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Three Percent Reviews Brothers
http://www.rochester.edu/College/translation/threepercent/index.php?id=1924
Along the way, there are endless reverses of fortune—Song Gang ends up marrying Lin Hong, Baldy Li’s grand schemes bankrupt him and lead him to collecting trash—and numerous side stories that give this novel a sort of Dickensian quality, allowing Yu Hua to really sketch out Chinese society both during and after Mao. The epic scope of the novel, along with Hua’s ability to shift from warm humor to sheer horror in the same sentence, are the real high points of this book. It’s easy to get sucked into Hua’s world, even when the reader knows exactly what’s going to happen next, which is true a good deal of the time.
attached to: Brothers
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So far Brothers hasn't earned very positive reviews. I wonder why. I guess in part it has to do with what it's being compared against, and in the English press it may inevitably be compared against English literature. Inevitably, but fairly? Is it fair to demand that a Chinese story about Chinese people in a Chinese town conform to the structures of a well-crafted novel written in English? Which is not to say that Brothers doesn't have something to say to non-Chinese readers, of course. I don't want to say more, in case I preempt my review of Brothers forthcoming in Rain Taxi, but I felt like the novel owed more to The Plum in the Golden Vase 金瓶梅 or Outlaws of the Marsh 水滸傳 than anything written in the West. Then again, is it fair of me to assume that anyone has read those?
I'm not sure why reviews in the west haven't been favorable, but I can comment on what bothered me about the English translation of Brothers: it was clunky, wordy in places it shouldn't have been, and not nearly vernacular or crude enough. Because in this novel, Yua Hua can be crude. There's a lot of shit and piss and bawdy sex and broad humour - in fact, I'd argue that's part of the point he's trying to make.
The Chinese text is simple, and not always in a good way. It's an easy read - albeit with some moments of hilarity and true insight - that sometimes borders on the jejune. The English translation should have reflected this childish simplicity, and it didn't.
Placing Brothers in the same league as The Plum in the Golden Vase or Outlaws of the Marsh - or using parallels with those novels to explain why Brothers has received such a chilly reception in the west - doesn't seem a very good strategy.
My two cents.