MCLC: the diseased language of Mo Yan (1,2)

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: Nick Kaldis <nkaldis at gmail.com>
Subject: the diseased language of Mo Yan (1)
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To be fair, Martin, I don't think Anna Sun's citation of James Woods's
estimation of Rushdie is meant to be entirely negative, although it's a
bit equivocal. In any case, Mo Yan should not be offended to find himself
likened to Rushdie, Pynchon, DeLillo, Wallace, or Smith. (Pynchon should
have already won the Nobel, in my opinion).

More importantly, we might note that Sun's is the first sustained literary
and literary-historical analysis of Mo Yan that MCLC has posted since the
prize was awarded (i think[?]). We've seen an abundance of political
commentary, but mostly only calls for us to separate politics from
fiction; it's refreshing to finally read one --I was starting to get
worried Mo Yan would have to be jailed in order for his fiction to be
taken seriously.

However, Sun's piece seems overly ambitious in its literary references and
literary-historical contextualizations, given its brevity. Worse yet, she
confuses her own reading history and literary predilections with a
universal measure of great fiction and of literary morality [sic]. As
Martin notes, we've heard this before. Her final summation is quite
sweeping and even pompous, concerning the "moral commitment...profound
moral imagination" and "extraordinary literary voice" of non-"moralistic"
writers, and determining which Chinese writers have "drunk from the purer
streams of China’s literary past" [taking for granted we all agree on
which are the purer streams --have the likes of 嫪毐, 尤瑞郎, and others
been 
filtered out?], and holding up for praise those who "have the strength
to...write about the sorrow and beauty of our shared human condition with
an illuminating, transfiguring aesthetic conviction."

Nick

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From: Lena Scheen <lena.scheen at gmail.com>
Subject: the diseased language of Mo Yan (2)

Martin Winter writes that Anna Sun's essay reminds him of "another female
critic" who dismissed the work of all Chinese writers "famous at the time"
except for "Can Xue, who happens to be a woman".

Does this mean that I should understand Winter's criticism of Mo Yan's
work as an opinion by a male critic on a male author? I sure hope not.

Lena Scheen
(who happens to be a woman)