Here are some extracts of or complete reviews and critical articles and essays on H.Golshiri's works, together with a list of them in different newspaper and journals.


Hushang Golshiri and Post-Pahlavi Concerns of the Iranian Writer of Fiction
With four novels and three collections of short stories, Hushang Golshiri (b. 1937) has become perhaps the significant active Iranian writer of fiction. Although Goishiri's fame stems for the most part from his well-received short novel Shazdeh Ehtejab [Prince Ehtejab] (1968), his active literary involvement in the Writers' Association of Iran, his editing of the literary journal Jong-e Esfahan and his various articles and interviews on the nature of modernist Persian literature have helped to secure a firm and prominent place for this writer among contemporary Iranian literary artists.

Goishiri's life and literary career can serve as a fruitful case study of the sociology of the Iranian writer. In several respects he typifies the Iranian literary artist during both the Pahlavi and post-Pahlavi eras. In terms of social provenance, allegiance, ideology, and economic source of support, which, according to René Wellek and Austin Warren, lead to a sociology of the writer, Golshiri's case is representative. Although he comes from a modest working class background, he managed to obtain a college education. His formative years coincide with the sociopolitical events of the early 1950s, a social climate which contributed to the formation of the general sociopolitical views he shares with his contemporary literary artists, among them, perhaps in part due to his own family circumstances, a sympathy with the lower classes. At the same time, a major concern of Golshiri, as evidenced in his work, is the plight of the intellectual. Finally, there is the question of his economic source of support. Golshiri has worked throughout his literary career as a teacher, writing never having been his main source of livelihood, another phenomenon true of most Iranian writers, who have had to rely on other means as their main source of income.

An overview of Golshiri's fictional work to date reveals his preoccupation with questions pertaining to the process of literary production, the function and nature of prose fiction, and the role of the literary artist in society. Addressing these questions in numerous essays, Golshiri has created a number of significant characters in his fiction who are writers by occupation, a phenomenon which in itself indicates Golshiri's preoccupation with the social identity and activity of fiction writers.

In an early article entitled "Si Sal Romannevisi" [Thirty Years of Novel Writing] (1967), Golshiri displays an awareness of the theoretical basis and the nature of fiction in observing that:

The novelist is not the full-length mirror of his or her time, that we may place the characters of his stories on one side of the scale and the people of his time on the other to actually see how far removed he is from the realities of his time and then to dismiss him as an artist for being "unrealistic," or to even look in his so-called full-length mirror for the economic, political, historical, geographical, and psychological conditions of the writer's time. To understand all of these, we must turn to books on those subjects. If such books have not been written or contemporary authors have either sheathed their pens or filled their pages in support of the branding irons and spears of the jailors, it is not the novelist who is to be blamed for having failed to provide us with accurate information with which to quench our thirst for knowledge.

Although these statements were made early in Golshiri's career as a fiction writer, having published only three short stories by this time, the passage contains some concerns which have remained consistent in Golshiri's views and fiction throughout his literary career, even in the post-Pahlavi period. First, in the light of the "realism" to which many important writers of the time, such as Jalal Al-e Ahmad (1923-1969), conform and which may have become a yardstick by which other "unrealistic" works were judged and dismissed, Golshiri's stance can be viewed as a reassessment of the nature of fiction as seen in the late 1960s in terms of approach and execution. Second, Golshiri seems to challenge the prevalent tendencies of the 1960s and 1970s to regard literary works as social documents in which the "economic, political, historical, geographical, and psychological" conditions of the society are represented directly and comprehensively. Again, Golshiri may have had Al-e Ahmad and writers who shared his views in mind. In the case of Al-e Ahmad, for instance, not only his fictional work but also his polemical writings and ethnographical studies seem to confirm the notion that Literature in general and fiction in particular was for him a vehicle primarily for social criticism and documentation.

Given his opposition to a purely utilitarian function for fiction, Golshiri does not intend to restrict this species of imaginative literature in terms of subject matter. In essence, he implies that once the primary role of fiction becomes social documentation and social criticism, its scope becomes restricted. Further on in the same article, he writes:

Every novel is a creation juxtaposed with reality, which cannot be conformed to the realities of the writer's time or even considered an actual representation of his time. It is a creation, an invention beyond the fleeting, narrow boundaries and scope of all the problems of the writer's time. It is a world of characters created by the writer at a given time and place, which he has also created, even though it may inevitably be tinted by the writer's own era.

