February 2010: Mo Yan: The Garlic Ballads

[Stewart]

February's choice for the World Literature Forum book group is Mo Yan's The Garlic Ballads (1989).

ABOUT THE BOOK
The peasants of Paradise County in China have been eking out an existence virtually unchanged for hundreds of years, until a glut on the garlic market forces them to watch the crop that is their lifeblood wilt, rot and blacken in the fields - leading them to storm the seat of corrupt Communist officialdom in an apocalyptic riot. Against this heroic backdrop unfold three intricately interwoven tales of love, loyalty and retribution: between man and woman, father and child, friend and friend. Banned in China following Tianamen Square, "The Garlic Ballads" is a bawdy, mystical and brawling novel that portrays a landscape at once strange and utterly compelling, and a people whose fierce passions overflow the rigid confines of their traditions.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mo Yan is a modern Chinese author, described as "one of the most famous, oft-banned and widely pirated of all Chinese writers". He is known in the West for two of his novels which were the basis of the film Red Sorghum. He has been referred to as the Chinese answer to Franz Kafka or Joseph Heller.

[lenz]

BBC News - China steps up restrictions on media, IFJ report says

Are they going to be the "forbidden" nation forever?

[Elie]

This is literally next on my 'to read' pile, I just got distracted by a lot of Hermann Hesse this month...

[lenz]

Towards the end of The Garlic Ballads, I felt that I had not been reading a novel but a series of horror stories separated occasionally by fleeting scenes of rural beauty and a few very brief moments of happiness in a love story. Mo Yan seems to want us to experience, as far as is possible in a work of fiction, the horrors of that time in visceral close-up description. The intense physical pain, mental anguish and disgust felt by each character is presented to us in excruciating, nauseating detail.
Corrupt, vicious officials (there are no exceptions) and superstitious, hungry peasants caught in a political system most of them barely understand carry on their mean, desperate, medieval master-and-serf lives while the tension builds to a climax of uncontrollable violence.

The Garlic Ballads tells a story of life (nasty, brutish and short) in a Chinese farming community in the 1980s. The government has promised large cash payments for as much garlic as the farmers can grow in one season. This leads, of course, to a huge surplus, much of which cannot be paid for - and even those who manage to sell are cheated out of most of their money by government officials and police demanding arbitrary fees or bribes. The enraged peasants rebel and storm the palatial county government headquarters, ransacking and burning the building. Harsh reprisals follow.

The story is told in a quick succession of flashbacks and flashforwards, which can be confusing but add to the sense of chaos and mental confusion of the main characters. Gao Ma is a young bachelor farmer in love with his neighbour's daughter Jinju. Her parents have promised her in marriage to another man in a complicated deal involving two other couples and large dowries;for her to refuse would destroy their plans. Gao Ma is also an angry young man who hates the corruption of government officials who are supposed to be upholding the ideals of Communism, of all the people working together for the common good. Jinju is much more passive, but her family's brutality lead her to attempt an escape to another town with Gao Ma. They are both nearly killed after severe beatings by her brothers. Scenes of beatings and torture (almost to death) by fellow peasants or police happen frequently to many characters at any opportunity and in close-up gory detail. Mud, blood, vomit, unconsiousness, teeth knocked out, swelling, bruises, tears, starving, concussion, open, festering wounds, infection, pus, shit, and often, almost obsessively, urine, the body in pain, and healing, only to be beaten back again, are elements returned to again and again. The normal passing of urine, or terror-induced, the drinking of urine (tastes okay) - it would be silly to call it a motif - it's more, I suppose, like the natural consequence of eating so much garlic. Garlic is everywhere, rotting in piles, it's noxious smell pervading the air, a constant reminder of the useless labour that went into growing it.
The ballads of the title are sung by the blind village bard, who mocks the government and encourages, in his simple, quiet way the people to act on their anger and frustration. Perhaps Mo Yan sees himself in this role and so might the Chinese government that banned this novel.
Another blind character is the young daughter of farmer Gao Yang - a pitiful, always fearful figure of innocence and suffering. Gao Yang is the voice of calm reason and common compassion in the story whose voice is buried under the noisy action around him. Jinju's mother, known as Fourth Aunt (all the villagers refer to each other as relatives - uncle, brother, sister - almost never "comrade"), though she seems cruel and greedy, becomes a sympathetic character when her desperate desire for a bit of material comfort and peace is understood.
Dystopian novel, historical romance, political tract ... perhaps a mix of all these ... or something else, it is obviously a passionate novel, presumably based on experience - daring but deformed, I would say, by the very repressive forces that necessitated its writing and the anger and sadness and almost-despair that inform every page.

[Elie]

I've finished reading this today so haven't really collected my impressions yet and don't know what to say. Whoever recommended this, thank you very much - it is a stunning book.