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Quarante Et Un Coups De Canon (2003)

by Mo Yan(Favorite Author)

3.35 of 5 Votes: 1

languge

English

genre

Historical Fiction

publisher

Seuil

review 1: Pow! is a book that I greatly enjoyed reading, but would not widely recommend. Crazy, huh?That's the problem. To the vast majority of readers, Pow!, I fear, would seem a disjointed romp, without being able to connect the narrative to Chinese history, current Sino events, and Buddhist teachings which make for a less jolting ride. It seems to me hard to sustain interest in a postmodern, Rabelaisian picaresque for 386 pages, especially given that two improbable story lines are woven together like a braid, unless there's a more meaningful context that the reader can recognize in the text.That said, if you groove on other works by the Nobel-winning Mo Yan, this is a, ah, feast. While Rabelais may get the edge on the amount of meat consumed (and that by no means is certain), Mo ... moreYan gets the nod for variety: beef and pork (of course), donkey, mule, dog, horse, leopard, sheep, goat, camel, and cat.But I digress. There are dual runaway narratives in Pow! In one, a most unreliable narrator recounts how his family rose to prominence in his village thanks to their good fortune riding the coattails of the local Wutang/big man figure, who feeds and provides for the village. Impermanence being what it is though...ooops. There I go again, getting ahead.The second story line is a trip. For the most part, it's a narration populated with ghosts, phantoms, and spirits. Yet it also intersects with what most would consider reality 101. It includes narration of a meat festival that could have been penned by Gabriel Marquez. And, it intersects at the end with the more down-to-earth previously mentioned narrative when...I did it again.It also helps to make one's self familiar with the Wutong cult in China, as the narrator has taken refuge in a decrepit temple. Briefly, Wutong evolved from the native shanxiao tradition of demons associated with nature. The primary Wutong (Wu translates sorcer, tong refers to the fifth, or transcendental, power) figures are a horse in the temple, and Lao Lan, the village's big man. They are sexually and economically vital, the source of the community's well being. As with all things Wutong, there is much ambiguity, especially around their morals, and the reader who will try to sort things out into good and bad will be lost...oh no, not again.In its own way, the story between the covers of Pow! reflects recent history of China. Not only has its new prosperity allowed it to become the largest consumer of pork on spaceship earth (North Carolina not excepted), but the growing pains of its food industry has opened the door to abuses in the food processing industry.Luckily, Mo Yan provides an explanation to all this, well - some of it, in an afterword, entitled Narration is Everything. I strongly recommend reading this first, not that it really explains everything in a straight forward fashion. But it does provide a meaningful framework that allows the reader who is firm-footed on shifting grounds to better negotiate the journey.One other caveat: I've noticed that a number of readers on the Internets (sic) are put off by sloppiness in the text. Seagull Books should be put through a meat grinder and stewed in a pot of piss for the job they did in producing this book. Considering the author is a Nobel laureate, you'd think they could have devoted better resources to proofing the copy.
review 2: A very surreal and vivid narration. Told from the point of view of a clever working class boy in (modern?) China. He has an insatiable appetite for meat, which is a constant theme from beginning to end. The beginning was slow, it didn't reel me in, but before long I was totally absorbed in the story. Not sure if I would recommend it, although for me, living in Taiwan, it is an interesting insight into our large looming neighbor on the other side of the straight's culture. And, oh yeah, Mo Yan (the author) is a Nobel Prize Literary award winner. less

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