Immortal Father
- Reading "Book with Father"
Huang Dandan
At the end of October this year, at a seminar on works, Chen Xianfa, chairman of the Provincial Federation of Literary and Art Circles, criticized me: "My heart is too elegant." I know that behind this criticism is that my writing is a reserved display, on the surface, mostly a gesture of beauty, but in fact, the work lacks a real sense of tearing and shame. Do I not have these feelings? Of course, but I dare not write it out truthfully, I deliberately avoid a lot of obscurity and even shame, you know, writing them not only requires courage, but also rely on the hand strength of the pen, especially the hand strength is more important, if the force is uneven, the pen is unstable, the things presented in the work will be deformed, blurred, exaggerated, and display artifacts.
Recently, I read Xiang Xun's "Book with My Father" and sighed at Xiang Xun's bravery and restraint, there is a compelling truth in that book, and people who are not brave really dare not write about their relatives like that. Family affection is not easy to write, magazine editors often friendly tips: either the author's fame is big enough, or the object of the writing is very special, otherwise, it is easy not to write a family affection essay, because it is easy to fall into the trap, often the writer himself is not moved, but the reader has no interest in it, it is difficult to induce empathy. I was pricked by the prologue to "The Book with My Father." When writing to the message, the emotion is handled with restraint, but because every word is to the point, the bullseye in the arrow, those precise details, and the abundant emotions are transmitted to the reader's heart, just like the blade of the knife. I didn't finish it in one sitting, and I really didn't dare to read it anymore, because those words pulled out my sealed memories. I found the letters my father had written to me more than twenty years ago, and thankfully I didn't make the mistake of destroying them. I kept them, hid them in hidden corners, and never opened them again—until I read The Book with Father.
A week later, I opened The Book with My Father again. After reading it, I couldn't believe what to say.
I sat under the north window where I usually write, looking out the window at the dazzling mountains, and my mind was like mountains. And those things, I didn't dare to think about them in the past, and I didn't dare to let them appear in my works in black and white. I wondered how many unforgettable memories my heart had been claustrophobic, so much so that they became an undercurrent, constantly flowing under the surface of so-called "elegance". At that moment, I realized that the mania, anxiety, despair and depression that I often produced were actually due to the fact that I never dared to face the deep pain in my heart, nor did I ever think of dredging and channeling it.
"Words are a cure for diseases" ---- this is my statement about why I read and write. In fact, for so many years, although I have never stopped reading and writing, my "disease" has not been cured.
Xiang Xun undoubtedly pinpointed the function, usage, and dosage of the elixir of words. He not only healed himself with this elixir, but also healed the reader with the elixir he made. After reading "Book with My Father", I suddenly found the reason why I used the "elixir of words" to cure my own disease: it was because I used the wrong dosage and usage, and wasted the symptomatic medicine.
In "Book with Father", Xiang Xun borrows his former juvenile eyes to let us see that he experienced a crisis of insufficient food in the year of rat infestation, the fight for the fate of his relatives for the destination of a tree, and the endless war between his parents... He does not hesitate to show off his "family ugliness" and is not afraid to uncover his old scars---- I believe that any child will regard the disastrousness of his parents' war as greater than any world war. In the child's heart, the home supported by the parents is the world, the world. I still remember the first day of the Chinese New Year when I was 6 years old, for some reason, my mother was bedridden, my father took me around the coal stove to bake, accidentally, a small firecracker that had not burned out in the Chinese New Year's Eve night fell into the stove, and the furnace exploded with a loud noise. I took the opportunity to cry. In fact, I have been putting up with it before, I dare not cry, I think that year was too cold. I was afraid that my parents would quarrel, and I was even more afraid that my bedridden mother would divorce my father. In Xiang Xun's writing, I seemed to see the three brothers and sisters trembling when their parents quarreled, and Xiang Xun, as the elder brother, would quietly pinch his sister's arm and make her cry, because her crying would make the parents who were arguing truce. I don't remember when my cries aroused my mother, but inexplicably, since then, I didn't like the New Year, and every Spring Festival after that, I would make people angry, and so far, whenever the New Year is celebrated, I will be depressed. Injuries suffered in childhood must be healed with a lifetime. Nowadays, nearly middle-aged me, I am still afraid of the New Year, the Spring Festival, I never want to go out to visit relatives and friends, but hide in the room to read or code words ---- "words are a pill that can cure the disease", and no matter how I use "medicine" in large doses, it can not cure my disease, it seems that every annual leave, I will be out of control and the closest people will be mad. My out-of-control bad emotions affected my parents, lovers and children, I knew that no matter how I made up for it later, the hurt I gave them at that moment could not be counteracted, I hated myself when my emotions were out of control, but I couldn't heal myself no matter what. Once, in the silent night after I was mad, my husband even said with a humorous tone, I really can't figure out why such an elegant person outside actually has such a beast hidden in his body, I can't figure it out, where do you read so many books... At that time, I also felt chagrin and confusion, and I fell into despair because the elixir of words could not cure my poison and cure my disease.
