All fired up
China's most combative author has come out of a six-year hibernation and launched a new round of salvos at prominent targets.
Wang Shuo, whose last published work was Dreams Shine Into Reality in 2000, brushed aside the "comeback" label.
"You think six years of absence is long? I didn't write anything in the 20 years before I became a published author," he said, with his trademark sarcasm.
Many consider Wang Shuo one of China's most influential writers in the post-reform era. For one, he is the most filmed of modern authors. In 1988 alone, four of his novels made their way onto the screen.
Wang Shuo, China’s most combative author has come |
Wang single-handedly pioneered the so-called "literature of the hooligan", giving voice to the rebellious, contemptuous, "good-for-nothings" who had long been neglected by the elitists. Many of his prolific writings turned out to be best-sellers, and his movies and television series, runaway hits.
"He has a gut feeling for what's in and what's out," said a former friend. "He knew words were going to be replaced by the image as the dominant expression of public sentiments before the trend started shifting and writers gave up their literary ideals for the quick buck of a scriptwriting career."
He also has a knack for the importance of media in shaping public opinion. His lengthy interviews within weeks at several of the nation's best-positioned platforms are interpreted by some as a marketing ploy for his upcoming novel. This two-million-word novel is being secretly hyped as a modern-day A Dream of the Red Mansions, and some say this is Wang's way of starting a bidding frenzy from publishers.
Wang has made bombastic figurative speech into a unique art form. He said he would not sell his manuscripts to a publisher for fear of piracy. Instead, he'll put it online and charge a fee. Asked how he would prevent illegal copying and pasting, which is easier and more rampant online, he responded: "Yes, it's okay you don't pay if you want me starving to death." He added that print copies could also be bought either the normal edition or the one-million-yuan diamond-studded edition.
Wang is known for memorable one-liners. His friend Ye Jing revealed that what appear to be spontaneous repartees are often carefully honed. After critics wrote volumes dissecting Zhang Yimou's delirious Curse of the Golden Flower, Wang summed up his take with only one sentence: "Zhang is an interior designer," implying that the much maligned director is only good for palatial sets.
"Maybe he worked two weeks at the phrase with such shocking effect," said Ye.
Yet Wang knows how to make his brand of acid tongue palatable by including himself in the target, which also helps him hide his real intentions. The things he sends up may not be those he puts down, and more frequently, words of eulogy may contain a derision clear only to those in the known.
For all the media spotlight on him, Wang is faced with an unprecedented dilemma: He made his name by crafting a devil-may-care attitude and bringing serious literature in line with public appetite. But in this age of reality TV and Internet stunts, Wang's proud admission that "I'm a hooligan and I fear nobody" is drowned out by millions of "shameless netizens" who would do anything to get their 15 minutes of notoriety. In the words of Sanlian Life Weekly's Wang Xiaofeng, "Our popular culture has evolved from the age of naivete, marked by Wang Shuo's 'I'm intrepid because I'm ignorant', to the age of stark nakedness with which people get materialistic and they don't care."
In other words, Wang's success may become his undoing as millions of newcomers outdo him in his own game. He used to pride himself as the one with the lowest taste among literary figures, but now he is considered too high-brow to retain his relevancy.
(China Daily 02/01/2007 page18)
