Famous artists talk about writing | Lu Yiping: The Fictional Beauty of Fiction

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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.

Lu Yiping

The fictional beauty of the novel

01

Fiction is the soul of fiction

Novelists are people who have long lived in fiction in the study, so novel writing itself is a very lonely profession. Dealing with some of your fictional characters. You love him and hate him, but you can't see their shadows, they live in your heart. This is not enough, they must be able to live in the reader's heart, in time. Only in this way can your fictional character be considered to be standing, and only then can it be considered to have vitality. You and your characters can only talk through words. During the time you were writing the novel, you were haunted and spent time together, and once you were done, they left. It's like a vigorous love, after love, grace breaks off.

Fiction is a heavy physical task in all literary genres. After a short story is conceived, it takes ten and a half days to write and change; a novella takes at least one month; a long novel, that is, long-term hard labor, sometimes can torture you for three or five years, or even more than ten years. For example, Cao Xueqin wrote "Dream of the Red Chamber" only eighty times, the German writer Muzier's "Man Without Personality", and the Czech writer Hašek's "The Adventures of the Good Soldier Shuaik", all of which are unfinished works.

We all know that fiction is fiction. Fiction is the soul of the novel, the most distinctive feature that distinguishes fiction writing from other writings. In other words, if there is no fiction, then there is no fiction. Ancient Greek literary critic Aristotle believed that literature is the art of "imitating" life, so the function of literature is to "reproduce life".

So, what is fiction? According to my understanding, the so-called fiction is an artistic means used by novelists to make the life reflected in the novel more intense, more concentrated, more typical, more ideal, and more real than actual life, relying on reasonable imagination.

How big the fiction and reality components of the novel are, which is also difficult for any writer to say clearly, is difficult to quantify. But from my own reading experience, we often ignore this problem and think of it as another world around me, another life, another life. Just as children believe in the world in fairy tales, we rarely have to determine whether a novel is fiction or not before reading it. We will only enjoy the process of reading, we will immerse ourselves in it, go to that world, rejoice or grieve for the fate of the characters in it.

All novels are fairy tales. It's just that adult fairy tales sometimes seem too profound and too cruel. Another point is that readers need a virtual reality to confront the reality they are facing, and they need to escape. So, together with the writers, they maintain this virtual reality.

History only has events, and novels can let us see the sadness and joy behind the events, see the fate of the characters in the events, see the secrets of the characters' hearts, and see the true face of an era.

The vast majority of the world is made up of lies. People who don't tell a single lie probably don't, because people need to lie. Fiction is lying, it is making up lies to the fullest. Fiction, a powerful fiction, a fiction like Kafka and Faulkner, but it better reflects the real reality.

02

The relationship between real and fiction

Now, I'm going to talk about the relationship between the real and the imaginary. The American writer Anne Pull has a collection of short stories, Close: Tales of Wyoming, published by the People's Literature Publishing House in 2006. From the book's thank-you speeches, I sensed the writer's efforts to find fictional truths. "I love local history and have collected memoirs and accounts of local life and events in many parts of North America over the years," she said. She adds, "Elements that are unrealistic, whimsical and not necessarily true add color to these stories, just as real life is enriched by these elements." After the success of the film "Brokeback Mountain", she talked about the creative process of "Brokeback Mountain", there is a passage, which may not sound like anything to us ordinary people, but it is very important to the person who writes: "I talked to a sheep to make sure that in the early 1960s I described, there could be a pair of white shepherd boys to watch over the sheep, which is in line with historical facts..." Why is Anne Prue so true, why is it time-consuming and laborious to seek the truth of history? Isn't fiction? What is there that cannot be fictionalized? This tells us that the truth of facts is very important, and that fiction is about creating a hypothetical life that takes place under real conditions, derives stories and details, and that truth is the source of fiction. It is with this source that she can "use sharp brushwork to break the passion and longing of life behind the rough and wild lifestyle of cowboys (in the American West), and use poetic language to quench beauty and hope from cruelty and roughness." ”

Every writer is looking for a fictional path that truly reflects reality. After I left Beijing, I made a great determination to become a novelist. But for a long time, I couldn't write a work that satisfies me. When I went to the Pamir Plateau, I originally wanted to write a collection of novels about it, but after living for nearly four years, I still couldn't write it, I walked through the entire northwest frontier, I walked through every place in the vast Xinjiang, and I have not yet found a text that can reflect this land with literature. To accumulate life is to accumulate details in life, and I am also looking for details that are convenient for fiction. But it's not just a matter of having details that translates them into fiction.

It wasn't until August 2006, when I returned to southern Xinjiang alone and went to the Pamir Plateau again, that after a few days of living in Taheman, a Tajik fellow told me about the avalanche of Muztagh Peak, and my heart was shocked, and I felt that thousands of worlds had gathered in my heart at that moment. The characters in the novel, the language I should use, both intonation and speed, suddenly became clear. I knew how I was going to write my own novel. I wrote novels such as "Pamir Love Song", "The Return of Shabazi", "Beijing Jeep", "The Horse Race Seven Years Ago", "Kek Turuk" and so on, and I once again built up my confidence in novel creation.

