Yuan Ling on "City of Memory": Novels cannot be written more and more "small"

Writer Yuan Ling.

A few days ago, the famous writer Yuan Ling was invited by the Nandu Book Club to share online. Yuan Ling's latest work, the novel "City of Memory", was launched by Huacheng Publishing House and attracted widespread attention. Yuan Ling talked freely about his creative process and experience in sharing.

Yuan Ling, born in Pingli County, Shaanxi Province, has been widely acclaimed in recent years for his non-fiction works such as "Lessons in Life and Death" and "Silent Child", making him one of the most influential non-fiction writers at present. But in fact, Yuan Ling's novel creation is also outstanding, and the short story collection "World" depicting poor rural life is a very outstanding work.

In 2021, Yuan Ling published a collection of essays about her own upbringing, "Elsewhere". And his new work this year, "City of Memories", also has a strong autobiographical color, and the first part of the novel is written in 2019, taking the tracking of the death of the young woman Xiaoqin as a clue. The second part and the third part, written in 2001 and 2003 respectively, delicately describe the protagonist's work in news reporting at a newspaper and his personal emotional experience. The whole book portrays the difficult life of ordinary people in the city and the ideological changes of small intellectuals in a melancholy atmosphere, which is very impressive. In fact, part of the first draft of this work was written more than a decade ago, and Yuan Ling has been supplementing and polishing it.

Yuan Ling expressed his creative ideals very frankly in his sharing. He said: "A novelist commented that my 'City of Memories' is 'mud and sand writing', and far away it is the number of roads of Towong. I love the feeling of being in the sand, like the world itself, full of something rough, not necessarily mature, so complete, not necessarily so artificial. It may still have some places that are not polished so smoothly, some possibilities of perfection, which leave the reader with some blank space and some space to continue to play with the imagination. Because it's also a kind of real life. Novels provide something for us to think about and feel further, and I hope that novels provide such a field. I don't like novels that are particularly like novels, and I prefer novels that are not so much like novels. ”

The transcript of the lecture is the essence

Nandu: From the perspective of the time composition of the plot, the novel "City of Memories" can probably be divided into two time periods: one is from 2001 to 2003, which is the beginning of this century; the other is 2019, which is closer to the present. We know that City of Memories has an autobiographical color, so what kind of life did you live in the above two time periods?

Yuan Ling: These two periods are separated by 16 years, and of course life has changed a lot. In the previous time period, both the protagonist of the novel and myself were in Chongqing, the second to fourth year of entering the journalistic profession. At that time, I first did street news in the hotline department, and then transferred to the weekend edition, doing something similar to features or close-ups, and often going out to interview. As far as personal life is concerned, it is actually more boring, because a person stays there and his family is not around. At that time, I felt that my personal ideals might not be realized, and my life in Chongqing was probably coming to an end. Then in 2019, I was in a state of "North Drift" at the time, free to write. Sometimes I also do some topic selection, go out to interview or something, basically a drifter state. At that time, he often went back to Chongqing.

Nandu: In City of Memories, you have a lot of descriptions of the "Fish City" in the past and present. You mentioned that the new city that landscaped erased the old face of this place a lot. So, what are some of the old looks of this place that you remember? Is it a cheap hostel where the "lollipops" in the novel live, an underground dance hall with dancers? Is there anything else?

Yuan Ling: When I was in Chongqing, because Chongqing became a municipality directly under the central government, this brought a kind of development momentum to the city. Chongqing has an ancient history, both the roughness of the dock culture and the very fashionable and fresh elements of the modern city, so I feel that Chongqing was a very rich, vibrant and conflicting city at that time. Some living places also left a deep impression on me. Chongqing is divided into the upper half of the city and the lower half of the city, and the lives of these two are intertwined.

In 2019, when I returned to Chongqing, I found that after a major demolition in Chongqing, some local residents had moved far away, and many of the lower-class people who had originally survived there had slowly left, which was a big change. For example, there was a large chemical factory opposite Hualong Bridge, and when I went to the factory on the verge of bankruptcy, I saw a lot of strange and twisted pipes, and I was deeply impressed. There is a huge sewage waterfall near the Hualong Bridge, and the landscape is very shocking, that is, the sewage flowing down from the upper half of Chongqing city flows to the lower half of the city. The waterfall was nearly 100 meters high and made a huge noise, and the whole valley was filled with sour smoke. I went again in 2019, and this place, this sewage waterfall, disappeared, and the smelly place at the lower end of the waterfall became a huge modern real estate. I was very impressed by this contrast.

