Li Geng's paintings
Li Zehou said: Recently, I am particularly pleased to read that some very different people, such as Wu Guanzhong, Zhou Ruchang, Xu Fancheng, Gu Sui, etc., all identify with Lu Xun from different aspects but not with Zhou Zuoren and Hu Shi.
I also don't like Zhou Zuoren. He and the later Qin Mu were both sketch writers, and they didn't understand why someone had raised him so high. They are all Dongqiao afternoon tea-style things, no matter how delicious they are, they are not dinner, similar to reading WeChat and Weibo today. This is a reflection of the city's culture, as long as there is a certain precipitation of the annual ring, the city will definitely produce such literati and sketches, which should be classified as lace literature.
The high-profile recommendation of Zhou Zuoren now may also be a reversal of the peasant writers who have long deliberately cultivated Gao Yubao,because until now, Chinese literature has still been peasant literature. Counting the writers who are active today, how many grew up in cities? The most written are still peasants, and occasionally some people who write about the city are basically "Chen Yisheng went to the city" and the like.
There are too few urban writers like Lao She, Lin Yutang, Zhang Hexhui, Zhang Ailing, and the Mandarin Duck Butterfly Sect writers Qin Shouou, Zhou Shuangjuan, Bao Tianxiao, as well as the New Sensation Sect Shi Jingcun, Liu Naou, Mu Shiying, Ye Lingfeng, Black Baby, Hejin, etc., as if today's success is Wang Shuo and Murong Xuecun. This shows that contemporary Chinese literature has not yet been transformed, the process of urbanization is still only in real estate development, literature is disconnected, and there are no master writers who belong to the city such as Thoreau, Dreiser, Owen Shaw, and O Henry.
If large airplanes and space landings on the moon are half a century later than those in the United States, Chinese urban literature is probably much worse than its Western counterparts. I have always wondered that after Napoleon personally presided over the construction of the radial Paris urban area, a large number of urban literature was "immediately desirable", Balzac, Hugo, Zola, Dumas, Mérime, Baudelaire, all have a large number of urban works, but Chinese literature has not appeared many works that reflect the value of contemporary urban civilization. After the founding of New China, the successful attempts in this regard, in my impression, that is, the weekly "Shanghai Morning", and Liu Xinwu, are also counted as one, Wang Anyi, Zhang Kangkang, Chi Li, and Wen Xi can only be counted as half. Obscure poems also count.
Things are scarce and expensive, so he focuses on Promoting Zhou as a person, and the main thing he values is the soul of the city in his bones.
Saying this is to prove that although China has built so many large and small cities, many places are still managed in rural areas. Go and inquire, the people who manage these cities, as well as the real estate tycoons who often call themselves "city operators", how many of them grew up in the city? They most likely believe that the city is to build the house high, and the higher the city, the higher it is. Only talk about the residential function, not the façade, resulting in a thousand cities. It seems that development means "demolition and demolition", before Beijing demolished the city wall, the past 40 years is the second large-scale destruction of traditional buildings and historical districts, the degree of tragedy is far worse than the demolition of the nine cities of old Beijing! The main reason is the lack of attachment to urban breast milk by people who grew up in the city.
Every time I go to Beijing, I live in Bada Hutong. Although it is dilapidated, the partition window is the front door building. I asked the grandfather why he had guarded this rotten house for decades, and the dozen square meters of this place could be replaced by a building elsewhere. Uncle said, we are all gone, can you still hear the original Beijing accent when you come?
In the 1980s, I took the Wuhan Changhang Dongfanghong series of steamships and visited cities along the Yangtze River. These cities have now been demolished beyond recognition; Jiujiang, one of the nine treaty ports in those years, was demolished the most thoroughly, and the Republic of China buildings along the river were demolished without a single brick.
Zhuhai Huafa went to Hankou and took a large piece of land from the French Concession, immediately demolished several old buildings, and then ruined them for many years. Now it is said that it is necessary to "repair the old as the old". Is that still the brick of the year? If the Ming Great Wall used the current foam bricks, what would it feel like?
History needs to be precipitated. When economic growth becomes barbaric growth, cities are bound to be subjected to violent demolitions like barbaric loading and unloading. Recently, I turned around in LaoHankou and demolished it more thoroughly, leaving behind several model buildings. People my age can't find childhood memories anymore.
Literary critic Huang Zihua said: Chinese writers cannot get out of the strange circle of writing about the countryside, which is related to the fact that Chinese are still resisting modern civilization and advocating agricultural civilization. Without the ideology and interpersonal relationships under modern civilization, urban writing is a freak who can never get out of the womb of agricultural civilization. Using the values and aesthetics of agricultural civilization to build a large number of civil engineering in the city, demolishing and building on a large scale, demolishing what is beautiful, and what is built is still a "new countryside" that is not compromised. They think it's beauty, and they reject bad reviews. This is directly related to the rejection or even criticism of modern civilization.
Dr. Xu Xun of Jianghan University said: In this regard, Shanghai is a little better, there are Wu Liang, Sun Ganlu, Jin Yucheng, there are also several post-80s and post-90s; other places are much worse.
