Classic literature is never a disposable consumer product

Part of contemporary China exists in contemporary literature.

Writers wrote from "Peiping Dormitory at Ten O'clock in May" to "This is Beijing at 4:08", from wanderers, waste pickers, and beggars to the survival of workers, peasants, bureaucrats, and intellectuals, writing fate in the city and families in the countryside.

In the history of this literature, critics will sum up one key word: roots, pioneers, return, hazy... Use direct naming to identify the reality and trend of thought echoed by literary narratives in human society.

Yang Qingxiang, a professor at the College of Literature of Chinese Minmin University, was born in 1980 and observed the 80s generation of his peers, proposing concepts such as "New Southern Writing" in the literary ocean, writing critical collections, and writing new scar poems "I Choose to Cry and Love You" and "The World Equals Zero".

This August, we chatted with Yang Qingxiang about contemporary literature and the current situation of youth.

Professor Yang Qingxiang. /Photo by Zhong Zhi

✎ Writing | Hard

✎ Edit | Cheng Chi

Young writers have a new sense of history

Hardcore Reading Club: You once mentioned that there is a general historical nihilism in the post-80s generation, "abandoning the historical dimension and living completely in 'life'", from a literary point of view, does youth writing also lack interaction with history?

Yang Qingxiang: I may have to take back my past judgment and take back the phrase "the post-80s generation has no sense of history", because I used to think that the post-80s generation was particularly ethereal on both the spiritual and material levels, in a suspended state, and had unrealistic illusions.

At that time, I wrote an article "Awakening from petty-bourgeois dreams", and this title especially indicates my attitude towards the 80s - we are all dreaming.

We think that everyone can live a decent life, middle-class family-style, have a house and a car, take the children to watch movies on weekends, fully enjoy freedom, aesthetics, modern life, we believe that the rapid growth of GDP will bring us these things.

But in fact, there is a gap between dreams and reality, housing prices are getting higher and higher and frothy, surplus value is being squeezed, and the gap between rich and poor in society is getting bigger and bigger.

These are history, and our generation has experienced it together. In this way, the writing of each generation automatically presents his mental state, which is itself a sense of history.

"Landscape of Literary Writing in the New Era"

By Yang Qingxiang

Shanghai Literature and Art Publishing House, 2021-12

This year I was giving a lecture at the Shanghai Library on "Reform Literature," and a boy in the audience waited until all the readers had left, and came back to me with tears in his eyes, saying "I don't want to be the raw material of history." This is a dilemma for a lot of people, we are stuffed with a lot of tooling requirements, but do not provide the corresponding configuration.

When we look at Chen Chuncheng's novels, we will find that there is a new sense of history and a new mental state - escaping the established rules of this world. Capturing the state of young people at once, this is where literature is important.

History, political science, sociology did not notice, only literature was particularly sensitive.

Hardcore Reading Club: Novels will present a period of life history, modern Chinese literature has a big story background is enlightenment, today, can we see a key word in the literary history written by contemporary writers?

Yang Qingxiang: This point is very good. I compiled a set of books called "New Coordinates", and mentioned in the general preface that the key word of the "May Fourth" generation is enlightenment, and Yu Hua and Mo Yan in the 80s of the 20th century are new enlightenment, and the space for interpretation is particularly large.

Nowadays, there are many good works, especially novellas and short stories that are even better written than previous writers, but it is difficult to be recognized as classics, why? Because we didn't find a keyword to explain them, we didn't have a coordinate axis to locate them, and it took writers, critics, researchers, and readers to find them.

"Utopia of Faith and Love"

By Xu Zechen

Jiangsu Phoenix Literature and Art Publishing House, 2021-8

In the past, we liked to use words like "post-80s" and "post-90s", but it is obviously a very lazy, very general, unrecognizable keyword, now there is "new south" and "new northeast", the generation has become space, a little interesting, I think can add more original theoretical keywords, such as mobility, great migration, etc. to summarize, these need us to construct.

A fluid contemporary literary life

Hardcore Reading Club: With the popularity of film and television adaptations, people have a concrete understanding of the historical narrative in New Northeast literature, compared to what kind of survival experience is the less strong story of New Southern writing?

Yang Qingxiang: From my personal point of view, New Southern Literature is based on a centrifugal force of strong realism in contemporary Chinese culture.

Because strong realism, strong historicist writing has always been our mainstream, it dominates, obscuring many possibilities, and in the new southern region I have delineated, including Lingnan, Hainan, Southeast Asia, and even more distant ocean depths, a different language, culture, and ethnic experience grows.

I wrote a series of essays discussing this concept, identifying relevant writers, such as Huang Jinshu, Chen Chuncheng, Lin Tang, etc., which constitute a southern temperament, as opposed to northern writing based on strong realism based on Mandarin.