The truth of the novel is based on details. And a novel is made up of thousands of details. So, every writer who takes writing seriously attaches great importance to the uniqueness and reliability of detail. In her essay "Again On Literature and Reality," García Márquez said, "The hardest experience of my career as a writer was the preparation for The Fall of the Parents. For almost a decade, I read everything I could possibly get about dictators in Latin America, and especially in the Caribbean, with the aim of making the books I was going to write as close as possible to the facts. But, "every step is a disappointment." Juan Wittson Gómez's instincts were much sharper than a true foreshadowing skill. Dr. Duvalier of Haiti ordered the black dog of the country to be wiped out, because one of his enemies managed to escape the persecution of the tyrant, got rid of his human form and became a black dog. Dr. Francia, whose philosopher's prestige is so remarkable that Carlisle studied him, closed the Republic of Paraguay like a house, leaving only a window for easy access to the mail. Antonio López Santana buried one of his legs in a magnificent funeral. Noppe Deagirre's severed hand drifted down the water for a few days, and the people who saw it drifting by trembled with fear, thinking that the murderous hand in that state could still swing the dagger. Anastasia Somosa Garcia of Nicaragua has a zoo in his yard, and the cages are divided into two rooms: one closes the beasts; the other, separated only by an iron fence, holds his political enemies. So, Márquez "believed in the magic of real life," he said, "we writers in Latin America and the Caribbean must religiously admit that reality is a better writer than we are, and that our vocation, perhaps our glory, lies in trying to imitate it humbly, to imitate it as much as we can." ”

There are many Chinese writers who imitate Márquez's magic realism and write a large number of novels, but why do so few succeed? This is how they did not see the magical reality as a true reflection of reality. They do not grasp the reality of China, and their works can only imitate, only the "magic" they have created, so the reality they reflect has become a false reality, and "magic realism" has become "false magic realism".

Therefore, fiction is "the most authentic component of the novel". We are in the midst of the news bombardment every day, but I feel more and more that the world is uncertain and unreal. The most famous program in the United States in the 1960s and 1970s was called "Cronquette Evening News", which could affect the entire world pattern. After Cronkite broadcast the news, then-President Johnson said, "I can not listen to the American people, I can also not listen to Congress, but I have to listen to Cronkite." Why? Because if I don't listen to the American people, I may lose some of the votes; but if I don't listen to Cronkite, I will lose the entire American people. Cronkite has also been called "the most trusted man in the world" for his news program. Including the Vietnam War at that time, Vietnamese officials and the Viet Cong were desperately trying to collect Cronquette's remarks, and Krones's program had affected the United States, South Vietnam, and the Viet Cong. Because Krishna appears in some kind of neutral voice. In an article he wrote after his retirement, Cronquette, in which he talked about his concerns, saying that his biggest concern was that when he was about to leave, an old American lady suddenly came up to him and said, "Mr. Cronkett, I believe everything you say." That is to say that the facts he provides are not all true. News uses intuitiveness to achieve its efficacy, and it gives the illusion that what we accept every day is the truth, the evidence of the world, no longer thinking and discerning, becoming the kind of "audience" they want.

It is this fictional reality that makes us feel the stagnation of time when reading, and feel that the time that has passed is completely preserved between the words. It forms one of the most fascinating parts of our time. We can't dwell on reality, but we can indulge in that fictional part.

03

Fictional establishment

Some writers often mention a sentence at the beginning of the novel, "This novel is purely fictional, please do not sit in the right seat", and novels with this statement are often some unpopular works. Why? He is either making things up or getting too close to reality, fearing that someone will see him in his work. Therefore, the fictionality of the novel will lose the authenticity of the novel; the fictional ability of the writer who is too close to reality is doubtful. Masters of fiction often emphasize the truth of their work. Speaking of his short story "Captive," Borges affirmed, "Of course this novel is true." When Márquez talks about his creations, he always emphasizes that his magic comes from reality, and its provenance can be found in Latin America.

Even for many novels based on real events—such as Babel's The Cavalry Corps, Márquez's The Story of a Victim—the writer's aim is not to recount the facts, and if so, he would have no meaning. Events are in the service of fiction. Facts for a novel are what is presented on the surface, one-eighth of the surface of the sea where the iceberg emerges. In order to achieve this, hard work is often required. For example, I have a lot of novels that I want to write but haven't written yet.

