Is Mo Yan one of the Nobel laureates who shouldn't be?

Everyone has their favorite Nobel gripe, someone the Swedish Academy, perhaps a little too full of itself, thought to immortalize, who, in retrospect, clogs up the list, occupying a space that could have gone to a writer whose immortality required no Scandinavian intervention. It all started when Sully Prudhomme cut Count Leo Tolstoy off at the pass to receive the first award. Pearl Buck is an ever-popular exhibit trotted out by those who argue that something in Stockholm's water system clouds literary judgement. And don't tell me you've never read or seen a production of even one of José Echegaray y Eizaguirre's plays. Really? Well then, who can trust you, being, as you are, like practically everyone else alive. Sixteen years later, people are still whining about playwright Dario Fo's Nobel. And Sam, my partner, hates Doris Lessing with something akin to glee.

To my personal list of Nobel duds, I fear I may have to include the most recent comer to the list, China's Mo Yan. I just read THE REPUBLIC OF WINE, about an investigator dispatched by the government in Beijing to a district known as "Liquorland" (Yuck!) to investigate rumors of a decadent culinary practice involving braising baby boys in red sauce. What was clearly intended to be subversive and full of fantasy came across, to me, as puerile and silly. I would love for someone who read and admires this book to, as they say, "talk me down". Teach me. What am I missing?

After his award, his troubling politics was more a hot topic than his actual writing. And, certainly, there is much to say about a writer celebrated by the Chinese government, who has refused to support dissident writers, and who has defended censorship. Herta Müller famously declared his win a "catastrophe".

I hope you'll stop by my blog, "The Stockholm Shelf" (thestockholmshelf.com), and slog through at least a little of my long post about China, Chinese culture, Mo Yan, and THE REPUBLIC OF WINE. I would so welcome your input. But, in the mean time, let use know, here, at LibraryThing, what you think. And who would be on your list of Nobel mistakes?

I just finished Life and Death are wearing me out, and while found the book interesting in a number of ways, I myself would not have thought the author nobel-worthy.

I am going to take a look at your blog later, when I have some time.