Bi Feiyu: The two worlds of the novelist

Southern Weekly

2024-05-09 02:00Posted on the official account of Guangdong Southern Weekly

Novelist Bi Feiyu talks about an old story about writing.

In 1988, he boarded a fishing boat on his own and prepared to go to sea. He has a prototype of a novel in his mind, and the plot is not yet perfect, but the setting has been determined, and it is set in the vast sea. Bi Feiyu grew up in the northern Jiangsu Plain, and lacked a perceptual understanding of the true texture of the sea, "the only thing he knows is (a lot) of water, which is very big." The young novelist is rigorous, believing that in the novel, "there is something that cannot be wrong". He made many connections, and finally got a bunk on a small fishing boat on the sixth day of the Lunar New Year.

The novel allows him to reach a world beyond his everyday experience for the first time.

The fishing boat, which weighs 17 tons, sways inconsiderably in the vast sea. He did see landscapes far beyond the resolution on land. For example, seagulls, who are only four or five meters away from him on the fishing boat, can clearly see the corners of their goose-yellow beaks; Because the hull of the boat swayed, not a single fisherman's front teeth were intact, and they were all broken; On the ship, the water is packed in tin cans, and it smells of rust when drunk, "if you can't drink it, you will vomit when you drink it."

He got the reality of the fictional world, but he also suffered a lot in the real world in which he lived.

On the morning of the second interview, he almost gushed about every subtle feeling of that experience. The 11 days of torment at sea were 11 days when his stomach was turned upside down, and he was dizzy and vomited from the time he got on the ship until he got off the ship.

"At sea, the head is infinitely open, and the body is infinitely painful, when the seasickness is the most dizzy, you can't sleep, the head is so flexible, it extends in all directions, and every moment your head is a bunch of gibberish." He said, "If you don't float there, you can't catch the fragility, the insignificance and the helplessness of life." ”

The drift on the sea is similar to the state in which he wrote.

It was a mixed feeling. The sense of sacredness and fear go hand in hand, equally strong. He described writing as like a person jumping into the sea, unable to see the other side, surrounded by infinitely expanding water, not knowing when and where to get ashore. "You think it's going to be interesting, and when you have to write down two or three lines of the title, you also feel like you're going to be scared when you're going to finish it." "Tuina" was written for 13 months, of which more than 5 months were shelved there because he couldn't finish it, and he even had the idea of giving up; The new work "Welcome to the World", published in 2023, tormented him even longer, and soaked in the "sea" for more than ten years before finally going ashore wet.

The fleeting inspiration was the driftwood he relied on.

When he was young, Bi Feiyu often kept a notebook next to his pillow and carried it with him when he was driving, and he visited his door at midnight when he was inspired, and he didn't have time to turn on the light in his sleep and take a note. Sometimes, because the handwriting was sloppy and the words pressed against the words, they could no longer be legible, and he would fall into a deep depression.

He describes the experience of inspiration as a kind of "gushing"—the speed of thought is measured in milliseconds, and new isms, new structures, and new relationships between characters keep popping up in his mind, and he is as noisy and restless as a "dog in estrus". Someone once asked him how long it takes to write a novel, and he blurted out, a few seconds. The other party thinks he's talking nonsense. "Actually, I'm not talking nonsense. No matter how big a novel is, sometimes it is really a few seconds, a dozen seconds, in the head, in an instant, there is a lightning impact. ”

When he was in his twenties, the gushing state came, and Bi Feiyu wanted to write down his inspiration that day. Now, he has the calmness of an old writer, and there is an extra layer of prudence in his eyes. After two or three days of looking back, I still felt that the content was good, and some of the content was considered good at the time, "but it was actually a bunch of shit". In his inferiority complex mixed with frustration, he deleted all the words in the document.

Those symbols that show the chaotic form of mental activity need to be smoothed out with a little patience and given order. He described the process of writing as a farmer's planting of seedlings, "a seedling is a word, a seedling is planted one seedling after another, and a word after word is typed," he said. ”

Now, Bi Feiyu owns one rice field after another, which can be called vast.

Bi Feiyu, a contemporary writer, born in 1964, is a native of Xinghua, Jiangsu, and his representative works are "Corn", "Tsing Yi", "Plain", "Tuina", etc. (Photo provided by the interviewee)

On the day of the interview with Southern Weekly, he wore a shirt and stood tall. In the chat, he naturally said that he was "a 60-year-old man", but he was always in a situation of daydreaming, "whether I was walking on the street or playing with friends, I basically made up someone's story there alone, and this 'fabrication' did not need to be deliberate, it was natural."

He once heard a saying that the most romantic thing for a writer is to "write yourself old". In his daily life today, signs of old age are gradually showing. In Nanjing, where he has lived for more than 30 years, he is old enough to apply for a senior citizen bus card. Not long ago, a friend called him and said that his voice had become thicker, and he replied, "Of course, is it old?"

Since the winter before, he has been reading ancient books, a move that even he himself has been amazed by. He turned out the Analects, Mencius, and recently read Han Feizi. He said that reading ancient books is to prepare psychologically for old age, "I want to rely on this to support my old age."

