MCLC: London Book Fair criticized (4,5)

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: wolfgang kubin <kubin at uni-bonn.de>
Subject: London Book Fair criticized (4)
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Bei Ling and London? He is a liar. He is a medriocre writer. He has
nothing to say except when he is selling himself. Wherever he goes, he
lost his "purse" and asks people to help him. Why do you support him? He
knows how to keep people busy for his own sake.

K. from Salzburg

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From: martin winter (dujuan99 at gmail.com)
Subject: London Book Fair criticized (5)

Hi friends,

I am glad this bit of news has generated some discussion. Bei Ling admits
that the Chinese writers going to the LBF include some very good writers.
He mentioned Xi Chuan, Han Dong and others. He just called me and told me
about a second piece in the Guardian, published under his
name:http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/libertycentral/2012/mar/23/lon
don-book-fair-china-banned
 

I translated the last paragraph. Some other sentences in there are quite
different from the original. Bei Lings essays in the FAZ (Frankfurter
Allgemeine Zeitung), in Der Spiegel and in the South China Morning Post
about Liu Xiaobo and Ai Weiwei are quite worth reading, and his book of
memoires that just came out in Germany provides a very detailed and
personal view, for instance in 1979 at the Beijing Democracy Wall. Bei
Ling's biography of Liu Xiaobo, published in German in December 2010, was
put together very hastily under pressure from the publisher. It does
contain a lot of interesting stuff, even if he couldn't put in everything
he wanted.

 
Xi Chuan and Bei Ling know each other from the early days of Qingxiang
magazine (Tendency) in the late 1980s. Xi Chuan even helped Bei Ling in
translating some of his poems into English. Bei Ling became known as a
poet in underground circles in the 1980s. But he is more important for his
essays, for his work with Qingxiang in the 1990s and with founding the
independent Chinese PEN.

 
Yes, Bei Ling's original name is Huang Beiling. At some point in the 1990s
he dropped his family name, a common practice with writers and artists. Xi
Chuan's original name is Liu Jun. Yes, he's a great poet. And Bei Ling is
a very interesting essayist. Is there any particular reason why he should
not be allowed to chose his name?

 
Martin