And the temperament of the south is not only in literary writing, but also in many movies and music, such as Bi Gan's "Roadside Picnic" and Wujoren's "Guangdong Girl", this atmosphere is a little alienated, a little negative, with the mysterious and magical elements of the ocean.

A still from "Roadside Picnic".

Hardcore Book Club: Another literary phenomenon worth paying attention to is the rise of nonfiction writing. Does it make journalism more humanistic or make literature more realistic? Is it a good bridge between the two worlds?

Yang Qingxiang: Non-fiction writing is also a product of history, which appeared relatively early in the United States and Europe.

Around the 60s of the 20th century, European writers found that literary writing could not catch up with life, and reality changed too quickly, so the so-called "new journalism" appeared, which is actually non-fiction writing.

Around 2000, due to the development of pure literature, the writing of contemporary Chinese literature began to move away from the scene of contemporary life, and everything had to have a balance, at this time, non-fiction writing re-made an organic link between literature, reality, and society.

From another point of view, I think there is no difference between "fiction" and "non-fiction", only the difference between good works and bad works.

Strictly speaking, many novels are both fiction and non-fiction, and there are many factors put together. Don't just label a work, it's a living, fluid being.

We know that science fiction literature was called "pulp literature" in the early days, what is pulp? It is printed in some cheap magazines, and it is beaten into pulp after reading it, which has no value, but now science fiction films, science fiction novels are very important.

So it's a living, fluid thing that needs to be discussed in a different historical context, not labeled.

"Blade Runner" stills.

Hardcore Book Club: Compared with ancient poetry and modern poetry, is the poetry writing of contemporary young writers less frequent, more niche, and less valued?

Yang Qingxiang: Yes, because we are in a commodity society, which is based on the circulation of money. Classical times did not say that publishing something and then getting royalties, this is a modern invention.

Poetry's ability to monetize this transaction process is relatively poor, it cannot calculate the manuscript fee according to the number of words like narrative literature, then it becomes a genre that cannot meet the transaction of modern society.

People tend to prefer genres that are more conducive to the exchange of benefits, such as novels, screenplays, etc., but poetry is impossible, so it is a bit more niche.

Although China is a country of poetry, many people are writing poetry, but from a commercial point of view, poetry is still not comparable to narrative literature and film. Of course, poetry is also widely disseminated in new media if it is not involved in commerce, but the quality of these disseminated poems needs to be questioned. For those who really love poetry writing, you don't have to care about this, just write good works.

Classic literature is not a disposable consumer good

Hardcore Book Club: As a literary critic, do you feel the connection between literary works and times, context, and luck? What are the modern and contemporary Chinese novels that came later? Is it a good literary era for young writers today?

Yang Qingxiang: This question is more appropriate and convincing if it is discussed in classical literature.

For example, Tao Yuanming, who was considered a second-rate poet in his own time, was not discovered to be a great poet until the Song Dynasty; And Du Fu, we all know that his status in the history of Chinese poetry is very high, but when he was alive, his status was not so important, and it was later that Su Shi discovered him.

This is actually the case in the history of modern and contemporary literature, such as Mudan. He was an important poet in the 40s of the 20th century, but at that time everyone thought of him more as a translator, and it was not until the 90s of the 20th century that people suddenly discovered that the best poet of that year was actually Mudan.

What is a classic? A very simple definition is that a classic can be reread repeatedly, meaning in the process of rereading, and it is not a one-time consumption work.

For example, many popular novels and popular literature, after reading do not want to read again, especially after a different generation, let alone re-read these works, and "Dream of Red Mansions" can call readers of different generations.

Dream of the Red Mansion.

A classic is a historical concept that must be sifted, re-read, and interpreted over and over again in history. Think of Shakespeare, whose research papers are still poured every year.

Sometimes he does not know what the place of the work in history is, what is its relationship with other literary classics, and it is difficult for the writer himself to see clearly, and this time the intervention of literary critics is required.

But the difficulty is that critics can also misinterpret first-rate works, such as third-rate works, or third-rate works as first-rate works.

Hardcore Reading Club: How to establish the literary historical value of a work? Does it have to reflect history?

Yang Qingxiang: Exactly not, that is a long-term habitual thinking that great works should reflect the times and reflect history. "Era" and "history" are very empty, and every era and every history must be implemented in specific people.

Therefore, the most important thing is to write about unique life experiences, there are countless authors writing about history and times, we understand that everyone's perspective is different, which is our way to understand the times and history.

Proofreader丨Zou Weiyun

Writing丨Bitterness

Editor丨Cheng Chi