Neither Fact nor Fiction: Endnotes, Mythorealism and Reading "Inner Truth" in Yan Lianke's Lenin's Kisses

This essay provides a new reading of Yan Lianke’s 2004 novel Lenin’s Kisses
by focusing on its use of paratext, specifically the endnotes that make up the
novel’s “Further Reading” sections. Main text and endnote regularly feature
alongside urban and rural, utopia and anti-utopia on the long list of oppositional
pairings explored in the novel. In contrast, I argue that the notes undermine
these pairings by pointing to the subjectivity of such categories. I show how
Yan destabilizes the division between main text and endnote by allowing their
function to overlap. The false division of text then maps onto the other
oppositions in Lenin’s Kisses, revealing difference as nothing more than a
veneer. The notes allow Yan to critique practices of labelling and categorizing,
becoming the aesthetic expression of his “mythorealist” (shenshizhuyi) genre.
Lenin’s Kisses is here read as an “interactive” text, full of commentary on the
pervasive and destructive nature of social categories.