Famous artists talk about writing| Li Er: Familiar strangers

Editor's Note

How to read, write, and judge the merits and weaknesses of an essay are different and different. In view of this, the China Writers Network has launched a series of articles on "Famous Artists Talk about Writing", so that famous artists from ancient and modern China and abroad can "face to face" with you to teach their writing experience, and perhaps a sentence can make you suddenly realize and open up in the vast sea of books. Stay tuned.

Li Er

Familiar strangers

One of Echo's metaphors is one I like: literature is a picnic, with the author bringing the symbols and the readers bringing meaning. The moment the author crawls out of the tunnel, he has to cover his eyes so as not to be blinded by the sunlight. He reached out from the darkness, longing for those wise readers to take him and take him to the picnic.

From here, we may see a great change in literature. Did Dostoevsky and Tolstoy wake up from their dreams when they saw this description? I think it shows Coucher's basic position: all experiences are examined and discerned...

Discover meaning in discernment

Around 2003, I first read Coetzee's novel Shame. Although he won the Nobel Prize in Literature, he was destined to be a snubbed writer in China. In fact, in addition to Márquez, Coetzee's "Nobel colleagues" in recent decades have "enjoyed" such a fate in China. The reasons for this are very complex, and it is possible to do a long article.

I think the most important reason may be that Chinese readers actually like simple works and form tenacious psychological stereotypes, that is, unilateral moral appeals and moral criticism. The kind of novel that analyzes complex experiences, our readers don't like it. This is certainly not worth the fuss. In our daily lives, we are already overwhelmed by that complex real-world experience, so there is a reason not to enter into novels that win by empirical discernment. The problem is that one of the basic requirements of modern fiction for the reader is that you should explore meaning in discernment.

Coetzee's writing is so clear and clear, but his experience of discernment is so complex, ambiguous, and ambiguous. In the case of Shame and The Master of Petersburg, the themes of these two works will not be too unfamiliar to Chinese readers, and with a little extension, you can find the corresponding real-world experience in China, so many people reading Coetzee's novels may feel familiar. Writers who discern experience are often "skeptics with moral principles." If you lose your "moral principles," your doubts and rebellions are no different from Those of Nechayev in The Masters of St. Petersburg.

By the way, the image of Nechayev, I think Chinese read it will feel "familiar strangeness" in another sense: the "familiarity" of experience and the "strangeness" (absence) of literature. The novel's portrayal of Dostoevsky is nothing more new, it is just a prop for Kuche's empirical analysis. The "master of Petersburg" mentioned in the book refers not so much to Toshi as to His sons Bavel and Nechayev. Both men were masters: Bawell became a martyr by suicide, Nechaev carried out revolutionary activities in the name of the poor, and of course both were masters. Of course, the real masters are still Kuche, because they have not escaped Kuche's scrutiny.

Coetzee's basic position

When criticizing the current state of Chinese writing, many critics like to bring out Dostoevsky and Tolstoy to point out the many shortcomings of Chinese writing. But after two long nights of two centuries, it is impossible for any contemporary writer to write a work like that again, and this should be a minimum of common sense. Even if it is written, it can only be a false work, which seems to be pretentious. Reading Coetzee's The Master of Petersburg, I was most struck by his portrayal of the young girl Mattelosa. Such a figure is reminiscent of Tolsto's Alyosha, Tolstoy's Natasha, Pasternak's Larissa, and Faulkner's black maid, unpolluted plants that grow on the earth and sparkle in the kingdom of darkness without censorship. But, slowly, it was such a young girl that Coetzee did not let her go easily. It can be said that a very important chapter in the book is the chapter "Poison": the girl's "insult" and "damage" are not because of others, but because of those who run for the "poor" and "noble cause", and she becomes the key person in the whole event, she is "poison".

From here, we may see a great change in literature. Did Dostoevsky and Tolstoy wake up from their dreams when they saw this description? I think it shows Coucher's basic position that all experiences are examined and discerned, including the experiences of Toshi and Toshi, including the experience of an underage girl— unless you think they are not part of the human race.

Coetzee's book mentions a story of "blowing the bone flute": the wind blows the femur of the remains, making a mournful sound, identifying the murderer. Reading Coetzee's book is like listening to a bone flute. There is a kind of bitter sadness, such as the gray snow of Petersburg written in the book. In fact, the "murderer" is as ubiquitous as the scattered snow powder, including the young girl Mattelosa, including Dostoevsky, and even tolstoy, who did not appear. There is another person who may not fail to mention, and he is Couche — he shattered the last wonderful illusions that people have left, and what is not the murderer? Of course, this "skeptic" will also be suspected. As long as the suspicion is a suspicion of "moral principles", it is valuable, and Couche did not come to China in vain.

Success traps and imitability

If Borges's novel is the first clay pot in the history of contemporary literature, it was originally used to hold grain, but later generations often regarded this clay pot as a pure handicraft. Or Paz said it best, saying, "A great poet must remind us that we are archers, arrows, and targets." And Borges was such a great poet.

Márquez and Borges had a huge influence on Chinese literature after the mid-1980s. I was once a big believer in Borges, and although my later writing had nothing to do with Borges, I was happy to admit that I learned some basic novel techniques from Borges's novels. For beginner writers, Borges may pave a bright road for you, his simple and strange writing style, his strong logical thinking ability belonging to the novel, can increase your understanding of the novel, and make your language as concise and powerful as possible, the story as orderly as possible. But for those who do not have the intelligence of Borges, his success may also set you a trap of perpetual doom, causing you to misread him while abandoning your connection with the complex spiritual life of our time, and involuntarily choosing between action and fantasy, thus making you an unsimilar person.

