Chinese Name: 郭強生
Born: 1964
Place of Birth: Taipei (Northern Taiwan)
Did You Know?
Kuo Chiang-sheng is a literary critic, writer, and scholar of Anglo-American literature. Some three decades ago, when he was teaching in Taichung just after having graduated from the Department of Foreign Languages at National Taiwan University, he published his first novel, intending for that to be the start and finish of his literary career. Then, however, he wrote a short story to vent some emotions and submitted it to a newspaper, where it was well received by readers. That warm reception, he says, meant a lot to him back then and inspired him to continue on with the work he still does to this day.
Kuo Chiang-sheng holds a degree in Foreign Languages from National Taiwan University and a doctorate in Theatre from New York University. He is currently a professor in the Department of Language and Creative Writing at the National Taipei University of Education. He was exposed to the works of novelists Eileen Chang (張愛玲) and Pai Hsien-yung (白先勇) when he was young, and began writing novels as a high school student at the Affiliated Junior High School of National Taiwan University, moving on to develop a passion for theatre and performance in college.
Kuo has gone through many low points in his life, but he has always relied on his creative work to survive. After receiving his doctorate in Theater in the United States, he returned to Taiwan in 2000 to teach, but his mother was diagnosed with cancer at the end of 2002 and passed away five months later. That year, he directed the theatrical show "The Desired (慾可慾 非常慾)," explaining that he wanted to immerse himself in the theatre not only because of his studies, but also out of a desire to keep himself busy in the wake of his mother's passing to help stave off depression and maintain some semblance of normalcy.
In the first few years of the 2010s, his brother died suddenly of cancer and his father fell victim to dementia. Amid this tremendous personal stress, Kuo delivered his first book of essays, “Why Not Seriously Grieve (何不認真來悲傷),” in which he describes his past grief, from the loss of his family members to the suicide of his partner, writing, “For almost a year, I tried to capture the memory of this family that was about to disappear. This is not an attempt to write a family history or an autobiography; what I wanted to explore most was the origin of the family’s emotional entanglements and the subsequent estrangement that would never go away. I only know that I can let go of other things that have disappeared from my life in the past, but not this time. I have only this one family, and I don’t want to wait until everything has passed to grieve and reminisce. I’ve already waited too long. I even regret not having written this earlier."
"The Piano Tuner (尋琴者)," a novella published in 2020, won the Taiwan Literature Golden Award and first prize for fiction at the Taipei International Book Exhibition. The U.S. edition was translated by Howard Goldblatt, and translations have been released in 14 countries including France, South Korea, and Japan. The book tells the story of a middle-aged man who lost his wife and a piano tuner who considers himself a musical genius, who works on the piano left behind by the man's late wife. The two become business partners with plans to buy and sell used pianos, embarking on a joint journey to find them. Asked what motivated him to write the book, Kuo explains that his first partner's "departure" in 1996 made him start contemplating loneliness, disillusionment, goodbyes, and death; at that time, he painted a painting in memory of his partner, entitled "Your Face in Dreams," and those emotions continued to simmer for more than 20 years before finally taking the shape of the novella.
He says that good literary works are always the expression of true feelings. He never pursues special topics in his books, writing only about his own life, whether in fiction or prose. "As one becomes more and more detached from events, one increasingly needs the company of literature," he says. Passion, courage and education alone are not enough in life, Kuo has observed, and as such, he feels glad to have the companionship of literature. To him, words have deep power and are a way to examine life or foster self-recognition.
After returning from his studies abroad, Kuo says, he devoted the next 10 years to literature and education, finding choosing between the paths a task as challenging as growing vegetables in the desert. "The literary path is a difficult one," he says. "If it were easy, we wouldn't have it so hard, but I'm glad to be doing something important. Anything worthwhile always have challenges."
"Writing is my life," says Kuo. "Writing is a promise to live, and even as door after door closes in life, I will—I should—continue writing."