Jimu news reporter Liu Ifeng
Correspondent Li Ran
"Monument" is the tenth novel by Wang Xiaoying, author of "Who Are You Defending". Wang Xiaoying said that the novel was originally written for her mother.
Wang Xiaoying, the daughter of the New Fourth Army, was born in the reeds of northern Jiangsu, fighting so often that her mother could not even remember the specific date of her birth.
Young Wang Xiaoying was with his parents
Wang Xiaoying's parents are veterans of the New Fourth Army, and his father Lu Mang is a famous painter and writer, and he wrote the lyrics of the long-standing "Play My Beloved Earth Pipa". My mother has been working in the government sector. In her old age, the mother hoped that her daughter, who was a writer, could help her write a memoir, but her daughter wanted to stand in the position of a bystander, objectively look at the history of the older generation, and use her vision and talent to write a richer, deeper, and more vivid story of the New Fourth Army. So, the mother wrote seven notebooks in succession in ten years and left them for her daughter. This thick handwritten note is the basic material for Wang Xiaoying's creation, and when she finished writing the thick Monument, her mother had been dead for ten years.
Wang Xiaoying's father, Lu Mang, is the lyricist of "Play My Beloved Earth Pipa"
"Monument" continues Wang Xiaoying's consistent writing style, with a dense plot, many characters, and a calm narrative. She combines grandeur and delicacy, firmness and romance, harshness and tolerance, cruelty and warmth, making this huge production unique, while at the same time giving full play to her ability to weave stories, control plots and character relationships, and set up an engaging entrance, emotionally filled space and a long aftertaste for the long-form masterpiece with heavy themes.
The Queen Of the Little Eagles
Recently, "Monument" was officially published, and Wang Xiaoying was interviewed by a reporter from Jimu News.
Wang Xiaoying recently took a photo
It's been brewing for more than twenty years
A biography for my mother and my mother's comrades in the New Fourth Army
Q: Please tell us about the origin of this novel. Have you ever encountered a bottleneck in the writing process?
Wang Xiaoying: I have been brewing this novel for more than twenty years. At a time when I have just entered the threshold of the 21st century, I accompanied my 83-year-old mother to Yunling in Jing County, Anhui Province, to participate in the commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the martyrdom of the Anhui Southern Incident. After the conference, my mother insisted on going to the garrison of the new Fourth Army teaching brigade girls' team in Dashan Pass. Also with us was the ninety-year-old He Ziyou, the widow of Zhou Zikun, deputy chief of staff of the New Fourth Army and captain of the Teaching Corps. Since Zhou Zikun and Xiang Ying were killed by traitors, He Ziyou has been alone for sixty years. I heard from the comrades in Jing County that she would come to Yunling every year to hang her dead husband's heroic soul. What a deep emotion she guards! I looked at her silver hair and staggered, and my heart was shaken.
My mother treasured the address book of the New Fourth Army Teaching Brigade Girls' Team, and there were more than twenty members of the team who settled in Shanghai, and every year their names were drawn in black frames. I decided to interview these female soldiers, and their experiences are worth a big book. Now they are living a simple old age in this stormy city. With the help of my mother, I interviewed five elderly people one after another and learned more stories of female soldiers who died heroically in the Anhui Incident. Is there anything more brilliant and brilliant than their lives? At that time, I had the impulse to write a long story for them—to dedicate my youth and blood to the cause of national liberation.
My mother fully supported my writing and wrote an autobiography to leave for me as material. I have repeatedly tried to write this novel, but I have not been able to write it. After entering the new century, the great development of social change is so fast that I have a fresh understanding every day, and I have successively written long stories on other themes. In 2011, my mother and my mother-in-law, who was also a female soldier in the New Fourth Army, passed away. I felt anxious and guilty that they hadn't seen the novels I wrote while they were alive. When I meditated on this work, I realized the root cause of my difficulty in writing. I'm a clumsy writer, and I want to be familiar with what I'm trying to write, so that I can write it with ease. I decided to go to the old revolutionary areas to find traces and step on the footprints of my mothers' youth. I went to the base area of northern Jiangsu, the place where the Anhui Yunling and southern Anhui incidents occurred, and I also went to Poyang Lake in Jiujiang, Jiangxi.
In 2015, I officially wrote until 2020. The first year went very slowly, too much material, huge structure, so many characters, I couldn't grasp the gist for a while, and I stagnated. After re-reading the footage notes and combing through the context, I asked another narrator to take on part of the plot from her point of view. The first few stanzas were almost a reversal, and then it went well.
Every character in the novel has an archetype
Sometimes fiction is more real than reality
Q: Shi Yinxiao in the novel is your mother, right?
Wang Xiaoying: Almost every character in the novel has an archetype, the difference is only in that some characters have two or three archetypes, some characters have a group of archetypes, and some characters have only one archetype.
Q: Why not just write it as a documentary work?
