Clipping Wings: A Chronicle and Wang Wen-Hsing’s Art

Abstract

AbstractClipping Wings: A Chronicle (剪翼史) by Wang Wen-hsing (王文興), published in 2016, is the latest milestone in Taiwan’s Modernist fiction. The novel delves deeply into disturbing spiritual and ethical issues while bringing to a culmination Wang’s lifelong language experiment. Reading the work can be a soul-wrenching and aesthetically gratifying experience for those equipped with the proper decoding tools. However, the novel’s contemporary reception has been dishearteningly apathetic. It is a phenomenon this chapter intends to explore and hopefully illuminate. Following an introductory section on the general background, this chapter goes on to explore the novel’s central themes by referring to a specific narrative device Wang professed to have employed: covertly positing an “implied author.” The subtle but readily discernible oscillation of narrative distance that results may hold the key to a more nuanced interpretation of the work’s thematic messages. Next, the chapter brings attention to the modernist-inflected cultural elitism that principally informs the novel’s sociocultural critique. Notably, through Wang’s proficient employment of “parodic mimicry,” poignant criticism is “put into brackets” and transformed into ambivalent showmanship. The chapter then tries to enhance our understanding of Wang’s radical language experiment with insights drawn from Brian Massumi’s theory of affect. The concluding section consists of brief remarks on the implications of the novel’s parting of the ways with Taiwan’s younger-generation critics from the perspective of literary history.Keywords Clipping Wings Wang Wen-hsingLiterary genealogyAesthetic modernismFlaubertMimesisTranslocal phenomenaParodic mimicry