via "The End of the Journey"
I weep because everything disappears and changes
It's back again, but always in another way.
In Blackbird, the poet Adam Zagaevsky bids farewell to the dead in the tone of a blackbird. Last year, we also had to say goodbye to the famous Polish poet. Last year — yes, it was already last year — we lost many literary masters.
Cruelly, you may have read their obituary before you read their work. Blackbird is right that reading a writer's words and phrases after death is always different from reading them before they die. You are no longer in the same time and space. You will always have to meet "in another way" forever. Don't say you don't love literature, your love for literature just tends to come too late.
Why do you always have to wait for a writer to die before you start reading him? Why can't we just read the works of the past and ignore the living writers? Let's start with a widely read conversation behind one.
John Edward Williams 1922-1994
American writer John Williams is rumored to be a "jerk."
He was born in Texas in 1922 to a farmer and a stepfather to a cleaner. After serving in the U.S. Air Force, he entered the University of Denver to study literature and returned to the University of Denver to teach writing.
He was not at all popular with students and colleagues. He smoked, drank, was cloudy, chattered, and then scolded students in public, scolding them for crying. After he spoke ill of a Jewish student, the Jewish professor at the same school was even more upset. "How the hell did this bastard become a great writer?"
He was only called a "great writer" because Williams and the popular postmodern writer John Bass carved up the 1973 National Book Award. The people around him reacted coldly, and few people celebrated for him. He never had a formal chair. The award-winning Augustus was his last novel and did not sell well. He died in 1994.
The New York Times published his obituary in medium length
At the time of Williams' death, two editions of the world-famous novel Stoner had not sold 10,000 copies in the previous thirty years. Stoner, Williams' third novel, still went through seven rejections before it was published in 1965.
Stoner 2016 Chinese translation
How can it be so bleak?
This may be because, as the writer Kong Yalei put it in an article called "The Ancient Light" in the literary review collection "Guide to Elysium Life", it is "the most prosaic story we have read in recent years". A college professor named Stoner means "stone man," an indifferent wife, a lovely but increasingly strange daughter, an extramarital affair, and several cold-eyed colleagues. That's all.
But Conyaré believes that Stoner's mediocrity is also his charm as a literary figure: "The simplicity and stability of his life is to more clearly highlight the subtleties of this specimen of the mind." Compared with the dramatic and violently changing specimens of the times, it appears mediocre and monotonous, but it is deeper and more enduring, and even more sacred and necessary. ”
When Stoner was finally republished in 2006, Maurice Dixstein, a New York Times book reviewer, probably for similar reasons, couldn't stop commenting, calling it "the perfect novel." Because it writes exhilarating feelings in the subtleties of suffering.
How is a life that is not worth living worth living?
As soon as the book review came out, the sales of "Stoner" were a little better. At this time, the French best-selling author Anna Cavalda read the book. She fell completely in love with the character of Stoner, tossed it around, translated it into French and published it, and immediately topped the best-seller list. "Stoner" returned to his hometown, and the export was transferred to domestic sales.
After Stoner was rediscovered, people took pictures of it
People realized they were reading too late. In 2013, half a century after Stoner was published, its translations traveled to 21 countries around the world, including China. Even though it was considered an unmade book by The New Yorker magazine because no one could photograph the "buried fire" beneath its bleak surface, Cassie Affleck, the male protagonist of Manchester by the Sea, became the male protagonist of the Stoner film, as if the story had never been left unattended.
There's a biography of Williams called The Man Who Wrote the Perfect Novel. Its title sounds proud at first glance, but the text repeatedly mentions a regrettable detail.
The Man Who Wrote the Perfect Novel, 2017
A year after the first edition of Stoner, it finally received a positive article in The New Republic, a magazine to which many academy teachers subscribe. The next day, Williams put on one of his most elaborate outfits and sat early next to the reception desk of the English department's office. It's a location where students and professors will pass by, and if anyone reads a magazine, they'll all have a chance to say something to Williams.
Most people didn't say anything.
In fact, every time Williams had a novel published, he would sit in the department office for a day, waiting to chat with people. Augustus came out in December, when the sun had set early and no one had told him about his new novel. It wasn't until no light came in through the window that he walked through the no-man's hallway and into his own office.
New Republic magazine produced illustrations for Stoner's 50th anniversary
Of course, it is not excluded that his "bastard" reputation is at work. But more regrettably, Williams's work did not receive the recognition he deserved during his lifetime. In correspondence with the editor, he wrote: "The only thing I can be sure of is that this novel is good. Over time, one might find it a solid work. ”
If his readers today could go back in time, perhaps the first thing to do would be to congratulate the English professor at the University of Denver. Congratulations on his good writing, congratulations on him being right. To quote him again, "It's like a buried fire."
A Guide to Elysium Life is the novelist and translator Conyaré's first collection of literary criticisms, including reviews of John Williams and Stoner. It takes you back to writers who have been delayed, such as W.G. who was in a car accident at the peak. Sebald, "the most prolific writer after his death" Bolanio. It also offers new perspectives for poets and musicians who have long since become famous, such as Adam Scott. Zagaevsky and Leonard Cohen. It also stands for living writers such as Jeff Dyer, Paul Oster, Yoko Ogawa, César Ella, and Carl Ove Knausgao.
Through it, you may be able to establish communication with living writers and experience the joy of "cultivating a system". Through it, you may be able to find the key to love in an era when it is no longer lovely.
Go read! Not too late.
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Which other underrated writers do you know?
Author - Wet Market