In the history of Chinese and foreign literature, the relationship between father and son has long become an eternal literary motif. Compared with the mother-child relationship of calm love and warm pulse, the father-son relationship is more vast and profound. Father's love is like a mountain, and mountains are different; mother's love is like water, trickling together. Young people do not understand the depth of father's love, and when they understand it, they have become middle-aged. In his new work "The Road to Father", the famous writer Ye Zhaoyan focuses on the Chinese father-son relationship, and for the first time faces, pays tribute to and reflects on his father with more than 60 years of life experience. In Ye Zhaoyan's view, everyone wants to get close to their father, but the results of approaching their father are nothing more than two, sometimes the closer they want to get, the closer they get, the more unbearable they seem to be. What exactly happened to us on the road to our father?
Recently, Ye Zhaoyan discussed with Ms. Zhao, the illustrator of "The Road to Father" and the famous writer and painter Ms. Zhao Yu, the original author and screenwriter of "Children of the Qiao Family", and Lu Yuan, a young scholar at Nanjing University, discussed what is the Chinese-style father-son relationship at the Wutaishan General Store of Nanjing Pioneer Bookstore, and explored with readers this emotion that is sometimes close at hand, but difficult to approach, the most complex and subtle emotion in the world.
Ye Zhaoyan: "The Road to Father" is equivalent to a two-hour movie
After the publication of "The Road to father", there are two ways to cause if you look at it from a film and television point of view, one is a tv series, using many episodes to tell a story, that is, the volume of a long novel; the other is a movie, "The Road to Father" is equivalent to a movie, telling the story in two hours, so that a large reader can read it in one night.
Writing this novel, he confessed, on the one hand, to prepare for the book's future novels, on the other hand, it is a good memory of the 80s of the last century. "When I started writing novels, I wrote novellas. Writing this novella has a very kind memory of when I began to write in my youth. ”
Many reports labeled the novel "Chinese paternity." Ye Zhaoyan also mentioned in the interview that this is indeed a novel about the "father-son relationship". But as a novelist, he still pays more attention to the narrative method of the work and the reader's reading experience when creating.
"I hope to write something different, say something different, write something different, write something different, and I think more about the three words 'different'." That was my original wish as a book writer. ”
The Road to Fatherhood tells the story of a father and son. Shortly after the birth of the protagonist Zhang Zuo, his parents were separated due to emotional discord, his mother remarried his father and married another, he was raised by his grandfather Wei Ren and his grandmother since childhood, and his father Zhang Xiyi was a proud disciple of his grandfather Wei Ren. Wei Ren, Zhang Xiyi, and Zhang Zuo were three generations of father and son or master and apprentice, with benevolent relatives, as well as clutch and alienation. Time passed, Zhang Xiyi became famous in his later years, and the father and son also became closely related. But the road to my father was too long, and sometimes the closer I got, the farther I felt. The Road to Fatherhood explores such a universal question.
Reading is to take us to experience a different life at the smallest cost
In the view of the host Lu Yuan, this book is about the mental journey of three or even four generations of intellectuals in modern China for more than 100 years. "Teacher Ye chose a very personal perspective, and from the perspective of the father-son relationship between generations of intellectuals, he started such a very private emotion from such a small incision to talk about the changes of the whole big era."
As a scholar of sociological research, Lu Yuan believes that in addition to the relationship between father and son, there is also a line about the relationship between husband and wife and father and son. "In this book, Zhang Zuo's father later divorced, his mother also divorced, and then the two people got married again, and Zhang Zuo also divorced." This special family environment reminded him of a point in Mr. Fei Xiaotong's "Native China": the main axis of Chinese is the father-son axis, that is, the parent-child relationship is more important than the relationship between husband and wife.
"Teacher Ye inspired us that reading actually takes us to experience a different life at the smallest cost. Every time you read a story, you may be exposed to a completely different life. ”
The literature that my parents loved and the art that my mother did not learn remained in my blood
Talking about the illustration of "The Road to Father", Zhao Zhichen and his mother Yang Wei's encouragement cannot be separated: "She said that Ye Zhaoyan is the best writer in Nanjing, and you must paint him." "After making a decision, Zhao Yun began to do his homework: read the book carefully, made a character table, and also made notes and analysis." The sunburn in the south, what clothes the postmans of that era wore, what bags they carried, I experienced. Including family portraits is also interesting because my son is married to an American wife and I have a mixed-race grandson. The growth age and similar growth background that are close to the protagonist of this book also make Zhao Yun naturally grasp the emotional atmosphere of the book, accurately restore the scene of the times, and make the illustrations more historical and realistic.
