- Giải Nobel văn chương cho Mạc Ngôn (Ngô Nhân Dụng, NV 13/10/2012)

" Họ đã mô tả con người sống trong một xã hội mà họ bị chiếm đoạt hết các quyền làm người căn bản. Dù họ không hô lên một khẩu hiệu nào chống chế độ. Tuy nhiên, chỉ cần cho độc giả thấy những con người sống thật, đau khổ và sung sướng, hiền lương và độc ác, trong một xã hội không còn hồn tính người, các tác giả đã lên tiếng bênh vực cho quyền sống làm người của nhân dân chung quanh họ. "

- The quiet man of Chinese letters- should we condemn Mo Yan for failling to speak out? (Isaac Stone Fish, Foreign Policies 12/10/2012)

"And perhaps Mo, in his silence, fears what happened to Ding, who suffers a very MoYanian ending: After finally deciding to really investigate what's happening around him, he gets drunk and confusedly shoots two people. Stumbling around, he spots a ship on which he sees a group of officials about to feast on a human baby. "I protest!" Ding screams. He rushes towards the boat, only to stumble into an open-air toilet, whose refuse he compares to "warm, vile porridge." As he sinks, "the sacred panoply of ideals, justice, respect, honor, and love" accompanies Ding to the bottom."

(Có lẽ Mạc, trong sự im lặng, sợ điều đã xẩy ra với Ding- người có một số phận rất kiểu Mạc Ngôn: Cuối cùng sau khi q/định tìm hiểu những gì xảy ra quanh mình, anh đã uống say và bắn nhầm hai người. Loạng choạng, anh thấy con tàu trên ấy có mấy quan chức sắp ăn thịt đứa bé. Ding gầm lên "Tôi cấm các người". Anh lao về phía cái thuyền, để rồi rơi vào cái hố xí lộ thiên, mà cứt trong đó anh thấy nó giống như thứ cháo ấm, kinh tởm. Rồi Ding chìm dần xuống đáy và chìm cùng với anh là cả đội ngũ thiêng liêng những lý tưởng, công lý, sự tôn trọng, danh dự và tình yêu)

- The real Mo Yan- A conversation by Mo Yan & Jim Leach (Humanities, Jan/Febr 2011, Vol.32, No.1)

"LEACH: You’ve sometimes been described as a “magical realist” and linked to people like Franz Kafka. At the same time, you’re considered a social realist, which in our country might suggest the influence of William Faulkner or John Steinbeck. Or, would it be better to discuss your ties to Chinese classical works?

MO YAN: I think my style is close to the American writer William Faulkner. I learned a lot from his books.

[In a speech the next day at the Cultural Forum, Mo Yan elaborated: “In 1984, in the winter, on a very snowy night, I borrowed a book by Mr. Faulkner—The Sound and the Fury. I read a Chinese version by a very famous translator. . . . The stories he wrote were of his hometown and countryside. He founded a county that you can’t find on a map. Even though that county is very small, it was representative. That made me realize, if a writer is to establish himself, he must establish his own republic. He created his own county, and so I created a village in the northeast region of China that I based on my own hometown as well and established a realm for myself. After Faulkner, it occurred to me that my own experience, my own life in that little village, could all become stories and literature. My family, people I’m familiar with, the villagers—they can all become my characters.]

But my style combines a lot of different influences.

I grew up in the countryside and lived there until my twenties. Folk literature and storytellers provided a lot of influence. The stories told to me by my grandmother, grandfather, and the old people, and by my father and my mother later became resources.

Journey to the West and Dream of the Red Chamber were classic Chinese books that were a big influence to me, too."

"...

MO YAN: If you want to describe a feeling, like pain and suffering, you could use painful words or you could use humorous words. I think most readers would prefer to read humorous sentences about a painful life.

No matter how hard a life we had, people in my village used a sense of humor to deal with life’s harshness. This I learned from these people.

LEACH: You’ve said that the salvation of an established writer is the search for suffering. Does this tie in to your concept of thinking about suffering with humor, and has it changed? Is suffering different today in China from earlier periods, or is there a continuum of suffering?