As mentioned earlier, my experience in the Pamir Plateau was enough to write a book, and my wanderings on the frontier, including my interviews with female soldiers in Hunan. But the novel of the Pamir Plateau was written after six years, and the story of Xiangnu was only tried to be fictional after eight years. My biggest confusion is that, for example, the experience of a Xiangnu is shocking enough, it is also told to me by xiangnu herself, and it feels natural when I use documentary techniques to express it. I believe everything it conveys, and so will the reader. But when I'm going to present it in a fictional way, I feel that the story might make the reader feel like I'm making it up. I'm going to recreate a true story in a fictional way. This is actually the difference between fiction and documentary. The label of a documentary work doesn't make readers wary of your words, which they are happy to accept. But when he becomes a novel, after they read it, they will say, this guy can really make it up. If the reader evaluates a novel in this way, this is undoubtedly a complete denial of the author. So, I'm going to look for seven-eighths of what's under reality. I want to find the atmosphere of the times in which this novel takes place, the way the main character speaks, his symbolism, the value of this character, that is, the meaning of a novel as a novel. Therefore, the profession of novelist is very difficult to do. He combines the roles of emperors, saints, devils, thugs, and so on, and as V. Moriac puts it in his essay The Novelist and His Characters, "It is our profession to describe life as complexly as life," and "the art of the novel is first and foremost a translocation of reality, not a representation of reality." It's like Borges's Book of Sand, which is clearly visible but vague. The appearance of "my" abode, the appearance of the Olkada Islanders who sold Bibles, the versions of the Bible, the celebrities mentioned, the origin of the Book of Sand, the conversations between the two men, what I did and the extent of my fascination with the Book of Sand, all seemed to be presented in front of me, and my final disposition of the Book of Sand was clearly visible even to the point where the book was stored. But there are many things in this novel that are shrouded in a sandstorm, waiting for the clever reader to interpret it in their own way, which is the complex feelings brought by the Borgesian approach of fiction.

Fiction is such a platform for constructing interaction between authors and readers in fiction. Fiction can better satisfy the novelist's mind and also better meet the needs of the reader. Readers need more than just visual effects, they need the space to think, they need influential works to make them respond to the heart, and I think one of the purposes of reading novels is to make their souls have longer vitality. And fiction can help us do just that.

04

Elements that make up fictional reality

As a fictional literary form, fiction permeates all aspects, and it can be said that it begins with language in the first place. If we examine a good novel carefully, we will find that both the narrative language used by the author and the language of the characters in it are unique and distinctive—they are not so much like the public, social, but purely unique. It turns out that it belongs to the writer himself, and cannot belong to anyone else. This "way of speaking" of his is simply impossible to replicate.

Some people will be surprised to hear it and ask, "Is every sentence false?" It can be said that, but the "linguistic fiction" we have here refers to the way of speaking, that is, the language of the novel, like the story and characters of the novel, is not the pursuit of a simple "reality of life". It is also equivalent to saying that the way the characters in the work speak, and the way they describe and tell, are all fictionalized by the author.

The narrative style of the novel is determined from the beginning, such as the famous opening of "One Hundred Years of Solitude" to see ice, which determines the narrative method of the novel. A novel I recently read, A Brief History of the Tractor in Ukraine, began with the following sentence, "Two years after my mother's death, my father fell in love with a charming Ukrainian blonde." He was eighty-four years old, and she was thirty-six. She exploded in our lives like a furry pink grenade, stirring up muddy waters, turning the silt beneath the mud of many long-simmering memories onto the water and kicking the butts of our family ghosts. This opening determines the drama of the novel. Look again at the beginning of The Adventures of the Good Soldier,' "'They killed our Emperor Ferdinand [the Emperor of Austria-Hungary, the Sarajevo Incident that sparked the First World War],' said the maid to Himck. A few years ago, when Shuai ke was finally declared an idiot by the military medical review committee, he retired from the army and has since made a living as a dog trader, forging pure blood certificates for the ugly bastard dogs. This begins by establishing that this is a novel that is "full of anger and laughter."

The fiction of details often comes from your own experience, but what is more important is whether your experience can be sublimated into the power of literature, whether it can become a symbol of human feelings and cognition of a certain aspect. Let's look at the description of the battlefield at the beginning of the second paragraph of the first article of the Cavalry Army, "Crossing the Zboruchi River": "In the fields around us, there are purple-red poppies, and the afternoon smoke breeze stirs the rye that is ripe in the sun, and the buckwheat is like a virgin, standing in the sky, like the pink wall of a distant monastery..." The description of the scenery in this passage accounts for a quarter of the entire novel, and such beautiful and gorgeous war scenes are everywhere in the novel. But if he wasn't there, it would be hard for such a beauty and the cruelty of war to be so perfectly combined and contrasted with each other.

This is the fiction of language. It is so real, so real that it is beyond what we can hear and witness. The truth of the novel is the truth that has been washed away by the years, and it has eliminated all the mud and sand that affects the literary nature. (This article has been deleted)

Source: Zhaotong Daily, September 11, 2018, page 4

Editor: Liu Ya

Second instance: Wang Yang

Third instance: Chen Tao