NOTES OF A DESOLATE MAN
By CHU T'IEN-WEN
Translated by Howard Goldblatt and Sylvia Li-Chun Lin. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999. 169 pages, $19.95
Tony Giffone
Western readers hoping for specific insights into gay life in Taiwan or how the AIDS epidemic plays itself out in East Asia might be disappointed in the novel, which focuses on the private life rather than on public policy. Although there are differences in attitudes toward homosexuality between the West and Asia, emotions like grief, and the existential questions about the meaning of life that are triggered by premature death, transcend those cultural differences. Furthermore, while there are specific East Asian references (the media frenzy that greets rumors that a Japanese model has AIDS), many of the references and allusions in this heavily allusive novel are to figures of international pop culture (Barbra Streisand, Michael Jackson) that might suggest an international gay subculture. In short, at first glance, there doesn't seem to be anything specific to Taiwan about this novel from Taiwan.
The book-jacket blurb suggests that the focus on the marginal in the novel is a metaphor for the precarious existence of Taiwan, which exists on the margins of the People's Republic of China. It is possible for one to read the novel in this way, but I hope the suggestion doesn't place an expectation in the reader that the novel is more overtly political than it is. The novel does not stake out political territory, whether that of Taiwan politics or gay politics. As the narrator takes inventory of his life, recounting both long-term lovers and one-night stands, the novel provides a panorama of gay male life in Taiwan; the characters represent different age groups and different degrees of self-acceptance. The narrator himself, for instance, was much less politically active than his dying friend, but the novel refrains from making moral or political judgements about the characters attitudes toward their sexuality.
Aesthetically, the structure of the novel is more essayistic than dramatic. Long passages are given over to the narrator contemplating the meaning and impact certain works of art have had on him. It is tempting to think of these passages as digressions, but they really form the intellectual heart of the work. Ranging from discussions of artists (Rodin, Monet), to authors (Goethe, Mishima, T.S. Eliot), to philosophers (Levi-Strauss, Schopenhauer, Foucault), to filmmakers (Bergman, Bunuel, Fellini, Visconti, Fassbinder, Ozu, and Mizoguchi), many of these passages could be excerpted for their insights into their subject matter. Given Chu T'ien-wen's film credentials, it is not surprising that the most intriguing of these discussions revolve around filmmakers. The discussion of the role of the marginal figure in Fellini's La Strada, the discussion of Ozu's "masculine style," and the speculation that Ozu might have been a closeted gay are especially insightful. More than simply a vehicle for Chu T'ien-wen to sound off her own ideas, the insights offered on these artists reflect the intellectual predisposition of the narrator. These intellectual discussions shed light not only on Fellini and Ozu, but also on the narrator's frame of mind. This, then, is that rare book, one that insists that what a person thinks is as important as what a person does.
The de-emphasis on plot (what happens to a person) in favor of philosophical musings is a device associated with eastern European novelists (Milan Kundera most famously); it is much rarer in East Asian writers. This is a slim but richly complex novel that deserves a wide readership, mainly because of its insistence that the intellectual passions of a person are the most important passions of all.
Tony Giffone, an associate professor at the State University of New York, Farmingdale, has taught English in Hebei Province and is a consultant for the Chinese-American Education Exchange.