Nandu: "City of Memory" portrays several young women who will impress readers, including Yu Xiaoqin, who gradually sinks in the sea of people and even disappears, Luo Yuying, a female worker who works in a printing factory, Li Ying, the ex-wife of the protagonist's good friend Chen Tian, and Xiao Shu, the protagonist's own wife. Can you talk about these female characters separately? In addition to personality, they all seem to bear the imprint of the times and society, what do you think Chinese society in the early 21st century had on women at that time?

Yuan Ling: The novel does describe several women, Xiaoqin and Xiaoxu are the two more important ones. Xiaoqin came to Yucheng from other places to work, first in a printing factory, and then lost her job due to a work injury, and went to a clothing store to sell clothing. She may be more afraid of hard work, earn a small amount, and then go to the black light dance hall, and then "old age and decay", forced to become the kind of inferior, accompany the elderly to dance the dam dance, earn a little money. In the end, this could not be sustained, and she fell ill again, and she committed suicide by jumping into the river in the midst of poverty and illness. In fact, Xiaoqin is also very kind and has her own personality, but she is a woman who goes all the way down.

Luo Yuying is a friend of Xiao Qin's, and they are all female workers in the printing factory. Luo Yuying was relatively lucky, but not so glamorous. She had been working in a printing house and later married a co-worker. After marriage and childlessness, coupled with some other factors, such as poor factory efficiency, etc., her marriage also had a crisis, and finally divorced. Years later, Chen Tian, another protagonist in the novel, reunites with her, and the two get married. This caused some controversy in the local area, because Chen Tian was a newspaper reporter and a doctor. Chen Tian has also experienced a lot, including the love affair with Li Ying, and then the relationship with his wife Tassel, all of which have problems. Whether it was his love or marriage, he went bankrupt, so later he chose Luo Yuying. Unlike Xiao Qin, Luo Yuying is not so sensitive, may be more easy-going, as if the heart is "bigger", not thinking too much, and being able to go with the flow. She has a good character of hard work and a warm thing in her body, which is also a reason why her later fate is different from Xiaoqin's.

There is also a female Xiao Shu in the novel, who is the wife of the protagonist "I" in the novel. She has no formal university education, is a middle school teacher, and in the novel, "I" travel from Shanghai to Yucheng, always trying to find a job for my wife, so that she can live, work, and take root with "me" in the local area. But Xiao Shu was timid and had no way to find a stable job. And "I" was also relatively weak and incapable of guaranteeing his wife's life, so in the end Xiao Shu left in disgrace. Xiao Shu is also very kind, very industrious, in the novel "I" had a serious illness, Xiao Shu has been taking care of "me", but after "I" healed, Xiao Shu left the fish city, because she could not find her own position in the fish city, lost herself, everything she has in the fish city is the "I" in the novel, and this makes "I" overwhelmed, so the two people often stumble, and life is full of the contradiction of "poor couple Pepsi lament". This led to the increasing lack of strength for the marriage of two people to continue, and finally failed. "I" and Xiao Shu eventually broke up, but Xiao Shu found her own way out of life after the breakup, so in such a dreamy and magical scene as Yucheng, everyone seems to be trapped in it and can't extricate themselves, can't get out of the nightmare of fate.

These women do bear the imprint of that era, and like some kind of spell, there is a special color, like a sense of destiny: although everyone is pursuing, they cannot get rid of this fate. Of course, they are still pursuing, not "lying flat" or complaining. Not so happy, but all trying to live, to seek themselves, I think I am willing to record this, because of this seriousness that is worth cherishing. They owe nothing to fate, but fate or life owes them. Perhaps at that time, the whole society was also in a stage of transition, and many things were in conflict and change, and people would not be able to grasp their own fate in the process. In fact, both men and women will encounter such problems, perhaps women are more sensitive, and her sense of destiny is more prominent. But there is also a search for the meaning of life, not hopelessness.

Nandu: The love life of the protagonist of "City of Memories" and his good friend Chen Tian, if viewed from the perspective of today's young people, seems to be very "non-standard". You seem to be deliberately making a precise outline of the form of this kind of love, what is your intention? How do you evaluate such feelings?

Yuan Ling: What is the view of love in today's young people? Maybe it's not that heavy, or maybe some of the conditions they're asking for are more explicit? Will there be less contradiction and pain? In the novel, whether it is Chen Tian or "my" love, it is more complicated and tangled, subject to a lot of constraints, and at the same time trapped in a lot of emotions, it is difficult to get rid of. The person himself is trapped in it, and does not distinguish some boundaries very clearly, he will invest, but at the same time it is difficult to extricate himself. This is the true form of life, it is a vague or muddy form, its emotions and desires are often entangled and conflicting, very heavy, there is a paradoxical mixture of the heaviness of the flesh and the lightness of the soul. I think this may not be the same as the situation of young people now, and such feelings are certainly not how beautiful, how perfect, and even often bring great pain. It may even be a little "confused", and sometimes it is not very in line with social norms. But I wanted to record it truthfully, without having to evaluate whether it was good or bad. I felt that since it had existed and was indeed a real state of human life, my task was to record it first.

