翁鬧之下的文學系譜

It amused me to read Lai Hsiang-yin’s comparison between Weng Nao, Dazai Osamu, and Qiu Miaojin, with Weng at the center. Apparently, my literary taste has been suspiciously stable since Dazai.

To be serious, as a chirping reader, I think I have always loved spaces that make “good-hearted villains” possible; or, let’s say, heterogeneous background stages. In Weng Nao’s novella, this space is 港町, the port town. A port town, a port city, or a metropolis growing out of the wharf is often heterogeneous in this way.

I think Chu T’ien-wen belongs somewhere on this spectrum too, perhaps at its tail end, or somewhere nearby, especially when I think of Notes of a Desolate Man (荒人手記) and 巫言. This feeling reached its peak when I read these two passages. Maybe this is also why I loved the film Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In and its fanfic works: for a similar kind of marginal ethics and dense urban atmosphere.

But honestly, I may love the jokes that send me straight to hell even more. 😈 I told my friend: guess who lived the longest among Weng, Qiu, and Dazai?

DAZAI.

Chu T’ien-wen is far too wholesome compared with them.