"My grandfather... Can the ashes make a sound? "The bean's grandfather died suddenly, but the bean accidentally found that the urn that shook the grandfather could make a sound." Cluck, cluck, cluck..." There seems to be a piece of "foreign body" in the urn that doesn't belong to Grandpa. What is it? Why is it here?
In the novel "Across the Ocean to Send You", the protagonist Nadou carries this questionable urn and embarks on a fantasy journey across time and space.
"Across the Ocean to Send You" is the latest novel by writer Shi Yifeng. Recently, the People's Literature Publishing House held the launch ceremony of the book online, and critic and vice chairman of the China Writers Association Li Jingze, writer Li Er, book critic Shi Hang, Deputy Editor-in-Chief of October Magazine Ji Yaya and author Shi Yifeng shared it.
Sharing sessions
"New Kyo Flavor" and "Common Nostalgia"
In "Across the Ocean to Send You", Shi Yifeng for the first time dropped his brushstrokes on the "aborigines" in Beijing's hutongs - na dou has been living with his grandfather since he was a child. The two and a half small bungalows in the hutong and the yellow finches hanging at the door of the bungalows constitute the tone of "Crossing the Ocean to Send You". In the text that unfolds later, the author reflects the historical changes of up to half a century by exploring the experiences of two generations of grandparents, from the grandfather's protection of the country and the transformation of the factory, to the grandchildren's crossing the ocean, and the generations of people have lived completely different but supportive lives.
Shi Yifeng
"Across the Ocean to Send You" begins with: (Na Dou) After working in the hotel, as long as there is no night shift on the first day, he will accompany grandpa to walk the birds. In the early morning of winter, the sun was still red, and there was still a mist in the alley, and the two went out. At this time, there were almost no cars on the street, and the air was exceptionally fresh. Grandpa walked to the front, a cage of yellow finches in his left hand, a cage of starlings in his right hand, and the bean followed behind, wearing a hotel-issued porter uniform, looking like a small follower. Grandpa did have a model, combing a half-gray and half-white big back, his arms were branched to the sides, a thin and tall body was eager to occupy half of the alley, and from time to time he would put a fart, as if to show the direction to the grandson in the fog.
"Across the Ocean to Send You"
"When I read this novel, I was very impressed with its Beijing flavor." Ji Yaya said, "When I opened it, there was a mynah inside, that is a talking mynah, and he would rob the conversation, and when the author arranged for his protagonist to appear, the first detail was to pick up the caged bird and walk around the inner roundabout." ”
Whether in reality or literature, "Beijing" has always been the label of Shi Yifeng, and the "new Beijing flavor" in "Crossing the Ocean to Send You" is, in Shi Hang's view, a trace of survival recorded by time itself. "In the novel, Grandpa's soy sauce factory, the soy sauce factory's turf later became an international financial center."
Li Jingze believes that Beijing is actually a highly mixed and highly immigrant city, "We don't know exactly whether this place must have such a fixed nature, called the Beijing nature of literature, or the local literary nature of Beijing, we repeatedly talk about the taste of Beijing - maybe there is, I can't say there is not - but really fundamentally shape the character of Beijing, or if it has Beijing, first of all, its universality and universality." So as far as "Crossing the Ocean to Send You" is concerned, what I am really interested in is not the so-called Jingweier, I am interested in that cosmopolitanism is a particularly interesting thing in this novel. ”
In the sharing, the word "cosmopolitan" has also been mentioned many times. "I like Shi Yifeng's worldwide vision in his writing, when I watch "Across the Ocean to Send You", I often think of novels like Dickens, who sometimes write about a village thing, an English village thing, a London inferior neighborhood thing, but when you look at the whole novel, you must also think that he is writing a world thing." 」 Li Jingze said.