Every year, Zhao Yun had to rush back to Nanjing from Beijing to celebrate his mother's birthday, and when the delivery time was approaching, it coincided with the 102nd birthday of his mother Yang Wei, and his mother took the initiative to persuade Zhao Yun not to come back, "We must complete this work well, and we must believe what we say." Participating in this activity, my mother also paid special attention, "My mother and aunt grew up reading Ye Shengtao's fables, and she said that the two generations of our family and the Ye family should be the relationship between authors and readers." ”
Zhao Yun is the daughter of the famous translators Zhao Ruihong and Yang Wei, and Ye Zhaoyan are both from a cultural family. The same as "after the celebrity", the two have different mentalities. "It's really embarrassing for a person like me to be a grandson everywhere, and I've written a lot of stuff over the past 40 years, and I personally want to get rid of such a role." But such an identity also makes Ye Zhaoyan "not easy to be proud, it is really difficult to be proud and satisfied." Unlike Ye Zhaoyan's troubles, Zhao Yun believes that the literature that her parents loved and the art that her mother did not learn remained in her blood. His father, Zhao Ruihong, graduated from Southwest United University and was a veritable talent. But in the eyes of his daughter Zhao Yun, his father was pedantic, naïve, and timid, but he worked hard, always sat at his desk and worked hard, was an absolutely good father, he especially loved his children, and encouraged his daughter to write. "I went this way again with their encouragement, but now I'm out of myself."
No one is born to be a parent, and the continuation of life needs to be taken on initiative
Young people do not understand the depth of father's love, and when they understand it, they have become middle-aged. "The Road to Father" also deeply touched the writer and screenwriter Wei Xi (real name Yang Xiaoyan) who was also in Nanjing. Last year's ORIGINAL AND SCREENWRITER TV series "Children of the Qiao Family" has attracted much attention, and a father who is extremely selfish and disregards his children, Qiao Zuwang, has made many viewers hate and itch their teeth. Wei Xi provides an idea of understanding the work from the perspective of the writer, she believes that Qiao Zuwang and zhang Xiyi, the father in "The Road to the Father", are both people who do not want to be fathers, and Zhang Xiyi is an eternal spiritual son. "For him, the road that might lead to his father was a forever dead end." Why Zhang Xiyi was able to get along well with his father-in-law Wei Ren, in essence, he was a person who was afraid of trouble and did not want to take it. "Just like Qiao Zuwang, he is basically a selfish figure, he is selfish, afraid of that burden, and it is true that children are the continuation of your life, but this is a good and heavy burden." 」
Wei Xi hopes that everyone will read this book and reflect on the relationship between themselves and their father. "It's hard to imagine what your father and mother look like when they were young, it's hard to imagine them falling in love and getting married. Probably in the feelings of many people, my parents were born parents, he was born at such an age, born as a family. She believes that different original families, different social environments and different cultural backgrounds will have completely different modes of getting along.
When it comes to his relationship with his father, Wei Xi is even more moved. Because the father was busy with work when he was young, he traveled for business all year round, and the relationship between him and him was very isolated, but when the father was old, the two began to be inexplicably cordial, and the father was proud of his daughter's book, would use WeChat to send her messages, and even fidgeted because the daughter did not tell her whether to go home in time. She said with deep feeling: "What is the Chinese father-daughter relationship, the father-son relationship? Sometimes it's an unspeakable pain. ”
Interestingly, the book's cover design also has a good story. The cover of "The Road to Father" was designed by the young designer Cinnabar, the son of Ye Zhaoyan's old friend Zhu Xinjian, the cover of Ye Zhaoyan's first novel was designed by Zhu Xinjian, and his first novel with illustration was designed by Cinnabar. "This cover is very interesting, a step, black and white, the road to the father, you think you want to go up, I think it's also a father-son relationship." 」 These wonderful encounters are condensed in this little book. Yangzi Evening News/Purple Cow News reporter Huang Yanwen