Yang Suqiu, an associate professor at Shaanxi University of Science and Technology, went to Xi'an Beilin District for one year to preside over the construction of the library in Xi'an Beilin District. The soul of the library is the bibliography, and in the process of determining the bibliography of the library, she encountered various unspoken rules and resistance from all sides, and in the end, the ideal and reality were balanced.
In the opinion of commentator Zou Shiqi, Yang Suqiu has been engaged in the teaching and research of literature and aesthetics in colleges and universities for many years, and the writing of the book "Why Should There Be a Library in the World" is essentially a vivid practice of his literary concepts and theories.
Literariness in nonfiction texts
Text/Zou Shiqi
Published in the Literary Newspaper on April 11, 2024
"Why Should There Be a Library in the World" is a non-fiction work published in 2024, which is the story of Yang Suqiu, an associate professor at the School of Design and Art of Shaanxi University of Science and Technology, who recounted his temporary deputy director in the Culture and Tourism Bureau of Beilin District, Xi'an from 2020 to 2021, in charge of public cultural work, and built the Beilin District Library from scratch. The book has attracted so much attention because of its value in terms of library science and other aspects, but from a purely literary point of view, this non-fiction text also has its praise.
The author, Yang Suqiu, is a doctor of literature who has been engaged in the teaching and research of literature and aesthetics in colleges and universities for many years. The author's own literary literacy determines that this is a text with no too low "literary" content.
Why do we need libraries?
What interests me the most is the author's shaping and completion of "me". There are two "I" in the text: one is Deputy Director Yang Suqiu, who is the founder and builder of the library, and the other is a very strong self and I want to be the master of the "I". The other "I", that is, Associate Professor Yang Suqiu, a temporary cadre, is the image of an intruder and an other. This "I" has always been a curious observer of the life of grassroots government agencies, and I am also very conscious of my object status. Following the eyes of this "I", the reader sees the work and life of the grassroots government agencies. The reason why Yang Suqiu can see, hear and feel the unusual in the ordinary is due to her sensibility and sensitivity, as well as the collision of two ecology and two cultures between the life of the university study and the life of the administrative organ.
The language of this book is dignified and elegant, fresh and demure.
"Spring is coming, and the flakes are rising. The plane tree's little umbrella was fluffy, and the fine plush of the willow rolled on the ground, and I was sneezed by these little things, but I thought they were vivid. When the white pompom meets the white pom-pom, it is pulled, and the big one rolls before the small one, and soon it floats up in a ball, as light as a soap bubble. They gathered in the corner of the parking lot to call for their friends, and were blown by the wind, squeezing out of a row of fences, like children rushing out of the school gate after school, you pushed me and chirped, and as soon as they poured out of the fence, they exploded in celebration. I stood by and laughed. ”
There are a lot of "idle pens" like this in the book, and the author often writes about the temporary job, and suddenly swings a stroke to write something that seems to have nothing to do with the main plot.
This very "novel" way of writing shows the author's talent and ambition in writing across genres. Her characters and stories are set in the east, west, south and north streets, the bell tower, the Luoma market, the academy gate, the Muslim street, the south courtyard gate, the small village, the Fan Lane, the Defu Lane, these very "Xi'an" places, her words are delicate and textured. When she writes about a food, the reader begins to talk about it, and when she writes about riding a shared bicycle from where to where, the reader's mind automatically plays the scenery along the way. As someone who has studied in Xi'an for many years, this book made me miss Xi'an again, so I guessed that it would also make more readers fall in love with Xi'an. In this sense, the author has inadvertently acted as a cultural ambassador for the city of Xi'an through writing this book, and has done quite a successful role, which is inseparable from the book's inconsistency between prose and fiction.
The structure of the book has the same ingenious design as the structure of the novel. In the book, it is written that many readers of the Beilin District Library, as well as the book selectors who helped "me" make the catalog, first sketched a movie-like picture, describing how this person moved in the picture, he approached the camera, and the reader saw what his eyebrows, eyes, nose and nose were, what kind of clothes he was wearing, and what his daily life was like. This is similar to the structure of a suspense novel.
At the end of this non-fiction work, it is not written that "I" ended my temporary job and left the Beilin District Library, but that after "I" returned to my original unit, I went to the Tibetan area in western Sichuan and met another person who built a public library on flat land. After writing the main plot, I will write a "fanwai" related to this, which is called "the turn of the autumn wave before leaving" in ancient Chinese literary theory, and the afterglow is long.
The blessing of literature, together with the library, sociology, and folklore values of the book, has jointly achieved the praise of "Why Should There Be a Library in the World".
New Media Editor: He Jing
Picture: data map, photo network
i: iwenxuebao
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