Huang Chong-kai and the Taiwanese Novel of Ideas

Abstract

Readers have observed how Huang Chong-kai’s (黃崇凱) novels present new ways of writing the local literary history of Taiwan. In this chapter, I argue that Huang’s literary-historical intervention can also be understood in relation to his pursuit of questions of historical fate and freedom, which he raises through acts of gleaning as a writing method and a citizen’s inherent right, thus asserting a sense of common ownership to a place. I discuss Huang’s The Content of the Times (文藝春 秋, 2017) and The Formosa Exchange (新寶島, 2021) as examples of the “novel of ideas,” and how Huang’s works, when viewed within this typology of a gimmick, specifically, one that reflects borrowed space and time—for example, in virtual reality and population exchange—modifies the terms of Taiwan’s diaspora across the long twentieth century. Huang also presents literary history as media history, and his fascination with extraterrestrial forms and Latin America, in particular Cuba, thus providing readers with new frameworks and entry points into studying Taiwan’s literary pasts and futures.