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Of Heroes and Bastards
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19958 |
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BOOK WORLD
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| Issue
Date : |
8 / 1992 |
2,379 Words |
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Howard Goldblatt
Howard Goldblatt has written or edited four books on Chinese
literature and translated a dozen more, including Jia
Pingwa's Turbulence, winner of the 1989 Pegasus Prize, and Mo
Yan's Red Sorghum: A Family Saga. He teaches Chinese
literature at the University of Colorado, where he edits the
scholarly journal Modern Chinese Literature. |
HONG GAOLIANO JIAZU
(The red sorghum clan)
Mo Yan
Taipei: Hung-fan, 1990
520 pp.
Don't say a word!" the author's pseudonym, Mo Yan, cries out to us when translated. But of course he doesn't take his own advice. Happily.
Mo Yan, whose hortatory nom de plume has become the only name he cares to use, is already a member of a literary ancien regime (at the age of thirty-six) in the eyes of some critics of Chinese literature. In a culture that traditionally has revered age and its trappings--experience, wisdom, authority--a frantic impatience now has many in its grip, frequently reducing the literary life expectancy of a writer to a second or third novel. It is the white-hot thrill of a new voice, a new style, or a new something that sells books, manufactures fame, and puts the previous "generation" out to pasture. The literary scene in China these days seems like a relay race, in which only the latest holder of the baton can claim the limelight.
What of craft? Is there no place for growth? Will China once again produce a national literature that tolerates only conformity to someone else's artistic vision or political standard, as it did during the Cultural Revolution? As that is very nearly what has occurred in poetry circles in the PRC (actually there are two groups, one within the country, the other in exile), it is just as likely to occur in fiction. The likely result: a literature of eternal adolescence, changes without maturation, heat but little light, and unfulfilled potential.
Breaking new ground
But back to Mo Yan. It is possible that he not only will stay the course but will reaffirm the wisdom that where literary greatness is concerned, there is no "national character," only individual genius. He may break the mold of novelty that is hardening around a contemporary literary organism and threatening its existence.
Mo Yan was born into the Yu clan in Gaomi township, a rural center northwest of Qingdao, the largest city on Shandong Peninsula, and a few hundred miles east of Qufu, the birthplace of Confucius. It is a place of searing poverty, its reputation historically linked to martial arts and banditry. In Mo Yan's words, it "is without
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