In a 1994 American Scholar article, Andrew Wachtel wrote of Ivan Bunin: "[He] is undoubtedly the greatest Russian writer whom no one reads." With the collapse of communism, however, Bunin's works are undergoing a revival in both Russia and the West. As enthusiastic as readers and publishers have been, scholarship has not kept pace with this "rediscovery," in part due to the many contradictions in Bunin's writing, in part because much past criticism has been used to advanced the critic's own view of what they love or hate about "modern" life.

In If You See the Buddha, Thomas Gaiton Marullo begins addressing the lack of scholarship by establishing that Bunin was a thoroughly modern writer whose images and ideas were rooted more in the twentieth century than in the nineteenth. But beyond that point, Marullo states that, of all the systems of belief that Bunin adopted and adapted throughout his career, it was his interest in Buddhism that best elucidates the dynamics of his writing. Key Buddhistic concepts figured prominently in Bunin's work. These ideas enabled him to make sense of his world and serves as the catalyst for an ars poetica that tempered his philosophical and aesthetic restiveness and contributed a sense of timelessness to work from both his prerevolutionary and émigré periods.

The notion of “individualism” inevitably creeps into the conversation of Americans who try to compare their country with China. It is something we supposedly have and prize which the Chinese do not now have nor probably ever had. For several generations, noncommunists and communists in China have excoriated individualism as the equivalent of selfishness. For them it is a morally insupportable value, not least because it is thought to fragment societies. Inasmuch as the word “individualism” defines a number of different, though related, value concepts in modern usage, the point of departure for our analysis will be the examination of each of these. This approach will enable us to judge exactly what it is we were supposed to have, whether or not the concept has played a role in Chinese society, past or present, and, if so, what significance has been attached to it.

The word “holism” rarely creeps into anyone’s conversation, except, perhaps, that of the sociologist or philosopher. It is a scholarly word. Yet there is considerable overlap between lay remarks about individual interest being subordinate to group interest and the scholar’s technical descriptions of what some holisms expect of people. The ideas suggested by the term are not exclusively scholarly. It seems to point to some Chinese ways of thinking about relations among individuals that contrast with our ways. But if anything, it is vaguer than “individualism.” [1]