Recently, the latest collection of novels by "post-90s" novelist and poet Song Aman, "Ah Friends Goodbye", was published by Shanghai Literature and Art Publishing House. This is Song Aman's second collection of novels, including five short and medium stories she wrote from 2018 to 2020, one of which, "Xipi Flowing Water", just won the 8th "West Lake China New Literature Award".
On the way to Shanghai for the book club, Song Aman turned the book again, and the cover was a bright gradient of yellow, which was a color she had begun to like in recent years. The various people written about in the book, the literary youth of the neighboring era, the young green clothes who "put out the fire with moths", the octogenarian old man who suddenly talked a lot, the city lovers who had their own confusion, the friends in the old time... Every fictional character comes alive again in her mind. She wants them to be concrete, vivid, and faceted, and they rise and fall in their respective worlds, while she waits at the end of the story, sending a light as gentle as yellow.
"I feel that I used to write whatever I could, but now I especially want to express specific people and the love between people and people." 」 On February 19, Song Aman and his contemporaries Wang Zhanhei and poet and critic Zhang Dinghao came to sinan book club to have a dialogue about the new book. In the interval between activities, Song Aman was interviewed by the surging news reporter.
On February 19, Song Aman and his contemporaries Wang Zhanhei and poet and critic Zhang Dinghao came to sinan book club to have a dialogue about the new book. Photo courtesy of Sinan Reading Club
【Dialogue】
The drying up and high tide of a river
The Paper: I think "Ah Friends Goodbye" is a novel with a strong "sense of time", there are young people feeling youth, recalling their own, or imagining others; there are middle-aged people reminiscing about the past; there are elderly people lamenting the years... In the past three years, you have had a lot of thinking about "time"?
Aman Song: I think you're saying it well. I didn't actually have a particularly strong sense of consciousness when I wrote it, and I rummaged over on the high-speed train that came and found that it was true, either writing about time itself, whether linear or non-linear, or writing about how people spend time.
This may have something to do with my current state of writing, which is my current "writing people and not writing things". I hardly think of a thing first, twisty, bizarre, dramatic, and then arrange a few people for it. I think it's the individuals who make up the event. Each article in this book can name a specific person, and I am more confident that each person is more convincing and unique, and there is no "invisible". I think that whether it is Li Chuiqing, Wu Mi, Shi Qing, Zhang Chunzi, Fatu, Xiao Zhang, Xiao Zhong, Xuanzi, Xizi (Note: the characters that appear in the novel collection), they can draw group portraits of the characters, and they have their own lives.
Two days ago I heard a case, it is the real thing, two customers of a bank clerk saved 8 million yuan in him, asked him to help with financial management, and as a result, he killed these two customers in order to swallow the 8 million, and also found a special killer to split the body at home. Just listening to this matter you feel very curious, it seems that it can be written into a novel, written as a suspense, but I don't like it very much. This bank clerk graduated from a well-known college, had a happy family, had children, and was well-liked in the unit, because of his clumsy techniques, the case was quickly solved. I thought, why do people have such a thought? Like this, things are finished, but people are too complicated, and people are eternal topics.
The Paper: How to write about people in "time"?
Song Aman: Novels are certainly limited, and can only show a certain time segment of a person, a day, or dozens of days, and a long story may be written for decades. Although you only write about a person for a while when you write a novel, in your mind, you have imagined the full growth of this person from birth. This feeling was strongest when I wrote About Grandpa Fatu (note: the protagonist of the novel "Between the Banks"). Fatu has always been a cautious peasant mentality, always the executor of other people's words, until one day he suddenly feels that he is old, fearless, and he wants to express himself. I wanted to write about the days, months, when he started trying to express himself, which would have been intriguing. This novel is also the one that I think has the strongest sense of time in the whole book.
Another point is that the novel writes about a river that has been drying up, and Fatu will imagine that it had water when he was young. At the end of the novel, the river rises and floods. In the fifth article "Ah Friends Goodbye", Liu Xuan, who has not returned to his hometown for a long time, asked the driver master whether it was the River, the driver said yes, Liu Xuan said is not dry, the driver said that the tide has risen earlier, and the water is big during the flood season. That is to say, the River has gone from having water to drying up to having water again, which is a very long period of time. Between the different novels, I also want to echo the whole sense of time with the drying up and rising tide of a river. This is a little careful thinking, and it is very gratifying that readers can see it.
