Qianjiang Evening News hourly news reporter Zhang Jinhua
In "Chasing the Moon", He Saifei plays his mother and tries on makeup.
The novel "Past", a famous writer and chairman of the Zhejiang Writers Association, was published for several months, appeared on various lists, and the readers responded enthusiastically, and the film adapted from the original work of "Past" has also been started and is being filmed.
On a rainy Sunday afternoon, in the Mingyuan Study Room of Xiaofeng Book House in the Park of Midas Temple on Hangzhou Stadium Road, at a money newspaper reading party with the theme of "The Past is All in the World", Ai Wei, together with guests, famous critics Wang Kan and Xia Lie, with a straight forward frankness, on the "Past", extending from literature to outside literature, more than 2 hours of exchange, we seem to see the rich human scene and spiritual core that literature can bring us.
In the quaint and open Mingyuan Study, Ai Wei exchanged with his friends at the Qianbao Reading Club about the influence of juvenile literature on him.
"I read novels late. I only started reading novels when I was in Chunhui Middle School, and the first foreign novel I read was "Oxfly", and I was impressed that this novel was more and more grateful and had great drama. I was fascinated by the nobility of life and the revolutionary feelings expressed in the novel, and I lamented the intertwined love-hate relationship between the oxfly and my father and Jona. This novel fits well into my blood and awakens my interest in reading novels.
"I have been called a Freudian by critics, a Libbidist, and I have always been interested in the subconscious behavior of the characters, and I am concerned with the vast, enigmatic realm of the human mind as vast as the universe. In the two novels "The Past" and "A Brief History of Women", I feel that I have not lost this concern. ”
Ai Wei shared his various interactions with readers since the publication of "Past".
He said that after the writer's work is completed, the writer says it does not count, his happiest thing is that the reader talks to him about the feelings of the work, the reader's perspective is often the author did not think at the beginning, the reader's interpretation and discovery of the work will bring novelty to the writer.
"A reader said to me that your 'A Brief History of Women' is a story of women's liberation. I thought about it, yes, but I didn't think about it when I wrote it. It's also the joy of writers writing. Fiction has its own wisdom, and it tends to go further than the writer. ”
At the scene, there are also readers who have read Ai Wei's works for many years, saying that Ai Wei's recent writing seems to have a different style from his previous "Wind and Sun Beauty", "Comrade Lover", etc. In this regard, Ai Wei reviewed his own creative process and frankly said that his writing had a stage pause, and he had a sober consciousness: it is to write works that are different from his previous self. He didn't want a few more in the original work queue, but a different one.
Ai Wei said that when he used to write, he was very ambitious.
"I used to want to summarize this era in my writing, to name it. Times are changing, the will of the times is changing, but I have always believed that fiction is a kind of intelligent text, and that any art is actually dancing in shackles. I now minimize my ambition to write, to write every stroke carefully, to write every character, to tell a meaningful story, and to polish the novel as richly and meaningfully as possible in the emotional and material parts, so that there may be a new and unique look. ”
This is a review of years of writing by the writer Ai Wei, born in the mid-1960s, and an expression of a new departure.
It can also be said that Ai Wei has been persistently on the road and made his voice in the times.
Xiaofeng Bookstore Mingyuan Study Room Qianbao Reading Club scene.
[The novel is a fictional small universe that balances with real life]
Ai Wei said that "Past" is not too long in terms of volume, and it is a "small book".
What makes Ai Wei happy is that his recent new books that are not thick, such as "A Brief History of Women" and "The Past", seem to like a lot of readers. A reader told Ai Wei that I can remember every character you wrote about in "The Past", even the two doormen in the book.
Ai Wei said that after reading the novel, after a few years we may not be able to remember the story, but we may remember the characters in the novel. So the novelist still has to contribute characters to the reader. It is important that the characters live in the reader's mind, and at the same time test the writer's skill. The character of the novel has a unique personality, to write a unique "this one", and at the same time to get the reader's empathy in a general sense, and the character also needs to have room for interpretation.
