莫言

[Basil]

Mo Yan's a controversial figure, so I thought I'd give him a go. With the exception of the relatively short 红高粱, 酒国 is the first book of his I've read.

 

When thinking about how to do this write up, I nearly veered to doing a parody of Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451. But eminem better encapsulates some of my feelings.

 

Warning, explicit content:

 

May I have your attention please?

May I have your attention please?

Will the real 莫言 please stand up?

I repeat will the real 莫言 please stand up?

We're going to have a problem here

 

Y'all act like you never read a book before

Jaws all on the floor like Pam and Tommy just burst in the door

Started whoopin' her ass worse than before, they first get divorced

Throwing her over furniture

It's the return of the "Oh wait, no way, your kidding,

He didn't just say what I think he did, did he?"

And 鲁迅 said

Nothing you idiots 鲁迅’s dead, he's locked in my basement (ha ha)

Feminist women love me, chicka chicka chicka 莫言 I'm sick of him

Look at him, walking around grabbing his brain

Flippin' the you know who "yeah, but he's so cute though"

Yea I probably got a couple of screws up in my head loose

But no worse than what's going on in your parent's bedrooms

Sometimes I want to get on TV and just let loose, but can't,

But it's cool for Tom Green to hump a dead moose

My bum is on your lips, my bum is on your lips

And if I'm lucky you might just give it a little kiss

And that's the message that we deliver to little kids

And expect them not to know what a women's clitoris is.

Of course they gonna know what intercourse is, by the time they hit 4th grade,

They got the discovery channel don't they?

We ain't nothing but mammals,

Well some of us cannibals, who cut other people open like cantaloupes.

But if we can hump dead animals and antelopes

Then there's no reason that a man and another man can't elope

But if you feel like I feel I got the antidote.

Women urinate in a wine pot, sing the chorus and it goes

 

[Chorus]

I'm 莫言, yes I'm the real 莫言

All you other 莫言s are just imitating

So won't the real 莫言, please stand up,

Please stand up,

Please stand up

'Cause I'm 莫言, yes I'm the real 言言

All you other 莫言s are just imitating

So won't the real 莫言, please stand up,

Please stand up,

Please stand up

 

路遥 don't gotta cuss in his stories to sell books

Well I do, so fuck him and fuck you too.

You, thee, yo! thou, I don’t give a cow

I can write it like back then, I can it write like now

Come look at my prose play in awe,

Then fuck off, go on, there’s the door.

You think I give a damn about a Nobel Prize?

Half of you critics can't even stomach me, let alone stand me.

"But 莫言 what if you win wouldn't it be weird?"

Why? So you guys can just lie to get me here?

 

I'm sick of you little girl and boy stories all you do is annoy me

So I've been sent here to destroy you

And there's a million of us just like me

Who cuss like me, who just don't give a fuck like me, who dress like me

Walk, talk and act like me, it just might be the next best thing,

But not quite me

 

[Chorus]

I'm 莫言, yes I'm the real 莫言

All you other 莫言s are just imitating

So won't the real 莫言, please stand up,

Please stand up,

Please stand up

'Cause I'm 莫言, yes I'm the real 言言

All you other 莫言s are just imitating

So won't the real 莫言, please stand up,

Please stand up,

Please stand up

 

I'm like a head trip to read

'Cause I'm only giving you, things you joke about with your friends

Inside your living room

The only difference is I got the balls to say it in front of y'all

And I don't gotta be false or sugar coat it at all

I just get out my pen and spit it, and whether you like to admit it (rip)

I just shit it better than 90 percent of you writters out there

 

So will the real 莫言, please stand up

And put one of those fingers on each hand up

And to be proud to be outta your mind and outta control

And one more time, loud as you can, how does it go?

 

[Chorus]

I'm 莫言, yes I'm the real 莫言

All you other 莫言s are just imitating

So won't the real 莫言, please stand up,

Please stand up,

Please stand up

'Cause I'm 莫言, yes I'm the real 言言

All you other 莫言s are just imitating

So won't the real 莫言, please stand up,

Please stand up,

Please stand up

 

Haha, I guess there's a 莫言 in all of us,

Fuck it,

 

Let's all stand up

 

The 文言文 sections were challenging but enjoyable, the plot initially hard to fathom but quite enjoyable. He likes wordplay, which as a foreign learner I found enjoyable and challenging. Sometimes, the wordplays were reminiscent of Fahrenheit 451, pulling words out of... somewhere, mixing them up, throwing them on the page and smiling at where they land.