In the first issue of "Literary Freedom Talk" this year, there is an article about why Shenzhen can't produce big writers and big works. This is indeed thought-provoking. One of the fastest growing metropolises in the world has gone from a small fishing village to a super city where tens of millions of people live and work in forty years, and literature is at least lagging behind. Obviously, there are also many famous writers who have entered, but they have been promoting migrant literature for decades – I have no intention of discriminating against migrant workers. It is also important to find Gao Yubao, who is hard-working and sweaty, from the assembly line, but is it a kind of self-dwarfing to deliberately render a world-class city with highly developed science and technology and economy into a peasant city from a cultural perspective? Where is your elite culture?
However, cultural people who grew up in cities generally have low emotional intelligence. This is a common disease of the so-called city people.
Finally, someone grabbed the handle of Li Ren again, which is said to be a hard wound: he lectured everywhere, and he was a good teacher, for example, his own works.
"Lecture everywhere" and "be a good teacher" should not be a progressive relationship. I lectured everywhere, just to earn some scraps of silver to cope with the increasingly out-of-control expenses, because I was paid the minimum wage in the unit, and I was working in the paper media, and the situation of the paper media was getting thinner and thinner, and I think everyone understood.
Therefore, my lectures have nothing to do with "being a good teacher".
The reason why I use my own works as examples is mainly because I have been protested against taking other people's works as examples before. Li Is often speechless and easy to injure the same kind, so in principle, except for those who have already been ancient, in principle, I do not compare with my peers; but use my own composition to illustrate some problems, basically there is no risk in this regard.
Later, some friends asked back, why did they comment on themselves? Someone gives a seminar to themselves, they miss themselves, they worship themselves, why can't you comment on yourself?
However, it is really difficult to find precedents for commenting on yourself. Shameless? Doubts aside. Some people always say that Li ren has no works, how can he be qualified to comment on others? That being the case, how can I comment on myself and how can I have a problem? Even if Li is a middle-aged man who has lost his footing, he must always give him a way out, right? Moreover, he only comments on himself, not on himself, not on ratings, not on awards, and has no meaning of traffic with goods.
Then again, Li's face is often "thick enough to carry things", and he is not afraid of being talked about. The following examples illustrate the importance of literary language appeal. In today's era of short and fast digestion of articles, if your grand narrative cannot grasp the reader within the first thousand words, but it is still as dry as "Remembrance of the Lost Water Years", from tomorrow onwards, hunger will be your new normal.
In order to write novels, I often practice how to start. For example, this "Lao Zhang" -
Old Zhang is gone. Before Lao Zhang left, his identity was a director, and before the director, he was a cave head, specializing in helping some second- and third-line actors organize performances. Originally in his hometown. In the countryside, weddings and funerals, if there is a whistle, it is music; if you add a gong and drum, and then add a flute or something, even if it is a symphony, you can earn a hundred dollars each time. Later, I went to the town to stage, and I also led monkey puppies or something, which was a circus. The real opportunity was the collapse of the county theater troupe. The lovers of his dreams before, those high-ranking actresses, were so unemployed. He went to ask for a contract, and several flower drum play women hugged him like water snakes, and their bodies were itching comfortably. The banks of the Huai River were almost walked by his drama team. Don't say that it was some small money, when Chang Xiangyu sang a Henan zizi, the soil had to fall off the slag, and actually bought a plane to give to the volunteer army. Lao Zhang had heard of it and said that he did not believe it when he was killed. Later, he believed that small businesses can indeed make a lot of money in China. This is what he later bought Da Ben said: You see Chery in Wuhu, you made money, and bought all the Land Rovers; Li Shufu, Geely made money, and bought the Volvo in Sweden. In fact, his means of making money is not clever, that is, in the middle of the play, a striptease, the whole climax, whether it is a township cadre, or the second uncle of the village head, like it. Wherever a person dies, he can let those half-old Xu Niang take off their clothes for half a month at the door of people's homes, and take off the three surroundings of the people, and the three views are not correct. Thus the original accumulation is completed. It is impossible to accumulate steps to a thousand miles, and of course it is necessary to leap thousands of miles into Dabie Mountain. East, west, south, north and south, get rich and go to Guangdong. The villagers said, Guangdong is where you go? So many tall people. Lao Zhang said that it was the jujube that hit two shots first. It was really auspicious, he shot it, and the jujube fell to the ground. This has to do with his attention to propaganda. In the field, as soon as the gong is broken, it is known to everyone; in the township and county towns, the loudspeakers collected at home are well known to everyone. In the big cities, it depends on the media (the new word he learns), on the journalists. It's not expensive to send off, and at that time, it's fifty stuffy — Cantonese, and a stuffy is a piece. Muffled to make a fortune, Guangdong is really less people with less money and more money. A year later, I made a lot of stuffy money. The actors he invited were no longer county team members, but national first-level and second-level actors. A few years later, his family's team "changed", the wife took the children away, the new wife was young and promising, the business was getting bigger and bigger, who was red and