Sense of language is the talent of the writer (new work review)

Qiang Wen is the author of Anhui Literature and Art Publishing House

Chongqing should produce novelists: the city where the docks grew, the steep mountains and rivers on the edge of the basin, the special status of the Anti-Japanese War and the indiscriminate bombardment of the Japanese army for 5 consecutive years... It provides both the soil for the story and the sense of destiny at the edge. However, there are not many novelists born and raised in Chongqing. The sheer size of Bashan, Wushan and the Yangtze River, and the sudden addition of history to the heavy load, make the land seem hot and busy. From this, it can be understood that all Chongqing novelists, such as Mo Huaiqi and Qiang Wen, all their narratives are moving towards the road of lightness. This is art's resistance to life.

Any resistance is a response. The same goes for Qiangwen.

Her work is not much, two novels, a collection of essays, and the latest collection of short and medium stories, Shi Yan. I read her works, starting with "Cleaning", and after reading it, I communicated with the Sichuan writer Wang Shu, and we all thought that Qiang Wen's language was good. Talking about the writer's sense of language is basic and high standard, and the sense of language is the innate talent of a writer, and it is the attraction and openness of literature to the writer. Writers with a good sense of language often have wings in words. "Seeing the signs of prosperity, I thought that the seeds would grow into a towering tree on their own, and then they were busy sowing another seed", which is Qiangwen's sentence; "The moon is getting higher and higher, you need to look up to see", which is also Qiangwen's sentence - a sentence of "nonsense", and behind the "nonsense" is the struggle and self-healing of the characters. The wings of literature are actually a kind of "penetration", a kind of insight ability. Literature needs to look deep in order to have the possibility of soaring.

Recognizing the sun and calling for warmth is what Qiang Wen wants to do. She cherishes the lives of the weak, pays attention to and realizes their plight, helplessness and persistence, and personifies what she sees in her eyes and thinks in her heart. In her place, there was almost nothing intense, no matter how vigorous and sharp the life, it was opened in a silent way, and then left to the days to absorb slowly. She had a powerful background in mind: time. It was "time" that gave her confidence, and "time" became her most powerful rhetoric. She has a book to be published, writing about cultural relics in essays, and "Shi Yan" is also written about a conservator named Hua Mian. The profession itself already has a symbolic character on the scale of literature. Hua Mian's respect for time reflects the novelist Qiang Wen's self-consciousness of time.

Correspondingly, Qiangwen is quiet. In "Shi Yan", there is a moving description of quietness: "Like those silent stone tools, the Qin Dynasty sitting figurines, solemn and quiet; the Tang Dynasty female figurines, feminine and quiet; Shi Yan, dense and brittle, delicate texture, with the atmosphere of the Tang and Song Dynasties, rugged and quiet." "Whether it is solemn, feminine or rugged, quiet has become the final destination, which is QiangWen's name for things." The storm is only in the low place, only in the place where people with hearts can hear, so Qiangwen's quiet is not hidden and silent, but does not need to open the sound, does not need to grow joints, is her attitude to life and destiny after examination. In her concept, it is not only cultural relics that precipitate time, but also language, and Qiang Wen loves to read ancient books, which makes her novels have elegance in temperament, as if inadvertently a short sentence, an old poem, connects time.

Qiang Wen should be able to write better works. Chongqing should not only produce novelists, but also novelists with great atmosphere. Overall, Qiang Wen's current works are more refined. Refinement is both an advantage and a disadvantage. Great writers, broad and deep, often make people forget to pay attention to the skills they have at hand.

(The author is vice chairman of Sichuan Writers Association)