CHARLIE CHAN’S NUMBER NONE SON

You had to go out and find Charlie Chan’s Number None Son to review my Chinaman work (Douglas Sun reviewing “The Chinaman Pacific & Fresco R.R. Co.”) (Book Review, Jan. 1). You’d probably get Gunga Din to review “Gandhi.”

Your grad student, George (sic) Sun, writes as if he’s grading my paper for Northrup (sic) Frye’s junior high English class.

Supposedly Sun is a Chinese-American. Supposedly he is knowledgeable in the literary universe of the Chinese-American literary sensibility, but lo! all his literary touchstones are white! He doesn’t know Chinese when he reads it.

In my work, the universals of the civilization founded on religion--Christendom--work with and against the universals of the civilization founded on history--Confuciandom. In Confuciandom, neither tragedy nor autobiography are literary forms. Tragedy and autobiography can only exist in a religious civilization, because they are religious forms. I play with them, but I don’t write them. Against the mannerism of autobiography and tragedy and all that Western mysticism that has faked Asia and my history, I play with the universals of the Confucian ethic of private revenge and the ethic of collective revenge on which kingdoms rise and fall and nations come and go, known as the Confucian mandate of heaven.

The Chinese-American fiction Sun prefers seeks only white approval and acceptance; mine is more Chinese and literary in its intent. Like Kwan, the god of fighters and writers, and Monkey, I try to make the difference between the real and the fake.

FRANK CHIN

LOS ANGELES