MCLC: More on Ning Ken's ultra-unreal (1)

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More on Ning Ken’s ultra-unreal (1)
A quick clarification: the "essay" by Ning Ken referred in this piece in "Quartz"  was a talk given in Chinese at Middlebury College. My translation of the talk was published by the New England Review (Vol. 37, No. 2, 2016: 89-96). Lit Hub picked up the translation but retitled it, "Modern China is So Crazy it Needs New Literary Genre." Ning Ken's title is “Writing in the Age of the Ultra-Unreal.” (I'll also mention that neither Ning Ken nor I picked the photo of Hong Kong to go with the translation on Lit Hub.) I'm not sure Ning Ken considers "chaohuan" to be a genre per se. In terms of genre, what is significant about Sange sanchongzou (Three Trios) is that in the novel Ning Ken gives literary treatment to subject matter (corruption, sex) that is often left in China to mass market genre fiction. This is not my insight, but that of Zhou Xinjing, a friend of Ning Ken's and a novelist himself. I will also say in response to the "Quartz" piece that I see absolutely no connection at all whatsoever between Ning Ken's work and that of Liu Xiaobo and no meaningful connection between Ning Ken's work and that of  Liao Yiwu or Ai Weiwei. Grouping Ning Ken with the others is possible only if we observe China from the outside and label every single writer either a dissident or an apologist for the government. Mo Yan, by the way, wrote a positive blurb for the jacket of Ning Ken's Three Trios; he praises Ning Ken's stylistic innovation and insight into the human condition. He praised Ning Ken's work, in other words, as literature, not as political intervention.
Tom Moran <moran at middlebury.edu>
by denton.2 at osu.edu on September 22, 2016
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