Notes on the Mao Dun Prize [anodyne, intended for publication in another outlet]
[This is an article written for another outlet. Although he was not particularly enthusiastic, the editor agreed to some coverage of the Mao Dun Literature Prize. He suggested that, rather than dwelling on this year’s winner, it would be best to present a big-picture take on the Mao Dun Prize, or, basically, an argument that they matter. I did my best, as I say somewhere in here, but I probably got the tone wrong. Going over it again now, I realize it might be insulting to the readership. Worse, maybe it’s boring. Seventy-five days have gone by since my submission, which means that it would be uncomfortable to send an email about it. You can read it here.]
Even though it has been four months since the winners of the 11th Mao Dun Literature Prize were announced, this story need not begin with any acknowledgement of its tardiness. Apart from an anodyne bulletin on the website of the China Daily, coverage of the five finalists and their winning books has been nearly nonexistent in other languages.
China’s most prestigious literary prize, awarded biannually to three to five novels and their authors, does not enjoy a high profile outside of the country. This is not a surprise: we receive in translation relatively few Chinese contemporary novels, and even fewer that have been published in the last five years. In this time of declining literacy and the replacement of criticism with algorithms, even literary prizes for English-language works receive minimal attention.
This space could be used to break the news, then, of the latest authors to win the Mao Dun, and to courteously introduce their novels. As late as this coverage is, nobody has beaten me to it.
This dearth of coverage reflects, I think, a true lack of interest. The five winning writers are not well-known outside of their own country. If they have been previously translated, they were not widely read or reviewed. If anyone takes the risk to publish translations of the winning novels, it will be years before they appear in print.
If restricted to a sketch that could be comfortably skimmed, an article on the Mao Dun Prize article would communicate so little as to be meaningless, and if it was expanded further to include context, even curious and committed readers would balk at the homework assignment.
Perhaps readers would tolerate a savaging of the token political choices on the list. I could note that Yang Zhijun’s novel of the Tibetan plateau is even more patronizing and ethno-nationalistic than his execrable Tibetan Mastiff series. I could tell you that Qiao Ye’s sprawling epic of modern rural reconstruction, apart from being poorly written and exceedingly dull, is less subtle in its messaging than works written in the fervor of the Great Leap Forward. This is a comforting framing: an attack on a book or an author can be thrilling, and it gives the reader an excuse to never seek them out.
Who could make it through an attempt at literary skepticism? How many readers have heard of Dong Xi (I translated an earlier work by him for an obscure academic press, so I have some feel for his popularity outside of China), let alone read his winning work? By dint of not yet making it into English, with limited prospects for being picked up by a foreign press or agent, Resonance is invisible to the wider world. Advancing skepticism about its narrative trickery or speculation on its political message would be wasted.
To hold forth on the beauty and ambition of the more worthy Mao Dun choices would strain attention spans, as well, I fear, or, at best, discourage readers that would be disappointed to learn that none are likely to make it into English. An explanation of Sun Ganlu's voyage from the 1980s avant-garde to his prize-winning work—a difficult, stylish riff on the Old Shanghai espionage novel—would narrow the audience for this article down to the single digits. It would be sadistic to inflict on readers an explication of the mystical beauty of Xinjiang-born poet and essayist Liu Liangcheng’s contemporary retelling of the Mongolian Jangar epic.
It is more worthwhile to say something about the Mao Dun Prize itself. Even if its name routinely appears in promotional copy for books in translation—“WINNER OF THE MAO DUN PRIZE!”—the award is not much better known than its recipients.
It is named after the man that initiated it. A heavyweight of contemporary literature, who joined every artistic revolution of his century, and stayed active from the 1910s up until his death in the early 1980s, Mao Dun, then-head of the China Writers Association, hoped that the award might keep lit a flame ignited at the end of the Cultural Revolution. The literary circle, even if it was still governed by a stiff cultural bureaucracy, was tossing off the strictures of the revolutionary years.
Over the first decade that the awards were handed out, the selections of China Writers Association jurors generated little controversy. Their choices reflect the trends: the first batch (1977-1981) is heavy on “scar literature,” with books like Gu Hua's A Small Town Called Hibiscus, reflecting on the hardships of the previous decade; judges for the second batch (1982-1984) contains novels in critical celebration of the Reform and Opening era; and the third batch (1985-1988) is heavy on historical epics with local flavor, including Huo Da's Muslim Funeral, which chronicled multiple generations of a Hui Muslim family of jade carvers.
The Mao Dun Prize was inaugurated when reform was incomplete. The intellectual atmosphere was thawing, but the market had not yet arrived. Nothing existed beyond the writing produced by the members of the China Writers Association. A range of popular writing, including martial arts adventures, urban sleaze, romance, and science-fiction may already by the early 1980s have been outselling what was known as "pure literature”—but it simply didn’t count: it was no more literature than any of the other products hawked from the stalls and rugs of streetside entrepreneurs.
But this tidy division began to break down. Marketization penetrated deeper. Publishers, required by market reforms to turn a profit, began marketing even “pure literature” as a commodity. Some authors, looking for more out of life than a state stipend and the esteem of their peers, began converting literary prowess into personal fortunes.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to CJK to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.