Ai Wei said that the mother in the novel, she has a temperament that does not play cards according to common sense, she is ambitious, she is deeply involved in the drama, and at the same time evades the parenting responsibility for the children, she is a seemingly incompetent mother. But at the same time, she is cute, very attractive, and has a natural temperament to be forgiven. The mother I write about is different from the "mother" we are educated to be, in our cultural system, the mother is a symbol of mercy, sacrifice, devotion, almost sacred, a denatural image.
"When the word 'mother' is implemented into the individual in a conceptual sense, it is a kind of human life. Every mother under the heavens is different, not perfect, each has its own advantages and disadvantages, and the way of expressing love is different. In this sense, the mother in the novel is still meaningful, and I at least provide such an image of a mother, which is relatively rare in the current literary genealogy. Ai Wei said.
"Now the filmmakers choose He Saifei to play their mother, which is very satisfactory to me. As an actor, He Saifei has a very different temperament, a temperament that suddenly loses control of emotions, and is a very explosive and good actor, I think she is very compatible with the mother's breath in the novel. One reader told me that when he read the novel, the image of his mother reminded him of Josefy. I was surprised to hear it. This reader didn't know that "The Past" was going to be made into a movie. ”
When the writer is still obsessed with a character more than a decade later, it can be believed that the character must be meaningful.
Ai Wei said that as stated in his "Afterword", "Past" has a prototype story, and at a dinner party more than 10 years ago, Ai Wei heard a friend tell the story of her mother, which triggered him to write the novel.
Ai Wei believes that stories in daily life are illogical, and it is difficult to be convincing to write into novels, but the details are useful. For example, there is a detail in the novel that the mother is a generous person, scattering money and things to the "fans" in her hometown along the way. My mother was the golden phoenix of my hometown at that time, and in the 80s, Yue opera swept the north and south of the river, and the villagers greeted the arrival of a "famous man" in a sea of people, and the grandeur was unprecedented, and it took her to get down from the station to her house, and it took her at least 1 hour. She gave her money and food to the people she met on the road, and when she came home empty-handed. This detail was written into the novel by Ai Wei.
"I often meet people who say that my life itself is a novel, but it is not so, and if the real life is written into the novel in its original form, it is not convincing, and the novel is essentially a fictional thing. Fiction and reality are two different things. When the novel world starts, it has its own operating logic, and the novelist seems to be writing about real life, but in fact it is a product of fiction, fictionalizing a small universe that is balanced with real life. ”
Ai Wei said that "The Past" is about human life. Mother once "ran to the moon" and escaped from daily life, but she eventually returned to the basic human problems such as emotions, blood, kinship, and ethics that our sentient beings need to solve. No matter how ridiculous your life is, you will eventually have to face these basic problems. Chinese have their own way of expressing their emotions. Chinese expressing emotions is very interesting, sometimes even rough, such as the novel Qiusheng and Xiasheng brothers, who love each other and often speak ill of each other. This emotional approach is particularly dramatic, with momentary moments of eruption, and is therefore particularly full of emotion.
One of the stills of "Chasing the Moon".
【Ai Wei has systematic concepts, ideas and methods】
The famous critic Wang Kan is a senior reader and researcher of Ai Wei's works, and has been following Ai Wei's writings since his debut. Over the years, the writer Ai Wei has been working to present a new possibility through his works.
Wang Kan said that I have been reading Ai Wei for more than 20 years, and I have a relatively complete reading that lasts for many years. Ai Wei has systematic ideas, ideas and methods, as well as a systematic language of his own, which is very important for a writer.
Wang Kan recently wrote an article about Ai Wei, and reread Ai Wei's works again, Ai Wei's pen writes a lot of self-redemption characters, Ai Wei wrote about how a person saves himself in a way. For example, there is a play in "Past" called "Running Moon", which is played by the mother, and the allusion of "Running Moon" is that Chang'e wants to go to the moon out of some selfish desire, and the punishment she receives is "blue sea, blue sky, night heart", and the play itself contains the theme of the novel "Past". Ai Wei's novel is basically that all characters are dominated by two forces, one is desire, including the desire for the flesh, for materials, money, fame and fortune, which I call instinctive will, and the second force is the will of the times. In Ai Wei's novel, everyone is driven by this or both forces, and they can't help themselves and make mistakes. What happens after making a mistake? Ai Wei wrote about how people find ways to come back after they make mistakes, back to where I first set off, and make up for the mistakes they committed. This process I call the will of human nature. People may be held hostage by the will of the times, such as the mother in "The Past", she will still find a way to achieve life or some kind of balance and deepening of life. People may be held hostage by their own instincts, or they may be held hostage by the will of the times, but Ai Wei is a man who believes in human nature, and he believes that human nature will always win at some point. On the subject of salvation, Ai Wei did not rely on Western-style religious resources, and his writing style is very Chinese, a Chinese experience.
