Yan Geling: The Flowers of War and The Uninvited

Yan Geling is one of China’s most promising contemporary writers. Earlier this year, while I lay in bed recovering from an a bad case of the flu, I did a lot of reading – and I happened to have two of her novels on my bedside table: The Flowers of War (also: 13 Flowers of Nanjing) and The Uninvited (also: The Banquet Bug).

That these books differ so greatly in terms of not only content, but voice, style, characterization just proves that Yan is a force to be reckoned with. The Flowers of War is a slim, spare novel – elegantly written, poignant, and attempts to capture a difficult time in Chinese history: the Japanese occupation/WWII. In this particular novel, Yan keeps the writing pared back and minimal in order not to sentimentalize or overdo what are potentially some horrifying scenes.

It is completely unlike the gory, graphic [non-fictional] account of the war by Iris Chang (The Nanjing Massacre). In a way, exploring the brutality of war is not her primary motive; rather, she uses the era as a backdrop to tell the stories of the ‘flowers of Nanjing’. Yan steers the reader away from the bloodshed by creating an enclosed world within an abandoned church, where a group of stranded schoolgirls are being looked after an American priest, Father Engelmann. Things become interesting when thirteen courtesans climb across the walls, seeking refuge in the church. (Side note, but I also highly recommend Zhang Yi Mou’s film version, starring Christopher Bale as an Oskar Schindler-type figure, who becomes an unwilling saviour for these schoolgirls/courtesans).

The Univited, on the other hand, is a tour de force through the corrupt, rambunctious, often dazzlingly dynamic paradoxes of modern China.  I would’ve been very dismissive and skeptical of Yan’s writing ability had I not picked up this second novel. It follows the life of a disgruntled factory worker who takes on a fake identity as a journalist in order to attend state-funded banquets.

Here, being unrestrained by a ‘heavy’ topic which has historical significance for thousands of Chinese citizens who suffered during the wartime era and their descendants, Yan takes on a playful approach, indulging us with decadent descriptions of gourmet dishes and taking her characters through a world spun with irony and black humour.

Despite this lighter touch, and the wry comedy of it all, The Uninvited pokes fingers into some pressing concerns about what some would call the disease of contemporary China – i.e. the rat race for wealth/prosperity and development, and the moral vacuum at the heart of it all.

We can try to understand China by keeping up with the news/media, and all the speculation by Western intellectuals (Martin Jacques, Fareed Zakaria, yeah we’ve heard it all), but perhaps we should also be listening to the voices coming from China itself. It doesn’t always need to be so politicized. There’s a lot to be learnt from the nation’s literature if you only look closely enough.

Swann’s Way: First Impressions

Proust. How I adore thee. I was timid when I started out, afraid that I might dislike you – and your intimidating chunky several-volumed “novel”. But only a few pages in, I fell prey to the magic you weave in Swann’s Way. I even succumbed to the temptation of madeleines. I don’t normally bake things like madeleines; in the kitchen I’m more of a papaya salad or Chairman Mao’s red-braised pork belly kind of girl. Or a green tea creme brulee, or coconut cheesecake kind of girl, if you want to talk desserts. Madeleines just seemed so prim and plain.

How wrong I was to have neglected madeleines, and how wrong I was to have been intimidated by Proust. Swann’s Way is definitely a little nuttier than I expected. It’s every bit as meandering and off-tangent and wildly dreamy as I thought it would be, but there’s an irony; a real barbed wire sharp edge to Proust’s voice underneath all the musings. And oh God, how the musings go on. I’m just about nearing the end of Combray, the first section, and if I try to recollect what I’ve been reading about, it’s just really hard – to remember exactly what went on. There is no (detectable) solid form to this thing. And the characters, they’re so bizarre. The world they inhabit is like a madhouse, as much a work of surrealism and farce as The Master and Margarita in a way. The characters just don’t make sense; in real life, they’d be absolute caricatures of themselves, but they just work. They’re utterly believable and loveable.