The Paper: I feel that there is a state of "looking back" in this book, looking back at my own, or someone else's, the past time. So in real life, are you an easy person to recall?
Song Aman: I'm not actually the kind of person who gets stuck in memories or looks back a lot. However, it is true that as you said, in terms of text time, writing "Li Qingqing, 2001" is looking back, and "Ah Friends Goodbye" is also looking back. This may be a bit like I said earlier, people have a way, I will think a lot when writing, thinking for a long time than writing, I will think about this person's way, what is his personal significance.
For example, "Li Chuiqing, 2001", I did want to write about the atmosphere of Li Chuiqing's era, but I found that if I wrote it directly, it would either pass by a lot of water, or it would need a lot of information, after all, I did not experience that youth. So I thought of creating a person in the present, and her retrospective and imagination of Li Chuiqing's time constituted a double fiction, and the growth of women of different generations also echoed each other.
Recently, Gansu post-90s novelist and poet Song Aman's latest collection of novels, "Ah Friends Goodbye", was published by Shanghai Literature and Art Publishing House.
The Paper: Will you yearn for Li Qingqing's youth, that is, the youth life at the turn of the century? Wu Mihui, the novelist in the novel, has repeatedly imagined that era and a kind of "pure youth character" at that time, and said: "We regret not being able to participate in that period." ”
Song Aman: I actually don't know much about it myself, I just think about the future. I would feel that the idealism of the time had not been completely worn away, that it was good, that I was full of illusions about it, but I did not think that I was living in such an era. I have a literary imagination of it, a literary yearning. Because I can't imagine what I would have been doing if I lived in that era.
The Paper: Do you like your life now?
Song Aman: It feels good. I was happiest in junior high school, like "Ah Friends Are Seeing" wrote, playing crazy, but the grades were very good. But if I want to go back to junior high school, go through it again, I also feel very hard, and then I have to take the college entrance examination, graduate school, find a job, every link is hard, but people don't want to amplify the hard work in their memories. Today's children are more stressed than we were then, and junior high school has begun to roll up, and we were very happy at that time anyway.
After breaking, it also heals
The Paper: The novelist in "Li Chuiqing, 2001" is called Wu Mi, and the wife in "Ordinary Passengers" in the previous book is also called Wu Mi.
Song Aman: Writing the novelist in "Li Chuiqing, 2001", at first I didn't know what name to take, and then I thought that after she finished her master's degree and got married, would she be like Wu Mi in "Ordinary Passengers" in my last book? In that story, the hero is the main one, and Wu Mi is the second, but as a Kochi woman, she can not make hysterical accusations when she knows that her husband has some problems, but turn her back to him and ask if she wants a cup of hot coffee.
I feel that I used to be able to write whatever I wanted, but now I especially want to express specific people, and the love between people and people. What I don't want to present is the tearing, broken, cruel things in the world, on the one hand there are too many people writing about it, painful literature, and on the other hand, I believe that some evil is instantaneous evil, and there are good people who move evil thoughts in an instant. Of course, some evil is unforgivable. People are multi-faceted. Like the bank clerk I mentioned earlier, he was cruel and murderous, but he was still a good colleague and father in life. Of course, he was not an instant evil, he put the evil of a thought into action.
Song Aman's first collection of novels, Inland Islands
The Paper: Are you still optimistic about human nature? Several of the novels in this new book do not have obvious negative characters, and they are quite loving, no matter what kind of love.
Song Aman: Indeed, I would prefer to write about people with ideal human nature. Including "Li Qingqing, 2001" in Li Qingqing and Tushu, Haihai three friends, they have some intricate things between each other, but they choose not to hurt each other, so they have to confess that they have not been able to confess, feel liked also chose to disappear, the other several are also, there is no obvious evil or harm. I think that when I am currently writing novels, I only want to write about a more ideal human nature, and I do not rule out that I may write something else in the future, after all, people are complex, and there will definitely be thoughts of evil, or tearing and destroying thoughts.