I think Borges is actually imitable, Borges has only one. You read his book and then leave, only occasionally looking back at him again, is the greatest respect for him.

Two basic literary currents

History is not over, the vitality of history is still there, but the disappearance of the story seems to have become inevitable. Telling a story in its entirety and portraying the way a world works by creating a character is no longer possible today. The historicity and cosmopolitan character of the individual described in nineteenth-century novels is already difficult for today's novelists. Contemporary fiction is not so much about telling the process of the story as it is about exploring the process of the story's disappearance. The traditional novel's representation of the good and evil of human nature is replaced in contemporary fiction with a display of human fragility and incompetence, and in the process, a complex introspective critical relationship is often formed between the narrator and the experience he is trying to describe.

Of course, this is not to say that the Márquez-style storytelling novel has failed, but Rushdie's emergence has proved that this way of telling stories still has its value in contemporary society. But with a little discernment, you can find that Márquez and Rushdie, the masters of storytelling, have also quietly changed their stories. In their stories, there are more and more complex cultural elements.

In the case of Rushdie, for example, in his exquisite short story "Golden Mouth", although the way the story is told does not seem to be too new, the story tells the complex feelings brought to the protagonist by the moment when multiculturalism is intertwined. In Márquez's novels, there are also complex connections between American planters and Gypsies and descendants of Spain, and the sharp social unrest, the huge gap between multiculturalism, and the religious disputes in the era of globalization have made their protagonists naturally have the ability to act, and the subjectivity of the individual has not completely collapsed. The cultural reality in which they live is both diachronic and synchronic, both the moment when the myth of the nation-state collapses and the moment when the pendulum tries to rebuild the myth of the nation-state. And this almost instinctively constitutes the legendary daily experience of Márquez and Rushdie.

Personally, I am inclined to think that there may be two basic literary currents, one is the literature of Márquez and Rushdie, which is a legendary expression of everyday experience, and the other is the literature of The Vavel and Saul Bellow, which is an analytical expression of everyday experience.

In recent years, my reading interest has focused on the latter category of writers. The Russian writer Markkanen, whom I like, obviously belongs to this category. Curiously, the writer did not get the response it deserved in China. In these writers, all human experience will once again be judged, and even the recognized self-evident truths will be re-examined. Although they write about life without a story, how can it not be another story without a story? Perhaps, in Márquez's view, this life without a story is a legendary life. Who knows?

The question I am most concerned about is whether there is a kind of writing in which two literary currents meet, that is, a kind of comprehensive writing. I may have seen such a trend in the novels of Saul Bellow and Coetzee. As for Chinese writers, since the beginning of the twenty-first century, a variety of emerging fresh experiences are also seeking a powerful expression, can we say that a new kind of writing is likely to be brewing? There is no doubt that such a kind of writing is undoubtedly very arduous and puts forward higher requirements for the writer. In the face of such a painstaking writing, the many revelations we have gained from world literature may bring us the necessary courage and wisdom.

Literature is a picnic

After the publication of "Brother Ying Wu", the editor will send me a sample book. I said, don't run, meet again and give it not too late. I saw the sample book at the launch ceremony at the same time as my media friends. Friends who were present asked me what I was asking of my readers. I said, "I've been writing for thirteen years, and if the reader can read it for thirteen days, I'll be satisfied." Thirteen days is not OK, three days is not OK? Not for three days, not for three hours? Read it for three hours, and if you don't find it interesting, throw it away. ”

Writing, as if groping in a dark tunnel. Although you are not less than others, you are not less than others, but you are not more than others. So I always feel that it is completely unnecessary to talk about my own creative process. If you feel bitter and tired, don't write it, and no one forces you to write.

You have written so much, which shows that you are not only bitter and tired, but also joyful. That euphoria is not the so-called fame and fortune. How much fame and fortune can a person who writes something have? And, in the end, fame and fortune are all things outside the body. I think that the so-called joy is just that you say what you want to say, and you also say something for the characters in the pen. To borrow Mr. Lu Xun's words, it is a small hole dug out of the dirt.

One of Echo's metaphors is one I like: literature is a picnic, with the author bringing the symbols and the readers bringing meaning. The moment the author crawls out of the tunnel, he has to cover his eyes so as not to be blinded by the sunlight. He reached out from the darkness, longing for those wise readers to take him and take him to the picnic. There, if the reader thinks that a certain dish is delicious, it is first of all because the reader's taste buds are developed and the taste is pure. It would be the author's good fortune to meet such a reader. The author is always looking for his own readers, like a bird looking for a cage.

Friends keep asking me what I'm going to write about next in the novel. During the long period of writing, I did write down a lot of my visions about the future novel, and I kept thinking back to the pleasure of writing novellas and short stories: you can present a feeling, an idea, a dream in a relatively short period of time. But I'm the kind of person who thinks a lot and writes less. I even thought about how nice it would be if someone else could help me with an idea, so I wouldn't need to write it myself. So, my first job now is to read. I'll have to see what my ideas have been done for me. Enough has been said, you should stop talking right away.

Source: Journal of Literature, March 28, 2019, 18th edition

Editor: Liu Ya

Second instance: Wang Yang

Third instance: Chen Tao