This was my first read of Mo Yan and also my first read on any book that was classified as 'Hallusionary Realism'. I thoroughly enjoyed the books of magic realism like Yuan Rulfo's Mexian classic Pedro Paramo, Nobel Laurette Gabriel Garcia Marquis's works like 'One hundred years of solitude' and naturally I wanted to read the modern masters of this craft. Mo Yan is extremely skillful in writing, Cruel, always reluctant to use polished, beautiful prose; a documentary styled, 'as it is' type of narration. But, he has a story to tell and he knows how to do it.
I liked it most, I didn't like it somewhere, but, I believe it definitely worth reading especially if someone is interested in china and its culture.And Its easy to note that, he is so cruelly honest when writing about his country.
It seems like Mo Yan, the celebrated writer of 'Hallussionary Realism' has already something hallusionary about his childhood. He says, he used to talk to himself a lot even when he was grown up and his parents were extremely anxious about this behavioral aberration. He had to promise his mother that he would not do that in future, something which he could not keep. But this resulted in choosing the pen name Mo yan which means 'dont speak'. A man who was brought up in one of the poorest counties in china, who had very little formal education, spent his childhood in extreme poverty in the famine hit china . A man who belonged to the
generation of Chinese writers who were subjected to censorship in the hand of communists, where everyone was afraid of being branded as 'rightists'. When In Soviet Russia intellectuals were sent to Siberia to spend the rest of the life fighting to survive, in china it seems like they were sent to fields to take care of the cattle or even to carry the manure in group farms for survival. Mo yan describes , he was forced to write a pro-communist short story to establish himself as a writer but still failed to do so as the authorities rejected classifying it as less revolutionary.He openly admits in his early days, he wanted his writing to have nothing to do with society but to make some money so that he could eat good food. As more and more he read western and other foreign literature's he developed a serious influence at least from some of them, and its obvious to see traces of Gabriel Garcia Marques in his works. Take this novel for instance ; if Marques spoke about the mystical village 'Macondo and the influential family of Buendía's in his most celebrated work, 'One hundred years of solitude' for Mo yan, its 'North east township of Gaomi' and he talks about the black smith family of 'Shangguan' extending generations.
Mo Yan's writing has good flow and initially the book seemed to be un-putdownable but in later stages,
his unusual penchant for cheap melodramas spoiled the class of the book. As in some silly movie script, long lost Brother and sister re-join somewhere in an unusual work place and introduce to each other, as ' I was sold to a Russian when I was young, and I believe I was your 7th sister' or, like a Sidney Sheldon novel, you often see 'out of blue' rag to rich and rich to rag transformations. Another example of silly melodrama is one of the sisters who was sold to a brothel thirty years back, coming back to home with some good money saying, 'I slept with ten thousand men to save this' and dies in her mother's hands.
Main character and also the narrator of the novel, Shangguan Jintong was shown to be breast fed for most of the early years of his life and even at the age of 42 he is breast fed by a 52 year old woman. Novel describes in detail about his unusual fetish for breasts.He even makes love to a corpse and arrested for necrophilia and murder. He is being ridiculed, and harassed by different sects of society, from women to men, children to adults, leftist authorities to Rightist gorillas. Both communists and bourgeoisie subject him to luxury and harassment in different phases.He seems to represent the 'common Chinese man' who's scared to react and I think this character fits in perfectly to the plot. The magical character, 'Birdman Han' reminded me of the wizard of 'macendo' but again its a very own mo yan thing, even though influence of Marquez can be seen many characters in this book.
Moyan' Big breast and wide hips is a very complex work of political satire and one of the big rightist work ever especially against china. His imagination and his ability to create stories is amazing. The canvas of north east township of gaomi is big enough to portray the untold history of modern china. Famine, Jap attack. Chinese Women, 'Bound feet' to Martial Arts, Power and misery of communist regime, emergence of Bourgeoisie in later years, state controlled suppression of intellectuality and expressionism. Considering all this I am sure, this work would be appealing to most non-Chinese readers like me. Mo yan's depiction of Poverty and exploitation of the poor and hungry by the people of power were extremely skillful unbearably painful. It was heart breaking to read, the narration of the rape of 'Qiao Qisha', the seventh sister of Jintong before his own eyes. I have not read anything more cruel before.
As i am just one book old in Mo yan's world, and may be this school of literature is new to me. I am not fit enough to criticize him by one book. But I should say, Nobel comity has always shown interest in rightist writers of communist countries from Solzhenitsyn, of Soviet Era.
Mo yan has seen it all in china, he sarcastically pukes on Chinese communism and end of the day, he is a good writer. But 'did he deserve a Nobel'. is what critics argue on.
Now lets see, how Mo Yan speaks about his own style.
'I am a writer with no theoretical training; but I possess a fertile imagination, thanks in part to china's popular traditions, which I am intent on continuing. I may be ignorant of high-flown literary concepts but I do know how to spin a bewitching tale, something I learned as a child from my grand father, grand mother; and variety of village story tellers. Critics who base their views of literature on scientific theories of one sort of other don't think much of me. But lets see them write a story that captures a reader's imagination'
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