Abstract

Fiction in Review

The article focuses on the book "The Bridge of Heaven," by the author S.I. Hsiung. For clearly, in proportion as a novel is a good novel, it invites the creative participation of the reader. Yet obviously this participation is possible only when a novel deals with people close enough to ourselves culturally for us to make some sort of identification with them. In the case of Oriental fiction such a wall of mystery separates us from the Oriental way of thinking that the identification is very difficult; the best of Western readers are likely to approach a novel of China or Japan as if it were a work of non-fiction--educational or quaint, but not the Western kind of fun. As it were a priori denied a share in the creative experience, one is robbed of the most reliable way of judging a novel, and so one ceases to judge at all.