Huang Yuning, an experienced foreign literary editor, translator and columnist, is now trying to write novels, and Huang Yuning, who mao jian jokingly calls "Wen Ba", recently launched a new book, "When Pretending to Be True". She said it was a "wayward" book, a summary of previous writing, memories of past lives, and review articles such as film reviews and book reviews. In short, there are fictions and truths, so the title of the book uses a sentence from "Dream of the Red Chamber": when pretending to be true.
Recently, Huang Yuning sat down with his friends Mao Jian and Xiao Bai to talk about the new book, talk about the fiction and reality in literary works, and as a reader, how to grasp the "true" and "false" here. The following text is compiled according to the content of the lecture, and the surging news is published with the authorization of Yilin Publishing House.
"Fake The Time" New Book Salon Scene, from left: Mao Jian, Huang Yuning, Xiao Bai
Writer XiaoBai mentioned that real writing, or the narrative we required to write when we were young, is a kind of historical narrative and non-fiction. However, in the commercial development of book publishing, it slowly became a large scope, and it also became that everything could be fictionalized. Let's say the truth and falsehood in writing, when we were children writing narratives, we knew that we had hardly ever said the truth, even if the composition handed over to the teacher, "The weather is good today", maybe in addition to this sentence is true, the back is fake, everyone is making up stories, "I picked up 5 cents on the ground or something." But some people, in the training of "counterfeiting", have gradually developed a skill: they can reflect the new content in the fictional writing, the real thing in a unique angle.
Xiao Bai gave an example from Huang Yuning's new book: She wrote about her uncle, that is, her grandmother's brother, but in reality, she had almost no material about her uncle. Ms. Wong said she only knew he was from Hong Kong and had long since lost contact with their families. At the beginning of reform and opening up, there were no communication tools such as mobile phones, and the uncle suddenly appeared at her doorstep one day, "And I opened the door, I was completely blinded." There was only this faint impression, a glimpse of surprise, all she could know was only a few words, but Huang Yuning completely constructed the character of uncle in the article. Xiao Bai said: "I remember that she came to me to ask for some information, including information on international seafarers, memoirs and the like, and she also read some books in this regard, and had a basic understanding of the living and working conditions of seafarers at that time." "It can be said that the uncle is a fictional image, but he is also a real character." We can say in other words, whether her uncle is real or not, because the truth is no longer recoverable, there is never a thing that can be recovered, and from the perspective of postmodern philosophy, there is no longer an infinite approximation of the truth of something in history, but we can say that Teacher Huang presented a very real uncle here, so that a deceased person can be re-emerged. ”
Huang Yuning added that in fact, she hopes to present a special era, an era that is changing. "Shanghai is a mixed-race city, originally has a colonial history, many people's relatives are from where you don't know, the roots don't know where, I and Mao Jian's family have a lot of Ningbo ancestry, my mother is also there." I want to show that in a city like ours, everyone doesn't know where the tentacles of their own home can go. Suddenly, such a 'most familiar stranger' came, the most familiar to my grandmother, and the family had an extra window to the outside. This is the common fate of Shanghainese people, suddenly the relatives who lost contact at that time, the United States, Japan, suddenly all connected, the younger generation of the family hopes to be able to see the outside through this window, he has not seen the outside for too long, this is the mentality of the people. In addition to writing about my uncle, I also wrote about my family, relatives and so on, including my uncle also hopes to go to Japan to study and work, and I hope to express these things in more than 10,000 words. ”
At the time of writing, Huang Yuning's grandmother had died, and "even if she hadn't died, she wouldn't have had the chance to see it." She still has a bit of a psychological barrier, "like Xiao Bai's novels can avoid this, because he wrote about old Shanghai, it is completely fictional, and the characters have nothing to do with him." Several of the novels I've written now are from this era, and that makes you feel terrified. When I write my own novels, anything that I think is related to me and that people can see the clues will definitely change. ”
