The novel "Feast" is the psychological work of Lao She Literature Award winner Cheng Qing's experience and emotions in the city for many years, from the perspective of the narrator who lives with the protagonist husband and wife Mr. Li and Mrs. Li in an upscale community, telling the process of the disintegration of a solid and glamorous middle-class family.
In the recent "Is Love Without Material Troubles Indestructible?" At the "Feast" live broadcast sharing session, Cheng Qing, the author of this book, Zhang Li, a literary critic and professor of the College of Literature of Beijing Normal University, and Shi Yifeng, deputy editor-in-chief of Contemporary Magazine, shared their creative experience and reading experience with readers, and explored the disorder and game of love, marriage and family in the "urban new middle class" group through the perspective of gender.
"Feast"
Marriage novel "Feast", is the emotion between men and women still an important premise?
Zhang Li said that the married life in "Feast" was indeed seamless at first: "I think it is the kind of middle-class life in Beijing that we imagine and often show on TV, and there is no need to consider facing south and north, all of which are large glass houses." There is also a garden, and when you meet friends, you are setting up a table outside. This perfection made myself as a professional reader feel vaguely uneasy during the reading process: "I would like to know the fate of these two people." You know there will be accidents, but how and where things happen is a test. ”
Cheng Qing once wrote that love is like an exam paper, and marriage is an additional question behind the exam paper, far from everyone can answer beautifully. So can love with a rich material foundation like "Feast" be sustained under the double test of marriage + middle age? The answer is not necessarily that the economic base cannot guarantee the inevitability of love. Zhang Li cites the demise of Zijun and Juansheng's love in "Wounded Death" to echo "Feast" - love is related to age, experience, passion, including hormones. These invisible and subtle things are the ones that can really influence love.
Therefore, it is not difficult to understand that the couple in "Feast" fell in love with a younger object after marriage, and they longed for the full state of life represented by abundant hormones. Zhang Li believes that the interesting point of Cheng Qing's male and female love is that he is willing to describe this kind of "capillary" subtle psychology, not shy away from the very gray part in the eyes of others, but shows it openly. Love is complex, subtle, spiritual. At the same time, the protagonist of her pen is not concerned about the specific problems of children's education, chai rice oil and salt, but the meaning and value of existence. At the end of the novel, Mrs. Lai, who learned of Mr. Lai's cheating, chose to end her ten-year marriage and leave the family. Yet everyone, including her husband, did not understand the decision. She no longer wanted to be a happy bird in a golden cage. It's possible for all people to escape from seemingly perfect and happy marriages and find something else, and I think she's validating herself in this way. Zhang Li said.
Shi Yifeng mentioned Anna Karenina in interpreting Mrs. Lai's choice. Also tearing apart the past of married life, Anna's motivation is that her personality is incompatible with the unspoken rules of the aristocracy, and Mrs. Lai is afraid of the "end of history" of the individual. A family that sits on money and status early also means that there is no need for most couples to live their lives. Shi Yifeng said: "The end of history said by Fukuyama is that the world no longer has contradictions, and the world has entered a state of perfection, harmony and abundance. But for individuals, the end of history is terrifying, and there is no possibility of any change or development in your life. ”
Cheng Qing recognized this philosophical interpretation, and at the same time said that he had a more intuitive and simple logic when writing. Mrs. Lai was an innocent person who was educated by her mother to regard marriage as the most important goal in life. Because of the unique conditions, she is cared for and cared for by the people around her, and the marriage and childbirth are also very smooth, so she always maintains a beautiful understanding of love. It is also because of this innocence that her husband's cheating will suddenly defeat her and make her begin to accept the transformation.
Zhang Li especially emphasized that Mrs. Li attaches great importance to the purity of emotion, and once she loses the emotional connection, she will not compromise and choose to compromise for material life. And such a position can only be truly portrayed and understood by female writers, because it is rooted in the common emotional experience of women. Mrs. Lai had been a protected "daughter" character until the divorce, and when she left the arms of the family and walked out, she walked from a vacuum, purified relationship into a complex society and grew into a woman. The rupture between the two lives is undoubtedly arduous, but how to overcome the difficulties is also the most lustrous and dramatic place for this woman.
Shi Yifeng proposed that "Feast" belongs to the marriage novel. In today's marriage novels, the feelings of men and women are no longer an important premise. The current marriage novel is a combination of factors, such as property, status, public opinion, upbringing, reproduction, and so on.
"Feast" Mrs. Lai: Modern women carry more expectations than traditional women
In the marriage novel, the status of men and women is not equal, and there is no improvement in today's day when women have realized everything that may happen to the marriage system. Cheng Qing said that modern women are actually carrying more demands than traditional women.
