MCLC: Mo Yan's wins the Nobel lit prize (26)

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: Anna Schonberg <aschonberg at gm.slc.edu>
Subject: Mo Yan wins the Nobel lit prize (26)
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Howard Goldblatt suggested I post this to piece on Mo Yan to the MCLC
LIST. 

Anna

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MO YAN¹S EXPLOSIVE NOBEL
By Anna Schonberg

The Nobel Prize for Literature awarded to Chinese writer Mo Yan has
created such uproar that the merits of his writing have hardly been
considered. Taking center stage are cries about the political implications
of honoring a member of the Communist Party and questions about the Party
politics of the writer himself. Then financial questions are posed: How
will China best cash in on Mo Yan? How can he be used to boost tourism to
China? The mayor of Mo Yan¹s hometown wants to create a ³Mo Yan brand,²
and there is talk of turning his hometown into a theme park.

Seven years ago I interviewed Mo Yan, and have an entirely different take
on the current debate.

It was September 2005 and I was writing for a Hong Kong based magazine. Mo
Yan¹s brilliant epic Big Breasts and Wide Hips had just come out in
English, translated by Howard Goldblatt. I was certain that he was a
future Nobel winner and must be featured. But, articles on designer clad,
diamond-encrusted socialites were popular and the magazine had no money
for culture. I decided to do the piece anyway. With the help of Goldblatt,
I contacted Mo Yan.

I paid my own flight to Beijing and went off to meet the author of that
wild ride of a novel that has come to be known as his magnum opus.

I arrived to the Beijing hotel lobby twenty minutes early, hoping that
meeting times had not been lost in translation. The atmosphere of the
entire lobby suddenly radiated what felt like a nuclear reaction to Mo
Yan¹s entrance. We know the thrill of tween girls at Taylor Swift
concerts, but the concentrated, silent adoration of this humble novelist
was something beyond.

Our subsequent conversation over coffee about his novel turned
immediately to politics. It became clear that Mo Yan's relationship with
Communist Party policy is infinitely complex. Mo Yan said that if he had
written the same book 20 years ago he might have been shot. He said that
he does not take political sides in his novel, but tries to, "treat all as
human. I want to show the real China and real life. It seems that [my
book] is about a village, but it is actually about China's history. In
this book I want to cover every critical issue of the last century."
Speaking about his future works, his face darkened as he mentioned the
unknown consequences he always fears they could provoke. He added, "a
writer without controversy is not a good one. A book without controversy
is not a good one, either."

Mo Yan does all of his writing in his hometown of Gaomi, 300 miles
southeast of Beijing, surrounded by family and rural peasant life. He
claims he could not write the same books in Beijing. "In my hometown, I
live in a small house, totally isolated from the outside world. There is
no telephone. People around me are just like the people in the book."
Regarding the magical, fantastical elements of his storytelling, they are
there for political reasons.  The symbolic elements in his novels, he told
me, are not a salute to the imaginary but indicators of a reality still
too dark to be named.

Mo Yan's works contain innumerable criticisms of the corruption of the
Communist Party to which he belongs, still many of his fellow Chinese
artists are denouncing his win. Dissident writer Yu Jie says it is a
victory for the Communist Party. The American educated artist Ai Weiwei
paints Mo Yan to be a sell out, citing Mo Yan¹s transcription of "Mao's
Talks on Literature and Art" to mark the 70th anniversary of the speech.
In it, Mao spoke vehemently about the duty of writers to create characters
drawn from real life and to, "help the people discard what is backward and
develop what is revolutionary."

Minus the propaganda obfuscating Mao's directives, is it so hard to see
that perhaps Mo Yan was paying an ironic tribute to the Cultural
Revolution responsible for his pen name (literally "no words") while he
has published thousands of pages? Political censorship has elevated Mo
Yan's writing because his revolutionary ideas can only be expressed with
subtlety and vivid imagination. His characters, drawn directly from his
own peasant background in Gaomi, are a fateful twist on what Mao intended
70 years ago.

Peter Englund, permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy that awarded the
Nobel Prize for Literature, said he considers Mo Yan, "a critic of the
system, sitting within the system." To write such compelling fiction
featuring current government corruption, inhumane policies and the
country's bloody history without being jailed, censored or having to leave
his native villagers and country in favor of citizenship abroad, speak to
the deep level of artistry in Mo Yan¹s novels and his commitment to his
people.

Although Mo Yan publicly supported the exiled Nobel Literature
Laureate Gao Xingjian, he has declined comment on many other issues until
now. So it is notable that his first statement after receiving the Nobel
called for the release of jailed Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo. The
clout of his Nobel now permits him to vocalize opinions that have hitherto
only been possible through his writing. Judgments about his Party
membership and politics are preemptively naïve when all is considered.

Mo Yan¹s comments to me during our interview about the main character
Shangguang Jintong in Big Breasts and Wide Hips add yet another layer of
irony to the contention sparked by the award he has received. Jintong is
the pampered son of a Chinese peasant mother and a Swedish missionary
father. Mo Yan explained him to me saying, "he is handsome and strong but
he is a dwarf emotionally.  The combination of western and eastern
cultures should have produced something better, but it did not." He has
also said censorship is a great spur to creativity. Is it possible that
Jintong is an allusion to the voice for change that Chinese artists dilute
when they escape to the more lenient west. Ponder that if you will,
dissident critics.

But, be assured none of this current debate can really be affecting Mo Yan
all that much, given his stance that controversy is the mark of good
writing. By his own standards, he has proved himself a tour de force. I am
just worried where he will write his next novel once Gaomi is turned into
a theme park.

 
 
Anna Schonberg
Stanford M.A in East Asian Studies