"Running through Zhongguancun" courtesy of Beijing Publishing Group
Beijing, October 20 (Reporter Gao Kai) As the first post-70s Mao Dun Literature Award winner, Xu Zechen's works have been quite concerned by the literary world, this well-known expert recently launched the latest collection of short stories "Qingcheng", and revised and republished the classic novel collection "Running through Zhongguancun" and "If the snow closes the door", a few days ago, a sharing meeting focusing on Xu Zechen's short stories was held in Beijing.
Qiu Huadong, a famous writer and secretary of the Secretariat of the China Writers Association, Zhang Li, a famous critic and professor of the College of Letters of Beijing Normal University, and Cong Zhichen and Xu Zechen, young critics and associate professors of the Department of Chinese of Peking University, discussed in depth the writing achievements and literary charm of Xu Zechen's short stories around works such as "Qingcheng", "Running Through Zhongguancun" and "If the Snow Closes the Door".
"Qingcheng", courtesy of Beijing Publishing Group
Xu Zechen, born in 1978 in Donghai, Jiangsu Province, graduated from the Department of Chinese of Peking University and is currently the deputy editor of People's Literature. He has won the Lu Xun Literature Award, the Zhuang Chongwen Literature Award, the Chinese Literature media award, the Novelist of the Year Award, the Feng Mu Literature Award, and was named the "2015 Young Chinese Leader" by Southern People Weekly. The novel "Jerusalem" was named "Top Ten Chinese Novels of 2014" by Hong Kong Asia Weekly, and won the 5th Lao She Literature Award and the 6th Hong Kong "Dream of the Red Chamber Award" Jury Award. The novel "Going North" won the 10th Mao Dun Literature Award, the 15th "Five One Project" Award for the Construction of Spiritual Civilization of the Central Propaganda Department, and the "2018 China Good Book" Award. The novel "Wang Cheng Ru Hai" was named "Top Ten Chinese Novels of 2017" by Hong Kong's Asia Weekly and "Top Ten Chinese Books of 2017" by Taiwan's Mirror Weekly. Some of his works have been translated into 20 languages, including English, French, German, Japanese, Spanish, Italian, Russian, Arabic, Korean, and Mongolian.
"Qingcheng" tells the emotional encounter of three women with three sad and clear love stories. "Running Through Zhongguancun" shows the turbulent, embarrassing and not without comedy of the low-level life of the special group of "North Drift". "If the Snow Closes the Door" covers the two major veins of the author's creation - "Beijing" and "Flower Street", the young people from the countryside in the story have good intentions and the wisdom of making fun in suffering, and the life of the metropolis is like a dream, but the reality is inevitably difficult, but they have always lived seriously and with ideals.
Qiu Huadong believes that Xu Zechen has a strong control over short story writing. This ability is mainly reflected in the short story collection "If the Snow Closes the Door", "This book is also very diverse in subject matter, in fact, he received the best short story he has written in more than twenty years into this collection, you can look at the characteristics of his short story writing, the contrast between each other, the kind of control, the sharpness of the dagger, this is particularly important." ”
"If the Snow Closes the Door" won the "2016 China Good Book", and Zhang Li, as the judge of the award, also has a high evaluation of this novel collection. Regarding "Running Through Zhongguancun", Zhang Li highlighted the stylistic awareness and life awareness in it, "If you want to see the changes and changes in life in Beijing in the past two decades, this book covers the exposition of China's best young writers. ”
Cong Zhichen believes that the strong ability to control details makes Xu Zechen's novels so real, "Xu Zechen's details are so beautiful, I felt strange at the beginning when I read "Western Xia", how can there be such a thing, but when you read it, the emotions go in." When we study fiction, we think that the writer's greatest skill is that the novel itself is fictional, and you know it is fake, but the writer's narrative makes you feel so realistic. ”
"If the Snow Closes the Door", courtesy of Beijing Publishing Group
Xu Zechen's new work "Qingcheng", including "Western Xia", "Juyan", and "Qingcheng", uses three place names as the names of three women to write their independent but intrinsically related fates. When introducing the writing process of "Qingcheng", Xu Zechen said: "The writing time of "Western Xia" is about 2003, this novel is almost twenty years, if I look back, pick a few that make me most moved and have the most words, "Western Xia" is one of the few novels. "Juyan" is a work written after I personally got married, I felt that I had a deeper and broader understanding of family, marriage, and women. ”
Zhang Li believes that "the hardest thing in the world, the most difficult thing between people and people, is to understand, especially if a person has to understand others across their own gender." But a good novelist, to reach such heights in his future, must have a gender consciousness on a higher level. In Zhang Li's view, Xu Zechen's new work "Qingcheng" has reached the height of being an excellent novelist and is a writing with a deep sense of gender, "When I read these three works myself, on the one hand, it shows that this writer, after the washing of time, his understanding of the complexity of the relationship between men and women is no longer a dualistic thinking." He wrote about the more complex state of existence of women in today's era, on the one hand you can feel the beauty and dedication in them, and at the same time you can see the very rigid, very bone-in-bones side of them. Because there are usually two types of women in male writing, one is an angel and the other is a slut. In fact, in addition to these two types, there is also a type of woman in the history of Chinese literature since ancient times, that is, the moth-fighting woman, she dedicates, she is stoic, she is like a mother of the earth, but at the same time she has her fierceness, Dou E'e, Du Liniang came back from the dead, and the spirit of fighting to the end when she dies. Xixia, Juyan and Qingcheng, although they are trapped in some kind of dilemma, they can see their rebellion against their own fate and dilemma in the subtleties. ”
"At the beginning, when there was no "Qingcheng", someone suggested that I put "Xixia" and "Juyan" together to produce a collection, and I felt that the time was not up. But now I don't put it together, and I don't want to. These three women grew up with me. Maybe in another ten or twenty years, when I am slowly getting older, I will have a new understanding of women, I will write another article and add it, become four sisters, or five sisters, maybe there will be different ages, different feelings about life, family, marriage, love, and so on. Xu Zechen said. (End)
Source: China News Network