Chinese literature is a black box here in the U.S. and the west -- for reasons of language and, let's be frank, myopia. Who are Su Tong and Jia Pingwa? It would be good to know; a lot more people read both of their books than, say, Jonathan Safran-Foer's. Who's the Mark Twain of China? The Jane Austen?
Finally, this couldn't possibly be more interesting: "The general manager of Penguin China, Jo Lusby, is even more emphatic. 'All credible interesting writing in China begins online at the moment,' she says. 'It's given an added boost because it exists in a relatively free space outside of the tight constraints of traditional publishers.' "
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- China, Books, Literature, Writing + add
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- sloan
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Here's the follow-up to that article. It talks about the impact that radical social change is having on the writers in China... and especially the continued pressure of government censorship. What I found particularly interesting in this article is that government censorship isn't applied as aggressively as we might assume, but instead is having a tremendous chilling effect on writers: "Writers can publish books, but then there's pressure exerted on publishers not to reprint them, or media organisations not to cover them." These economic threats create a climate of fear where writers are afraid to write, he adds. "Self-censorship is a far bigger problem than government censorship."
It's good to see the optimism for the online writing momentum in China. I hope that the most recent killing of the citizen journalist blogger doesn't further add to the chilling effect, but has the opposite effect and has more people writing more.