The first two days I saw two sentences, to the effect that everyone used to sing the praises of broken love together, and without love, we both ended together, but then some people no longer appreciated brokenness, but appreciated that no matter how capable they could make each other feel better. For example, China and foreign infidelity is not the same, Chinese husbands cheat, often feel that the wife is not good enough, let the wife hysterical; and foreign husbands cheat, first tell the wife that this is not your problem, it is my problem. Of course, in any case, the damage is difficult to repair, but there are ways to make the other party feel a little better.
The Paper: Do you feel that your understanding of love has changed?
Song Aman: Yes, I used to think that broken is broken, but now I want to see the word "healing", that is, we can break, but in the end we have to heal, not broken and broken. I've also posted a state before that say don't be afraid of trial and error, broken is broken. That's a very dashing attitude indeed. But now I want to heal after the broken, and I don't really want to show the broken.
The Paper: Is this change related to age?
Song Aman: Yes, it seems that people become more lenient with age. I think there is a relationship with age, not physiological age reasons, but you in time, people's thinking power is developing forward, before you can only think about broken, think broken is cool and handsome, and then found that no matter who is broken, you have to continue, you have to heal, as if you think about it again. Just like in "Xipi Flowing Water", Shi Qing felt humiliated and wronged on the stage, but she finally stepped off the stage and would tell her friends that we should go shopping again. It can't be called starting all over again, but there's a feeling that we have to have other thoughts, rather than saying I'm finished.
The Paper: In fact, the end of this book will give people a little bit of a sense of light, it is going up. "Sippi Flowing Water" is like this, and so are several other articles, which will give people comfort in the end.
Aman Song: If you want to show something that is broken, reality abounds. But I think that people always have to live, always have to continue, and the novel also has to continue. I hope that readers who read my novels will feel that life can go on.
In addition, in the eyes of some people, the mental predicament of man may be very pretentious, and the innocent moaning of little Bourgeois is fatal to some. This is the question of the meaning of life. Some people's spiritual lives are more deadly than their material lives.
The Paper: I like some of the moments about spiritual life in your novels, such as "Li Qingqing, 2001" in which Li Chuiqing and his friends attend a bonfire party with friends, and Wu Mi and his friends tread barefoot in the heavy rain, these side-by-side oblique parts are not so important in the promotion of the plot of the novel, but they are particularly moving.
Song Aman: I have always felt that the best part of my novel is the part that is obliquely out of the side, for example, some characters will go in a straight line, but I want to make this line wider, so that the characters have some feelings and thoughts, and have some moments of surprise.
But because of this, my novel is a bit picky for readers, not that the novel is difficult to read, but that you need to be patient to feel the details and emotions. Some readers read novels just to read stories, and they will feel that in this book, they have not turned to the stories he wants to see. I can understand that, though I don't quite believe in that reading.
When it is relaxed, humanity will be revealed, and romance will also occur
The Paper: Your changes are reflected in your writing. Conversely, ever wondered that it was writing that brought about a lot of change?
Aman Song: Possibly, I think some fictional characters will influence me in turn. For example, in this book, Shi Qing and Zhang Chunzi in "Xipi Flowing Water", as well as Xuanzi and Xizi in "Ah Friends Goodbye", after writing it, I think their personalities also have a certain impact on my life itself, which is a certain admonition to me. Just like Shi Qing will give unconditionally for what she thinks is worthwhile, but this kind of behavior itself also impresses me.
The Paper: Is the process of writing a novel also a process of straightening yourself out?
Aman Song: Yes. I wrote "Li Qingqing, 2001" from the end of 2017 to prepare, and then from the beginning of 2018, I was about to graduate with a master's degree, and as soon as I finished writing my graduation thesis, I quickly began to write novels. In fact, when you graduate soon, there will be a kind of "no need to chase", or a kind of invigorating that is similar to the new freedom of women. I think my student career is likely to end here, and I want to hopefully go to the next stop in my life. Friends who know me well also say that there are many places that can be matched. Of course, the reader does not need to know this, the author writes where to go, but for me personally, Song Xi's trip is my graduation trip.
Song Aman, born in Gansu in 1991, began publishing poems and novels in 2015 and his first collection of novels, Inland Islands, in 2017. He is currently the foreign literary and art editor of Literature and Art Daily and lives in Beijing.