He was born in 1964, his father's generation studied private school, studied the Four Books and Five Classics, and when he was in college, he was exposed to Western modernism and did not spend much effort on classical culture. "After all, you are a Chinese, you have to see your ancestors when you die, and when you see Confucius and Mencius, you have to talk, what to say?" You have to find out. ”

But he feels that his mentality is not old. According to his words, a post-60s writer, after the age of knowing the destiny of heaven, can be said to have achieved fame and lived to an age where he can slack off, but he still pursues "progress" in writing. In his novels in recent years, he has persistently chosen young people as the protagonists of his narratives.

After entering the age of 60, he found that his heart was much cleaner, "I don't want it so much", "I am in my twenties and thirties, and in my thirties and forties it seems that he is facing himself on the surface, but in fact he is facing something other than himself". Now, vanity cannot be said to be absent at all, but it is nowhere near as strong as it was when it was younger. In the face of life, it is more about feeling calm, having a calm love for the everyday, and at the same time having legitimate doubts.

The passion for writing is still there.

Year after year, Bi Feiyu coexisted with his fictional world for more than 30 years. It's hard to tell which is more important than the world he imagines and the world he lives in. They mirror each other and permeate each other, recording the truths of life that he discovered.

When writing, Bi Feiyu needs a little bit of daily life. The sound of mopping the floor, the sound of dogs walking around, the sound of porcelain bowls colliding with porcelain bowls, the sound of boiling water. These voices put him at ease. No matter how vague the people and things in his mind were, those voices reminded him that he was still in reality. A friend once offered him to write in a villa in the mountains or by the sea, but he refused. "There's no sound at all, and I can't tell if I'm alive or dead."

Without a full block of five hours, he doesn't usually write. After long hours of writing, sometimes skipping lunch, his wife would put the dish on top of the rice and deliver the bowl to his computer. "I'll just eat and tap there with one finger."

The fictional world tugs at the writer's realistic emotions. According to his wife, he was "almost insane" at the time of writing. "She said that I had a lot of expressions when I wrote, but I didn't know anything about it," Bi Feiyu told Southern Weekly, "but I think it must be very scary, sometimes the face is full of joy, sometimes full of sadness." ”

"Writers are not writers, writers are wishful thinking about things like fiction, most people think that the fictional world is fake, it's something made up and imagined, we don't do that, at least not for me. For me, I believe in fiction very much, but it's not in three dimensions, it's a very firm reality, I'm with it, I'm breathing with it, I'm sharing the same fate. Fiction is not false, fictional scenarios imply different dimensions, it is not false, fiction is truth in a higher sense. Bi Feiyu firmly believes this.

Strength, writing, and everyday life

I didn't stop writing.

A writer's day starts with a cup of coffee.

In Longjiang, Nanjing, there is a café where Bi Feiyu often haunts. is famous, and there are often "fans" who squat there to block him. He said that the "most amazing thing" he had encountered so far was at the traffic light downstairs, blocked by readers who had been dragging suitcases for two or three days, and the other side was incoherent and just wanted to say a few words to him.

People from afar, with their own practical problems, want to talk to him, thinking that the writer may have a special secret recipe that they can take away. "Actually, I don't," Bi Feiyu said helplessly, "When he saw me, he found that I was more ordinary than him and couldn't help them." ”

In his most famous novels "Corn" and "Tsing Yi", a series of successful female images have been created, and there are many female readers who recognize a certain character in the novel and write about her. "She will ask you, how do you know me so well?" For a long time, he was known as the most proficient male writer in contemporary China who could write about women's psychology.

Works such as "Corn" and "Tsing Yi" have created a series of classic female images. Xu Fan plays the heroine in the TV series "Tsing Yi" (data map)

In a 2011 Weibo interview, he responded to the labels placed on him: "The best writer who writes about women's psychology, rural writers, rural women writers, the most handsome writers, muscle writers, these are the hats that people give me." I keep these hats in my closet, and even in the cold winter months, I'm bald. ”

From the point of view of appearance, "bald head" and "toned body" are two prominent impressions left by Bi Feiyu to the outside world.

Sometime every night, he'd be at the gym, where he'd made friends and gym friends. Friends are familiar with each other, meet and greet each other: Mr. Bi, I saw you on TV, newspapers, and magazines yesterday. They form part of Bi Feiyu's daily life, making life generally predictable, and "it is also the norm of life to occasionally pop up a few strangers".

He has been working out since 1999 and was obsessed with playing football. The rhythm of fitness can be called regular: a four-day cycle, which exercises the chest, shoulders, back, and legs, and after the fifth day of rest, another cycle begins. When it comes to writing, he always turns to fitness jargon, consciously or unconsciously. He uses the analogy of white muscle strength and red muscle strength, the former maintaining human endurance and the latter maintaining explosive power. "With stamina alone, the novel will not be exciting enough, and with explosive power alone, the novel will lose its survival."

"I often tease him, you work out every day, train pectorals, biceps and abs, that's for fans, especially female fans. Writers have a desire to be seen. Ding Fan, a professor at Nanjing University, wrote in a written reply to an interview with Southern Weekly.