What Golshiri's commentary on fiction and fiction writing implies is that the writer should be primarily concerned with the literary work, artistic imagination, and the process of literary creation, rather than merely using literature as a vehicle for extraliterary socio political and other purposes. In other words, Golshiri challenges the popular notion of ta'ahhod-e adabi or the sociopolitical commitment of the literary artist in his work, as it was interpreted by many writers, critics, and readers alike. In an interview in mid-summer of 1979, shortly after the establishment of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Golshiri presents his position more candidly by stating that during the Pahlavi "age of repression," literature had become "a vehicle for political analysis," or that literature had committed itself to "transmitting news and historical reporting":

If people had forgotten the events of 19 August 1953, literature intended to somehow transmit this information, because the mass media would not do so. Or, for instance, if torture existed in prisons, in essence, if strugglers were arrested and prisons existed, literature accepted the responsibility of transmitting even such simple bits of information. In other words, literature had accepted the responsibility for tasks which are generally carried out through announcements, newspapers, radio, and television; which is to say, literature had taken on an added responsibility.

For this reason, Golshiri concludes:

All those books which were considered very revolutionary during those years [the Pahlavi period], I believe, will soon_even now, one can sense_go out of circulation. These books may now only be good for storing in a museum, so that some day, for instance, one will be able to see how a given book presents a particular issue.

In retrospect, Golshiri's views about prose fiction suggest that he has valued, at least in theory and in his work if not always in his public pronouncements, the art and craft of fiction writing over extraliterary issues even though his harassment by the security officials of the Pahlavi regime indicates that both the nonestablishment intelligentsia and also the government considered him a committed, i.e., politically active writer. Nevertheless, Golshiri does not narrowly define commitment in political terms. As he puts it in a 1984 letter:

If we accept commitment, this responsibility of ours extends to the culture of a nation, fiction writing in a country, and fiction writing in the world. Most importantly, such a responsibility does not merely concern itself with today's audience, but takes into consideration the course of past cultures here and everywhere. We must prepare the means for the advancement of man tomorrow as well.

This definition of commitment may indirectly reveal what Golshiri sees as other new concerns of the writer of fiction, concerns which do not surface in the works of the mainstream writers of social criticism fiction. They were largely preoccupied with the topical political issues of the time and were limited by their tendency to view the world in absolute, black and white terms.

Pointing out Golshiri's views on ta'ahhod-e adabi does not imply that his works exclude engagé stories dealing with the two "demons" of the dictatorial government and the religious institution.

On the contrary, in many stories, such as "Mesl-e Hamisheh" [As Always], "Yek Dastan-e Khub-e Ejtema'i" [A Good Social Story], and "Mardi ba Keravat-e Sorkh" [The Man with a Red Necktie], in his first collection of short stories, Mesl-e Hamisheh (1968/69); "Aksi bara-ye Qab-e Khali-ye Man" [A Picture for My Empty Picture Frame], "Har Do Ruy-e Yak Sekkeh" [Both Sides of the Coin], "Arusak-e Chini-ye Man" [My China Doll], "Ma'sum-e 1" [The Innocent I], "Ma'sum-e 2" [The Innocent II], and "Ma'sum-e 4" [The Innocent IV], as well as his novels, Prince Ehtejab and Ma'sum-e Panjom [The Fifth Innocent], Golshiri displays his concerns about sociopolitical issues as well as his critical attitude toward the government and religious institutions. However, his objections to social-criticism fiction bring to light another aspect of his work, particularly evident in those stories in which he experiments with the formal and technical aspects of fiction writing, including his experiments with narrative voice and his approach to the use of various modes of language in his fiction. Golshiri's attention to the craft of fiction, which he sees as commitment to the culture of a nation and the fiction writing of a country and the world, attention which he sees lacking for the most part in the work of writers prior to the Islamic Revolution, may signal that he advocates, among other things, emphasis on the formal aspects of fiction writing as one of the new concerns of Iranian writers of fiction. A closer examination of Golshiri's work, nevertheless, reveals that a preoccupation with the craft of fiction is not a new concern for Golshiri. Not only does he engage in his various stories in experimenting with the techniques of short-story and novel writing, but, in addition, in several short stories and novels written prior to 1979, the main characters are writers, and sometimes the stories revolve around their writing activity. Fiction and its creators often become the central focus of a story, and the nature, function, and craft of fiction become subject matters for fiction.

(extract)    Mohammad R. Ghanoonparvar, Iranian Studies, Spring - Autumn 1985