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PARTISAN REVIEW
much scholarly attention outside of China. Contrary to the examples
given here, Yang experiments with longer forms in order perhaps to
evolve a broader poetic vision.
In fiction, forms longer than the short story are also
dominating current writing. The genre in vogue is the "medium–
length fiction"
(Zhongpian xiaoshuo),
novelettes composed of anywhere
between 20,000 and 80,000 Chinese characters, which often appear
in several thick, large-sized literary magazines:
The Contemporary, Oc–
tober, Harvest,
and
Flower City
being the famous "big four" that enjoy
nationwide circulation. A middle-ranged Chinese writer, seasoned
after years of political hardship, gave me the following rationale for
the popularity oflengthier fiction: the short story is a politically risky
genre because its very limited length makes it difficult to camouflage
its real message . Longer forms of fiction take longer to write: the
author can thus seek a convenient excuse not to respond to im–
mediate issues or the Party's campaign calls. On the other hand,
younger novelists are more affirmative and ambitious: they wish to
seize the artistic potential that the long novel affords, if only they
can - as they told me so many times - transform their experience
into art.
There has been much talk, both inside and outside of China,
about the possible emergence of the "great novel": in view of China's
recent past, there has been certainly no shortage of fictional
material. The Cultural Revolution has been viewed by the Chinese
as a "massive disaster"
(haojie)
which in the scale of human deaths
and suffering, if not genocidal intent, may be comparable to the
Jewish Holocaust. It will probably take many more years before the
magnitude of such a national experience can be fully confronted in
the collective memory of the Chinese themselves and expressed in
creative writing. The few small steps the young poets have made to–
ward personal remembrance lay the ground for better works to
come - works which bear a certain imprint of combined humanism
and modernism and which, because of this Chinese legacy of revolu–
tion and suffering, will inevitably depart in both style and spirit from
European modernism of the early twentieth century .
As in the past, literature in China is still irretrievably locked in
with politics and the Party . What distinguishes the post-Mao literary
scene from before is that for the first time in thirty years the Party is
ideologically on the defensive. As a result of its tacit de–
Maoification, the present leadership is left with no clear-cut ideology
of its own to counterpose to the literary dissidents. Mao, at least,
