Gao links

[David Morris]

>From: Arne Herløv Petersen I have added a few Gao Xingjian links to my 
>homepage at
>
>http://inet.uni2.dk/~herlahp

One link there is none too complimentary:
http://www.theage.com.au/books/20000814/A3040-2000Aug14.html

Chinese water torture
By LINDA JAIVIN

"On page 453 of the literary hybrid that is Soul Mountain, Gao Xingjian 
accuses himself of being a failed modernist. He then launches into a 
discourse on the nature and purpose of fiction, one sentence of which goes 
on for nearly two pages. By this point, most readers will have decided 
either that Gao has unfortunately demonstrated his point or triumphantly 
disproved it."

AND

"When in reality, Gao meets an ``ugly'' woman of middle age, he can barely 
disguise his contempt. Gao was no spring chicken himself; he was in his 40s 
when he embarked on his journey. Yet the women he encounters are of interest 
to him only so far as they are nubile and at least theoretically open to his 
charms, and he declares proudly that he will never ``submit to a woman'' or 
be ``a woman's slave''. Puh-lease.

Yes, I'm guilty of applying the non-culturally relativistic values of a 
Western feminist to my reading of Soul Mountain. But I'm also speaking as 
someone who's read widely in the Chinese literature of the 1980s, in Chinese 
as well as English. Even in cultural context, on this subject anyway, Gao is 
hopelessly derriere-guard."




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