When I was an undergraduate I was close friends with a Chinese girl, someone who came up to Cambridge in the same year. We keep in touch, though she’s now back home. When I first met her I remember she invariably carried a particular book with her, one she dipped in to from time to time. I knew her well enough to guess it wasn’t the Thoughts of Chairman Mao, but when I asked what it was I was no less surprised. She was reading Self-Help, the classic text of Victorian self-improvement by Samuel Smiles. I gather it’s quite the thing in modern China.
I was reminded of this on reading a piece by Giles Coren in The Times recently on the popularity of nineteenth century literature in the People’s Republic. Chinese television companies have seemingly been snapping up BBC adaptations of Jane Eyre, Bleak House, Our Mutual Friend and Vanity Fair. And the masses are thrilled!
As Coren says there is no great surprise in this; for our past is their present, a present of Gradgrind-style capitalism; of urban crime, of pollution, of dust heaps, of smog and corruption. Think just how relevant the work of Dickens is;
…in the land of child labour and a partial slave economy, the story of Oliver Twist regains its original political urgency. In the West it has become a soppy musical love story but in China there is nothing funny or sweet or nostalgic about hordes of unwanted children, turned out by their parents for economic reasons, sent to the workhouse or falling into a life of crime.
Even the mushy nostalgia of A Christmas Carol has an appeal for people longing for forms of mythical social harmony, except in the Chinese version of the story when Scrooge leans out of his window on Christmas morning he calls on the passing boy to go to the butcher and fetch not the prize turkey but the biggest aromatic crispy duck he has!
Vanity Fair is a rave for very much the same reason, I suspect, as Self-Help. It’s the story of Becky Sharp, my favourite Victorian heroine, the original social climber, unscrupulous, ruthless and treacherous, about as far removed from the communist ideal as it’s possible to get, a new model for a new age. It’s the great panorama that the Chinese are clearly looking for, something that the Victorians did so well, something that most modern writers simply cannot match.
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ReplyDeleteComrade Sharp!
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ReplyDeleteThanks Comrade Ana and Mister GON!
ReplyDeleteI did remember, during my late teen (80s) there were overwhelmingly western "cultural invasion". I feel grateful for those early Chinese intellects for such a massive amount of translations of western literatures. I still remember how I could not wait to watch the tv show of David Copperfield every night (everybody knew about Dickens), and only wish I had a grandma like that skinny Betty. And it was even a "fashion" to have a recitation from movie Jane Eyre in parties, formal or not. All movies were excellent transliterated in Chinese. There were even some radio programs for those fictions. Most of what I know about classical western literatures were from that period of time.
However, the direction of contemporary China is worrisome, I believe. too much American pop cultural influence, too materialist.
Yes, Chinese people have very patriotic stomach so good job on that part Ana!
Yes, a great book and Becky Sharp is a true heroine. Thackeray was tapping into something when he wrote her. Have you seen the film GHOSTS about the Chinese cockle workers that were drowned? I've wanted to write a poem about the tragedy but did/have not.
ReplyDeleteSharp's the word.
ReplyDeleteYun yi, I've enjoyed some of the classics of Chinese literature, including Monkey.
ReplyDeleteRehan, she is. No, I have not. I'll see if I can track it down. You must let me know if you write your poem. I'd love to read it.
ReplyDeleteDavid, the other Sharp I like is over the hills and far away. :-)
ReplyDeleteI'll be honest with you Ana, I've never actually read Vanity Fair, I've only seen six or seven movie versions with my mother (same with all of Jane Austens books.) My mother's a great deal more in to Victorian literature then I am, I'm generally more in to literature of the Old West like Jack London, Mourning Dove and Rolvaag along with responses to the Old West like Ray Bradburys' "Martian Chronicles" (set on Mars, but purposefully paralleling American history) and Sherman Alexie, and frontier histories like the great whimsical story of Seattle from 1851-1903 called "Sons of the Profits" (no I did not misspell that) and Dana's great journey at sea entitled "Two years before the mast," a favorite book for its detailed descriptions of Spanish California. Those are more the hayday of Western Civilization (pardon the pun) that I came to appreciate growing up in the Pacific Northwest.
ReplyDeleteIn my studies of the Old West, I really come to admire the tenacity, openness, loyalty, love of adventure, naive kindness, and frontier wisdom of characters like Father Roubeau, the Malamute Kid, and the husband of the main family from "Giants in the Earth" by Rolvaag, the mysticism and humanity of the Indian spirits and animal characters present in the stories of Dove, Alexie, and some of the stories of London and the humility and understanding of the world that they instill, and the moral clarity provided by "monsters" like Captain Wolf Larsen (in some ways a little like Becky Sharp in the films) and the main wife from "Giants in the Earth," along with the big world government that eventually destroys what the Martian settlers had created in the "Martian Chronicles."
