In the latest issue of the Carp series, Time Capsule, Zhang Yueran brought in 24 writers, critics, and cultural figures to predict the future of Chinese. Zhang Yueran plans to use this book as a time capsule and permanently store it in the National Library, as a sample for future people to interpret the literature of our time.
From left: Liang Wendao, Zhang Yueran, Shuang Xuetao
What will the future of literature look like? On the afternoon of December 21, at the Blancpain Republic Youth Literature Forum, Liang Wendao, Zhang Yueran and Shuang Xuetao held a dialogue on this issue.
Does literature have a future? Futuristic literature has disappeared
From the "Time Capsule", the 24 invitees handed over a very negative answer sheet, and it was generally believed that the future of literature was not good. For example, Liang Wendao's prediction of future literature is: the Nobel Prize in Literature will be cancelled in 2023, and there will be some literary awards in China that represent the so-called "Right to Speak in China", and this "Literature Award" should reflect the Chinese road, Chinese values, and Chinese self-confidence. Lu Nei said that in the 2023 Serious Literature Award, there will be self-media with novel serials.
Zhang Yueran put forward three predictions, the first of which was that young people would lose interest in sex, so the government set up the "Jin Ping Mei Novel Award" to encourage the creation of pornographic novels. The second prophecy is that a major breakthrough in astrology will set off a spiritual upsurge, and the two major schools of "afterlife" fiction and "immortality" fiction will clash. The last prophecy is that artificial intelligence has exhausted human writing, has been able to write, the slightest human feelings, so human writers have to start writing about animals.
"Carp Time Capsule"
Zhang Yueran, editor-in-chief
Ideal country | Kyushu Publishing Co., Ltd.
November 2018
One of the most negative prophecies came from Shibu-an, where he said that a hundred years from now people would study the people who had been engaged in literary work a hundred years earlier, and they would find these people very interesting and still enjoy talking about something called literature. The meaning of The Temple is clear: literature will disappear in the future.
In this regard, Zhang Yueran disagreed, she admitted that literature will become more niche or will experience many inflection points, and even experience short critical moments, but literature will definitely not die, and literature will certainly flourish again at many moments.
Shuang Xuetao's prediction seems positive, but it is actually ironic. He speculated that in 2028, the group of post-00 writers surfaced, because the "New Concept" essay contest was launched, the first prize prize was 10 million, the high prize led to high school students giving up the college entrance examination and participating in literary competitions, foreigners pouring into China to learn Chinese, and various "new concept" cram classes emerged in an endless stream.
The prophecies of writers about literature are certainly wild, and the literati are always singing about decline. But Zhang Yueran launched such a questionnaire, which is ultimately based on the imagination of the future path of literature. She does not think that this seemingly pessimistic prophecy negates the future of literature, on the contrary, there is hope in the decline.
Literary IP, so what is there that only fiction can accomplish?
Liang Wendao noticed a phenomenon in China in recent years, the industrialization or IP of literature, that is, when many writers write novels, they think about what else the novel can become, whether it can be adapted into film and television dramas, dramas, and whether it can be exchanged for cash and traffic. When literature is IP, writers do not feel that they are writing novels, but will feel that they are writing IP.
At the Blancpain Republic Literary Awards ceremony in September, one of the judges, Taiwanese literary critic Tang Nuo, talked about a question he would ask himself when he read the novels, whether there was a way for these novels to do what only novels could do. When the novel has been IP, is there anything that belongs only to the territory of the novel? What kind of unique aesthetic experience can the novel express in the face of other artistic disciplines that have been adapted?
Zhang Yueran herself often thinks about the above problems when writing novels, and she feels that she should open up the kingdom that belongs only to novels. Zhang Yueran took Joyce's novel "The Dead" as an example, which is something that only a novel can do. "A novel like The Dead, which we can't show with video or any other artistic means, can achieve such a shocking impact. So I think the novel in this field still enjoys its kind of hegemony. ”
Stills from the film of the same name, The Dead (1987), based on Joyce's novel
On this issue, Shuang Xuetao has a lot of say, his recent re-edition of "Winged Ghost" has won the "Film Novel Award", this book was considered to have IP potential as soon as it was published, and at present, Shuang Xuetao has a number of novels that are being adapted into film and television.
Shuang Xuetao believes that the novel can certainly not reach the direct visual stimulation, but the novel can think about many problems, which is a vibrant carrier that can include many other things.
The novels of this era have become very spiritual, and no matter how great the cinema is, it is materialized and requires material materials. The spirituality of the novel lies in the fact that it uses only this book and the scale of hundreds of thousands of words to achieve a magnificent spiritual picture, which only the novel can do, and the cost is very low.
Literature does not bear so much of a force to promote society, but precisely protects literature
Some viewers at the scene asked how to view the function of literature in society, whether it is reduced or increased? Shuang Xuetao believes that a hundred years ago, the power of literature must have been greater, which is irrefutable. Because at that time, the literacy rate was not high, and literature could have a great impact on the entire literate class. And at that time, literature was like a pocket, which could hold philosophy and history, and these categories needed to be expressed in a literary way. Today is a society ruled by technology, and literature has become a certain category of technology. When technology reaches a very sophisticated stage, it enters a place of nerve endings in the classification of art, which is why literature is now vulnerable to the public voice.
But Shuang Xuetao still feels that literature has its own unique power, and this power comes from fiction itself. The fictional category of fiction a hundred years ago was not as well developed as it is today, and when fiction became a cornerstone of the novel, it could be pushed into a more mysterious or potentially different force for society. In this sense, Shuang Xuetao is an optimist.
Winged Ghost
Author: Shuang Xuetao
Guangxi Normal University Press, January 2019
Literature does not have the power to promote society as much as a hundred years, and Zhang Yueran feels fortunate about this, and she believes that this has protected literature. "Because in a very long historical time, our country has been very easy to write, and this tendency is very serious. Once literature is pushed to a particularly important position, it will surely become literature that puts the Tao first. But is such literature really conducive to the development of literature? I think that kind of literature is not as good as popular literature, not as good as marginal, niche, free-growing literature, born for art. From this point of view, perhaps literature is protected. ”
Author: Beijing News reporter Shen Hexi
Edited by Shen Hexi Proofreader He Yan