Wang Wen-hsing is an internationally renowned modernist writer who has long been regarded by Taiwan writers as a bellwether of literary aesthetics. His reputation rests on his devotion to an innovative literary language and writing style, demonstrated primarily in his novels. His persistent pursuit of an ideal style has challenged standard aesthetic views of Chinese literary language and conventional reading strategies. He views writing much as he does painting, music, or any other art form: while acknowledging the importance of content, he foregrounds the form. His fictional works, therefore, are not only pieces of creative writing but also creative artworks; each word and sign should be appreciated like a musical note in a song or a brush stroke in a painting. This ideal pushes him constantly to search out a more precise method to describe a specific subject, and each new method he develops is added to the reservoir of Chinese rhetoric. Due to his peculiar approach, he writes extremely slowly. During the past three decades, he has been able to write only thirty-some characters a day. To date, he has published twenty-three short stories, one novella, three novels (the second novel is in two volumes), one one-act play, three volumes of essays, and numerous poems, prose works, translations, and pieces of criticism.
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