Xiao Bai is not completely free of trouble in this regard. There was a character named Lü Yan in his first novel", "Bureau Point", after the novel was published, "At that time, there was no WeChat, I opened Weibo, some people said who you really are, I knew as soon as I looked at the avatar photo, it was Lü Yan himself." I hadn't seen him in 20 years, and I was so embarrassed that I didn't write his image as particularly normal, and then I didn't continue to talk to him, I didn't say, I didn't answer him, he didn't ask me. However, Xiao Bai's later handling method was completely different from Huang Yuning's, and he Suoxing used many people's real names in the novel, "All are real people, I don't care if he is true or not." But Huang Yuning's psychological disorder even to a more extreme point, anyone who has a little clue relationship, she will change this character to age, occupation and the like, must be transformed to the point that others can not recognize. "In fact, many of the writer's own emotions and opinions must be integrated into the characters, and no matter how many characters you write, maybe these people are you, but you have to deform and change to the point that no one can recognize you." Troubles are here, but fun is also fun here. ”
Mao Jian also said that she had written an essay about her parents before, and her father was particularly unhappy when he read it. "Because I wrote that my father is the son of a landlord, my father has wanted to escape this identity all his life, he can't join the party all his life, after I wrote it, he was particularly unhappy, repeatedly asked me, how many people can see this article of yours?" I said there were probably a few people, and people didn't know it was you. He said you signed it, you wrote your dad and your mom, people will definitely know it's me. My father was a Chinese teacher, and he was particularly truthful, asking me repeatedly how many people had read it, and I wished I should publish a newspaper to apologize to him. ”
Following the angle of Mao Jian, Xiao Bai thought that a book can be discussed from the perspective of the author or from the perspective of the reader. How should you read a book as a reader? The average reader sees that there is a little bit of real stuff in the article, or sees something fake, how do they judge this text and accept this text? "Now we readers have gone through a long period of discipline in the publishing industry, fiction and non-fiction, and have preconceived notions about it before they have read it, but the reader has a psychological tendency or a lazy way, and if he sees a little bit of truth in this book, he immediately takes it as a real thing. I don't believe you go to Weibo to talk about which star is how to do it, tell a little bit of truth, and immediately everyone will believe that this is true. Therefore, Xiao Bai feels that the problem mentioned by Mao Jian is a very important problem in reading: when the real thing obtained in reading is consistent with what we have experienced in real experience, how do we grasp the judgment of its real or fictional scale? This may require continuous reading training to master. "You have to read a book, fiction or non-fiction, and you always have to learn how to read this text, how to read the things behind this text. If you read a novel, for example, I wrote in one of my own books, when we were very young, we crossed the Tianshan Road and it was all farmland, and two of our classmates rode bicycles all the way to the farmland and the single wooden bridge, that is, the experience was in it, when a reader did not experience it, maybe this scene passed, but if there is a reader who has a little experience, reading here, will it be taken as real? ”
Xiao Bai feels that how to grasp the real scale and how to grasp the text requires long-term reading training, which is actually the most important thing to read, and you have this ability to read. "Reading the meaning behind the author from a sentence can also read the author's life experience, his judgment, or the questions he does not want to say, does not want to say, avoids saying, and is embarrassed to say, can be read from the text. If you are a perfectly trained reader, you will be able to read from his text what this person really is. Of course, this is the perfect state, but in fact, the purpose of our reading, the ability of reading training, is to continue to move closer to this goal and read the things under the text. ”
Huang Yuning himself does guess what the author himself is when he reads the novel, "but in fact, I think that if he is a more experienced reader, he will distinguish the difference between the author and the character, and he will also distinguish the distance between the author and the author he created, and more or get something from the text that is equivalent to his own feelings." ”
"Train each other." Xiao Bai said.
Huang Yuning also agreed: "The higher the level of the author, the higher the level of the reader, and in turn, the higher the level of the reader will also require the author to continuously improve." We, the publishers and the writers, are eager for such an exchange. ”
Xiao Bai believes that the reader and the author are the relationship between cat and mouse. "Of course, it doesn't matter how the metaphor is, there is a cat and mouse game between the author and the reader, the reader looks for loopholes in the text, how the author uses your skills to make the reader difficult to catch, this is actually the pleasure of writing or reading." As Teacher Huang just said, if you say that Chinese literature – the bigger talk – is better, it may be that readers and authors play this game more and more cleverly together. ”
"When The Fake Is True", Huang Yuning/Author, Yilin Publishing House, February 2017 edition.