- The Adventures of Mao on the Long March
infobox Book |
name = The Adventures of Mao on the Long March
title_orig =
translator =
image_caption = Cover of New Directions reprint, 2005
author =Frederic Tuten
illustrator =
cover_artist =Roy Lichtenstein
country =United States
language = English
series =
genre = Postmodern,Collage , Parody novel
publisher =Citadel Press (First Edition)
release_date = 1971
media_type = Print (Hardcover and Paperback)
pages = 121 pp (First edition)
isbn = ISBN 0806502487 (First edition)
preceded_by =
followed_by ="The Adventures of Mao on the Long March" is
Frederic Tuten 's first published novel. The novel is a fictionalized account of Chairman Mao's rise to power, and is highly experimental in nature, including extensive use of parody and collage.Plot summary
The novel has no linear plot, and is mostly composed of an elaborate arrangement of disparate elements. The novel presents a seemingly straightforward history of the
Long March , as well as a fictionalized interview with Mao and several more conventional "novelistic" scenes with Mao as the main character.The novel also includes a large selection of unattributed quotes from various sources and parodies of certain writers, including Faulkner, Hemingway, and Kerouac.Publication history
The story first appeared in 1969 in a 39-page condensed form in the magazine "Artist Slain". In
1970 the completed book was sent to various publishers and rejected as it was not considered a novel. Tuten considered self-publication and asked his friend Roy Lichtenstein to do the cover. Eventually, he was offered a publication deal by Citadel Press, on the condition that Lichtenstein make a lithograph of Mao for a deluxe edition (Lichtenstein's "Head of Mao" precedes Andy Warhol's Mao series by two years). The lithograph and book were published in an edition of 150 signed copies. However, the special edition was then disassembled by the publisher and very few of the original box editions remain intact. The novel was finally printed in1971 and received a favorable review in theNew York Times by Thomas Lask; this was followed by several other positive reviews and comments by writers, includingIris Murdoch andJohn Updike . In1977 Marion Boyers reprinted the novel in England and the U.S, making sure to keep it in print as long as she was alive. The novel was re-released in 2005 byNew Directions and is currently still in print. [Tuten, Frederic. Postscript to "The Adventures of Mao on the Long March". New Directions edition, 2005. 127-134.]Cover and layout
The cover of "Mao" features original artwork by painter
Roy Lichtenstein , Tuten's close friend. It is a bold, smiling depiction of Mao, rendered in Lichtenstein's trademarkbenday dot style. Tuten himself was actually used as a model for the drawing, which Lichtenstein altered accordingly to resemble Mao.The font used in the book intentionally resembles that of an informational pamphlet.
Quotations
I'm an old man who wants to dream the remaining days away. Yet I can't take a nice healthy crap without some fanatic bowing to the stool and singing: "Oh, our great Chairman Mao has again fertilized the world." What was all my hard work for, if I can't fill my last hours with serenity and nonproductive contemplation? [Tuten, Frederic. "The Adventures of Mao on the Long March". New Directions edition, 2005. 118.]
:: - Chairman MaoMao's wife sighs. "Come to bed, my sweet man; you need to dream."
:: - A conversation between Mao and his wife on the Long March.
"Not tonight. Tonight I would like to love you alone."
"Oh! Mao, the world is too tired for that."
"We must stir it to life then. The sexual act is a revolutionary act." [Tuten, 57.]Satire must never be directed against the class whose aspirations you share - only against the enemy. [Tuten, 114.]
:: - Chairman Mao criticizing "La Chinoise ", a film byJean-Luc Godard Allusions/references to other works
The book is loaded with references to writers and literary texts, in the form of direct quotes, parodies, and allusions:
Quoted texts
*
William Shakespeare - "Anthony and Cleopatra "
*Jack London - "Iron Heel ", "Martin Eden "
*Nathaniel Hawthorne - "The Marble Faun ", "The Blithedale Romance ", "Twice-Told Tales ", "Septimlus Felton"
*John William De Forest - "Miss Ravenel's Conversion"
*Herman Melville - "Roman Statuary"
*James Fenimore Cooper - "The Bravo", "The Pioneers "
*Ralph Waldo Emerson - "The Transcendentalists"
*Washington Irving - "The Adventures of Captain Bonneville"
*Walter Pater - "The Renaissance ", "Marius the Epicurean "
*Oscar Wilde - "De Profundis "Parodied Authors
*
John Dos Passos
*William Faulkner
*Ernest Hemingway
*Jack Kerouac
*Bernard Malamud
*John Steinbeck References to writers, artists, and filmmakers
In the fictional interview with Mao, over fifty books and publications, as well as several artists and filmmakers, are mentioned in passing. The following list includes only those who were discussed at length by Mao:
*Jean-Luc Godard - "Made in U.S.A.", "La Chinoise ", "Vivre sa vie", "Breathless"
*Leon Trotsky - "Literature and Revolution"
*Kenneth Burke - "Counter-Statement", "Philosophy of Literary Form"
*John Keats - "Ode on a Grecian Urn "
*Wallace Stevens
*Salvador Dalí Literary significance & criticism
Earl Rovit describes the novel as:
an artful pastiche of parody, surprising quotations, startling juxtaposition, teasing incongruity, and shrewd illumination of the knotted contradictoriness of the Western aesthetic tradition. Tuten makes subtle and productive use of the strategies of focus and composition which are traditionally the property of the visual arts. [Rovit, Earl. "Some Shapes in Recent American Fiction" "Contemporary Literature", 15, 4. 1974. 556.]
According to Robert Detweiler, Tuten's handling of history as fantasy "enables the reader to grasp immediately the distortion of history and contrast it to the actual structure of past events." By transforming Mao into an insecure buffoon and the march into a mad and chaotic journey, the novel comically deflates the mythical status Mao had at the time. [ Detweiler, Robert. "Theological Trends of Postmodern Fiction" "Journal of the American Academy of Religion", 44, 2. 1976. 232.]
Editions
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* The novel has also been translated into French and Spanish.ources
John Updike 's essay on the novel, "Satire without Serifs," originally appeared inthe New Yorker . It was reprinted as an introduction in the 2005 New Direction edition, along with an introductory essay and postscript by Tuten himself.Footnotes
References
* [http://www.archipelago.org/vol1-1/tuten.htm "Twenty-Five Years After: "The Adventures of Mao on the Long March"."] Essay by Frederic Tuten on Archipelago, 1997.
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