“My books are proletarian literature!” the fellow protested.
“you know nothing about big words, you know nothing about long sentences!” replied the Bureaucrat.
“My books are proletarian literature!” the fellow protested.
“Why can you not get a respectable publisher?” replied the Bureaucrat.
“My books are proletarian literature!”
“Why can you not get a Guggenheim scholarship?”
“My books are proletarian literature!”
“Have you ever been in Hollywood?”
“Wong Wan-Lee didn’t know what all this fight was about, but he thought the ejection very humiliating to his race, so he stopped and invited the fellow to come to his laundry.”
p. 111~112
When a stranger enters Wong Wan-Lee’s laundromat one day, Wan-Lee recognizes him to be the same eccentric man who twice caught his interest a long time ago. In this passage, he narrates a flashback to his second encounter with the “Chinese fellow”. Wan-Lee catches glimpses of the “proletarian” novelist as he attempts to establish his name as an important writer.
In his recollection of the man, Wan-Lee directly voices the qualms of a desperate, exasperated novelist who promotes his writing, only to be met with different iterations of the same, dulling rejection by a hostile and predominantly white audience. It can be inferred from prior allusions to “China Red” and “The Hanging on Union Square”, H.T. Tsiang’s own self-published books, that this supporting character is a caricature of the author himself. This incident becomes one of the many forlorn situations that reflect Tsiang’s own alienation, and his resulting frustrations with the publishing industry, capitalism, and racism in America.
Tsiang makes use of repetition with the phrase, “my books are proletarian literature!” to convey the man’s dogged determination for acceptance. However, this is countered by a series of demeaning questions by the Bureaucrat-“Why can you not get a respectable publisher?” “Why can you not get a Guggenheim scholarship?“.
Whereas the man continuously recites the same answer, the questions refuse to directly address his statement. Instead, they redirect attention to the pressures surrounding his career that are shaped by capitalist notions of productivity, mobility, and legibility. The dissonance between the two conversants hints towards the impossibility and unattainability of true “success” under oppressive forces. The questions are presumably ones that ailed Tsiang’s conscience throughout his personal struggle as a troubled, largely invalidated Chinese-American radical writer in the U.S.
The author also adds, “Wan-Lee didn’t know what all this fight was about, but he though the ejection very humiliating to his race, so he stopped and invited the fellow to come to his laundry.” This seems to be conveying a sense of self-pity, almost as a humorous touch to the scene; this also considers the stance of a newly immigrated Chinese worker, perhaps serving as a warning to those who are not yet exposed to the tedious labors and unpromising future endured by the persevering Tsiang.