Shi Yifeng, Zhang Li and Cheng Qing were in the live broadcast of the sharing meeting
In "Feast", Mrs. Lai also broke away from the identity of a full-time housewife and returned to society, which also led to the discussion of the value of labor within the family.
Zhang Li believes that this involves society's understanding of women's self-worth. Domestic labour is a very complex labour and should also be measured by economic profits. Society does not treat domestic work fairly, and there are problems with the understanding of housewives. This is also the reason why many women's lives are now "screwed". Today's women's liberation depends not only on the awakening of women themselves, but also on the pluralistic evaluation of women's values in society, and it should be determined by ability rather than gender who bears the labor within the family.
Simulate real urban middle class communities
"Feast" in addition to talking about material and love, there is a very important point, this book puts the brush strokes on the middle class of the first-tier cities, with the high-end community Qinfangyuan as the stage, radiating the psychological life of the contemporary middle-class family community, where writers, professors, doctors, financial and Internet officials, businessmen and other elites from all walks of life have gradually appeared, including Mrs. Li is also a famous school returnee.
Zhang Li calls the life shown in "Feast" a solidified class life: "You will know what they eat and wear when you read the first page, and the whole taste has been formed. When I read it, I was curious about what their lives were like. Now there are a lot of middle-class women's anxiety in the TV series, but that anxiety is not necessarily the real anxiety, it may be that people with thirty thousand yuan imagine the anxiety of people with 100,000 yuan, or let them suffer from that crime, but it may not be the case. On the other hand, "Feast" is very honest and practical to write about the holes in the hearts of the characters in this class, but this is invisible and requires the writer to examine it very carefully. ”
Shi Yifeng proposed that "Feast" can be classified as community literature. Community literature is very common in English novels, and while giving a community, the identity of the characters, the professional identity, including the atmosphere has been stipulated. For example, in Revolutionary Road, the description of this place name lets the reader know that this is a typical middle-class white settlement of a small city in the United States. But there was no similar community novel in China before, because China has always been a mixed way of life between rich and poor, and it is difficult to form the concept of a community with only one class in a place. Even if it is a small unzhuang in "The True Biography of Ah Q", all classes are complete. Lao She's novel is also the same, in an alley, the next door to the large courtyard may be the large courtyard of a large family.
"But now our community can actually form such a community in a sense." The face of this community is determined by the housing prices of the community. Shi Yifeng said, "It is a community formed after China's reform and opening up, and in a sense, it is also unique to China." Cheng Qing, who has lived in Beijing for decades, has always been keen in his observation of urban life, and "Feast" is no exception, accurately grasping the atmosphere of this era, and this breath is precisely the life in the current big city community." "Through a community, you can gather a class. Zhang Li agrees with this community, but also mentions that Beijing also has large communities with mixed fish and dragons from all walks of life, such as Huilongguan and Tiantongyuan. "It's also a new Beijing, an emotional way of life for the new Beijingers."
Cheng Qing said that writing the stories that are happening in the community now is almost the same as the Western world read in literary books, which is caused by the rapid development brought about by China's reform and opening up, and people's psychological, emotional state and life patterns are constantly changing. In tens of millions of cities, emotional life is naturally different from in small counties. It is for this reason that some hidden lives can only be staged in the big cities.
Shi Yifeng commented that Cheng Qing's creation is based on sensibility, and unlike other writers who first use rational structures, she is happy to show specific people and their life situations first, and then refine them later. Cheng Qing also said that what he prefers is not a conflict plot with ups and downs, nor a novel like Calvino that maintains a certain distance from actual life, but to simulate a very similar and focused life. For example, traditional novels such as "Jin Ping Mei" and "Dream of the Red Chamber" have elements such as eating, drinking, playing, love, marriage, birth, old age, illness and death. With her own experience, Cheng Qing spent time and effort like embroidery to produce the details of urban middle-class life in the novel. This is not only a test of technology, but also a test of whether the writer's mental strength is enough to persist in completing this type of novel.
Finally, on how to finalize the name "Feast", Cheng Qing shared, one of the reasons is to pay tribute to Hemingway's "Flowing Feast". In the book, after Mrs. Li ran away from home, Mr. Li's classmates at New York University wanted to express comfort, and the two of them drove to Xinjiang on a self-driving tour, which was a tribute to Fitzgerald and Hemingway's special and legendary trip to Paris. The second reason is the old saying, "There is no feast under the heavens." "Whatever you encounter and what choice you make will be annihilated over time. Cheng Qing believes that this is the "great compassion of life." It is also for this reason that everyone will continue to love life after seeing the essence of life, and cherish what they have and feel more.