There are more ginger mother duck shops than bookstores, which is very sad | An exclusive interview must be a melon
The writer must be a melon. Photo by Chen Qiang
✎ Writing | Xu Zheng
✎ Edit | Cheng Chi
Xu Yigua belongs to the kind of novelist who drives deeply, telling the reader with all kinds of buried threads hidden in the pen, "Things are more complicated than you think".
She writes about the bad rain before the murder, about her husband's surrender in the moonlight, about the confessions of criminals ringing on the free phone, about a confused "I know you won't love me" between the reporter and the victim, about how powerful women often eat tiramisu, and have to say sweet and sour words to their male colleagues all day long.
The text is like a rope pumped straight to the bottom of the incident, snapping, raising clearly visible details, all kinds of stories about urban and rural areas, men and women, police and bandits, and money power, quietly coming to the reader, as if waving so close in the corridor.
Her novel "Sunspot" was adapted into the movie "Scorching Sun", "Pale Green Moon" was adapted into "Sultry Night", and "Two Hundred and Forty Months of Life" and "The Word of the West Wind" have all been adapted and released, when the movie won the award and traced all the way to the original book, Xu Yigua still felt that "the novel has its own value field".
Reading is not always a serious matter, it occasionally occurs in lecture halls, and it can also appear on the beach, on the reef, in small talk.
In June 2023, "I Am Reading on the Island" moved the possibility of text to Dong'ao Island in Zhuhai, gathering writers such as Xu Yigua, Su Tong, and Yu Hua to talk about novels, creation, and the never-ending "Memories of the Watery Years" and the distant "Dubliners".
They wondered to the sound of the waves, which books can question which kind of social problems? How many literary expositions lead to how many belated rebuttals? What kind of text is accurate? Why are books the "ashes of life" in the words of Yousenar?
Around various topics, the New Weekly Hardcore Reading Club also talked about "reading" with the program guest Xu Yigua.
She often re-reads "A Pre-Publicized Homicide" and "On Chessel Beach", insisting on slow work novels, but as a reader who writes novels, what kind of reading vision will she have? The following is Xu Yigua's answer.
The writer must be a melon. Photo by Chen Qiang
When reading, keep the first blank piece of paper to yourself
Hardcore Book Club: Do you have a fixed reading time every day?
Xu Yigua: Not strictly fixed. Usually I spend most of my time reading in the afternoon, and I deal with writing more in the morning. After a work is conceived and enters the writing stage, it will be used in large chunks, regardless of morning and afternoon.
Hardcore Book Club: What book have you been reading lately? Why did you choose it, is there a social issue that you are more concerned about?
Xu Yigua: Recently I have been reading the Cloud Collector's Handbook, which is a book about clouds. Knowledge class. Niche but special. I kept reading it repeatedly, not because of its connotation, but because of the need for writing, and my memory became more and more like a thread.
Humans are the only creatures that can appreciate the sky and the clouds, but there are too many people who do not look up at the sky, and there are more and more.
A young girl told me that she only consciously looked at the sky when she was very young, and later it was almost impossible to feel the existence of the sky except for climate change. At this age, it is still the Miaoling flower season where there are fewer ties in the world and can dream at any time, and even they are not very good at looking at the sky and the clouds.
Looking at the heart of rushing, life is less and less relaxed.
Hardcore Reading Club: We are used to reading comprehension since childhood, after reading a novel, we always seek its deep meaning and find authoritative explanation, do you think, should the novel be read like this?
Xu Yigua: Many language test questions and language teachers are an unusual existence related to words.
Students have left a variety of letters of help about my novels or articles on my Weibo. Most of them want me to help them with their homework, because if they find the author, they will definitely find the standard answer. However, I can't answer. The answer is also incomplete, and even points will be deducted. The language teacher doesn't seem to need the author to speak.
A still from "Young You".
In fact, for a child, the immersion of reading is the companion of growth. If you ask a child of the right age to read "The Little Prince" carefully, his understanding may be more unique than that of an adult, he may not be able to answer the teacher's question, but his feelings and emotions may be more full - this is the communication and possession of life.
Until now, I am often aroused by the re-reading of old books to sigh a long time ago, and these immersions and reflections will become more profound and open with age.
Therefore, I think that the novel is first and foremost a self-based reading, leaving the first blank piece of paper to yourself. Then, you can look at other people's or authoritative voices, whether they extend your vision, inspire you, and expand your sensory blind spots.