Do I love it? Yes. Is it crazy? Completely. He’s just nuts. Am I going to read the next one? Probably! Why? Because it’s not sappy and sentimental, as you would assume from a mere ‘summary’ of the plot of this book – if one can even presume to summarize this baggy, loose-ended monster of a novel. There’s more to Proust that meets the eye, and I’m determined to get to the bottom of it all. Swann’s Way is really only the tip of the iceberg. Next up: Within a Budding Grove.

The Garlic Ballads

[Sorry about the confusion/double post, it's just too much hassle to maintain another blog at this stage, so I'll be posting book thoughts here again until I've properly thought out my website]

Mo Yan weaves together a tale of  ’brutal honesty’ and sheer poetry in his story of the garlic-farming peasants of Paradise County. The novel centres around the arrest of Gao Ma, Gao Yang and Fourth Aunt, who have been imprisoned for participating in a mass riot against the local government. But interspersed with this main narrative is the tragic love between Gao Ma and Jinju, as well as the stories of former landlords and the struggling garlic farmers, based on the villagers of Mo Yan’s hometown in Shandong Province.

I have to say that this was a welcome respite from the Proust’s dreamy voice/narrative style in Swann’s Way. Mo Yan is sharp, in both his language and observations, and such a powerful writer. Having formed an image of him as the Chinese Communist Party’s poster boy, I was surprised to see that he writes with such unnerving frankness. He never once shies away from telling the difficult truths, nor does he sugarcoat the actions of corrupt government officials. Several of his books, including this one, are banned in the mainland because of their non-government approved stance on certain issues.

While (as with Barnes’ recent Booker winning The Sense of an Ending), I don’t want to detract from the merits of this book by making this post about politics, I want to just point out that Mo Yan is hardly a friend of the CCP for “failing to speak out” about the imprisonment of writers such as Liu Xiaobo. It’s like the P. G. Wodehouse and the Nazi radio broadcast all over again. I’m not the one to say whether he deserved the Nobel Peace Prize or not. But let’s not allow some of his poor choices or his personal right to act or not act in a certain situation to discolour our view of his writing itself.

For instance, Salman Rushdie has dismissed Mo Yan as a “patsy” for the Chinese government for not speaking out, but do we all need to conform to Rushdie’s standards? He might think he has the right to point fingers at others so easily, because he’s had his life put on the line as a result of one of his works. We can’t deny that Rushdie has been through a hell of a lot for the freedom of literature he believes in. But would Rushdie himself, having the benefit of hindsight, choose to publish The Satanic Verses all over again, knowing the ordeal he’d have to face – or want anyone to face a similar ordeal? We aren’t talking about signing any old petition against whaling or something – censorship and freedom of speech is a deeply political issue in China. And Mo Yan has the right to choose whether or not he wants to get himself deeply involved in those things as a writer. 

Key word: writer.

I thought a writer’s primary role was to write. Anyone who has read Mo Yan’s work closely will find it hard to accuse him of being a ‘patsy’. Knowing that this generation of writers have emerged from a culture of fear and persecution during the Cultural Revolution, it’s a big step that writers are gaining the courage to write with honesty and conviction again. There is a vibrant literary scene in China at the moment – Yan Lian-ke, Mo Yan, Yan Geling – all these writers are speaking out against social injustice/corruption. Let’s not crush that momentum by pointing fingers. We in the West are too hasty, always expecting things to transform the way we want them. Why isn’t China a democracy yet? Why is there such a wealth divide in China? Why are artists and intellectuals still imprisoned for speaking out? Well, guess what? Change doesn’t happen overnight. You have to look at the bigger picture to see that yes, there is a lot happening.

“A writer should express criticism and indignation at the dark side of society and the ugliness of human nature, but we should not use one uniform expression,” Mo said in a speech at the 2009 Frankfurt Book Fair, “Some may want to shout on the street, but we should tolerate those who hide in their rooms and use literature to voice their opinions.” Mo Yan is not a human rights activist, he’s not a spokesperson for some liberation movement – he’s a writer. And he’s done his job by writing powerful works about injustice and the plight of ordinary people in contemporary China. In his own words,  ”For a writer, the best way to speak is by writing. You will find everything I need to say in my works. Speech is carried off by the wind; the written word can never be obliterated.” I, for one, agree with him.

