MCLC: Mo Yan says censorship necessary (6)

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: Michael Day <mday at nu.edu>
Subject: Mo Yan says censorship necessary (6)
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I don't know... when I consider what is happening to Tibetans in China,
and the silence, whether due to self-censorship or "official" censorship
or indifference or ignorance (dehumanizing even to argue about it, no?),
this seems all too pathetic... Is this what Literature is then? Of
parochial interest to a few rather parochial people? No wonder there is
less and less interest in what is called "serious" literature... it may
talk of life and death, and matters that affect these.... but what is the
point of that if it is so remote from realities that most people actually
live in? How many farmer folk will be reading Mo's farmer-based fiction
and having their lives changed as a result? Too much to ask? So, what's
that about? Then I guess the bomb-maker that was Alfred Nobel was asking
too much, or he just didn't know how petty literary types could be?
Another pointless and circular discussion.... and nobody gets a million
bucks for having it.

So, as Prof. Kubin appears to suggest, think on Lu Xun and fling up yee
hands in despair.... or that's what I thought when I first read his
response. The only writer from China who's ever deserved a Nobel?... maybe
they should give them out posthumously, a sort of special committee that
might be formed when and if there was a great paucity of humanist or even
semi-humanist writers, and/or people got tired of giving Nobels to poets
(no money in that, after all ... got to reward the money-spinning fiction
writers, no matter the drivel they spew out, no? Argghhh... a pox on it
all, I say.... sorry, my mind melts at the thought of all this nonsense).

Respectfully,

Michael M. Day