 

If one of the defining aspects of literature is that it be edifying, then this book is not literature. The story is mostly fast paced, dirty, bawdy and corrupt.

 

Like Eminem, wordplay that brings a smile to the lips, but too vulgar and self referential to be truly great.

 

4/5 

 

 

 

[skylee]

"but too vulgar and self referential to be truly great."

I am not in a position to comment about this writer. I mean I haven't read his books. But I wonder, perhaps real literature has to be vulgar? and perhaps the feeling of vulgarity is just a kind of hypocrisy?

[li3wei1]

Shakespeare was vulgar and self-referential.

[Lu]

But I wonder, perhaps real literature has to be vulgar? and perhaps the feeling of vulgarity is just a kind of hypocrisy?

I disagree. Something vulgar can still be real literature, but a work doesn't have to be vulgar to be real literature. Jane Austen or the Brontë sisters were not vulgar in any sense, and their work is literature, to name just one example.

[skylee]

I agree with Lu.

[Basil]

Shakespeare was vulgar, though he did kind of balance it out well though.

 

That Eminem thing came out much longer than I was expecting... whoops.

[Shelley]

I understand that vulgarities can give work a gritty, real feel, but I am of the school that you should be able to replace the swear words with a word meaning exactly what you want to convey. I think using vulgarities can sometimes be as a result of laziness.

 

A true master of the English language can find precisely the exact word for what they are trying to say, sometimes I suppose this may also be a swear word, but if you don't have to, then use something else.

 

I don't consider my self prudish, just some one who appreciates the English language.

[Basil]

I agree Shelley,

 

I feel that high arts offer the chance to transcend the restraints of earthly muck. In great art works the divine is a counterpoint to human mucky muck.

 

Wallow or revel in muck too much and I'd say the result is likely some form of degradation.

 

I enjoyed this book, it was a rollicking read, but it was still, just a little bit too mucky. Hence the eminem...

[Guest realmayo]

Chaucer!

 

Dark was the night as pitch or as the coal,

And at the window she put out her hole,

And Absolon him fell ne bet ne werse,

But with his mouth he kiss'd her naked erse

Full savourly. When he was ware of this,

Aback he start, and thought it was amiss;

For well he wist a woman hath no beard.

He felt a thing all rough, and long y-hair'd,

[Basil]

And so it begins...

[Lu]

I understand that vulgarities can give work a gritty, real feel, but I am of the school that you should be able to replace the swear words with a word meaning exactly what you want to convey. I think using vulgarities can sometimes be as a result of laziness.

While use of vulgarities can sometimes be a result of laziness, vulgarities can usually not be replaced by a different word which conveys the exact same thing. If a 老大 gets stabbed in the back by a woman desparate because he's driven her husband to suicide, does he say 'Ouch, that hurts!' or 'God damn it, you bitch'? The latter contributes to showing the reader just what kind of person he is: his background, the kind of people he associates with, etc. I don't think there is a non-vulgar phrase that would do the same in about the same amount of text.

 

(Text in white so people don't have to look at it if they don't want to. Select the text to see it.)

[Demonic_Duck]

Agree with Lu. All things in moderation (including moderation itself), and all things in the appropriate context. You don't swear when you're teaching your kid how to ride a bike, but you might very reasonably swear when you're expressing your righteous anger at some injustice. You don't swear when you're talking to a client at work, but you'll almost certainly swear when you're telling a dirty joke. If the character in your book is a kindhearted nun who runs the local orphanage, you don't have her utter profanity, but if she's a ruthless gangster then you're almost insulting your audience's intelligence by not having her swear.

 

There are also shades of meaning that can be expressed only with profanity, which can't be replaced with non-taboo words, because it comes from the taboo nature of the words themselves. Don't tell me that the meaning and emotional weight of

"I fucking hate that guy"

is perfectly encapsulated within the equivalent "I absolutely hate that guy".

 

On the other hand, I agree that profanity can be overused for cheap shock value, but the kind of "art" that does this tends to have little artistic value in the first place, and if it does have artistic value, it's unlikely that the overuse of profanity is going to be the one factor that ruins it.

 

Guess I should go read some 莫言.

[Basil]

 

 

Guess I should go read some 莫言.

 

Please do, I've got another 2 waiting on my shelves, hoping I'll be able to attack them before long.