Wang Xiaoying: Sometimes fiction is more real than reality.
I read a lot of the history of the development of the New Fourth Army, the history of the War of Resistance Against Japan, and the history of the War of Liberation. I am someone without birthdays. I was born in Huai'an, northern Jiangsu Province, left when I was very young, and never went back. For this writing, I went back and forth, and I didn't find out where I was born. It's exactly the same as a big city like Shanghai now, the road is wide, the sidewalk trees are all ginkgo trees, when we went it was autumn, the leaves were golden, I can't imagine the reeds described by my mother, I can't imagine how my mother and father fought guerrillas in that place. It was hard to find the remaining ancient city in Huai'an, and there were some potholes in the city wall, so I thought, is this a bullet hole of the year? Life has changed too much, and it has lost a lot of simple things. Life is constantly correcting my opinions, giving me a lot of new information, and enriching my intention to write novels.
Q: Why is the novel named Monument? Of all these fictional characters, which one of your favorite novels is your favorite?
Wang Xiaoying: The monument is an important clue in the novel, and many stories have taken place around it. I want to give it a symbolic meaning. I was worried that the title of the novel with a monument was too straightforward, so I made it the title of the upper volume. Later, the editor said that the title of "Monument" could only hold the whole article. I replaced "Absolute Dust" with the title of the upper volume, and sure enough, each got its own place. "Monument" is the most character of all my novels, and each character is deliberately set up and portrayed with great care. Shi Yinxiao, Ping Chu, and the Yao family brothers and sisters, including Lan Qi and Han Cheng, were all seniors I revered, and I poured out my remembrance and admiration for them. I also launched Snow Bow, who is the epitome of our generation. He is cheerful and humorous, has ideals and ambitions, but in the turmoil of the years, his fate is rubbing. He and Xiao Nandu, the girlfriend of Qingmei Zhuma, went to the old district to join the team, but they broke up due to different political concepts; after the reform and opening up, he went to the United States to study with his lover Ji Yu, and then parted ways because of the different values of life. All of these stories are brilliantly presented in the novel. "Monument" is a novel with special significance to me, and I believe that it is also a novel that can bring readers a deep reading experience.
When I was young, I could write tens of thousands of words a day
Now I can only write two thousand words a day
Q: When you wrote "Who Did You Defend" at that time, was it more real or more fictional?
Wang Xiaoying: It's too fictional, I chose 5 cases to write "Who Do You Defend", all of which I really participated in, but I changed them all. The prototype of the female lawyer in the novel is Teacher Zhao Jue, and this female lawyer's concept of love is completely different from Teacher Zhao. It can be said that every one of my novels has a prototype, but it is not a prototype. I hope that the work will express the worldview of the writer.
Q: "Who Do You Defend" is your famous work, and what was the motivation for writing this novel at that time?
Wang Xiaoying: In 1985, I became a professional writer, and my mother worked in the Justice Bureau and introduced me to a law firm to experience life. I was half an hour late the first time I went because writers often had to be late for meetings, or leave early. The law firm teacher didn't care if my mother was a leader or not, she was not polite at all, and scolded me very harshly, saying that if people had a court, how could they wait for you? From tomorrow we are determined not to be late again! Since then I have been in that firm for two years and have worked on 23 cases. It was the late 1980s, when judicial reform had just begun, when lawyers were old, the courtroom was very simple, and there were two tables in the Shikumen house, which was a temporary courtroom. To get to the suburbs, it takes more than an hour by bus. There were no tape recorders back then, and I was much faster at making records than their clerks, and I was able to write every sentence because we were writers who wrote very quickly. The law firm wanted me to stay, and at that time, as long as I could handle 25 cases and pass the simple exam of the Justice Bureau, I could get a lawyer's license.
Q: Why did you end up choosing to be a writer instead of a lawyer?
Wang Xiaoying: I am too unsuitable to be a lawyer because my feelings are very impulsive. When I was in court, when people scolded us, I said teacher, why don't you refute it? The teacher said very calmly that this question had nothing to do with our case, and we did not need to refute it. What I hate the most is to handle civil cases, divorce cases, inheritance dispute cases, the right and wrong inside, it is not clear, I always think that the other party is also reasonable, and I can't bear to refute the other party. Sometimes when you talk about it, you go to help each other, how does this work? So then I told the teacher, I really don't fit to be a lawyer, you still let me go back and write articles.
I wrote "Who Do You Defend" in 9 months, 500,000 words, which is my first novel. At that time, I was young, I could write tens of thousands of words a day, but now I can't write, and I am exhausted by writing two thousand words a day. I can't drive a night train, work during the day, and must sleep at night until eight or nine o'clock.
For more exciting information, please download the "Jimu News" client in the application market, please do not reprint it without authorization, welcome to provide news clues, and pay as soon as you adopt it. 24-hour reporting hotline 027-86777777.