Customer Reviews

The Noodle Maker

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Sardonic... insightful... hilarious... satirical... curious... elliptical... Gogolesque... playful... surreal... bitingly sarcastic... cosmic... bizarre... magical... Kafkaesque... touching... disturbing... profound... hugely entertaining.

How many ways can a marvelous work of fiction be praised? Ma Jian's THE NOODLE MAKER deserves all these accolades, and more. This is a dead-on depiction of life's vagaries and absurdities in the earliest years of Communist China, yet it transcends both time and place to describe the human condition.

Set just after Deng Xiaoping's pronunciation of the Open Door Policy to modernize and open China to Western ideas and business, THE NOODLE MAKER tells the story of two friends, a professional writer named Sheng and a professional blood donor nicknamed Vlazerim. Sheng has been charged by his Writer's Association to pen a short novel about a modern-day Lei Feng, an actual Red Army soldier who died in his country's service and was effectively canonized by Mao for his supposed good deeds while alive. Not only can Sheng not think of anyone to write about, he can only think of stories drawn from his own acquaintances, people whose actions illustrate the most unconventional responses to Deng's vision of a "new China."

Most of the book consists of stories Sheng would have written had he been granted the artistic freedom. He begins with undoubtedly his best piece, the story of a young man who buys a used kiln from an art school and turns it into an upscale crematorium, complete with corpse pick-up service and a wide range of legal and illicit music for the deceased to swoon to as he or she enters the furnace. The young man and his mother become wealthy from his business, enough so that the mother decides her time has come to move on to the next life. Other stories deal with a failed actress who arranges her own, very public suicide in the jaws of a tiger, a middle-aged editor who embarks on a series of love trysts until he encounters a textile worker who won't let go, a writer of love (and rejection) letters who comes to realize that he himself can love someone, a woman whose large breasts ruin her life and career, and a painter who lives with a philosophical talking dog.

Ma Jian tells each story with panache and a wonderful sense of comic timing. His characters are absurd and their actions grotesque, yet they lovably empathetic, each in his or her own peculiar way. The characters' lives and stories are cleverly interconnected, so that as the novel unfolds, we begin to see a community, not just a random collection of individuals. At the same time, each story offers sharply satirical and wonderfully funny commentary on life in a socialist state bent on control of every detail of peoples' lives. The result is a society so full of rules, all rules are meaningless.

Some readers will be reminded by this book of DEAD SOULS, or perhaps Kafka's THE TRIAL or THE CASTLE. For me, THE NOODLE MAKER was most reminiscent of Italo Calvino's IF ON A WINTER'S NIGHT A TRAVELER, a collection of short tales exchanged between Marco Polo and Genghis Khan. This is a wonderful short novel, one of the best I've read in recent years. Sadly, it may well pass largely unnoticed by the public, lacking the advertising and name recognition of far less deserving works by Grisham, Clancy, or King. That such should be the case is undoubtedly another one of life's ironies that Ma Jian's characters would have duly noted with a sigh.

I picked up this book and read a few stories from it when my girlfriend was reading it. The writing is witty and very insightful to the workings and ironies of modern day china. I would recommend this book to anybody as being one of the best I have encountered in the last few years. It is rare to find a writer who can amuse you while being so revealing about the painful, beautiful, and absurd of a culture. I'm going to get my own copy to pass around and one for my mother too.

Ma Jian, Noodle Maker. 1991. New York: FSG, 2004.
The English translation of this wonderful book only came out 13 years after it was published (wisely) in Hong Kong. Its structure is a tapestry of interconnected fables ("noodles") emanating from the mind of an impoverished writer, the noodle maker. Between stories the reader is treated to hilarious colloquies between the noodle maker and his permanent weekly guest, a professional blood donor. The tales are wild and original, and reach quite deeply. They include a benign version of Animal Farm, The Lady and the Tiger, and a generous helping of anti-Communist commentary aimed at the stupid bureaucracy and forced rote memorization of patriotic songs with ridiculous lyrics, such as "Our beloved Party, you have been like a mother to me," played over loudspeakers in an attempt to break up a mob engaging in gang rape outside West Friendship Park. "Chairman Mao's Brilliance Lights Up the World" was also played. Five very large stars.

