Reading Weekly | Reading – the mutual growth of writers and time

The relationship between writer and time is the most isomorphic of mutual growth. Whether it is green and crisp, or notched and calluses, they are soaked with the juice of time. It has always been like this, it is time to gaze at me, to water me, to lead me. Writing about "Golden River" at the age of fifty is also a property and gift under the years. The dance steps of time took me to this open area, intimate and strange, and the wisps of light and shadow were all projections of sun and moonlight.

The most intimate contacts in life are all cultural practitioners who are similar to me, in the kind faces, journalists, translators, research, bookstores, Kunqu performances, engraving inheritance, everyone diligently pursues and creates, are "once slow" or "immaterial" intangible things, uplifting to say that there is the so-called paper life of a thousand years, immortal self-hypnosis, it seems to be connected to the relay and sublimation of the human spiritual level. These expressions and assertions that guard the artistic highlands and are determined to be like heartache have always been important scenes of literary writing, after all, the retreat and useless use are the realms that we are most affectionate and sustenance. But sometimes it is also felt that this emotional perspective of the "superstructure", the aesthetic values that favor the spiritual dimension, seems to be a telescope... Social life is so extensive, in addition to the spiritual and immaterial stretches, there are also "material" formats and their creators that we do not pay much attention to and present less.

For example, in the Jiangsu and Zhejiang areas where I live, large and small private factories, decades of deep ploughing, sprinkling beans like soldiers, small bosses from all walks of life, can really be said to be a fairly large base existence. When I was doing corporate propaganda at the post office more than twenty years ago, one of my jobs was to extract and cut all kinds of materials related to the postal industry on the newspapers, and since the newspapers were always cut to pieces, it was best to make the most of them, so I would also leave the parts of personal interest. At that time, the evening newspaper often had half a page and a half version, shaking off the various enmities and ups and downs of these rich people in the tone of gossip, and I was shaking my head and shaking my head, and I was happy, and the copper plate in my ears sounded. Even at the dinner party at that time, people would talk about money and the various "bad things" and "retribution" it brought. This may have been a tradition in the first place. For example, the most folk-interesting Yuan Dynasty script and related opera stages, including the three words and two beats that were later sorted out and extended by the literati, etc., more than half of the stories, there must be a rich man and an old man, there are twists and turns of rich and noble cause and effect, one and the other. Whether it is a legend of a book, a theater performance, a news clipping, a discussion at the table, there is always a stubborn tradition of valuing literature over business, the innate critical tendency of money and all evils, and the positioning and moral reasoning of pure public opinion, no business is not adulterous, the rules of the market are ruthless, money is alienated and kidnapped of human nature, leading to the degeneration of the world style, etc., all dissatisfaction and anger can be pushed to money, business and wealth.

Many years ago, I knew a small boss in Yixing, Jiangnan, who made communication accessories, and he treated writers like us very politely, politely, and also had a sense of estrangement from self-protection, thinking that we looked down on him, or would also think, anyway, we don't understand each other, literati and businessmen, have always been on two roads. These are not to be ignored, after all, we have known each other for a long time, and one day we happened to talk a little more. He said that his son studied overseas, the direction is the museum and archaeology I can't remember clearly, in short, there is no interest in his stall, the sons and nephews of the same generation of relatives and friends, also have their own choices, even if they have business acumen, they are more willing to earn the quick money and hot money, and they completely lack recognition of the business model and path he has worked hard to make. The boss is old, his face is old, he sighs tiredly and indignantly, recalling his half-life history of going south and north, painstakingly operating a fortune and entrepreneurship, which can be imagined, and now no one cherishes nor takes over. He knew that his pain was not easy to understand, even sadness was not appropriate, not very appropriate, in the eyes of outsiders, it was not a family property and a business, we would always regard all this as a materialized "way" to life. But for him, the road of life itself is where life and all values lie—it reminds me of those newspaper clippings, which are hidden and hidden, floating, and scattered, and those characters and pictures that have long been taken for granted, ignored, and instrumentalized by faces, have been staged in another mirror tube, and countless Yixing bosses, not far from me, reflect, verify or subvert the stories on the newspaper clippings.

Their generation is becoming the back of time, the creators are gone, but leaving behind a huge amount of material and wealth, all flows into the great rivers and seas, ze is surrounded by children and grandchildren, infinitely poor. As an indirect, and indeed direct beneficiary, as a contemporary who is here and now, and whose eyes are reachable, I feel that something should be written, something should be asserted, for all such creators and what they have created.

Of course, these ideas are still very preliminary, as well as various channels, successive reading and preparation of materials, including the passage of time and changes in the external world, some of my ideas from vague to clear, for the protagonist's interception of this life, I decided to choose his last two years, because What Attracted Me to Mu Youheng is not how he created, where he came from, but more importantly, where he and his creation will go, how it will survive and influence in the world... At this stage, in preparation for the master's thesis, Hayden White revisited many of Hayden White's ideas about "subjectivization", "rhetorical imagination", "being chosen", etc., which discuss historical writing, but if applied to fiction, it seems to create a certain unique charm of realistic materials and disguised texts. So I wondered if I could add an author's perspective to the text, using the non-fiction writing plan in the novel to deconstruct the biographical material of the protagonist in the torrent of time. The perspective and position of this writer will obviously continue to turn and cover themselves with the passage of time, as the relationship between the characters is close and close, and as the cultural consumption scenario changes, from the beginning of the novel to the last line, this narrative nesting can always be present.

After determining the position of Teacher Xie's writer, I abandoned the common omniscient and omniscient narrative for Mu Youheng and his children, and placed small microphones on their necklines, moving with the camera position, adopting a restrictive third-person perspective. Technology is never technology, just as form is never form. I hope that this will be closer to them more delicately, like the lines of the river close to you, me, him, Yixing Little Boss, Mu Youheng, etc., are all the same Creator, material, immaterial, or trickle endlessly, or gushing to the heavens, generation after generation, which is the river of life of all creators, and it is also the law of transmission in this world.

"Golden River", by Lu Min/Author, Yilin Publishing House, 2022 edition

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