Author: Yi Yang
Literary criticism seems to have never been the preserve of critics, such as E.M. Foster, who has been hailed as "the greatest novelist of the 20th century", but his most popular work is his "Aspects of the Art of the Novel", which is regarded as a "ticket-playing work". Throughout William Somerset Maugham, Jorge Luis Borges, Italo Calvino, J.M. Coetzee, Milan Kundera, Paul Oster, these world-renowned novelists, either sent to the standard academy, or worked as doctors, spies, handymen, and salesmen, but all of them published a certain number of literary criticism works and gained a good reputation.
Borges Writing Lesson [Argentina] by Jorge Luis Borges, translated by Wang Renren, published by Shanghai Translation Publishing House
"Here and Now" by Paul Oster [South Africa] by J.M. Coetzee Translated by Guo Yingjian Published by People's Literature Publishing House
The Art of the Novel by Milan Kundera translated by Dong Qiang and published by Shanghai Translation Press
Masterpieces and Masterpieces by William Somerset Maugham, translated by Li Feng, published by Sichuan People's Publishing House
Three people talk
"Borges, Writing Lesson" is a collection of three conversations Borges had with McShoure and Giovanni on fiction, poetry, and translation at Columbia University. Unlike most writers, who chose the "target" of their commentary on the most well-known compositions, Borges turned inward, and he and his colleagues analyzed their own works, such as the short story "Duel (Another)" and the poem "June 1986". In Borges's vast works, these selected texts may not seem dazzling, but even in the face of these very likely "overlooked existences", Borges cherishes and talks about them. Especially in the part of the dialogue novel, every time Giovanni reads the original text of the novel, Borges follows up and interprets a creative idea, a short story of more than 2,000 words, each sentence is famous, it can be said that there is no waste pen, and the words are dedicated.
Flaubert, speaking of his Madame Bovary, famously quoted: "Madame Bovary, I am myself." Compared to Flaubert, Borges does not want the reader to see many personal shadows in the novel, let alone admit what "autobiography" he is. For this reason, Borges in the dialogue tries to show a different posture - a "novel strategist" who stays out of the matter and has absolute control over the beginning and transition of the story.
For example, in terms of character naming, unlike writers such as Coetzee, who often set fictional characters with the same name as themselves, Borges confessed that he was accustomed to setting names according to narrative verse and character personality, "For Gauchos, it is quite common to give a woman's name." But since they are ruthless figures, I think one of them should have a man's name"; For example, in the flow of plot, Borges never mentioned creative pursuits such as "water comes naturally", but did not hide the various modernist writing techniques he used, "I claim to know nothing about many things here, so that the reader believes some other things", "Because the story has to be laid out, I have to make up the sheepdog and that thing", "I try to slow down the pace of the story to produce an effect"; For example, in the selection of themes, Borges also did not agree with arguments such as "a writer should write stories of his time", and believed that writing the present is the duty of journalism, "a real writer does not try to become a contemporary", it is in accordance with this principle, as a dialogue text "Duel (Another)", although written in Latin America in the 19th century, but let people think of a broader historical background and historical events in the span of time and space, The plot of two Gao Qiao captives being cut their throats first and then ordered to run is like a reproduction of the scene of Song Qinzong and Emperor Tianzuo dying in the Jurchen polo field.
Coincidentally, Kundera also "exposed" the idea of self-creation in the form of dialogue in "The Art of Fiction". But if Kundera and Borges were to organize a dialogue, the two would most likely quarrel, because even in the face of the interviewer's artificial "hard evidence" that "almost all of your novels are divided into seven parts", Kundera still insists that he did not do it intentionally, and interprets it mysteriously as "a deep, unconscious, incomprehensible necessity that I cannot avoid". Imagine if Borges faced such a confrontation, and he might have rushed to confess before the other party could pick it out: "Yes, I just have a soft spot for the number 'seven'." ”
Book of Two Places
The writer Mu Xin wrote an almost well-known poem in Once Upon a Time Slow: "Once upon a time the sun became slow / Cars, horses, and mail were slow." "Mail is slow" is a memory of the old days, but Coetzee and Oster have to go against the time, and the two literary "celebrities" refuse to use "email" and other instant communication methods outside the door, but with the help of "letters" and "fax", two retro communication methods and talk happily, in the words of translator Guo Yingjian: This "Here and Now" "may be the last collection of letters of contemporary people."