"A lot of people think that I work out to show off my muscles, but I'm not," Bi Feiyu explained, "I just like this kind of life, I like loads, and when my body overcomes the load, it will bring me pleasure that outsiders can't experience." The strength of the body load allows him to carry the weight of the fictional world, which he says are compatible.

Over the past few years, though, the power he was so proud of has been leaving him to some extent. In 2016, after undergoing lumbar disc surgery, he always reminded himself that he was a "patient" according to the doctor's instructions. The body is a little fatter, and strength, flexibility, and balance are greatly reduced, "especially coordination, which can be said to be devastating". More than 10 years ago, when he went abroad and his strength dropped, he would stipulate that he would return to bench press weight on a certain number of days. At the gym, a few friends have fun and will rush to strength.

"Not now, if you face a relatively large load now, you can't go up, and if you can't go up, I'll put it down." When it comes to fitness, he's no longer reckless.

But I didn't stop writing. Since many years ago, when he saw a news about a surgeon with serious mental problems and decided to write a novel, the writing of "Welcome to the World" was up and down, picked up and put down, and "tortured" him for more than ten years. His friend, literary critic Wang Zheng, recalled that when everyone almost forgot about it, Bi Feiyu wrote it out.

The novel tells the story of Fu Rui, a young surgeon who falls into a mental crisis after a failed operation. A rational young man who is obsessed like a nightmare and longs to save the degenerate around him. In "Welcome to the World", there is a rather dramatic scene: in order to save Xiao Cai, a young nurse who is a lover for others, Fu Rui pulls her into a black Passat and sps around the playground, hoping to save the other party's soul and make her vomit the impurity in her body. In the writing of novels, Bi Feiyu is not as comfortable as in the past, like a young man, running into walls everywhere in the room of the spiritual world.

The novel was written three times. At first, he followed Bi Feiyu's usual writing style, focusing on stories and characters. But the epidemic has seriously affected his daily life and creation, and sometimes even going out to buy a box of cigarettes has become a luxury, and without systematic training for three years, the fitness results are "almost ruined". He overturned the original idea. "The sense of entanglement, pain, difficulty, and wall that is embodied in this work is completely brought to me by the special life I experienced at the end of 2019." Bi Feiyu said.

During that time, his condition was up and down, and writing became the only save. The fictional world and the real world are interpenetrating and referencing each other. When he is in good shape, he writes relaxedly; If the state is sluggish, the intensity of writing will become abnormally high.

Bi Feiyu preferred abstract thinking and loved to write poetry in college, but his talent for narrative led him to the path of fiction writing. (Photo provided by the interviewee)

For writers, writing is ultimately about dealing with the relationship between people and everyday life.

"Have you ever rowed a boat?" He asked a Southern Weekly reporter suddenly. It is a kind of fitness equipment designed by the Americans, called the Smith machine, there is liquid in the column, the barbell is carried on the shoulder, the person has to exert force to overcome its weight, the greater the force, the greater the resistance of the liquid. "That's called the Waiting Movement." Bi Feiyu said, "The relationship between writers and life is this kind of isotonic movement, the more you exert yourself, the more you can bear the power of life, if you don't exert your strength, this power will be gone." ”

"There is something in the writer's heart that resists, and in life, there is some innate strength, on the one hand, you have to participate in it, and on the other hand, you have to resist it." He said.

A few years ago, a reporter came to interview him and asked him what his daily life was like. "I'm so sad that I was actually asked by this sentence," Bi Feiyu still remembers how he felt at the time, "When I recall my life, there is nothing to say, in fact, it is a catalog." "On the catalog, there are successful or not-so-successful novels. Many friends call him "otaku", and when mobile communication devices are not yet widespread, he can be reached by calling his home from a landline. He doesn't drink much and doesn't often appear at literary dinners.

He is not exactly a scholarly writer, he has his own observations on current affairs, and around 2010, he was once active on Weibo.

In his early days, Bi Feiyu was obsessed with allegorical historical writing, gazing at what was happening on the Chinese landscape in the 1970s. In the late 1990s, the timeline of his virtual world began to approach and overlap with real life. "I always doubted life...... I feel that our lives can be better and more reasonable. ”

In recent years, the crosshairs of his novels have not deviated too far from reality.

"Since "Tuina", he has gradually found a dialogue relationship with reality, rather than a dialogue relationship with history. Literary critic Wang Zheng told Southern Weekly, "This is a sign of a writer's self-confidence, he vaguely feels that reality is unclear and difficult to grasp, but he does not retreat from new things." Many writers have transcribed historical themes that are relatively far away from reality, and almost stopped writing, but Bi Feiyu still used his way to adjust his posture, but he got closer and closer, and finally formed a synchronic relationship with the times. ”

A person who prefers abstraction writes novels

Fame and fame are not the same.

Bi Feiyu prefers abstract thinking, which he attributes to being "innate" and "the neuronal type is this". When I was studying at Yangzhou Normal University, I studied Chinese, but I was keen to read philosophy for a long time and was surprised by the language talent of philosophers. "In the face of such a complex world, with a few words, or even a concept, the whole world is lifted."

