What is a father? Or another way: What is a father?
Behind this absurd rhetorical question, it is actually a mixed point of the word "father".
Women give birth to babies, most of which are naturally promoted to mothers, but men who have children are not so easy to become fathers. The mother seems to be born, but the father needs constant tests to gain some recognition.
Perhaps it is for this reason that our feelings for our fathers are not as direct and intense as those of our mothers.
There are many images of fathers, and they are engraved in our hearts in different looks and postures. Chinese fathers (not serious or precise concepts) usually give the impression of being taciturn and unsmiling, typical cases such as Jia Zheng in "Dream of the Red Chamber", Bai Jiaxuan in "White Deer Plain", and Kafka's father, the image of the father is naturally inseparable from the patriarchal society, and it is also the epitome of the patriarchal society. Perhaps for girls, "Chinese fathers" may still be able to show love more naturally, but for boys, there is a deliberate estrangement and restraint of emotions, which makes the image of fathers more complex and diverse.
Therefore, in the eyes of many post-80s writers, the father is a missing state, they rarely write about the father, perhaps in their hearts, the father is a cookie-cutter concept.
In the view of the writer Xiang Xun, his father is an unfinished book, and it is also an unfinished book. He said: One day, after my father left us, all kinds of memories of him came to us.
When he was young, his family was relatively poor, Xiang Xun's father would always run all over the country to earn money to support his family, although he was always not at home, but he was never missing, no matter where he was, he would write letters home, these letters, sent from Beijing Miyun, a county in Guizhou, Urumqi, or somewhere else.
And whenever a letter from his father was sent by the postman, the teenager Xiang Xun would hide in a corner undisturbed with secret joy, carefully open the envelope, and pull out two or three pages of letter paper stacked on top of each other—mostly the inner pages cut from the notebook or exercise book—flatten the creases and read them word by word.
In these letters, my father revealed a different side, "like a change of voice, a change of personality, a change of face, and a pleasant face to me with a lot of words that I could not hear in my daily life, and even a little bit of purring (instigation) - when he was booing and asking for warmth." And at the beginning of each letter, he always imitates the tone of the ancients: Wu'er Xiangxun, how is it late? ”
Xiang Xun later recalled: "Reading such a sentence, I always feel strange, which makes me can't help but be funny. ”
He always imagined scenes like this:
When he finally finished writing, his father raised his head and breathed a sigh of relief, looked out of the window for a while, leaned down again, read the letter silently from beginning to end, added a sentence somewhere, modified another word in another place, and finally solemnly settled the money - 'Father, a certain month and a certain day in a certain year'. Putting down his pen, he folded a mark on the side of the letter, carefully cut them from the notebook, lifted them to his chest, gathered his lips and blew them, and then, in accordance with his usual rigorous style, folded them neatly in half or three folds, carried them into the pocket of his jacket, and gently pressed them with his hands. In the afternoon or the next morning, my father set off from the hustle and bustle of the construction site by motorcycle or truck, over hills and rolling hills and crop fields, and finally arrived at the town's post office, where he bought envelopes and stamps, packed the letters, wrote down the delivery address, and solemnly threw them into the post box. When I received the letter, I seemed to be able to touch the warmth of my father's hands on the envelope, his gaze on the letter paper, and his flame-bright loneliness. ”
And every time in the back of the letter, the father asked "no need to reply to the letter, back can not receive", because go out to work, the liquidity is too strong, there is always no fixed address, but at that time Xiao Xiangxun will still reply, accumulated over time, the reply letter has become a thick stack of paper.
A long letter that cannot be sent
One summer in 2015, my father died of illness, and the letters became long letters that could never be sent.
He had been thinking about writing a book about his father, and in such a situation, his creative ability was even stronger, he wanted to know his father better, he wanted to find the shadow of family history and his father through his father, originally he wanted to create in the form of a long novel, but later decided to use prose to present his father's life, in the matter of writing his father, prose or non-fiction is more appropriate, but also more able to challenge himself.
The Book with the Father consists of six essays about the father. Xiang Xun chose several important time nodes in his father's life, wrote about his father's life in childhood, when he was hungry, and after serious illness, and created a simple, warm and responsible peasant father image.
He says at the beginning of the book: "I am eager to write a different father, a father who is different, and has a small ambition for the reader to see the shadow of my father or my father's generation in him." ”
In his book, "fathers", like most fathers, are mediocre people who are not good at words, but like heroes, they rarely cry out for pain.
"Father is not very literate, and asks professionally in the face of nurses - what is your pain level?" The father was cramped and frightened, his voice trembling and tentatively saying a number, he could not quantify the 'pain', 'very painful', 'particularly painful' into Arabic values, always hesitated for half a moment to give an uncertain score, he was like a child waiting for the teacher's criticism, bowing his head and waiting for the nurse's answer. ”
They never seem to know how to love someone, but knowing that he is behind you gives you the courage to go further.
"There was no passionate love between father and mother, and the mother had suspicions and resentment towards her father, but the mother cried like a helpless child after her father's death, and the marriage certificate that symbolized their love did not even have a picture of them."
"Letters with Father" is a collection of essays that can touch people's hearts, and Xiang Xun writes about not only his father, but also countless typical Chinese fathers, and the image of traditional Chinese fathers for generations.
In these texts about fathers, there are not only the separation and gap between children and fathers, but also rare understanding and recognition.
At 8:00 p.m. this Friday (December 17), the author Xiang Xun brought his new book "Book with Father" as a guest of slow study room and Cloud Salon, sharing "Book with Father" - long letters that cannot be sent and unreachable affection", so stay tuned.
Welcome to the video number Slow Study
Watch the Salon on the Cloud as the 89th salon in this issue
The Honored Guests
Share guests
Xiang Xun
Born in 1984 in Western Hubei, China, he currently lives in Nanjing. He is a member of the Chinese Writers Association. He has published a collection of essays, "Who Can Still Return Home", "Scarborough Bazaar", "Notes on Sojourners" and so on. He has won many awards such as the Lin Yutang Prose Award, the Feng Zikai Prose Award Jury Award, the Sun Li Prose Award, the Bingxin Children's Literature Award, the Sanmao Prose Award, and the Yangtze River Annual Young Poet Award.
Book Recommendation
Good book recommendation
"Book with Father"
Xiang Xun/
Beijing October Literature and Art Publishing House
Published in June 2021
Yu Jian × Su Tong × Li Xiuwen sincerely recommended
A long letter that can never be sent
A son's affectionate book to his father