After Prof. Goffe mentioned that Lee was inspired by journalistic accounts in Shenzhen, China, I looked up Lee’s interviews on the novel.
There are some really interesting points in his interviews:
- Originally, Lee wants to write a book on social realism inspired by Chinese factory workers in Shenzhen. He concerned about income inequality, health care and American exceptionalism in the U.S., and On Such a Full Sea is “stratified by class and wealth happening in the U.S.” (Singh) In terms of the discussion on near-future in class, Lee mentioned that he was “looking at the issues of our time.” (PBS)
- The theme of Chinese ascendancy and American decline. The issues of environmental contamination. Lee’s futuristic novel is a reflection of his worries on contemporary topics. The expansion of the Chinese economy at the cost of environmental pollution also echoes with the condition in B-Mor.
- Charter villages are similar to upper-middle and middle class in the U.S., where there is no “safety net.” Lee brought up the word “anxiety” many times in his interviews. Having worked on Wall Street for a year before he became a full-time writer and described it as a payback to an immigrant kid’s struggle in American education, Lee’s perspective on Asian Americans as the model minority influences his construction of the novel (Singh).
- China and India (B-Mor) as the global provider of goods to countries such as the U.S. Lee saw these developing countries as the rising global energy: “the millions of people coming from the provinces into the urban centers and factory centers of China and really being the engine of growth for the world.” (Brada-Williams)
- The name of the book came from the fourth act of Julius Caesar “On such a full sea are we now afloat.” Lee explained that, although the book is not about the tyranny of dictatorship (like many utopian novels), it has the tyranny of civil society.
- On the role of the unnamed narrator, Lee briefly alluded that “I hope they also recognize the way the novel is written – the way an unnamed narrator is asking them to look at certain things.” It’s awesome that my peers brought up the significance of the narrator in blog posts and class discussions.
Before my laptop runs out of battery, I guess my questions would be:
- Does reading interviews on the novel help with our understanding or does it inevitably kill part of the joy?
- Did Lee romanticize the socio-political issues in China and the U.S. when he reduces them to symbolism?
Citation:
I enjoyed reading this post, as it frames the book in a very comprehensive context. To respond to your second question, I think symbolism is absolutely necessary in trying to portray transnational lines of oppression and the hegemonic “tyranny of civil society”. Hegemony is ingrained in us to the degree that it is the primary basis of how we think of things/subjects/issues. Subsequently, hegemony is then ingrained in how we talk in our daily lives. In this sense, the author essentially wants us to conduct linguistic analysis when reading the book, as the way we talk about things in the everyday is reflective of the hegemonic ensemble, or the “full sea that we float on”.
To be a little more convincing, think of the nature of our daily conversations. It, first of all, is very structured; people take turns when talking, and talking over others is frowned upon. Much like this structure of talking that is commonly shared, a lot of aspects of daily conversations are taken for granted. Especially when about a symbol or event of high interest or controversy that is of common knowledge, daily conversation is constructed around the hegemonic discourse that underlies the subject matter.