He said that at that time, three people who studied at that time, Kant, Hegel, and Feuerbach, "look back now as a joke, and I can't read it at all." In the 1970s, he told his playmate about a novel he had read, and when the other party looked for it, he found that the novel was not as well written as he said.

In the 1980s, writing poetry on campus became a trend, and like many "blind" young people, he inevitably found himself in it. "All the college students on campus are writing poems, and I am a person who thinks highly of myself, so why can't I write poems when others write poems?" Following the tide of literature, Bi Feiyu grew long hair, wore bell bottoms, and soon became a campus poet. "It's so bad, and the friends around me don't tell the truth, they praise me there every day, Lao Bi writes well, Lao Bi is a poet."

In 1987, the poet Bi Feiyu went to work at Nanjing Normal University of Special Education. He clearly felt that he was limited and struggling to write poetry, and when he wrote novels, he was free from the sky.

Writing fiction began as a way to dispel confusion and confusion. When I was young, it was difficult to release my energy, so I vented it on novels. He was used to writing poetry, and at first he couldn't write novels, so he used a method that now seems "stupid": find Hemingway's novel, a pen, a blank piece of paper, and scroll down the whole article to find the writing context inside the novel. Reading philosophy books brought a problem, and his wife, who was still a girlfriend at the time, pointed out that there were too many related words in his novels. He began to train himself to spend a little time every day "writing blindly" and breaking the limits of logical thinking.

He stared at the most important magazines "People's Literature", "Harvest", "Zhongshan", "Huacheng" and "Writer", and always fell into the sea, until 1991, when his first novel "Lonely Island" was turned out of a pile of manuscripts by Zhu Yanling, the editor of "Flower City" at that time. Zhu Yanling has the impression that "Lonely Island" is "a relatively thoughtful manuscript, very mature".

At that time, the situation of literature was a little cold. But the publication still brought great encouragement to Bi Feiyu, "I am very excited in my heart".

Zhu Yanling recalled to Southern Weekend that the first time she met Bi Feiyu was at her home, in the dormitory of Nanjing Institute of Posts and Telecommunications. Bi Feiyu rode his bicycle for an hour from his Nanjing Normal School of Special Education. Zhu Yanling's first impression of him was that he was very thin, silent, and didn't talk much. Bi Feiyu described it as a meeting that was "neither salty nor light", with silence occupying most of the time, and he drank water seriously and with all his might all afternoon. Later, recalling that meeting, Bi Feiyu talked about her younger brother, and Zhu Yanling remembered that expression, "You see this is the writer's language, middle school students, developing, he said like a fluffy raw winter melon." ”

At that time, there was a strong atmosphere of fiction in Nanjing, and the peasant house rented by Fan Xiaotian (who later became deputy editor-in-chief) of Zhongshan at the time, a place known as the "Bird's Nest", which was a base of communication for many writers. Bi Feiyu remembers that when he first came to Nanjing, the atmosphere of discussing novels was so strong that it made people feel like they were on campus. Everyone sat down and talked about three people – Márquez, Kundera, Borges – often getting into arguments and even quarrels, and then putting them down after they were done.

Fan Xiaotian noticed that at such literary youth gatherings, Bi Feiyu was usually a dull figure who didn't talk much. But when they first met, he recognized that kind of "tendon" temperament, and he felt that Bi Feiyu was a bit like "Sisyphus's brother", a person who kept pushing stones up the mountain. "You can see that he is lonely, all unique people, all people who have a kind of energy in them, are lonely, and he can't really communicate with people." He told Southern Weekend.

When he first started writing, he was not satisfied with the work, so Bi Feiyu drew a cross on the manuscript paper, locked it in a drawer, and never showed it. Some writers would publish their early immature works for readers or critics to explore their early styles, and he has so far refused to publish those works of his apprenticeship. "No, don't do anything that detracts points." He said. He didn't delete his manuscripts very mercilessly. In the novel "Plains", there were originally 80,000 words of descriptions of local customs, but he did not create another document backup, leaving a chance to recover it later, "completely deleted, I can't think about it." ”

"This kind of harshness may have been a requirement for himself in the early days, but later on, I think it should have formed a habit similar to muscle memory." Zhu Hui, editor-in-chief of Yuhua magazine, told Southern Weekly, "[Bi Feiyu's] words are clean when they come out, and their speech is very clean. ”

"Shake, Shake, Shake to Grandma's Bridge" is directed by Zhang Yimou, written by Bi Feiyu, and was shortlisted for the main competition unit of the 48th Cannes International Film Festival in 1995. (Data map)

In 1993, after publishing four novels in "Zhong Shan", he was recommended to Zhang Yimou by Fan Xiaotian and became the screenwriter of the movie "Shake, Shake, Shake to Grandma's Bridge".

Ding Fan remembers that in the 1990s, the writer Ye Xin's novel "Debt of Sin" had few readers, and the book could not be sold in the warehouse of the publishing house, "When it was adapted into a TV series, it became popular all of a sudden, and 200,000 copies were printed at one time." Ding Fan observed that a new iron law is taking shape: the era of reading pictures is replacing the era of reading, and writing film and television scripts can gain more market "red division" than writing novels.