MO YAN: I think as long as humans live, there is pain. I had a lot of pain when I was young because I did not have enough food; I did not have enough clothes—it was a really hard time. I tell my daughter: ‘See what I had in my childhood; now you have everything. So why are you in pain? Why do you still suffer?’
She said, ‘Do you think if people have enough to eat and have clothes, they ought to have no pain? We have so much homework. We have to pass so many hard tests, and we can’t find the right boyfriend. I think that these sufferings are worse than you having no food.’

So I think as long as humans are there, the pain and suffering from their hearts and their minds are always there. Literature works to show people that suffering always will be there.

LEACH: In this context, do you feel you have a responsibility to reflect this, a responsibility to culture, to your nation, to the world? Or is your responsibility principally to yourself, your own values, your own integrity? Or is it a combination that a writer has?

MO YAN: When a writer starts writing, in the beginning, it always is from his or her own heart, from his or her individual ideas. Usually, it’s from his own or his family’s pain. Of course, there is some happiness, too. He will be concerned, focused.

But what concerns a writer, what he feels, is common to other people. So what he writes, what will be expressed, most people feel.

I think everything happening in society influences my work directly or indirectly—even things happening in America and Japan. Great literature has no country boundaries."

Và anh Mạc Ngôn làm chính trị:

"LEACH: When we think of relations between countries, we often think of the politician contrasted with the politician, the general with the general, the diplomat with the diplomat. But do you think two countries as different as ours would be more likely to get along better if there were more literary exchanges and our peoples understood each other through novels rather than through treatises about politics?MO YAN: If writers can communicate and talk, it is good for their future writing. Exchanging ideas is positive. Last year, the Chinese Writers’ Association had an activity where they brought a lot of American writers and Chinese writers together. They communicated and made conversation.

LEACH: Thank you, Mo Yan. You may be China’s premier diplomat as well as novelist."

- TRÒ CHUYỆN VỚI THƯỢNG QUAN KIM ĐỒNG CỦA MẠC NGÔN (Nguyễn Trọng Tạo, nguyentrongtao.info, 12/10/2012)

"Cuốn sách 850 trang mà đọc một lèo, không dứt ra được. Văn hấp dẫn đã đành, nhưng tôi đọc khi cười khi khóc khi ngẫm nghĩ toát cả mồ hôi. Rốt cuộc là đọc xong cuốn sách, cảm giác mình bị sút đếm dăm kí. Đến cả tháng sau, những nhân vật trong sách cứ bám riết lấy đầu óc tôi, lúc nào họ cũng cứ hiện ra trước mắt mình vừa thương vừa ghét vừa sợ vừa thích. Rốt cuộc là tôi bỗng đổ một trận ốm mê man suốt một tuần liền. Trong trận ốm đó, tôi bỗng gặp đứa con thứ 9 của Lỗ Thi và mục sư Malôa là Thượng Quan Kim Đồng tóc vàng, da trắng, mũi dài. Ông ta từ vùng Cao Mật tỉnh Sơn Đông đến Việt Nam định tìm hiểu để viết một cuốn tiểu thuyết mới theo yêu cầu của nhà văn Mạc Ngôn."

"Tôi đọc “Vú to mông nở” thấy trang nào cũng ngồn ngộn đời sống đầy bi hài của một xã hội trải dài hơn nửa thế kỉ qua. Như một biên niên sử của vùng Cao Mật quê ông…
- Đấy là thành công của sự thành thật. Đọc tiểu thuyết mà thấy hiện lên cả lịch sử. Nó khác với những cuốn sách viết về lịch sử mà cứ như là bịa đặt ra. Khi nhà văn bán rẻ thiên chức của mình thì chỉ là những nhà văn dởm mà thôi."

Đọc thêm: http://www.postmodernmystery.com/the_republic_of_wine.html
http://khoahocnet.com/2012/10/15/tran-kiem-doan-mac-ngon-la-an-ngu-nobel-van-chuong-2012/

- MẠC NGÔN LÀ AI? (Nguyễn Trọng Tạo, nguyentrongtao.info, 12/10/2012)