Hardcore Reading Club: In "A Kind of Creation in Spring", you say that "when you can't buy "Harvest" everywhere, you can buy ginger mother duck everywhere... Literature is not worth much, this is the national market", is our reading atmosphere more bleak than in the past? Or has literature always been so neglected?
Xu Yigua: It's emotional. If a society has more ginger duck shops than bookstores, and fewer people read literature than investment guides and negotiation skills, this reality is indeed sad.
If material values become the ultimate value choice, literature will naturally not be competitive. However, it seems to me that the more a society loses its immaterial values, the more awakening literature becomes.
It makes people see, it provides understanding, it provides breathing, it uplifts the spirit and soothes the heart; If one day, we completely forget literature, literature does not care about us, and our spiritual space will inevitably shrink, under the wind and frost sword, the social heart will only become more regolithic.
As far as I know, in the 80s, there was a tendency for people to love literature. I often think that the people who were generally nourished by the literary age will be rewarded by literature later in their lives.
But now, as you say, at least the atmosphere of reading literature is bleaker.
But I see a lot of resistance. I have a friend who does her best to promote wide-angle reading (which includes but is not limited to literature) to children, and she and her team have seen the spiritual growth and inner richness of children in reading.
This is also a force in which literature is valued.
Harvest magazine book shadow.
Newspapers provide "knowing" and fiction gives "feeling"
Hardcore Book Club: In your 10 years as a journalist, when did you start to create creative impulses about the stories and news you witnessed?
Xu Yigua: Before I became a journalist, I was a die-hard literature lover and had already started writing. It was only when I was a journalist that I quit literary writing because the pace of journalism was too fast and busy.
Hardcore Book Club: You have a novel called "Tail Reporter," about a journalist who reports on bad guys, often at the end of the newspaper, and many of your fictional characters are mostly involved in bleak, bloody events. Why do you think people need to read novels, not just newspapers?
Xu Yigua: Newspaper news provides social facts. The characteristic of social facts is that it has blind spots, in addition, newspapers must have choices, the so-called "some reports, some not reports", put in any region any newspaper is the same, the difference is only the selection of standards, principles, each different.
Therefore, it must have traces of subjective screening. Subjectivity determines how social facts are presented.
Relatively speaking, the facts presented in the novel are more comprehensive, which are accurately expressed with the mature vision, thinking and research of the writer, and it is closer to the social reality, that is, the essence of life.
In addition, news newspapers only provide "knowing", while art, such as reading a novel, you are not only in "knowing", but also in the "feeling" that the news cannot give.
Only when we can "feel" things, life is "in the heart". It is aesthetic and determined. This is also the meaning and value of reading novels.
"Moment by Moment" stills.
Hardcore Book Club: The criminal details in novels are often sad, such as tucking hair into the temporal area, inserting a knife into the chest and then turning twice, etc., are these all seconded material in reality? Would you fit several cases into one novel?
Xu Yigua: I basically don't have any cases that go straight into the novel. But as long as they complete the trigger—not necessarily the facts of the case, it may just be a special word or deed, a particular relationship, a strange thought, a representative paranoia, it is enough.
What you think is a case or a hodgepodge of several cases is a misunderstanding, maybe there are some realistic elements and symbols in it that make you mistakenly think that they are all-natural integrated scheduling. It's not.
In that case, I would have gone straight to the non-fiction. There is no need to use fiction to chase greater ambitions in fictional worlds.
In fact, I have a lot of novels without criminal elements, such as "Tiramisu", "Black-collared Starling", "Seamelon Seed", "Gray Whale", "Old Girlfriend", "Primary School Student Huang Bohao Document Selection"... That's a lot.
Unfortunately, they seem to be easily obscured to varying degrees. Between me and the reader's reading expectations, something may have gone wrong. I was also helpless.
"Gray Whale"
It must be a melon
Yangtze River New Century | Hebei Education Press, 2022-10
Hardcore Book Club: In the novel "Happy New Year", there is a pair of keywords that are "stupid and noble", the protagonists chase police ideals in a life, many readers think it is romantic, do you agree? On the other hand, when we read, is reading itself a romantic act?
Xu Yigua: There were many urban anti-pickpocket volunteers back then, and this is a historical scene of public transportation policing, which can be regarded as the reason for writing this novel.
I wrote it mainly because through these personnel, I saw the basic will of everyone's heart to eliminate violence and good health, about fairness and justice, about punishing evil and promoting good, and about doing chivalry. The sense of justice is human nature, a good society nourishes it and maintains it, and the management function of the social order of the police is easy to inspire some people's ambition.
