Family Catastrophe.

Williams, Philip F.

Readers of mainline twentieth-century Chinese fiction rarely encounter a complexly drawn and compelling paternal figure such as Jia Zheng of Cao Xueqin's eighteenth-century masterpiece, A Dream of Red Mansions. Even though memorable maternal characters abound in the stories of Lu Xun and Wu Zuxiang, about the closest approximation to a father figure visible in their .works is the occasional uncle. Since the modern Chinese father has not actually walked away from his family nearly so frequently as the contemporary American father has, his relative absence in modern Chinese fictional portrayals of the family points less to demographic realities than to the authorial predicament of adequately handling questions of authority so often linked to paternal figures, especially in a Confucian cultural context. Rapid, uneven, and often baffling sociocultural changes in modern China have intensified this authorial predicament, which surfaces prominently in the earlier and more acclaimed of the Taiwan writer Wang Wen-hsing's two novels, Family Catastrophe (Jia bian), which was originally serialized in the Taipei journal Chung-wai Literary Monthly in 1972 and was first published in book form the following year.

The novel consists of over 150 sections which vary in length from a couple of lines to several pages. The bachelor protagonist Fan Yeh dominates most of the narrative present with his reactions to the mysterious disappearance of his elderly father, especially during his extended journeys in search of the old man. Yet the numerous short sections of the novel facilitate cinematic flashbacks to various episodes from Fan Yeh's childhood that flesh out his ambivalent feelings toward his parents, particularly his father. Emotionally, Fan Yeh oscillates between heartfelt concern for his father and impatience, even disgust, with the old man. The harsher emotions appear to prevail, for Fan Yeh finally launches an outspoken attack upon the Confucian obligations of filial piety, bitterly vowing to cut off the family line by avoiding marriage and childrearing as entanglements of suffering.

On the second anniversary of his father's mysterious disappearance, Fan Yeh and his mother have tacitly abandoned their search for the old man and appear content and even refreshed upon this release from their burden of looking for him. In allegorical terms, the eclipse of the Confucian paternal authority figure has become a process of relief and emotional unburdening to the remaining family members, who no longer perceive a need for a central figure of familial authority. Aside from this allegorical dimension, the novel dramatizes many typical stresses on the modern family in Taiwan, including fierce wifely jealousy over the husband's real or imagined infidelity, sky-high parental expectations of generous financial support in their old age from their sons, and stubborn parental illusions about keeping even their grown-up children emotionally dependent upon the elders.

The translation is very readable, and brief postscripts by both author and translator sketch the author's literary background and interests. Yet the translator somewhat overstates the negative local critical reaction to Family Catastrophe, since an entire conference in Taiwan was convened in honor of this single novel, which received many accolades from such leading fiction writers as Chu Hsi-ning and Chang Hsi-kuo as well as from such influential critics as Yen Yuan-shu. The translator also omits any mention of significant textual matters such as which journal originally serialized the novel and to what extent Wang Wen-hsing revised the journal version prior to the work's publication by the Taipei press Huan-yu in the spring of 1973. Neither is it clear which of the many Huan-yu editions serves as the basis of the translation.

Instead of summarizing these textual fundamentals, the translator speculates that Fan Yeh's name stealthily stands for the term fanhua, "anti-Chinese," in spite of the fact that the graph for Yeh is much less unusual as a name and less easily confused with the hua of "Chinese" than is claimed, as well as the fact that the graph in Fan Yeh's surname has a different tone from, the fan of "anti" and thus is not a true homonym of "anti." Although the translation's scholarly apparatus leaves something to be desired, all readers of contemporary Chinese fiction should still welcome this lively English version of one of Taiwan's key literary landmarks.

Philip F. Williams Arizona State University