给伯克利英文系教授列的中国当代文学书单

今天的课上读勃兰兑斯有关世界文学的那一篇小文，他列举出一系列他认为在国内享有盛誉的的丹麦作家，并感叹这些作品没有被翻译成外文的时候，我突然想起在Berkeley给我后现代文学课的教授Mark Danner列书单时的心情。在一次office hour上，话题从后现代突然转向了中国的文学，他对于中国电影的了解显然更多，而他能说得出名字的那些电影，无一例外都是由重要的当代文学作品改编的。对此他深感兴趣，并希望我能给他列一份中国当代文学的书单，以供他这个对于他来说完全空白的领域。

他嘱咐我，书单里最好只包括十本最具有代表性的书，不可再多，否则便没有推荐的意义；并且最好有比较好得到的英文译本。这些条件让很多本我觉得很有理由进入这个书单，或希望被更多的读者阅读到的作品被我无奈地抛弃，在此之上，我不得不考虑被勃兰兑斯称之为universal fame的那种标准。现在翻开这个书单看，整体上仍旧是丝毫不出格的最保守的选择，即使是这样，其中的一些译本在英语世界仍旧是难以寻找的。

以下是邮件的原文：

Dear Professor Danner,

I’m Chenxin. I’m so sorry that I’ve spent so much time preparing this book list. Hope you haven’t forgotten about this. It’s very hard for me to choose ten because there are so many books that I want to include. I also asked some of my friends for their suggestions and choose these ten based both on Chinese academia and my personal preferences. Also, I have made sure that all my recommendations can be found in translated versions or at least film adaptations. Many of them have hard copies or e-links in our library so that you won’t have trouble finding them.

Hope you enjoy Chinese literature and maybe we can talk about some of the books on this list sometime!

Cries in the Drizzle by Yu Hua (1960-) This is his debut novel, not the best-known one but I think it is the most mature one and has a strong avant-garde feature. Yu Hua is one of the greatest Chinese contemporary novelists and also the pioneer of Avant-garde Literature in the 1980s. (Also by him To Live, adapted into a homonymic movie by Zhang Yimou) I put him first because he is really a figure and everyone knows him in China including those who never read literature.

Sandalwood Death by Mo Yan (1955-) His book Red Sorghum Clan has also been adapted into a homonymic movie by Zhang Yimou. He has been greatly influenced by the school of Magic Realism, especially Gabriel Márquez. His stories are all set in a town called "Northeast Township" of Gaomi County, a fictional version of his hometown. This is the impact of William Faulkner and his Yoknapatawpha County. He won the Nobel Prize, the first one in the history of China.

The spell of the Gangdise Mountains by Ma Yuan (1953-) As far as I’m concerned, he is actually the greatest novelist in terms of narrative skills. But his works are not widely accepted even in China due to ambiguity and obscurity. Only students and scholars of Literature know about him. But he is the real core of Avant-garde Literature. The critics in China even create a term especially for him called “Ma Yuan’s narrative trap”.

Raise the Red Lantern by Su Tong (1963-) The novel’s original Chinese name is totally different from this, but since the novel is adapted into a film called Raise the Red Lantern by Zhang Yimou (he again!), the translator just uses this name as the title.

Baotown by Wang Anyi (1954-) She is probably the greatest contemporary female writer and this novel marks a very important trend called “Root-seeking Literature”, which is closely intertwined with the 1980’s Avant-garde literature. Other important writers associated with this are Han Shaogong, A Cheng, Mo Yan, and so on.

Wild Beast by Wang Shuo (1958-) This is my best novella of all! It successfully depicts a bunch of recalcitrant and disorientated young people’s inner worlds and their erotic feelings. But I’m not sure if it has been translated into English. I check on Wikipedia and it says a Chinese artist has adapted it into a graphic book called Wild Animals, and this one is translated in English and published by Yen Press. Also, this novella has been adapted into a film called “In the Heat of the Sun” by Jiang Wen. It is a classic for Chinese movie buffs and the actor who played the young protagonist of the film won the best actor in that year’s Venice Film Festival.

Strings of life by Shi Tiesheng (1951-2010) He is a disabled writer. Although despite his disability, his works can be considered as the greatest ones, still his suffering does add philosophical profoundness to his writing. Unfortunately, his great novel My Sojourn in Ding Yi hasn’t been translated.

The Golden Age by Wang Xiaobo (1952-1997) He is a cultural icon for a whole generation, what he means to Chinese young people is just like what J.D Salinger and the Beats Generation mean to American adolescents. We quote him all the time even after he has died over 20 years.

"In Remembrance of My Buddies from the Military Compound" by Chu T’ien-hsin or Zhu Tianxin (1958-) I think I should include at least a writer from Taiwan or Hong Kong. Of course, the Chinese literature outside mainland China can not be represented by a single writer and I may need another ten books to introduce Taiwan and Hong Kong literature, but she is the first one that pops into my mind because she writes about military dependents' village, the residence or refuge for mainlanders and how these people feel perplexed with their cultural identity. And this is the problem we are facing now when it comes to whether to include these books as part of Chinese Contemporary Literature.

Secret Love for the Peach Blossom Spring by Stan Lai or Lai Shengchuan (1954-), a Taiwanese playwright. This one may be the best-known and most popular contemporary play. It has a very interesting format, a play about plays. It’s full of laughter and tears and I believe that every drama club in the universities all around China has at least once tried to adapt it.

我不知道Danner后来是否阅读了这些作品，在这一点上我自己也是有些惭愧的，因为种种原因，我远离中国当代文学很久了，因而今日翻开这个书单，似乎仍旧不能添上去什么新的东西。这仅仅是我利用我捉襟见肘的现当代文学知识的所做的一个冒昧的，仅能提供给对中国当代文学一无所知者的一个粗略的介绍，趁这个机会放上来，与各位探讨。

以及非常好奇，如果各位来选择，会是怎么样的一个书单呢？