In "Here and Now", Coetzee and Oster are transformed into unexpected "cosplay", they are not as serious and less spoken as they have shown in literary works and literary activities, but uncharacteristically become unrestrained and chattering "talkers". Coetzee and Auster's correspondence not only talks about literature and art, but also talks about various topics such as life trivia, personal experience, current affairs and politics, seemingly mixed peanut trees and all-encompassing, but in fact they all come to the same end, all converged on the fundamental topic of literature and art.
In the case of "spitting" on reader complaints, Coetzee forwarded to Oster the readers' accusations of the so-called anti-Semitic remarks in the novel "Slow Man", and his starting point is, of course, to ask Auster to make a fair judgment from a Jewish point of view, because the accusation of anti-Semitism is not a "small hat", "like accusing you of racism, it suddenly throws people on the defensive end". Interestingly, the topic does not continue to dig deeper into the social category, but easily turns to the discussion of "novel text and fictional readers" and "fictional characters of fiction". Oster directly pointed the finger at the unqualified reader of the novel, "The character said what she said, which does not mean that you agree with her. This is the content of the first lesson of 'How to Read a Novel'"; Perhaps out of protection for "fans," Coetzee is docile and rational, simply explaining on a matter-of-fact basis: "The protagonists in the novel are somewhat independent of their authors, and — especially for secondary characters — the authors don't always speak for them." At best, it's just a few complaints like "Once the friendly relationship between reader and author disappears, reading loses pleasure and writing becomes a heavy burden of reluctance."
Before co-authoring "Here and Now", although Coetzee and Oster had heard and appreciated each other, they had only met once. However, the intimacy revealed in the correspondence between the two is like a dear friend of God for many years. Or in the face of the "reader complaint letter", perhaps because of the heartfelt and empathetic feeling of the guardian, Auster unexpectedly opened the "personal attack" mode. In the letter, he bluntly said: "That woman's letter is ridiculous and idiotic. My usual response to this is to crumple it up and throw it in the trash. Oster's frankness probably scared Coetzee, who was known for his cautious words and actions, and the lovely Coetzee quickly replied that "enough on this topic, stop here", and then quickly changed the topic with the speed of racing drift.
A family word
Rather than conversations and correspondence, well-known writers seem to be more willing to use columns, speeches, and commissioned manuscripts to express their views and attitudes towards fiction. Maugham's "Masterpieces and Masterpieces" and Calvino's "Why Read the Classics" are all about masterpieces, but the focus is completely different.
In Masterpieces and Masterpieces, Maugham is a surgeon bent under a shadowless lamp clutching a scalpel, and his meticulous observation of famous writers and widely circulated works is not missed by any clue. Maugham's curiosity is by no means limited to novels and notes on exotic cultures such as "The Veil" and "On the Chinese Screen", and in the article "Charles Dickens and David Copperfield" included in the book, Maugham keenly captures Dickens's long-standing experience as a teenager. Unlike Dickens's "unforgettable pain" in the interview, Maugham not only did not show the slightest empathy, on the contrary, while questioning Dickens's shame of being so "explosive", he also ridiculed Dickens as a genius of exaggerated fiction, "his talent (or his talent) lies in exaggeration." Through black and white writing, we seem to hear Maugham's "cunning" laughter behind the scenes, relying on superhuman wisdom and humor, Maugham lays facts, reasons, and points of view, as if he has become a "master of exposing the short" who is "stunning". Maugham "stunned" not only Dickens alone, Flaubert, Balzac, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky and other literary giants, in "Masters and Masterpieces" are all "disgraced". However, we should also firmly believe that Maugham's starting point is obviously not to pull them off the altar, but to restore their true nature as "people" and make them more closely integrated with their characters.
Filtering out all hearsay lace and laissez-faire reasoning, Calvino's Why Read the Classics focuses all its attention on the novel text itself, with no anecdotes like Maugham's Balzac's entangled feelings, Dickens' deliberately exaggerated experiences, and only praise for the former's epic writing career, and the latter's love-hate social writing. "Why Read the Classics" is plastered with Calvino's self-esteemed label, and he reads these masters with absolute admiration and solemn expression, as the frontispiece of the book puts it, and the subjects of the book are Calvino's "particularly respected writers and poets." Just as Balzac and Dickens wrote almost all flat characters, Calvino's commentary on the 36 masters and classics is flat, but this does not mean that the views in the book will be biased or even greatly discounted. Just as the classics of Balzac and Dickens were not compromised, through Why Read the Classics, we not only open a path to enlightenment, but also peek into how a master of postmodernism, whom Updike called "the most charismatic master of postmodernism", drew a lot of nourishment from seemingly unrelated realist literature. (Yiyang)
Source: Wen Wei Po