Nandu: You are engaged in news reporting in "Fish City", and you have the opportunity to understand and touch all aspects of society. Criminal cases are also written in the novel, often with some characteristics of the era at the beginning of the 21st century. Can you talk about your days as a journalist at Fish City? How has this professional experience influenced your work and worldview?

Yuan Ling: At the beginning of my journalistic career in Yucheng, I did the most basic kind of journalistic work, that is, running the streets and looking for small social news in the streets and alleys. It feels very hard because the workload is also pressed there, often unable to find clues, and it is difficult to interview. Sometimes it's a day of tossing and turning, and at night it's empty-handed, and the pressure is very high. For example, a proofreader has to change the idiom "full of brain fat" written in the manuscript to "full of brain fat", which makes people laugh, because Chongqing people like to eat fat intestines, she thinks it should be "full of brain fat intestines". As you can imagine, as a graduate student in Fudan, it was very painful to be held back by such an uncultured proofreader in the newspaper. This is a real thing.

It can be said that my understanding of the life at the bottom has formed a background for my writing. Because that was my real first job out of school and into society, facing life at the bottom, facing all kinds of social phenomena, including the chronic diseases in the media industry, it built me a solid foundation for life. Maybe it is the underlying and marginal, not very identified with the mainstream. At the same time, this profession will give me a way to think about society.

I emphasize that my literature, on the one hand, must have realism and authenticity, on the other hand, it must also have humanity and spirituality, not only at the level of faith or aesthetics, but also at the current phenomenon of social life, some themes of life, and some things in the field of knowledge. On this basis, you can see that the "I" in the novel, Chen Tian, and Shen Wenming will have some exchanges and some thoughts on philosophy, education, poetry, and so on at the intellectual level. And these are intertwined with the scenes and emotional experiences of the underlying life, not to say how significantly there is a separation between them. I hope there is such a fusion, which may also be a feature of my creation. I may prefer "muddy" writing, I like authenticity itself, but I also want to have something humanistic in authenticity. This is a way of thinking that I created.

Nandu: Compared with the common Chinese novels today, "City of Memories" seems that the "story" is not so strong, and it is not used to catch the reader to read down with suspense. You also mention in your novels modernist works like Joyce's Ulysses. So, what was your aesthetic pursuit when you wrote City of Memories? What qualities do you value more about novels?

Yuan Ling: Indeed, "City of Memories" uses feelings, images, and emotions, including the transformation of scenes, the transformation of time and space, as a clue, and it does not use a tortuous story and suspense as a clue. This does have some similarities with works like Ulysses or Calvino's The Invisible City. It can be said that it follows the heel and the heart, not follows the interlocking logic of the story.

This may have something to do with one of my views on fiction. I think that the current novel is actually writing "legends", all of which are writing "unfortunately not books", and readers also look forward to seeing that whether it is in the plot or in the development of human nature, there is an answer, a full, full, and rounded answer. But I think this is actually not right, it will cause each other's intelligence weakening, that is, between the writer and the reader, between each other, feeding each other such a state. The possibility of fiction is let go.

I want fiction to be like a tree, it breathes, it follows time and the heart, and some things can be unfinished. It allows you to stop at any time in a place where there is still life, like a tree, any leaf, a branch, it still has its own life. It has a whole, and you can stop here and feel the beauty of the details of this sentence, this scene. There can be an aesthetic, there can be a kind of thinking, not just to find some kind of satisfaction in it, an alternative satisfaction to the lack of reality. Love Mo Foster said that novels are worms, and I think this is actually very bad, and finally it becomes something that everyone lazily seeks a pitiful psychological comfort in it. I think it's very bad that novels get smaller and smaller like this. Even when I later read some of Kafka's novels, I had a bad feeling, and I felt that they were childish, immature protagonists daydreaming in them. In fact, many novels are such daydreams.

Our Chinese novels, of course, are now more of a "family history" writing, a certain family in the Republic of China, ah, write a lot of suspense, or a social legendary event. I'm personally less interested in this, and I think I prefer works that are closer to our current experience of survival. I want the language of my novel to be penetrating and beautiful, and I want the novel to be more memorable than the details I write, the scenes I write, the language I use, not the plot.

So what I value more about the quality of the novel is that it can convey and think about social life and the human spirit. Writing about human nature is also written in the context of human life and the field of human spirit. I wish the novel had the capacity of a world, and it was like a world.

Moderator/Writer: Nandu reporter Liu Zheng