To understand the wellsprings of her own art, her creativity, [Pearl Buck] had to examine in depth and to explain at length the scope and the limits of her work within the tradition of the Chinese novel. Now that more than twenty-five years have elapsed since her lecture on the Chinese novel before the Nobel Committee, her judgments can be dispassionately reconsidered, objectively commented upon, and critically evaluated. Her conception of the Chinese novel, moreover, can be utilized as a yardstick in an estimation of what Pearl Buck has attempted to do in her fiction, how well she has succeeded, and what value should be placed upon her literary endeavors. (p. 438)

In China, art and the novel have been dichotomous subjects. The novel was hardly ever considered belles lettres, nor did the novelist look upon himself as an artist. (p. 440)

Many are the reasons for the ignoble history of the indigenous Chinese novel. One important consideration, undoubtedly, lies in the interdict of Confucius: fiction was supposed to have an immoral influence, especially in turning the mind away from philosophy and virtue. (p. 440)

One theme Mrs. Buck emphasized before the Academy was relative to the natural growth of Chinese fiction. "Happily for the Chinese novel," she noted, "it was not considered by the scholars as literature." It did remain unfettered by pedantic norms. "The Chinese novel was free," she continued. "It grew as it liked out of its own soil, the common people, nurtured by that heartiest of sunshine, popular approval, and untouched by the cold and frosty winds of the scholar's art."

The excessive freedom of growth enjoyed by the Chinese novel accounts for its popular appeal, but lack of critical, scholarly direction may be responsible for some of its deficiencies…. The traditional Chinese novel, like many of the inferior English novels of the late Neo-Classical period, was seldom planned from beginning to end: it just grew and grew with incident added to incident, necessitating the introduction of one new character after another. (p. 441)

Professional storytellers spun tales, recorded some, and delivered them to available audiences. Legends, myths, romance, intrigue, and war formed the framework of their narratives. Characters were etched in. Fascinating individuals were created and made to run the gamut of various experiences. Their motivation was wholly external; they lacked interior causation….

Psychological penetration of character and detailed analyses were not considered important by the Oriental teller of tales. Their audience did not expect it, and the storyteller was most concerned with pleasing his audience….

The professional storyteller would usually forego anything that did not embellish the framework of his tale, while yet adding certain touches and flourishes in his characterization in order to make each major character more appealing and unique. As for plot development, the author was omniscient, never allowing his presence to intrude upon the narrative. Above all, he desired "tse ran"—that is, a naturalness, a flexibility, a seemingly effortless presentation of material. The Chinese novelist sought to be, in Pearl Buck's words, "wholly at the command of the material flowing through him." (p. 442)

Pearl Buck may be somewhat too melodramatic and pollyannish for some readers and too didactic and sociallyminded for others, yet most readers are forced to agree that several of her novels are minor masterpieces. Mainly because she is an "insider" rather than an "outsider" in the writing of her Chinese fiction, her Oriental characters seem real and her settings authentic. (p. 443)

The Chinese reality in her fiction cannot be over-emphasized. Without it, she would be just another Western writer exploiting Oriental themes in her books. With it, her narratives, her characters, her locales are so completely Chinese that the reader feels convinced he is experiencing life in ancient China. For literary critics, this Chinese reality is important only if it is fictionalized successfully by a novelist. The sights, the smells, the joys and the sorrows of the Chinese people, their customs, their traditions—all give reality to Pearl Buck's fiction and delight to her devotees.

Of the more than 250 Western novelists who have used China as backdrop, she is quantitatively and qualitatively the most outstanding….

The Good Earth is undisputably Pearl Buck's best Chinese novel and one of her outstanding literary achievements. (p. 444)

Possibly The Good Earth should be criticized because of poor characterization or faulty style. Characterization, after all, is an acid test for any novelist; yet Pearl Buck's characters, with the exceptions of a few subsidiary ones in her minor works, have been ingeniously created, carefully differentiated, and effectively dramatized in all sorts of conflicts. Her characters are embodied with both good and bad—but always credible—human qualities. True to life, they are neither idealized nor intrinsically evil. They behave the way they do not because they are moved in puppet-like fashion by their literary creator; their actions are a consequence of their inner nature reacting to and upon external forces. Wang Lung and his family are as real as any flesh and blood individuals who have ever lived in China. (p. 447)

As for Pearl Buck's style, it has been designated biblical by some critics, Chinese by others. A biblical flavor can be found in her easy-flowing, dignified, and graceful narratives mainly because of her frequent use of conjunctive elements to link simple sentences. The Testament has undoubtedly had some influence upon her writing, but she once commented that her style "is not biblical, it is Chinese." What she meant by her Chinese style she made clear by stating, "When I wrote in China of Chinese things about Chinese, I used the Chinese tongue…. The consequence is that when … writing about Chinese people the story spins itself in my mind entirely in the Chinese idioms, and I literally translate as I go."

The more important question is not whether Mrs. Buck's style is biblical or Chinese, but whether it is effective. That her Chinese style is appropriate for her Chinese novels has been acknowledged by most critics. They concur that her style is an excellent vehicle for rich and genuine sentiments expressed in poignant terms. Her prose is unmarked by labored passages and rhetorical flourishes: it is always clear and central to her characterization. (p. 448)

Pearl Buck's supreme success with The Good Earth has given critics the opportunity to measure all her other novels against this one work. Virtually everything else she has written has been measured against her magnum opus—and usually found wanting. In one way, The Good Earth was written too early in her career, for she has not been able to surpass this brilliant achievement with any of the more than fifty books that have followed. Regrettably, the more facility she displayed in plotting, character creation, invention of incident, and dialogue after writing The Good Earth the less impression her books seemed to make upon contemporary critics, most of whom were caught up with such avantgarde considerations as archetypes, symbolism, the subconscious, the unconscious, interior monologues, and stream-of-consciousness techniques to be interested in the quintessential element of the novel—its narrative quality.

Experimentation in the novel, however, has just about come to an end. When it ultimately does, Pearl Buck's reputation is bound to grow. After being virtually ignored for so many years by critics, she will be "rediscovered." When this general reevaluation does take place, it will undoubtedly become increasingly proper to say that her Oriental novels display a full measure of greatness.

What can be definitely posited now is that of all she has written, her best works are her Chinese novels. According to their overall quality they should be ranked after The Good Earth as Sons, Imperial Woman, Mothers, The Patriot, East Wind: West Wind, and Dragon Seed. Mainly because they conform to the norms of Chinese fiction, these novels are her very best. In writing them she has tried to entertain and delight, to reach a large audience, to follow the traditional Chinese practice of emphasizing event and characterization. It is likewise true that conformation to the norms of traditional Chinese fiction is responsible for some of the shortcomings American critics detect in her work, although it may be somewhat uncritical of them to judge her fictional efforts according to artistic dogmas and aesthetic criteria she herself does not accept or attempt to emulate.

A good critic, Pearl Buck once wrote, judged a writer "on how well he had accomplished the goal he had set for himself". It is plainly obvious that her goal has been to model her novels on the plan of the orthodox Chinese novel, that she always wanted to be a storyteller, not a literary innovator extending the bounds of the novel. (pp. 448-49)