MCLC: Nobel laureate the Politburo can love

Denton, Kirk denton.2 at osu.edu
Sat Oct 13 09:52:19 EDT 2012


MCLC LIST
From: Rowena He <rowenahe at gmail.com>
Subject: Nobel laureate the Politburo can love
****************************************************

Source: The Globe and Mail (10/11/12):
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/a-nobel-laureate-the-chinese-poli
tburo-can-love/article4607850/

A Nobel laureate the Chinese Politburo can love
By MARK MacKINNON

BEIJING ‹ There was, until Thursday, an embarrassingly empty space on this
rising superpower¹s list of achievements. No citizen of the People¹s
Republic of China ­ other than those in exile or in jail ­ had ever won a
Nobel Prize.

So when Mo Yan, a 57-year-old from Shandong province who tells bawdy and
edgy tales of life in rural China while staying within the political red
lines, was named winner of the 2012 Nobel Prize for Literature on
Thursday, the people who govern this nation of 1.3 billion could almost be
heard exhaling with relief. It can no longer be said that the world¹s
second-largest economy has produced everything but a uniquely creative
talent.

At a brief ceremony in Stockholm, the Nobel Prize committee praised Mr.
Mo¹s work for its ³hallucinatory realism,² saying he ³created a world
reminiscent in its complexity of those in the writings of William Faulkner
and Gabriel Garcia Marquez, at the same time finding a departure point in
old Chinese literature and in oral tradition.²There have, of course, been
a few previous Nobel laureates from China. But the ruling Communist Party
reviled, rather than celebrated, those recipients.

Mr. Mo¹s win was a reversal of that pattern. At last, Beijing was cheering
the Nobel selection committee for choosing a Chinese writer it approves
of. Critics, meanwhile, complained that the Nobel Prize had gone to a
writer who ­ whatever his artistic talents ­ is a tool of a repressive
regime.

³This is the first Chinese writer who has won the Nobel Prize for
Literature. Chinese writers have waited too long, the Chinese people have
waited too long,² the official People¹s Daily crowed shortly after the win
was announced. The editorial deliberately ignored the fact Chinese-born
Gao Xingjian won the same prize 11 years earlier for work he was forced to
have published abroad.
It was also a sharply different response than jailed pro-democracy
activist Liu Xiaobo got when he won the Nobel Peace Prize two years ago.
Then, the Chinese government snarled that the selection committee had
become ³a political instrument for some Western forces² and blocked online
mention of Mr. Liu or the word ³Nobel.²

This time, state media hopefully geared up the cheering section days
before the official announcement, as soon as betting houses put Mr. Mo on
a short list of potential winners with Japan¹s Haruki Murakami and
Canada¹s Alice Munro.

While Mr. Mo¹s work hardly paints a flattering portrait of China¹s wobbly
rise over the past six decades, he is unquestionably a product of the
system. He joined the People¹s Liberation Army in 1976 and graduated eight
years later from the PLA College of Literature and Arts. Though he has
pronounced himself ³disgusted² with much of the fiction produced under
Communist rule, he¹s a party member, and serves as vice-chairman of the
official China Writers Association.

He has drawn fire for that from dissident Chinese writers, who accuse him
of refusing to use his influence to defend their right to speak, and for
publicly avoiding the topic of Mr. Liu¹s Peace Prize. Mr. Mo has become
increasingly controversial in recent years, first for boycotting a 2010
book fair in Frankfurt that included dissident Chinese writers, then for
helping organize this year¹s London Book Fair, which excluded the same
voices.

He also helped transcribe, by hand, a speech Mao Zedong gave on culture
and the arts, for a commemorative book.

³A writer who chanted ŒHitler¹ couldn't win the award, but a writer who
chanted ŒMao Zedong¹ could,² said Yu Jie, a prominent author who fled
China to the United States earlier this year after being detained and
tortured after the publication of a book critical of Premier Wen Jiabao.
³That shows the negligence of the West toward China¹s human-rights issues.
Mo Yan¹s award is not a victory for literature but a victory for the
Communist Party of China.²

Several prominent dissidents said they hoped Mr. Mo would use his new
prominence to call for the release of Mr. Liu ­ who remains in prison with
eight years remaining on a sentence for ³inciting subversion of state
power² with his writings ­ but said they had no expectation he would.

Mo Yan is actually the pen name ­ it means ³Don¹t Speak² ­ of Guan Moye,
the son of a farming family from Gaomi Township in northeastern China.
Gaomi became the setting of his most famous novels: Red Sorghum, published
in 1987 and made into a critically acclaimed film directed by Zhang Yimou;
Big Breasts and Wide Hips, written nine years later and winner of the Man
Asian Literary Prize; and his most recent work, 2008¹s Life and Death are
Wearing Me Out. He writes affectionately of the big blue skies and green
pastures of pre-revolutionary Gaomi, as well as its backward and
tradition-bound people who are buffeted by the times they live in.

His novels deal with Japan¹s brutal Second World War occupation of China,
and the cruelties inflicted by Mao¹s failed Great Leap Forward and the
bloody Cultural Revolution. They are often clear in their criticisms of
what the Communist Party did to its own people in that era. But nothing is
too directly said ­ Mr. Mo says he chose his pen name while still a
soldier to remind himself to be restrained in voicing his opinions.

³I have nothing against the Communist Party,² one of Mr. Mo¹s characters
declares in Life and Death are Wearing Me Out, ³and I definitely have
nothing against Chairman Mao. I¹m not opposed to the People¹s Commune or
to collectivization. I just want to be left alone to work for myself.²

Speaking to an interviewer at this year¹s London Book Fair, Mr. Mo said he
thought having to deal with censorship helped him refine his craft. ³In
our real life there might be some sharp or sensitive issues that [the
writer does] not wish to touch upon. At such a juncture a writer can
inject their own imagination to isolate them from the real world or maybe
they can exaggerate the situation ­ making sure it is bold, vivid and has
the signature of our real world. So, actually I believe these limitations
or censorship is great for literature creation,² he said.

Peter Englund, the Nobel academy¹s permanent secretary, said Mr. Mo had
been contacted before the announcement. ³He said he was overjoyed and
scared.² 







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