In contrast to the hustle and bustle of film and television, there is a continuous snub in literature. Bi Feiyu recalled the cultural atmosphere at that time in an interview: "There were no pen clubs, no seminars, no strong media agitation, none of these things, and people didn't even talk about literature. ”

After following "Shake, Shake, Shake to Grandma's Bridge", an opportunity to gain a foothold in the film and television industry was placed in front of Bi Feiyu. Instead, he began to hide from the media. He predicted that a few interviews would be enough for him to quickly become famous with Zhang Yimou's east wind. He was reluctant and therefore remained silent.

"I want to keep my precious chance to become famous, I can't take his ride, this idea is very strong, (this involves) the self-esteem of young people, I can see the future, maybe I can write a few more works to come out, why should I throw the best opportunity of my life to others? I can't bear it. Bi Feiyu said.

Fame and fame are not the same.

Bi Feiyu is a fierce son and plunges back into the writing of novels. The novel "Narrative," which chronicles that voyage at sea, was published in Harvest magazine in 1994, and he always regarded it as his most satisfying work before 1999, and wrote it on impulse. But apart from people in the literary world, few ordinary readers pay attention. Someone said to him with regret: "If this novel had come out a few years earlier, you would have established yourself with this novel." ”

He spent several years "in bad shape". It wasn't until 2001 that the novella "Corn" came out.

That year, after spending 40 days writing "Corn", he had no confidence in the novel. The novel was originally written for "The Harvest," which, in his words, abruptly handed over a rural story in the midst of writing in a large area of the city. Because he was not confident, he sent it to Li Jingze, a literary critic he trusted, and asked him to palm it. Soon, a line popped up on his Hanxian BP machine: 2001, the fourth issue of "People's Literature".

At a seminar, Mo Yan talked with appreciation about the shock he felt when he read "Corn". "At that time, I thought where this rabbit cub came from, and he finished the novel I wanted to write in advance, originally I wanted to finish writing sorghum and corn, but he wrote it, and if I wrote it again, I had to write about other crops."

In the years after the publication of "Corn", Bi Feiyu went out, and as soon as he sat down, everyone talked about "Corn" with him. During that time, his phone calls were "non-stop". Sometimes a friend called after drinking: Feiyu, we drank and discussed "Corn" all night. Then tell him what was being discussed. He usually annoys drunk phone calls, but that kind of enthusiasm makes him quite useful.

Bi Feiyu felt the "popularity" of a writer for the first time.

"When we were young, we often encountered the popularity of a writer, and the whole nineties were so depressed, our generation of writers no longer counted on it, and it is impossible for people like us to become popular." Bi Feiyu said, "The glorious 80s have passed, and the 90s have declined very much, but at least I can still feel everyone's enthusiasm for literature, especially the simple kind of enthusiasm." ”

"Popularity" adjusted his creation to a feverish state. "I didn't have the heart to think about anything else, I wanted to become 48 hours a day, and I wrote desperately, and in those years or two, I could write 15 or 6 hours a day." At that time, he was infinitely energetic, and every day he stuffed himself in front of his desk, and after writing, when the computer was turned off, he found that it was dark outside the window, "I had to think about whether it was morning or night for a long time, and I didn't know what was going on outside."

He published novel after novel. From "Three Jades" ("Corn", "Jade Show", "Jade Seedling") to the long "Plains", it has been sought after by readers and attracted the attention of critics. It wasn't until the completion of "Plains" that I finally felt that my energy was declining and overdrawn. He keenly felt that after writing "Corn", another Bi Feiyu was born. The narrative tone, which was completely different from the avant-garde writing of the past, focused on presenting the reality of the characters, was maintained until he finished writing "Tuina" in 2008.

The film "Tuina" directed by Lou Ye is adapted from Bi Feiyu's novel of the same name. (Data map)

"Looking back today, in a sense, the trouble I had when I wrote "Welcome to the World" was buried." Fifteen years after the publication of "Tuina", Bi Feiyu sat in front of a reporter from Southern Weekly and said solemnly. He said that when he was young, he wrote somewhat utilitarianly, worrying about whether readers could accept it, whether critics could accept it, and even whether he could win awards. At that time, he didn't dare to deliver a work like "Welcome to the World".

And now, "even if you pounce on me and scold me, it's the mentality of people of our age." We didn't dare before we were 40, and now I don't. He said, "One of the biggest things, the language of my novels is here, no matter how unacceptable, my language can hold up, and you will never say that I write a shoddy thing." ”

History and contemporary, vernacular and distant

It's getting more and more like my father.

Bi Feiyu often says that he is a "painful person".

The perception of pain comes in part from my father's experience. My father used to work in the city's education bureau, but after being branded as a "rightist", he went to work as a teacher in the village. When he was born, his father had been a farmer for five or six years, and as soon as he opened his eyes, it was his lowest point. In the first fifteen years of his life, Bi Feiyu traveled through three villages and towns, and his life was uprooted again and again.

