THE FAMILY FONG

New Zealand Listener, Volume 22, Issue 554, 3 February 1950, Page 18

THE FAMILY FONG

CHINATOWN FAMILY, by Lin Yutang; Heinemann. English price, 9/6. N this book Dr. Lin turns his attention from the family in China to the family in America; always the family, the Chinese family, stable and soft as a down country hillock, everlasting as the. hillock’s rock foundation: stable? Because it is a matriarchal unit in a larger matriarchy? Perhaps. Individual women may be flighty, but Woman is an eternal colossus of relaxation, conquering by surrender, absorbing violence by quietude. In spite of the’ limitless possibilities of the theme, this is not Dr. Lin’s best book. It is possible to detect a listlessness in the construction, as if the author were not working with the whole of his concentrated mind,

The characters remain afar off, going through their actions rather mechanically. Yet with half his mind Dr, Lin can do more and better than the many people who come to the business of writing blessed with no mind at all. The book is worth reading for a couple of sentences, comments on American civilisation. Tom Fong, the old man, who sweated without cease in a laundry to make enough to bring his family from China, is hit by a truck: "When the police came they found Tom Fong lying in a pool of blood, dying a typicaliy American death." And the damning question without answer that could only come from a son of a Matriarchy: "The Americans would proclaim, display, exploit and brazen sex from the skies ... but where did the (American) mothers go when they suckled their

young??

G. le F.

Y.