Another key word is drama. He did not write according to life, but according to logic. Ai Wei will definitely design some kind of conflict, it will be full of drama, it will be beyond life. Because there is no strong drama, a strong conflict of will cannot be expressed. Drama is particularly capable of expressing the nobility of human nature, such as the ancient Greek drama, which is particularly suitable for expressing noble humanity under a strong conflict of wills. The novel begins with the situation of the gangster film, and from the beginning to the end of the novel, there is always a suspense, which is a specially set dramatic scene.
As a continuous observer, Wang Kan also mentioned that several of Ai Wei's novels discussing blood relations are very interesting. For example, "Wind and Sun", "Past" and "Musician" all have his profound and unique insights.
Past insert.
[Ai Wei's writing is the women who are liberating]
Critic Xia Lie also has been reading Ai Wei's works.
He said that "small books" of the length of "Past" and "A Brief History of Women" are the most suitable for reading on high-speed rail, and a book may be exactly the length of "one high-speed rail". In the past reading of Ai Wei's works, "people are held hostage by the times" - I always think of Ai Wei's words. Each individual actually has his own rhythm of life, his own wishes and will, but in the big times and the whirlpool of history, we have repeatedly experienced that individuals have to conform to the big rhythm, and between freedom and compromise, the test is the choice of individuals who have grown up. Literature grows in this process, and the times and individuals provide a lot of materials that deserve the attention of aestheticians and thinkers.
Xia Lie, as a critic, noticed that in Ai Wei's recent writings, whether it was "Dunhuang" or "Past", the first protagonist of the novel was a woman.
Xia Lie said that Ai Wei wrote something "frontal attack" in the literary sense, and wrote in the face of the awkward and contradictory points in the will of the times, with the sensitivity of a writer. "I prefer to look at the genealogy of female characters in Ai Wei's pen. Male-centric narratives are important but sometimes boring, and many of the points that male narratives try to illustrate are incomprehensible in concrete life; female narratives are more real, sensitive, and fibrous than female narratives. Back to the mother in the novel "The Past", such a mother exists in life, and it is even more common in my previous generation, in the intergenerational distortions of history. There is something 'poisonous' in their character, but in the novel, it is literary, special, and a combination of reality and drama. ”
Xia Lie also said that Ai Wei's "Past" has a conscious inheritance of the mantle of 19th-century realist literature in the style of "Madame Bovary", and has a kind of "custom research" interest. For example, in "The Past", the customs of the mother's relatives and teachers and the pear garden environment in which she is located, the way of life in the field of the pear garden people, the interpersonal way, etc., are all presented as accurate and meticulous "custom studies" in Ai Wei's book, which is a valuable thing.
In other words, contemporary Chinese literature actually needs to be systematically "studied" of the characters and scenes of the times, which is the true principle of realism and the spirit of reality and the spirit of modernity, which Ai Wei is a typical writer.
Xia Lie believes that the mother Qi Teacher in "The Past" can be used as a feminist perspective, she was originally a liberated woman, she was liberated from family chores and immersed in art and career, but she also fell into the worship of power structures. This complexity is pervasive in many contemporary women. Not only did art conquer her, but power also conquered her. In the big era, she has both a liberating side and a side of obedience to male power, so she is still held hostage by the times.
Xia Lie said that Ai Wei made such a female narrative, writing down the side of women's self-enlightenment and awakening in the big era, and also writing down the side that was pulled down by the times. Therefore, people are held hostage by the times, women are held hostage by the times, and mothers are also held hostage by the times.
"We should also be optimistic to note that the women in Ai Wei's pen all have a liberating aspect." This is Xia Lie's observation.
The quaint and fragrant Xiaofeng Bookstore Mingyuan Study.
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Source: Qianjiang Evening News Hourly News