Gao Xingjian: "Fiction is the actualization of language and not the imitation of reality in writing"

In her “Translator’s Note” in Gao Xingjian’s Buying a Fishing Rod for My Grandfather (a beautiful title) Mabel Lee provides some interesting insights into the author’s art of fiction [italics mine]:

“While still in Beijing Gao wrote a brief postscript for his seventeen-story collection [...] in which he warns readers that his fiction does not set out to tell a story. There is no plot, as found in most fiction, and anything of interest to be found in it is inherent in the language itself. More explicit is his proposal that the linguistic art of fiction is “the actualization of language and not the imitation of reality in writing,” and that its power to fascinate lies in the fact that, even while employing language, it is able to evoke authentic feelings in the reader.”