He had a bad relationship with his father for a long time. He said that his parents experienced the "anti-rightist" and "Cultural Revolution", and the emotional communication between their generation and their parents is usually very weak. "We were playing outside, our hands were cut, our heads were broken, we were bleeding profusely, and when we came home there was no pain, everything was peaceful. Just go out after eating and come back alive, that's how life is. ”

Bi Feiyu feels that his father is like José, Colonel Aureliano's father in "One Hundred Years of Solitude", "who is there all day long about ice, telescopes, magnets, and European technology." Bi Feiyu remembers that when he was about ten years old, his father took a book of logic and told him about the extension and non-extension of concepts. He understood his father because there was no one to talk to, but he was more confused. "How can anyone do this, father?" He said that all he wanted for a teenager was to get some care and love from his father.

My father is 91 years old this year, and the two are still chatting about things 1,000 kilometers away. "He will never talk to you about things around him, and he is not interested in the firewood, rice, oil and salt at home."

It's hard to say whether Bi Feiyu's emphasis on abstract thinking comes from this.

Looking back on his childhood now, Bi Feiyu feels that most of the time he was happy, and he just knows many things. The first time he touched the deeper texture of life was on the day his father was "rehabilitated" in 1979. The father put the notice in front of him, and years of disaster and humiliation were on a piece of paper. My father lit a cigarette and said nothing. Neither spoke.

My father was always a silent man, and it was rare to see a moment of his emotions. Bi Feiyu was deeply impressed by one Chinese New Year's Eve night, when his father looked at Lu Xun's "Blessing" and cried. "On the night of Chinese New Year's Eve, Xianglin's sister-in-law died, and his adoptive mother also died on Chinese New Year's Eve, so he suffered." Bi Feiyu recalled, "The most painful time for him was silence and didn't say a word. ”

On May 12, 2008, the day he finished writing "Tuina", Bi Feiyu clearly remembered that day, and the fate of his father and his fictional characters overlapped. When he bent down to wash his face in the morning, his father's blood vessels burst, and his eyes suddenly went dark. Bi Feiyu took him to the doctor, and after the operation, his vision was temporarily restored. But it didn't take long for it to be completely out of sight. They went to the hospital again, and the doctor said, old man, we don't have surgery, last time your eye was a broken light bulb, we helped you fix it, and now you have a broken wire, do you understand? The father silently did not speak, but turned to him and said, "Let's go home." "It was painful in that moment, and I knew he was in pain. But he didn't show it, I didn't show it either, I said okay, let's go back. ”

Father and son once again accepted the pain calmly.

In "Don Quixote", he recalled that his father's contemplative appearance made the family lifeless, and he didn't like it at all. My father only had the universe in his pupils, and he was silent, paranoid, and an immaterial person. But after the age of 30, he felt more and more like his father. "It's a reality I really don't want to see."

He said that his mother is his sun sign, lively and athletic, and his father is the ascendant. There is a popular saying that as one gets older, one gets closer and closer to the temperament of the ascendant. "Unfortunately, my son doesn't like my aura either. The way I sat in front of the computer also made him feel dead at home. History is like that, it has to go through cycles, and I can't help it. ”

"I think there's an orderly side of his life. He has a very clear scale of value, and he guards it vigilantly. Speaking at a seminar, writer Ai Wei described his impression of Bi Feiyu as "not to be offended in certain matters related to his life feelings and value system." He has a very decisive side. Ai Wei feels that this "resoluteness" also affects his language, "I once joked that he was a 'dictator of language', and when I looked at it, he wanted his language to be as neat as a team, without any flaws." ”

Because he was wary of language, his father did not support him writing novels at all. My father was originally a Chinese teacher, and he taught himself physics during the Cultural Revolution. After becoming famous, he handed his novels to his father to read. My father was concise and to the point: one language is good, and the other is profound.

More than one person speaks Bi Feiyu's language as "as precise as a Swiss watch". Zhang Tongdao, a professor at Beijing Normal University, described to Southern Weekly how he felt when he read Bi Feiyu's novels: It is rare to see words sliding in and out of paragraphs. "You will see that the man has a rich sensory system, but he does not allow it to overflow, but transforms it into a precise inner power." Zhang Tongdao said.

Bi Feiyu spent his childhood in Xinghua, Jiangsu Province, and constantly moved between villages and towns. His father was an adopted son, and his adoptive father's surname was "Lu", and later changed his surname to "Bi". After his son was born, Bi Feiyu once asked his father whether his son's surname should be Lu or Bi. (Screenshot of the documentary "The Hometown of Literature")

Many years ago, in order to shoot the documentary "The Homesickness of Literature", Zhang Tongdao contacted Bi Feiyu and was bluntly refused. "He said he has no homesickness, no hometown, no surname, nothing, what are you shooting?" The writer talks to death in one sentence. Zhang Tongdao talked to him on the phone for three hours, and finally convinced him: "You have built a hometown in literature, and this hometown will not float from the sky for no reason. Later, the documentary was renamed "The Hometown of Literature".

