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Title |
From Horse-Meat Rice Noodle to Soufflé: Pai Hsien-Yung Hunger Narrative |
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Author |
Chen, Li-Fen |
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Associate Professor, Division of Humanities, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology |
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Abstract |
Food has such a conspicuous presence throughout Pai Hsien-yung’s oeuvre that it constitutes an integral part of the signifying system of his narration. This article examines the rituality of eating and consumption, in particular, the exchangeability of the overlapping hunger and gluttony in Pai Hsien-yung’s world, to reflect on the relationship between eating and speaking in his narrative discourse. It is argued that the interplay of lack and excess in Pai Hsien-yung results in a metonymical narrative of desire in which relations of the subject and the object can never be reciprocal and thus are destined to be reenacted in an endlessly renewable cycle of appetite and anxiety in the storytelling process. Food is a site that enables Bai to explore and develop his various but thematically connected topics. Focusing on Bai’s alimentary obsession, this article traces the development of his writing career in the last three decades and attempts a new approach to some of the most studied aspects of his fiction such as cultural nostalgia, modernism, and homoeroticism. |
