Comments on: Mo Yan’s Nobel Banquet Speech: “When (Literature) Does Not Exist, Our Lives Become Coarsened And Brutal” http://beijingcream.com/2012/12/mo-yan-receives-nobel-prize-gives-banquet-speech/ A Dollop of China Tue, 22 Jan 2019 17:42:34 +0000 hourly 1 By: King Baeksu http://beijingcream.com/2012/12/mo-yan-receives-nobel-prize-gives-banquet-speech/#comment-214079 Wed, 12 Dec 2012 02:21:45 +0000 http://beijingcream.com/?p=7386#comment-214079 Mo Yan joins the army:

http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2012/dec/10/mo-yan-peoples-liberation-army/

I really hope the problem is the translation, because there are more cliches here than Charisma Men in Sanlitun!

]]> By: King Baeksu http://beijingcream.com/2012/12/mo-yan-receives-nobel-prize-gives-banquet-speech/#comment-214015 Tue, 11 Dec 2012 10:54:06 +0000 http://beijingcream.com/?p=7386#comment-214015 “Mo Yan is a poet who tears down stereotypical propaganda posters, elevating the individual from an anonymous human mass. Using ridicule and sarcasm Mo Yan attacks history and its falsifications as well as deprivation and political hypocrisy. Playfully and with ill-disguised delight, he reveals the murkiest aspects of human existence, almost inadvertently finding images of strong symbolic weight.”

Translation: Care to buy some nice Swedish herring, y’all?

Love the patronizing “inadvertently” at the end. Is Mo Yan the new William S. Burroughs, a glorious Chinese master of the cut-up?

Lol.

]]> By: King Baeksu http://beijingcream.com/2012/12/mo-yan-receives-nobel-prize-gives-banquet-speech/#comment-213962 Tue, 11 Dec 2012 04:23:59 +0000 http://beijingcream.com/?p=7386#comment-213962 “I am well aware that there are many writers in the world who would be more worthy Laureates than I. I am convinced that if they only continue to write, if they only believe that literature is the ornament of humanity and a God-given right, “She will give you a garland to grace your head and present you with a glorious crown.” (Proverbs 4:9)”

Mo Yan has committed the first sin of writing here: Being totally fucking boring!

]]> By: King Baeksu http://beijingcream.com/2012/12/mo-yan-receives-nobel-prize-gives-banquet-speech/#comment-213957 Tue, 11 Dec 2012 04:01:14 +0000 http://beijingcream.com/?p=7386#comment-213957 I wish they had given it to Liao Yiwu. “The Corpse Walker” is an amazing book, and wholly original. It certainly meets Kafka’s belief that “A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.”

It would have also been so much more fun to see that hard-drinking, bald-headed old coot take on the entire CCP from the safety of Europe, rather than being served this soggy, pre-masticated pap.

]]>