Bi Feiyu when he was a teenager belonged to the "unobtrusive type" in the eyes of others. It was only later that he understood the peculiarity of his family in the village. In his reminiscences of his youth, he wrote of himself, a black, skinny boy who thought he was Don Quixote of the Far East, "whose enemies were those tall reeds, and whose heart was full of justice that had no way out." ”

In a way, he is confronted with two worlds that are pieced together. At that time, his house was like a teahouse, and the educated youth often came to chat. The communication between the people in the village usually revolves around "cow and pig" and "wheat and potato", but the language of the educated youth and the father is different. The first time he heard the name "Kissinger" was in 1971, when the boy sitting cross-legged on the ground thought that the "Ji" in the name of the big man was the "chicken" of chicken, duck and goose.

"I don't think it's possible for Americans to have such strange surnames." Bi Feiyu is still deeply impressed by this, and feels that the language itself has a fictional form, and it is not strongly related to the environment at all. "Today, in the age of mobile phones, it is a norm for language to be separated from concrete life and concrete materials, but it is different for us (at that time)."

He suddenly realized a problem: the world is big, and there are far away. "All the worlds, the whole earth was our village, and everything in life was this. After having educated youth, there is an endless reverie of distant places, which is very strong, in fact, it is very similar to a novelist at that time. Bi Feiyu told a reporter from Southern Weekend.

In 1983, after going to university, Bi Feiyu began to refuse to use dialects, and he once talked about the reason: he just wished that he could be "far away".

Over the past many years, the post-60s writer has had a strange and conflicting emotional mixture of vernacular society. In a series of his most representative works, such as "Corn" and "Plain", he mercilessly portrays the politics of people in grassroots society, the ghost behind the behavior of chasing "people". It was his longest-running motif.

Zhang Tongdao, a former literary youth, was deeply impressed by this, "Although he is in the Yangtze River basin and I am in the Yellow River valley, what we feel is the same." The atmosphere of that era, the repression, the barrenness of culture, the cruelty of human nature. ”

This kind of examination of past writing has drawn criticism.

In 2005, at a symposium on novels in Jinzhou, Liaoning Province, literary critic Chen Xiaoming argued that Chinese novelists have congenital defects and do not seem to be able to write after leaving the scaffolding of history. At that time, "Plains" had just been published, and Bi Feiyu once had high expectations that this work would win the Mao Dun Literature Award. At the meeting, Bi Feiyu and Chen "stood up".

Zhang Tongdao feels that literature is not news, and writers do not need to react immediately to life, but society will be projected in the hearts of writers. "Welcome to the World" is set during the SARS period more than ten years ago, but it gives people a sense of current life, "In a normal society, the transformation of human nature is extremely slow, and even thousands of years have a super-stable structure." ”

"I never thought that a work of literature could leave the 'scaffolding of history.'" Ding Fan thinks.

The experience of drifting at sea in 1988 was finally turned into a novel "Narrative". Bi Feiyu fictionalized the life of his grandmother who he had never met, thus filling in the hole in the family history. At the end of the novel, it reads: "As I experienced the sensation in detail and detail, tears flowed up my cheeks like the panicked fingers of my grandmother." ”

At that time, the fishing boat did not stop at its original destination, but docked in Shanghai. Coincidentally, that's where his father's birth mother used to live - and he never knew where he came from.

After going ashore, the road was still surging like ocean waves, and Bi Feiyu stumbled against a tree, crying for a long time, "I can't explain the reason". He said, with countless flustered fingers moving across his face.

A bunch of people are crammed inside you

"Did he really die in the world of fiction, or did the writer kill him?"

In the 2017 "Reader" program, the host Dong Qing asked him why the concept of home is the word wandering. He later told Southern Weekend that on several occasions, if Dong Qing pushed one step further, he was likely to cry at the show.

In public, Bi Feiyu always shows a humorous and talkative side, which is familiar to everyone. The sensual side is often hidden and hidden. His tears were low. In a university dormitory, a person who reads a Russian folk song and thinks about his hometown will cry uncontrollably.

He worked as a journalist in the 1990s, and once interviewed a celebrity, and the other party said it emotionally, Bi Feiyu was moved by tears and quickly wrote a report. A few days later, he was told that the celebrity had few words of truth in front of reporters. In a documentary, Bi Feiyu frankly admitted that he was better at fictional stories, and he often did not write well in real-world news interviews.

In real life, many people perceive Bi Feiyu's sharpness. Writer Chi Zijian called him easy-going and "prickly", and there were "not easy" parts to get in touch with him. Zhu Yanling also found that in reality, Bi Feiyu often spoke sharply, "It makes you choke, but you also have to obey...... He doesn't seem so worldly, a bit of a self-styler. ”

Literary critic Zhang Li has known Bi Feiyu for more than ten years, and she has the impression that Bi Feiyu in life is self-disciplined, calm, and keeps a distance from lively things, but "from his works, I can see his insight into the world, and then feel the softness, fear, and pain in his heart."

In the face of his fictional world, Bi Feiyu revealed his emotions more calmly, "Don't be ashamed to admit it when you cry when you write, you should admit it calmly." He said.