Even the South is really based off of the England of old, people who couldn't adapt, for varying reasons, to Victorian England and its immediate predecessor, including both Romantics who wanted to be noble lords and hated the bourgeoise, Olster Scots who hated Victorian conformity, and debtors who couldn't handle the additional responsibility of Victorian freedom. That's actually part of its charm. It must have been strange for those debtors in Georgia, let out of prison in shame, only to be in the position of being able to own land and make something of themselves for the first time in their lives. People always criticize the slave owning so much, and while it was a travesty, it was a travesty created by centuries of tradition and hierarchy, a history that in and of itself was necessary for its time, that inevitably led there and could not go anywhere else.
I assume the books must be very different, as the Becky Sharp in the films seems to be a fairly cut and dry character. Not quite 2-D, but close, though I do know that there are a lot of things you can do in print that you can't do on a movie screen, so this may not really be the fault of the directors as much as the medium.
Then, Jeremy, you are in for a real treat if you ever do! Becky is a remarkably modern character, outrageous now, even more outrageous then. I suppose you might describe her as the original gold digger, quite an innovation for Victorian literature, when most female characters had a pre-allocated role in life, whether it is Jane Austen’s Emma or Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre. No film could possibly do justice to her complex character. So, be adventurous: dive! I’m convinced you will love Vanity Fair for all sorts of reasons, not just for the character of Becky but because it offers a panoramic view of a particular period in English history.
ReplyDeleteI’m not quite sure how exactly you would define the literature of the Old West. I’ve read just about all of Jack London, and while White Fang and The Call of the Wild would obviously fit within the genre, The Iron Heel or Sea Wolf would not. Wolf Larsen, incidentally, is one of my favourite characters from American literature, with all of the virtues, and the vices, of a particular kind of self-reliant human being. I do think he and Becky would have a lot in common, in that both come close to the ideal of the amoral Nietzchean superman! I simply adore Huckleberry Finn, though again I’m not sure if that could be described as ‘Old West’, more Old South.
I haven’t read any of the other people you mention here, though I’ve hugely enjoyed the stories of Bret Harte and Frank Norris’ Octopus, which I suppose, in a way, does count as Old West, if one includes California, though I think you have something more specific in mind. I’ve never read any ‘westerns’ as such, though I do have a copy of The Oregon Trail somewhere among my collection. But the next big American book I have my eye on is John Dos Passos’ USA.
I don't mean Westerns so much as Western writers, and Jack London counts because he grew up there. He's a part of that society, and characters like Wolf Larsen are a part of the West even though Larsen is at sea. I haven't read the Iron Heel though - have you read many of Jack Londons Short Stories? They're generally my favorites.
ReplyDeleteI definitely should read "Vanity Fair," I can definitely believe it would be much more amazing in print.
Ah, thanks, Jeremy; I wasn't sure but the term 'Old West' tends to conjure up Westerns for me. Yes, you are right; Larsen is part of the tradition you allude to. I honestly don't think you would like Iron Heel unless you share London's views on politics and eugenics. I might write something about this here in the near future. It's not a great book anyway. I've read some of his short stories and really enjoyed them. What I did not enjoy was John Barleycorn, his memoir of his days as an alcoholic, which struck me as being deeply dishonest in parts.
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ReplyDeleteYes, Adam, I know that song but not this version; so I shall have a listen.
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ReplyDeleteYes, it's good. I've added it to my YouTube favourites, the second today, following a recommendation from Brendano.
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ReplyDelete@Mister Garrie's One Nation, i love the music. sad and beautiful.
ReplyDelete@JJ & Ana, I also love Jack London when I was young. I mean "younger"! And I too, never read "Vanity Fair".
@Ana, there is only one Chinese classic book I could think of about "monkey" and I have not read it, even though I know the story well enough to criticize it. There are not a whole lot of long fictions in classic Chinese literature but there are massive amount of poetry & prose, which I love much more than Chinese fictions.
Yun yi, yes I read a lot of traditional Chinese poetry also, as well as Mencius, all part of a course I did on Chinese history and culture. But when I was yonger I loved traditional folk tales, which I read by the dozen, including those of China.
ReplyDeleteI see. I didn't read Mencius. I loathe Confucianism. Taoism is better. I think Zhuang Zhi is really a piece of art work.
ReplyDeleteOh, have you heard about Chinese Nietzche "Lu Xun"? He is the only one true independent thinker I could think of this thousands years long chinese history. His short stories are brilliant.
I am trying to read "Hard Time" now, during my "hard time". lol
I found Mencius intriguing, though stifly formal. Yes, I loved The Madman's Diary. A hard time, indeed. Good luck.
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excellent! i am truly impressed that how much you have read Ana:-)
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