Mo Yan - Nobel Lecture

[Gregory Samsa]

Such a great author. I read The Garlic Ballads today, amazing story, and I understand why he is so big in China.

Mo Yans Nobel Lecture (http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/2012/yan-prose.html)

Excerpt from The Garlic Ballads (http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/2012/yan-prose.html)

[JBI]

The lecture is banned in China. Oh the irony.

[billl]

Those links are the same at the moment, just a mix-up like we all make now and then I'm sure, and maybe I'll track that lecture down myself. I came to this thread because I just got done reading an article about his recently-stated support of censorship and his reportedly ambiguous comments about China's other recent laureate, Liu Xiaobo, whom the Chinese government would rather everyone just forgot about.

http://m.apnews.com/ap/db_268777/contentdetail.htm?contentguid=vfXU7fSP

Of course, someone in Mo Yan's position might be trying to pragmatically walk lines and only vaguely speak of things he has more definite opinions about, or perhaps would rather not consider publicly, being more concerned with his immediate work as a writer. The article I linked has some quotes about his support of censorship that could be construed as a merely roundabout way of supporting laws against defamation and libel. But he also uses an unfortunate analogy to government security measures at airports.

[JBI]

Those links are the same at the moment, just a mix-up like we all make now and then I'm sure, and maybe I'll track that lecture down myself. I came to this thread because I just got done reading an article about his recently-stated support of censorship and his reportedly ambiguous comments about China's other recent laureate, Liu Xiaobo, whom the Chinese government would rather everyone just forgot about.

http://m.apnews.com/ap/db_268777/contentdetail.htm?contentguid=vfXU7fSP

Of course, someone in Mo Yan's position might be trying to pragmatically walk lines and only vaguely speak of things he has more definite opinions about, or perhaps would rather not consider publicly, being more concerned with his immediate work as a writer. The article I linked has some quotes about his support of censorship that could be construed as a merely roundabout way of supporting laws against defamation and libel. But he also uses an unfortunate analogy to government security measures at airports.

I found the article online, it reads like a set of stories about growing up in China, without any politics mentioned at all, until you read more closely and it is all a veiled political commentary. He is ambiguous because he wants to stay a writer. Censorship in China is unbelievably scary. That's probably why they haven't had great authors since the 80s - the censorship has gone crazier of late, even in the most minute places.

As a student here I feel the propaganda every day - teachers are paid to feed lies to their students, and likewise students are mediocre and just regurgitate lies. The same book published by a Shanghai press is completely rewritten when its author publishes it in English by Brill (out of Holland). It's a pretty sad intellectual climate, but I guess Taiwan and Hong-Kong are about the same.

[billl]

Thanks for your perspective, that's exactly the sort of thing I was looking to learn, JBI. I'd like to read some of his work eventually--but not right now, suddenly, just mostly for the sake of figuring out his politics or what he might have been going through at a press conference.. You've helped me to make sense of a news story in the middle of something very unfortunate for Chinese intellectuals.