"The common nostalgia is the world," Mr. Shi said, "like that bean, he doesn't know he doesn't care about Beijing until he gets to Chicago." ”
A heartless and lungless idle pen in written language
Regarding Shi Yifeng's language, Li Er believes that "Shi Yifeng can integrate spoken and written language to write together, because it is a third-person narrative, and when he tells a story, he must jump out of the analysis of the story and analyze the psychology of the characters, and when he analyzes the psychology of the characters, it is also a combination between written language, Mandarin and Beijing spoken language." ”
"When Shi Yifeng wrote a novel, unlike Lao She, Lao She was written with characters, and Shi Yifeng was separated from the characters, and you had to examine him. Your language is not Beijing dialect plus Mandarin, it is some kind of reform of Beijing flavor. Li Er said.
Shi Hang believes that Shi Yifeng's reasoning lies in the fact that he will have a little more leisurely portrayal, "For example, the bean opened the manager's head, but his father, who was not in shape, had three knives, and joked: That blood spurts out, this is a whale." When ordinary people encounter such things, they either care about the injured person or care about their son, both of which he does not care about, he cares about whales, this kind of idle writing without heart and lungs is exactly the way Beijingers speak. ”
In the novel, a description of NaDou recalling his grandfather well reflects the characteristics of Shi Yifeng's language:
"Just like that, you, me, and myna, the sun has also changed from red to white, illuminating the mist above the roundabout and illuminating the abundant traffic under the overpass in the distance." Not long after, the traffic gradually stopped again, and the congestion of the area lasted for more than ten hours a day began. The subway stations around the island also crowded with people, and sometimes Na Dou thought, look at the posture of these people, it really shows that he lives in a big country like the news says. And this sight also showed that the time was almost up, so he stood up and said to Grandpa, 'Then you rest, I will go to work.' Grandpa said, 'Little monkey cub, get down on your knees.' ’”
Hand-drawn illustrations
Life has long been wrapped up in the whole earth
Li Jingze said, "In our memory, a grandfather and a grandson are not ordinary emotions, but really two complete lives, and it is rare to have a world view and a value-driven novel. ”
"After the protagonist's grandfather died, the grandfather's ashes became 'non-existent existence', and his ashes could even be used as the first character, and he died very quickly at the beginning, but all the stories are because of his ashes, and the various cultural atmospheres that this ashes carry in this life, his traditions, his old man, his face, constitute the core of this novel." Li Er said.
In an interview with October, Shi Yifeng said of the ideation process of "Crossing the Ocean to See You": "I like to see some old predecessors have their own set of words, love to talk about the world as their village's affairs, think about climate agreements or trade wars, talk about a treacherous affair on the threshing ground, or a stupid second uncle who lost two chickens. Eat bowls and look at pots, and have the world in mind. And for people my age, there is also a subconscious, that is, our lives have long been wrapped up in the whole earth, whether you want to or not, there is no sense of distance between eating bowls and watching pots. This kind of coercion sometimes makes us hallucinate on the top of the world, and sometimes makes us lick our wounds with self-pity, and we also need to present its process and mechanism. ”
With this in mind, although the novel "Across the Ocean to Send You" is based on humor, it also contains a solemnity, as written in the book:
"After being shot in the head, the bean woke up like a dream, and then it was like another life." This was the case when he was a child, and it is also true now: when he was excited, he first had to re-determine his place in the world, and after a while, he seemed to remember that his grandfather had been 's', and he was going to the cemetery to send his grandfather. He also remembered that he had just thought of sorrow and nothingness, and thought of the world like smoke. For another moment, he saw that there was real smoke in front of him—the smoke was gray-white, thick and vast, rolling over the car window. ”
Shi Yifeng believes, "For telling things, the interesting thing is often that extremely distant things are related to each other. "A new generation of young people are looking at and exposing themselves to the outside world in a different way than their predecessors: in mobile phone videos, on the other side of the unfamiliar ocean, heterogeneous cultures collide with each other, caged birds and cross the ocean are all aspects of reality.