The Paper: Many of the fictional characters in this book are engaged in creation, including poets, novelists, screenwriters, journalists, and several of them talk about the problem of imagination. For example, in the first part, the novelist Wu Mi believes that the current life is very barren, and can only rely on imagination to create in the daily barrenness; in the fourth part, the screenwriter Xiao Zhang mentions that we have lost our imagination in the complicated information, so that many times we need to quote others to express ourselves. You are also a poet and a novelist, how do you think about the problem of imagination?
Song Aman: The ultimate question is whether there is a real life, whether to live on the lives of others. I really have a few creators around me, staying at home, but the amount of writing is huge. It is not excluded that the kind of talented writers, authors who have no life and experience at all, may eventually turn to fantasy novels. In this activity, Wang Zhanhei and Zhang Dinghao discussed imagination and said that direct imagination and indirect imagination are not superior to the author, I think it is quite right, I have not thought about this problem before, leave it and think about it carefully.
Sinan Book Club No. 384. Photo courtesy of Sinan Reading Club
The Paper: Why do you think we sometimes need to quote others to express ourselves?
Song Aman: It may be that there is too much information now, when mobile phone software was not so developed, life accounted for six points, information accounted for four points, and now I think information accounts for at least seven points, and life accounts for three points at most. We can not go out for a day, but we must see what the circle of friends sends, and we want to live online.
I'm a worker's child, and I think my parents' generation is really a bit romantic, such as doing a big chorus and dancing together. When I was a child, I still had the kind of thing that organized a theatrical performance in the big square, and everyone wanted to go up and sing and dance, just like they were a star. My classmate's mother would go dancing, she was at least in her 30s at that time, and you said that you wanted your young mother to stand in the square and sing and dance in public, and I felt embarrassed.
Today's romance may turn into a serious life offline, such as a friend calling you to eat, he makes you four dishes and a soup at home, and when you arrive, he starts to fry the last dish, and then hot on the table, the meal costs 100 yuan. This can be much happier than a 2,000-dollar restaurant dinner because someone has given you time and attention.
The Paper: Do you miss the romance of your parents' time?
Song Aman: I miss the state of people's relaxation, as if people were more relaxed at that time, and the relationship between people and people was also more relaxed. When there is relaxation, humanity will be revealed, and romance will also occur. What can you do now? Two days ago, I was walking on the main road with a friend, and in the middle of the night, I was very interested, and suddenly I walked on the side of the road, which made us very happy, like children doing imitation shows. If you're a little serious, it's impossible to know that the road is full of cameras. The great liberation from the eyes of others is a very good ideal, and I hope that everyone will establish it.
The Paper: Do you have many friends in Beijing?
Song Aman: Friends who write in Beijing don't necessarily talk about literature when they get together, they play together and are very happy. Why don't we talk about novels, because subconsciously we don't feel that the other person must read their own novels, and this does not prevent us from making friends. When we worked, we were very calm, not in contact, everyone wrote their own, even if they looked at each other, it seemed that they would not praise in person.
The Paper: Which of the works of writers of the same age do you prefer?
Aman Song: I've recently started looking at works by my peers, which I used to see very rarely. I like Wang Zhanhei's novels, especially "Little Flower Dan", which I especially like. There are also Ban Yu's "Winter Swimming" and "Killing", and Shuang Xuetao's "Moses on the Plain", which are quite famous, and I feel that the reputation is worthy of the name when I read it. There is also Zheng Zaihuan, he is very talented, recently published two new books, there is a "I am just a ghost, can not do anything", the average person can not write such a novel, too ghostly, and I think his "straight male writing" is quite unique. What I was recently watching was Sansan's collection of novels, "Russian Matryoshka Dolls," which was particularly dense. Suo'er, Wang Suxin, and Liang Hao all have excellent works, so I won't say them all, I am still just reading with fate, and I can't evaluate them as a whole.
The Paper: What kind of novels do you generally like?
Song Aman: I like intriguing, and I can't say anything fixed, I have to stop and breathe, guide me to think, or suddenly have a feeling of "novels can be written this way", before my reading interest was in short stories, now it has become long.