I agree that it is romantic. All dreamers, especially unrealistic dreamers, have romantic overtones, are against the arrangement of fate, fate has made you a foot of, but they still have a heart higher than the sky and do not look back. Stupidity and nobility come from this.
As for reading, has it become romantic? If this is a general feeling, I don't know whether it is good or bad.
Reading is the shortest way to understand the world and life. If social reality has shown that reading is a human activity that can be weakened and deleted, then a stubborn reading confrontation may be a bit romantic.
Go against the current, do not forget, do not give up, stubbornly pursue depth and beauty. That's romance.
"Happy New Year"
It must be a melon
Shanghai Literature and Art Publishing House, 2021-1
Hardcore Book Club: Marginalized people often become the protagonists or part of the material of novels, and conversely, is it possible for people at the bottom and muddy lives to come into contact with literature? When you were writing, did you ever imagine your readers?
Xu Yigua: No. I don't imagine readers. It is providence what kind of reader a novel meets and what kind of book a reader encounters.
The literary threshold is the lowest, and reading literature is even more, as long as you can read words, you can have reading and have your own literary world.
Literature has nothing to do with social class, as long as you want, you are the master of your own literary world. Literature never refuses to come to people, let alone care about the status difference of the people who come to them.
But the popularity or refrigeration of literature in a certain era has nothing to do with literature itself, but only with the mentality of society as a whole and the willingness to perceive the world.
"My Genius Girlfriend" stills.
Anyway, reading is generally not bad
Hardcore Reading Club: Why did you choose to record the variety show "I Am Studying on the Island"? Do you have any topics that you are looking forward to talking about in the show?
Xu Yigua: There is no way back to come. Compared to observation and recording, I am not a good person for expression. It is precisely because of the poor expression that I chose to write as a way of silently dialogue with the world.
It's hard for me to speak in public, especially in front of the camera. But I understand the original purpose of the Island Reading section. In this world of "rushing hearts", it is worthy of recognition.
We are losing the life of reading, just as we are losing the life of watching the clouds. The wider these windows to the spiritual world open, the calmer, more powerful, and deeper our lives will be.
In addition, I think that the "I Study on the Island" column has accumulated such a high popularity, with a stupid, melon writer, pull a little score down, raise the soup to stop the boil is also far-sighted, can help the column go better and further, so I came.
I don't have a topic to look forward to, anyway, opening the book is beneficial, and reading is generally not bad.
The movie "Scorching Sun" is adapted from the works of Xu Yigua.
Hardcore Book Club: The show chose a very good-looking, casual island as the backdrop for our reading, does that somehow mean that the city and busy work have the potential to dampen our enthusiasm for reading?
Xu Yigua: That's a good question. During the book house shooting, I was once reminded that my reading posture was not correct. At that time, I pointed to Ah who was "Ge You paralyzed" outside the camera and said: In fact, the real reading posture is like Teacher Alai, relaxed, free, and casual.
"Tired hands and long dreams", very comfortable. However, when Mr. Alai entered the camera, he also had to obediently straighten up. Because everyone knows that this is an aesthetic symbol, a symbol and encouragement, a way to pay tribute to reading and the book itself.
I remember I had a friend's son who was reluctant to take a book into the bathroom to read when he was a child. Especially beloved books. Cherishing books and giving them a connection with beauty is a natural complex for many people.
Of course, in terms of the essence of reading, in the busy city, in the island, reading is all about learning. Books are like chargers, regardless of orientation, as long as they are plugged in, they can get energy.
I understand that I chose this island with the same sea and sky to fight the hustle and bustle, and to show the meaning and beauty of reading more conspicuously.
A still from "Twentieth Century Woman".
Hardcore Book Club: In the last season of the show, there was a recommended book list at the end of each episode, in a variety show facing the public, how would you consider and give your own book list?
Xu Yigua: There are many good books, and I recommend a few that may be more suitable for female readers:
1. "Love in the Time of Cholera" Márquez
2. "The Blind Assassin", "The Handmaid's Tale", "Stone Mattress" (Atwood's book, the more women read, the better)
3. "No Consolation" Kazuo Ishiguro
4. "On Chessel Beach" McEwan
5. "Summer Before Dark" Doris Lessing
Writers must recommend some books.
· END ·
Written by丨Xu Zheng
Editor丨Cheng Chi
Proofreader丨Yang Chao