MCLC: Mueller says Mo Yan choice a 'catastrophe' (3, 4)

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: Wolfgang Kubin <kubin at uni-bonn.de>
Subject: Mueller says Mo Yan choice a 'catastrophe' (3)
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Bill Goldman writes about Gao Xingjian: "he lives in exile in Paris,
having been driven to leave China by the state's refusal to allow any of
its citizens to write freely."

Really? Gao left on will in 1987 for Germany and then for Paris because he
could make money there with his paintings. He never went into exile! He
went into business just as many other writers of the 80s after him. I am
afraid that the black and white painting does not work any more. Some
Chinese writers and artists know how to get their profit  out of Western
black and white journalism. They sell themselves as dissidents, but they
might be not at all.

W. Kubin

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From: yomi braester (yomi at u.washington.edu <mailto:yomi at uwashington.edu>)
Subject: Mueller says Mo Yan choicea "catastrophe' (4)

The tone of the full interview in Dagens Nyheter is extremely emotional,
and the interviewer marks it, possibly distancing himself from Mueller's
extreme rhetoric. Mueller also says she's uninterested in the literary
value of Mo Yan's works: "No aesthetics can justify such a choice. He [Mo
Yan] doesn't even get to say what he wants." Apart from the faulty logic
of the two sentences put together, Mueller takes an unnuanced view of
politics, rejecting offhand anything that's associated with communism - a
view common among Rumanian emigres.

Yomi Braester, University of Washington