At the Wall Street Journal's China Real Time weblog Laura Fitch asks Eric Abrahamsen and Canaan Morse (of Pathlight) about The Mo Yan Effect on China's Literary Scene.
Lots of interesting observations, including that:
Interesting also to hear the example of the popular (in China) author of the just-published-in-translation Decoded:
Also interesting:
Lots of interesting observations, including that:
One of the ironies about Mo Yan is that his style of writing is a kind of Chinese literature that international publishers are getting tired of and are deciding not to continue publishing -- the very long, epic novels about China's rural problems and recent history. There's a real fatigue among publishers and among readers.(For 'fatigue' presumably read -- at least among publishers --: annoyance that this stuff just doesn't sell.)
Interesting also to hear the example of the popular (in China) author of the just-published-in-translation Decoded:
We'll take an extreme example. Mai Jia's advance supposedly from his Chinese publisher was over 10 million yuan ($1.6 million). You could push [a foreign publisher] to maybe $10,000 at best.That does skew incentives, quite a bit -- though you figure entry to the English-language market (and via that potentially to many others) is worth an upfront discount that you hope to make up in the long run.
Also interesting:
The writers that China has been bringing to the international book fairs have been actually good writers. But they show up, they're squirreled away in the hotel, their media contact is doled out very carefully, they don't get a lot of opportunities to talk to local writers, they do a couple of events at the book fair and then they're whisked away again. People still get the feeling that these are a bunch of party hacks that have been stuck on a plane and flown over here to give us the impression that China has literature.(You know my opinion: that's part of the problem -- paying attention to authors rather than to their works. Don't worry about signing personalities (or party hacks) -- worry about signing texts ..... Of course, this kind of silly thinking is exactly why I am not employed in publishing .....)