A Year of Proust

Blogland is a little like Narnia: once you stray away from it all, you have no sense of how much time has passed when you return. Though three months is hardly my longest hiatus, it’s still a long time to have been away from books. And in this time, I’ve been mulling over things and concocted up this crazy idea that I’d like to tackle Proust this year. It’s crazy, because honestly speaking, I have less and less patience for books which require concentration. It’s not so much that I resent the effort, but I simply don’t have time to devote hours and hours to reading anymore, and I know I’ll get stuck somewhere along the way. I’ll probably put it down, get back to it a few weeks later, then lose interest and not pick it up again. As I did with Middlemarch. And with Portrait of a Lady. Speaking of that particular Henry James novel, I’ve stuck it onto my February reading list too. Seems I’m a stickler for torturing myself.

Inspired by the film Julie & Julia, I want to try get through one book every two months – which may not seem very ambitious at all, only that as we all know very well, Remembrance of Things Past (a title more reflective of its nature than Time Regained) is a dreamy, hazy, meandering sort of thing. And judging with my past experiences with stream-of-consciousness writing, narratives that are dreamy and hazy and meandering actually require more effort. You’ve got to catch the wave, and then ride with it, keeping with the rhythm, and once you lose that rhythm, you’re just lost. Lost. Not lost in the pleasant sense of the word either. Lost, as in you’re swimming against the current and trying so hard not to drown that you can’t make any sense of what’s going on around you. Anyway, no point fretting about that now. It’s too late to regret anything, because I’ve just ordered my copy of the first volume, Swann’s Way - in the Moncrieff translation published by Vintage Classics. Wish me luck! :)

Russian Reading: Week 3 Round-Up

Everyone seems to be making good progress so far! Rachel recently finished Gogol’s short story, The Nose, which she adored. I think I’d also be interested in reading this after I’m done with Dead Souls, because Nabokov actually goes into some detail about Gogol’s obsession with noses in his critical biography. Claire has also been captivated by Gogol’s writing in Dead Souls. Alex in Leeds is reading two works of Russian literature which she hasn’t specified yet – I think one may be The Russian Gentleman by Sergei Askakov. Meanwhile, she looks on back on her experience of Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita, which she finished in July of this year. Alex has also written a fantastic review of Ludmilla Petrushevskaya’s There Once Lived a Woman… (Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbour’s Baby), stories which she describes as being ‘dystopian fairytales’.

These stories are delicate but brutal, intriguingly dream-like and frequently have a twist or unexpected change in tone that makes them truly ‘fantastic’. There is a cruel streak running through them. They are potently bleak. They are, to some readers I imagine, beautiful.

Set frequently in a place the author calls ‘orchards of unusual possibilities’ (which is a wonderfully Soviet euphemism), the subjects range from the eponymous woman who tries to kill her neighbour’s baby to ghostly meetings in the woods, from deadly epidemics to post-apocalyptic homesteaders. The collection is broken into four sections – Songs of the Eastern Slavs, Allegories, Requiems and Fairy Tales – and they were written over a thirty year period, deeply rooting them both in the ancient mythology and modern history of Russia.

A character experiencing the start of starvation in one story serves as a great example of this – starving in a fictional post-apocalyptic future, living like many of the peasants who died in the all-too-real brutality of the Stalinist era and yet very firmly reminding the reader of darker, older fairy tales. A matryoshka doll of myth, history and imagination calmly included as a bit-part character in a much bigger story.

Sounds absolutely amazing, and I can’t wait to get my hands on a copy!

November’s been a surprisingly busy month for me. But I guess that’s life, it’s never what you expect! Still, I’ve managed to trudge through The Master and Margarita (more thoughts on that later…) and am now halfway through Dead Souls, which is fantastic stuff. Also halfway through Nikolai Gogol, by Vladimir Nabokov, which is extremely well-written but probably only readable because I’m going through Dead Souls at the same time. On its own, it’s a tad dry.

