographer, Han Shishan. Chapters one and two tackle a fundamental dichotomy in all biographical writing, that they intend to represent fact 事實 but are always already fictions -- 虛構 -- feigned facts fashioned for form's sake. From this investigation Zhao derives his key tool, 'biographical fact' 傳記事實, which will aid in his analysis of the structure and interpretation of biography. These are summed up in the final chapter, a gesture towards a canon of Chinese biographical writing that includes academic biographies, cultural revolution memoirs, and memoirs of life in Republican China -- all by recognized artists and intellectuals (as well as one public political intellectual in Taiwan, Li Ao).
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