who was black and who was yellow in the country, asked him, the door was clear. Anti-corruption, the performance on the football field can not be done, and the concert in the basketball hall can not recruit people. When I inquired, I dared to watch the TV series. Someone came to flicker, so they followed it to Hengdian, Zhejiang. People are smart, and they can see everything out of the doorway. He did not cooperate with others, and found a literary old man. People have worked hard for several years, and a long novel cannot be published. What was written? Fight the devils. Lao Zhang is a person without organization, just according to his own intuition accumulated in the countryside, asking, what is a ghost? The middleman said, it was the Imperial Army. Huang Jun? Interesting, to be yellow, to be black, to be violent, qi! The second uncle does not like to watch, the third uncle and the fourth master must look. At that time, there was no "divine drama" to say, and if you were not careful, you would take the lead. He said, give you two hundred thousand, take something and leave. The playwright originally just wanted to get thirty-twenty thousand, and according to today's saying, scared the baby to death. According to the rules and regulations, according to Lao Zhang's requirements, he gave up the right of signature and went home to report the good news to his wife. The point is that when Lao Zhang intervened in this business, he asked people to understand and shoot TV dramas, what is the most difficult and what is the easiest? People say that writing a script is the hardest, and being a director is the easiest. Because you write a script, you must at least be a writer, right? Other types of work are also technical tasks, lighting, props, makeup, art, clothing, historical consultants, and so on. Lao Zhang said, so, this director must have to do it? So he really became a director, and then he went to film school and found a young man who studied directing, that is executive director. Originally, I thought that this devil would fight once, but I didn't expect that everyone was calling for resistance to Japan, and there were "angry youth" boycotting Japanese goods or something. Lao Zhang later confessed to the reporter who interviewed him that luck had come, and it was impossible to stop it! In one breath, he fought hard for eight years, all kinds of fighting styles, and his skills, destroyed the Kanto Army and the Kansai Army, and made a lot of money himself. He felt that if he continued to fight like this, the resources should be exhausted, and it was estimated that he would have to fight the emperor's house. Is anyone else watching? Sure enough, it was constantly returned by the TV station. But he transformed quickly, and immediately remembered that culture is now being advocated in various places. Lao Zhang quickly learned a new term - buying services. There are special funds in the city, and the province is even more unambiguous, who shoots TV series, subsidies range from five million to fifty million. Old Zhang has a bit, and there are rich people, that is, poor books. He began to buy the script in cash everywhere, telling people, this is stock speculation, you have to buy first, the book is the original stock. By the time Lao Zhang bought the book, the professional screenwriter already had a sense of rights protection, and he felt that he could not afford to buy it. But he clearly knew that there were gunmen in the jianghu, and he was looking for the gunman, but in fact the gunman was also looking for him. Sure enough, there was an old comrade who had been through seventy years. It is said that people also inquired for several years before they found him, and they hated each other. The writer has been tossing and turning for this book for five or six years, and the original wish is to change it for ten thousand yuan. Lao Zhang never had a heart of compassion attack, look at people, write a lifetime, the goal is only ten thousand yuan. He wanted to surprise the other party, and as soon as he exited, even he was stunned: a million! The ancient writers even had the heart to kneel at that time. Benefactor. Lao Zhang lightly told the old man to dare to imagine. When the assistant finished reading thirty episodes of the script, he said that he had the heart to die: it was another fight again. Lao Zhang said when "interviewing" Gu Laixian, how do you, this, eight years of the War of Resistance, we are all over, you just thought, fight the devil? Gu Laixi said, no, this script, I wrote it for eight years. There is no way, for the sake of credibility, Lao Zhang said to his assistant, look at the fact that people have also resisted for eight years, let's fight the devil again. I don't know if we are on the "blacklist" of Japan, I have not been to Japan yet. Lao Zhang certainly doesn't take a risk. He did it according to the established method, found a local government to pay the bill, and arranged all the names of the relevant leaders. Some people say that I will do the same. Old Smile, you try? That is, only Lao Zhang has taken this road through, and only Lao Zhang can rely on the script in his hand to find relevant departments to get relevant subsidies.
I think that in addition to taking subsidies such as support fees and project fees, literature is the most able to reflect social reality.
Aesthetic awareness and aesthetic ability are two concepts.
The problem with many Chinese writers is that they have no aesthetic ability.
Sometimes, the truth is more absurd than the novel. Fiction is often carried out under certain logic, and some realities are often illogical.
If literature does not reflect reality, but only as a manifestation of writing skills, without values, without basic moral judgments, it is a walking dead without a soul.
Today's literary criticism can no longer adapt to the collapse rate of a certain literary reality, and it must be solved with "literary criticism".
Instead of waiting for Godot, wait for Valad.
Waiting is a kind of lying flat, and lying flat is a kind of waiting.
Only music can fully reflect the complex heart without being caught.
Even painting can't do that.
literature? Black and white, ironclad evidence.
October 6, 2021, Shangjietang
("Literary Freedom Talk", No. 6, 2021, the original title is "Dragging Mud and Water". Image courtesy of the author)