That day, I was caught by my husband when I turned halfway through "The Book with My Father", and I burst into tears when I saw him turn a few pages. So I took the opportunity to leave, giving him room to cry. He lost his father during the epidemic, and he did not shed tears at his father's funeral that was sloppy because of the epidemic, but at that moment, I think, he must have been restrained by Xiangxun but affectionately described to evoke his memories of his father. The relationship between a Chinese son and a father is very interesting, knowing that they love each other very much, but rarely communicate through language and body. The father-father-son relationship in "With the Father" is touching because xiang xun is really written, and the father who exists in the book is the same person as the father in reality, not the whitewashed and beautified father, and Xiang Xun does not pretend to be anything because he is writing his father, especially the father who has passed away. The truth in his article is not only true, true, and true, but also the details of the implementation to support these. The truth of Xiang Xun is not out of control, the truth is not fermented, the truth is even more undisguised bold, if I am, I dare not write about my father's suspected cheating. He not only "cruel" enough to his father, but also deep enough to analyze himself, he wrote that his father went to the zoo with his father during his serious illness, and his father happily and strangely pulled out his local luxury gold-shaped cottage mobile phone, but he pressed for half a day but could not shoot successfully, he found that the mobile phone memory was too small, because the storage was full and the camera could not be used. He deleted something for his father, and when he saw his father taking pictures with great interest, he exchanged his mobile phone with his father's mobile phone, but eventually gave up this idea because of selfishness. In the book, he has done countless similar introspections. If you think about it, isn't his introspection similar to the selfishness of the vast majority of children to their parents? This is human nature, but it is the nature of people who are embarrassed to show it, and even do not want to admit it. After reading this book, I couldn't help but turn it out again and look at it, and sighed at this rare truth in a collection of essays, how sincere and brave it was.
If it weren't for these truths, how could "Book with Father" go beyond the writing of family essays? As a veteran reader, I've captured more from this book than just family affection. For example, when I read The Year of the Rat Infestation, I was delighted to find that he saw me through the eyes of a child in a rural world that was very foreign to me. That childhood, which was hard but had a lot of fun and adventures, really made me envious. Childhood is a rich mine for writers, Xiang Xun has such a rich childhood, and has a natural memory (he writes in "Time Castle" that he can still remember the old house he lived in before the age of three), projecting it into a memory bank, and can use a magic pen to truly describe the scenes he has lived with the life experience he has obtained. At the same time, I also discovered a secret---- Xiangxun is afraid that he also loves Márquez, right? "One morning during the rainy season, and possibly in the fall, father and uncle fought over the ownership of a tree, surrounded by many neighbors." Is this sentence I excerpted very meaningful to "One Hundred Years of Solitude"? As mentioned earlier, in "The Year of the Rat Infestation", Xiang Xun wrote about the fear of a rural child about hunger, family fights, and parental disputes, but in addition to those gray tones, there is a bright light in this article, such as the scene where their family is mobilized and a cat fights against the grain stealing rats in the attic, which is really funny. Those words, I saw crying, laughing, as if I was stupid. Not only this one, but I found that the whole book, even in the articles "September Forever" and "Unicorn", which wrote about the journey of accompanying my father to see a doctor and treat his illness, was not only gray-black tone, but had a dreamy and charming tone. There has always been light in his articles. Under the illumination of the light, there is a shadow, so those sad experiences make the reader feel that the shadow is more frightening when reading, and some interesting things are also magnified by the light, and the person who pays attention to the book is like a kaleidoscope of eyes, and can see a more brilliant world.
I've never liked to make creases on the pages, but I folded many pages of This Book with My Father. One of the pages reads that he angrily clutched the corner of the dining table because of his parents' argument, trying to flip the table and throw a harsh sentence of "never go back to this home" and whisked away, but he finally overcame his emotions and sat there in frustration. On another page, it is written that after the death of his father, he sat with his mother and wife and recalled the past and said: If only you could be as good as we are. It is this sentence, which may be ignored by many readers, that leads me to conclude that Xiang Xun is a person who borrowed the elixir of words to heal his original family and caused him an old disease. Parents are grumpy, children are most likely to be grumpy, parents are not emotionally harmonious, and children's emotions are also twisty. But I have the impression that Xiang Xun, who once had a relationship with xiang xun, was a young man with a gentle temperament and a kind face, and Xiang Xun's wife, who had a friendship with me in the same class (The Yangtze River Delta Writers Advanced Research Class), was also a very elegant and quiet girl, they were "so good".
While walking, my husband and I talked about "Book with Father", and I said that I finally understood why I had read some books and written so many words, and I had not been cured by the elixir of words. That's because I'm not brave enough, I don't dare to really face myself and write my life, and Xiangxun is in the process of reading, reflecting and writing truthfully, forcing out the cold in my body. My husband said that I was right, and then he handed me the mobile phone, and I saw that he sent a letter to his father on the WeChat address to his deceased father.
Every father deserves to receive a letter from his children to them. If you don't know how to pick up a pen and write a letter to your father, read "The Book with Your Father". After reading it, you will find that the father is the back cover of our book of life, and we turn the book in a bunch of ways until the end, and only then do we understand the value of the father. Thanks to Xiang Xun's "Book with My Father", not only did his father get eternal life in the text, but also let me, as a reader, read my father in advance and reflect on myself.
2021.11.10
About author Huang Dandan: Member of the Chinese Writers Association, Chairman of the Shouxian Writers Association, and the sixth contracted writer of the Anhui Provincial College of Literature. Lu Xun Literature Dean Triangle Young and Middle-Aged Writers Advanced Study Class, Lu Xun Literature College Anhui Writers Seminar completed. His works have been published in literary journals such as Selected Novels, Western China, Yanhe, Qingming, Anhui Literature, Poetry Monthly, Times Literature, Essays, and Literary Harbor. Some works have been adapted into film and television works. The text has been selected for a variety of annual anthologies.