Story Note: Wang Zengqi's "Buddhist Initiation"

Wang Zengqi, folk culture expert, writer, editor of a volume on food writing I'd like to see. He also illustrated a reference work on the potato, which has me dreaming of a volume of food writing. (From Fang's introductory biography). Thanks to this blog for the picture.

Chinese Short Stories of the Twentieth Century: An Anthology in English by Zhihua Fang

My rating: 1 of 5 stars


I picked this up so I could read Fang's translation of "Buddhist Initiation" by Wang Zengqi. It's a ridiculously poor translation of a story that already lacks conflict and tension.



The introduction to the book has some real howlers, e.g. Fang on the 1980s in China: "It was a magic, romantic and wondrous time that will never be again." Astoundingly, Fang's bumbling historical introduction does not even mention "Buddhist Initiation."



I can see no reason to look at this volume, unless you need to read stories by Gao Xiaosheng, Tie Ning and/or Wang Zengqi quickly, in poor English that will leave you suspecting that Chinese literature really is inferior.



(Apparently the "Garland Reference Library of the Humanities" is another one of those near-vanity publishers that will publish practically anything, with no attempt to vet or consult with peers in the field.)



Finally, a response to the story "Buddhist Initiation," at least in this English translation:



Wang Zengqi’s “Buddhist Initiation” is about a town where a Buddhist monastery and an earthy citizenry exist in harmony. People love and respect the monks, even though the monks don't obey the vinaya codes that prohibit eating meat and having sex. The story drifts from scene to scene with lyrical writing about land, as well as detailed portraits of the various monks, children, old ladies, street merchants, etc. etc. that fill the town. There is a sort of a protagonist, a child named Mingzi who wants to be a monk, but also likes this one girl Yingzi. Will he be able to have both? Yes.



Like so much of Mark Twain's writing, place and language are bound so tightly together, this piece is probably not a good choice for translation. As Carolyn FitzGerald has suggested in Modern Chinese Literature and Culture, we can apply David Wang's term "imaginary nostalgia" to describe the idealized network of landscape and portrait that comprises these compositions. Note that I say "compositions" and not "stories" because landscape and portrait do not a story make.







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Reapproaching Positive Thinking 1

Maureen Dowd, a New York Times columnist that academics love to hate. Well, that's one point in her favor...

At the IABA 2010 conference, Nancy K. Miller mentioned Maureen Dowd’s June 1, 2010 column “A Storyteller Loses the Story Line” as evidence of the popular equivalence between the story of recovery and recovery itself. Miller seemed to me clearly following Barbara Ehrenreich, and when I brought this up with her she just nodded -- “I’m just nodding here, you’re so right,” she said. In any case, when I heard that Dowd had taken an interest in storytelling, however utilitarian, my interest was piqued, and so I read some Dowd. The climax of Dowd’s June 1 column is as follows:

In “Dreams From My Father,” Obama showed passion, lyricism, empathy and an exquisite understanding of character and psychological context — all the qualities that he has stubbornly resisted showing as president. It was a book that promised a president who could see into the hearts of other people. But there’s so much you don’t learn about candidates in campaigns, even when they seem completely exposed.

This president has made it clear that he’s not comfortable outside whatever domain he’s defined. But unless he wants his story to be marred by a pattern of passivity, detachment, acquiescence and compromise, he’d better seize control of the story line of his White House years. Woe-is-me is not an attractive narrative.

We can see here something of what Miller means when she speaks of an equivalence between the story’s positive and the real positive that is so desired. Dowd took the qualities Obama assigns himself in his life story for qualities he would take into his presidency. Obama doesn’t display those qualities in the story as Dowd sees it today, hence Dowd’s lack of satisfaction. Miller deduces a much stronger, and more stupid, reading here: Dowd wants Obama to come up with a story that seems more positive, and thus more attractive. Damn the facts. But a more sympathetic reading of Dowd is available to us. She wants Obama to display the qualities that he displayed before. She may even believe, as I do, that he really is an empathic and well-meaning man, but simply unable to project in this moment of multiple, interrelated crises. So her meaning may be for him to project what she still believes from his earlier story to actually, really be there. Miller makes this sound very bad indeed: a confusion of story and reality. But what needles me in both Miller and Ehrenreich is that in their current “realist” moment they deny any application to positive-seeking vision. I’ll be working to respond to this -- in part with the very careers of these thinkers.

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