Ma Jian's The Noodle Maker is a collection of very loosely connected stories narrated by a professional propogandist (or "professional writer") to his friend and confidant, the 'professional blood-donor' over an elaborate dinner the blood-donor provides. The stories are about the people the writer observes on the street and knows professionally and includes such diverse characters as a painter who claims to have had a talking three legged dog to a 'street writer' who provides his services to lovesick teenagers wanting to impress their sweethearts with love letters of deep feeling. Flora Drew's translation of this volume is very fluid and satisfying.
I greatly enjoyed Ma Jian's work and 'am eager to get hold of his other books, Red Dust and Stick Out Your Tongue.

What do you get when you mix a career blood donor and a propaganda writer? A book that will get your blood pumping while you laugh. The characters are, uh ..... unique.

What I learned: If you are considering cremation, you may want to re-think it. Plus, don't trust your love life to someone with a street cart. And, don't let your girlfriend have a cat.

Banned in PRC for very obvious reasons.

Having been a big fan of Chinese and Japanese literature, I was surprised I had not read any Ma Jian until recently. Lately I have been enjoying a lot of Ha Jin, Yiyun Li, and Yu Hua; but I would place the works of Ma Jian at least on par with Ha Jin (though Ma Jian writes in Chinese and has his work brilliantly translated by Flora Drew).

The novel is made up of several intertwining stories taken from the fictional 'professional writers' life. The reader is drawn into China during the period of the 'Open Door Policy'. The first story is arguably the best (Swooner), but all have a wonderful realism and eye-opening events. The characters are richly developed; most are depraved, downtrodden, or just depressed. But throughout all, the reader can glimpse supporting characters who have made peace with the life they live.

I would not recommend this to an Asian literature novice; perhaps some of the stories of Ha Jin or Yiyun Li might be a better introduction to Chinese lit.

This is a wonderful translation and is a well paced read.

Not for everyone. Some strange and macabre stories that left me mystified. Still, it's fascinating. A great read for those who want something different.

I read this book immediately after finishing Mo Yan's Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out (highly recommended) and the contrast couldn't be more extreme. Where Mo Yan's book gently pokes fun at both the Maoist era and the Open Door policy that followed it, this book is merciless. It depicts an absurd, often violent slice of life in the Open Door period. The two "main characters"- if that is the right word- are a professional writer and a professional blood donor who meet for one of their regular dinners and get into discussions about what is right and wrong with their lives, and by extension the China they live in. Each succeeding chapter tells the story of another character - an actress who stages her own suicide, an entrepreneur who runs a home made crematorium, a painter, and so on. At first it is not clear how they are connected, but their lives seem to connect in strange ways. All of the stories are very bleak and sad, especially the one about the young woman with the big breasts. The depict a China of warped values and institutional cruelty that seems like a horrible place to live. I have been to China three times (as an individual, not with tour groups)and most of the people I have met are very pleasant. I cannot say reading this book was a pleasant experience, but I am glad I read it. I greatly respect Ma Jian as a writer (I've read three of his books so far), and his views of China bear listening to. In retrospect I wish I'd read him first and then Mo Yan. I'd have been left in a much more upbeat frame of mind.

DD could mean disturbingly delightful, or delightfully disturbing. Both descriptions seem to fit this book equally well. I picked this one up (random choice, I admit) on sale at a bookstore, and it was worth every penny, and more!

Ma Jian captures the spirit of post Tiananmen China in this satirical novel, through a dialog between a professional writer and a professional blood donor. This is not the kind of book you judge based on reviews...its the kind of book you simply have to read, because its worth it.

Is it just Ma Jian or is China so bereft of soul that people have a one dimensional inner life? Contrast this with the stories of the poor in Appalachia by Barbara Kingsolver, in Prodigal Summer where relationships between people are rich, and where the idea of cremating one's very alive mother for the experience of it would be beyond contemplation.

I have traveled in China both before and after Ma Jian's stories took place and did not find the nihilism he portrays to be particularly prevalent. His satire is perhaps on a par with Voltaire's Candide, but I don't find it particularly illuminating. Even people who navigate the shoals of the Cultural Revolution, the Great Leap Foreward and The Great Awakening have depths and his portrayal robs them of any dignity.