Mo Yan’s portrait of Chinese history has met ire on the mainland. Goldblatt quotes one critic as calling the novel ‘a sycophantic, shameless work that turns history upside down, fabricates lies, and glorifies the Japanese fascists and the Landlord Restoration Corps.’ The Japanese forces, whose invasion is the principal event of ‘Red Sorghum,’ are relatively shadowy in this novel; but even a Western reader insensitive to the fine points of the civil conflict that placed Mao in power must notice that in this book Communist programs and propaganda are played mostly for laughs, and that the most praiseworthy men, the Sima brothers, are associated with the old, bourgeois regime and the Nationalist Army. Mo Yan’s fate is to operate on the edge of official constraints; the novel, nearly a half-million words long as first published in 1996 in China, has undergone trimming and rearrangement right up to this translation, based upon ‘a further shortened, computer-generated manuscript supplied by the author.’ Semi-capitalist China will not replay the censorship game by the same rules as were hammered out in the Soviet Union, but free spirits in China are still short of enjoying free speech.
John Updike on Mo Yan’s Big Breasts and Wide Hips

14 Notes/ Hide

  1. lackadaisycool reblogged this from millionsmillions
  2. millionsmillions posted this