Re: China’s Mo Yan Wins Nobel Literature Prize

[Erik T. Burns]

A-also, according to the WP report, there's a talking dog.

Maybe Mr "Don't Speak" is China's TRP...

"It’s a grimly entertaining overview of recent Chinese history. As a “wise
German shepherd” summarizes it, “People in the 1950s were innocent, in the
1960s they were fanatics, in the 1970s they were afraid of their own
shadows, in the 1980s they carefully weighed people’s words and actions,
and in the 1990s they were simply evil.”"

This also sounds TRPesque:

“He’s bawdy when he wants to be. Big and bold, lots of adjectives, and long
sentences. The visuality is incredible. When he describes a scene, he does
it with every tool in his box. He turns things on their head and makes them
be something they could ever be in real life. In Mo Yan’s hands, even the
most horrific scenes have a great beauty to them.”

a-and this is by far the most elegant sentence I've ever seen used by a
reviewer to casually admit he hasn't actually read the books in question:

"A sense of Mo Yan’s work emerges from the titles alone: “The Garlic
Ballads<http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1611457076?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creativeASIN=1611457076&linkCode=xm2&tag=washpost-books-20>,”
“Explosions and Other Stories,” “The Republic of Wine,” “Shifu: You’ll Do
Anything for a Laugh<http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1559706716?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creativeASIN=1559706716&linkCode=xm2&tag=washpost-books-20>,”
and “Big Breasts and Wide
Hips<http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1611453437?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creativeASIN=1611453437&linkCode=xm2&tag=washpost-books-20>”
(all published in the 1990s)."

On Thu, Oct 11, 2012 at 4:02 PM, Erik T. Burns <eburns at gmail.com> wrote:

> I'd be one of the last people to complain about literature being rewarded
> for being complex.
> But how does Jonathan Franzen feel about it?
>
>
>
>
> On Thu, Oct 11, 2012 at 3:55 PM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>
>> http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/chinese-fiction-writer-mo-yan-wins-nobel-prize-in-literature/2012/10/11/ca4795a2-13a0-11e2-ba83-a7a396e6b2a7_story.html
>>
>> The WP article convincingly connects his writing to GGM's magic
>> realism.  The only (tenuouis) WF connection I can surmise is his
>> confronting prevalent social pressures of China.
>>
>> On Thu, Oct 11, 2012 at 9:28 AM, Johnny Marr <marrja at gmail.com> wrote:
>> > It's not the most tenuous pairing of names I've ever encountered.
>> They're both renowned for their fragmentary narratives.
>>
>
>
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