In other reading endeavours, I haven’t been doing too well. I’ve been quite unwell lately, and so I find it hard to concentrate for long periods of time, and can’t seem to commit myself to a single book either. I’ve just been flitting half-heartedly through different things without really finding anything I like.

And so (sorry Claire), I’ve decided I just can’t finish Wolf Hall. It’s just a chore at the moment, because I couldn’t care less about it. Knowing my habit of eventually coming back to books I can’t finish, I’ll probably read it at some later stage. Okay, actually, the real reason is because it’s a library loan and I’ve been so negligent with returning the books that my library card has been cancelled. Haha! So I need to go and sort that out, and unless there’s a lot of goodwill on their side, there’s not much chance of them renewing those books for me…

After re-reading Norwegian Wood (yes, that’s my own copy) for Bellezza’s readalong, I’ll probably stick my nose into something on my shelf that I haven’t read yet – Moby Dick, or some of the Chinese classics maybe.

Booker Booker

Belatedly narrowing down my reading choices from the Booker longlist (I never like to restrict myself to just the shortlist):

• Skios, Michael Frayn – seems like a good read for summer. I’m partial to things set on the Greek islands, and I don’t even mind if they’re twee or or a bit cheesy (like Mamma Mia). The cover does make it look like supermarket chick-lit, but I’m trying to get over my atrocious habit of literally judging books by their covers.
• The Garden of Evening Mists, Tan Twan Eng - fo sho, the type of book I enjoy and adore and will possibly be disappointed by, but I really doubt it at this stage, because it looks wonderful! (I’m already raving)
• Swimming Home, Deborah Levy. Heard some fantastic things about this one. Sounds a bit like a modern Tender is the Night, though perhaps it won’t be as glamorous as the jazz age world Fitzgerald paints.
• Narcopolis, Jeet Thayil – some readers I know have snidely dismissed this as the ‘token’ Indian novel, but come on people! If it’s a good book, it’s a good book so just give it a chance. Perhaps this also applies to this year’s winner, which I’m really just dubious about.

This brings me to my next point. Yes, you may have noticed that a certain prominent book by a certain prominent author is missing; namely, the winner, Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel. But I’ve decided not to read it, because dear Booker judges, I didn’t like your 2009 choice Wolf Hall that much! And (somewhat childishly, I know) I’ve decided not to even give the second book a chance.

Day 1: Russian Reading Month

Today is the first day of Russian Reading Month! I hope you’re all ready to crack open your copies of Dostoevsky or Nabokov or Gogol. Right now, my copy of Vladimir Nabokov’s Nikolai Gogol is sitting on my desk next to a glass of frothy, freshly squeezed orange juice (it’s nearing summer here, for all you Northern Hemispherers), and I plan on digging in as soon as I’m done writing this post.

I’m not sure if I would classify this particular work as ‘Russian Literature’, seeing as it’s written in English. Some would even go so far as to call Nabokov a quintessentially American writer, and not a Russian one (Nabokov considered himself a ‘cosmopolite’, and noted once in an interview that he was a “perfectly normal trilingual child”). But since this work is a critical study and biography of the great Russian poet-novelist Gogol, I’m reading it as a sort of prelude to Dead Souls. I really know so little about Gogol, and I’ve only ever read one story by him (‘The Overcoat’), so I’m hoping this book will help me along.

Over the next month, I’ll also be tackling Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita and of course, Dead Souls itself. For all of you who are joining in, I won’t really impose any schedules on you, just write reviews or thoughts at a pace comfortable to you, and link them to me so I can create round-up posts.

As for short stories, I’ve got two links for you today: Pushkin’s The Queen of Spades and Gogol’s The Overcoat, which I think serve as a good introduction to Russian shorts.

And finally – a weekly meme, just for fun! Open to everyone, not just those participating in Russian Reading Month :)

What has your relationship with Russian literature been like thus far? What are your expectations for the following month – and perhaps your expectations towards the novel/writer you’ve chosen to read?

Enjoy!