Before the publication of "Welcome to the World", the editor proposed to delete a passage related to a character in the novel, but this deletion did not affect the overall situation. But this was strongly opposed by Bi Feiyu, who almost scolded the editor to tears. "You don't know a writer's sense of morality, as long as this character appears in my novel, I have the responsibility to let him live in the work with a literary image and a literary life. I don't have any reason for him to be just a name, just a symbol, no. ”

"For most people, fiction is fiction and reality is reality. For those of us who write novels, fiction is reality, we don't think it's fiction, we're just throwing ourselves into another life. Bi Feiyu explained to a reporter from Southern Weekly, "There is no fiction that is not fictional, you have to be responsible, you have to bear the world." ”

He lives with the characters as if they were living together. Over the past years, Fu Rui has been like an earthworm, wandering around his mind and life, and the more he gets to the end, the more he wants to get rid of it, "The desire to get rid of him is far more than the desire to finish a book." ”

Over the years with Fu Rui, Bi Feiyu often felt fearful. He rubbed against the young surgeon, who had fallen into an extremely unstable mental state and "very dark" because of an operation that failed to save the patient.

"Fu Rui has questions, does (the patient's) death have anything to do with me? The writer also has this question, does the character in the novel have anything to do with me when he dies? Bi Feiyu said that he realized this problem early on and made psychological construction for a long time, "Did he really die in the world of fiction, or did the writer kill him?" ”

"Welcome to the World" is set in the aftermath of SARS, when surgeon Fu Rui fell into a mental crisis due to an operating accident. (None of the text and pictures are related, Visual China Picture)

What surprised him even more was another character, Lao Zhao. At the beginning of the novel, Lao Zhao is a decent person with a decent retirement life. After the kidney transplant operation, Lao Zhao, who used to do things to his wife at home, suddenly realized the reversal of power and relied on his wife's care day after day. As if facing God, Lao Zhao knelt down to his wife and expressed his piety. Bi Feiyu realized the universality of Lao Zhao's character, "He is in my life, or he is a part of me." ”

"After a long time, you will suddenly realize that the so-called fictional characters are born from your heart. For readers, what you see is Lao Zhao, but for the author, you can see the trajectory of your heart completely, which is very frightening. Bi Feiyu gestured with his hand and said, "Little by little, from here to here." ”

"Wouldn't it be painful for a sensitive, low-tear writer to present the thorns of everyday life and examine the difficult parts of human nature?"

"Pain is inevitable, and this is the fate you must bear when you choose to be a writer." Bi Feiyu said.

When writing, it is the writer's power to control the direction of the character's fate, but Bi Feiyu is vigilant about this, "You must control the power in your hands to the greatest extent, let the characters be free, and let the characters in the fictional world be free." If a character is free in the fictional world and wants to fight against his fate, then "go with him".

For a long time, "Welcome to the World" was difficult to progress, and he overturned it several times.

Bi Feiyu loves to talk about "frustration", he will be depressed if the novel is not written well, and he will be depressed if he fails to capture the inspiration in time. One of the most frustrating times in recent years was around 2013, when "Welcome to the World" was halfway through writing, almost stagnant and frozen for two years.

In the past, someone asked him, are you worried that the novel will not be written? He said he wasn't worried. The process of writing is "a bunch of people congested in your heart", "to a certain point, someone must knock on the door, and when you pull the door and a person comes, it is a new work". It was a kind of superstitious confidence that God had chosen to write.

But in those two years, the novel did not have the slightest possibility of moving forward. He was almost about to accept the fate of being given up by God, and felt that he could no longer write, during that time, he went out to meetings and activities, everything was as usual, outsiders could not see it, only he and his family knew how depressed he was every day.

The playground is often an occasion for him to vent his emotions. When he was a child, his family lived in school, and when he opened the door, he could see the playground, "until he was 13 years old, the playground was the patio of our house." Zhu Yanling remembered that Bi Feiyu told her that after getting the first manuscript fee from "Flower City", he rode a tricycle, pulled the refrigerator bought with the manuscript fee, and rode around the playground.

He mentioned with some shame and even puzzlement that in the summer of 1997, he became obsessed with football and appeared on the pitch every day. Rainy days are no exception, and one person practices shooting in the rain.

After "Welcome to the World" came to a standstill, one day, he went to the United States to visit his son, and he was hanging around at a football field, carrying a beer. An aura struck him like thunder, "I suddenly understood a truth, why should I continue to develop, can't I rewrite it and finish it?" ”

He quickly bought a ballpoint pen and a notebook in a supermarket in the United States, overturned all the novels, kept only the first chapter, and wrote from the beginning from the second chapter.

Now, he doesn't write day and night like he did when he was a young fanatic. Writing "Welcome to the World", he didn't stay up all night, "What should I do the next day if I have insomnia?" But the night the novel was about to end, and he made an exception, writing until four o'clock in the morning. At the end of 2022, this novel that tormented him for a long time finally ended, and after sending it by email, Bi Feiyu really felt calm.

Once the novel is completed and leaves the computer, Bi Feiyu immediately returns to the daily life of reality, no longer playing with the fate of the characters in the fictional world, and eliminating them from life cleanly.

"A person's life is such a process. A person's life is an endless stream of others entering their own hearts, and they are constantly entering the hearts of others, isn't that it? Bi Feiyu said.

Southern Weekly reporter Pan Xuan

Editor-in-charge: Li Muyan

View original image 119K

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

•