Peninsula V TV|A Zhan's new work sharing session was held in Qingdao, and "Houhai" traced the changes of the city in the fireworks
□ Peninsula all-media reporter Meng Xiuli
On the afternoon of May 16th, Qingdao writer A Zhan's new work "Houhai" sharing meeting was held at Qingdao International Conference Center, Liu Dongfang, Dean of the School of Literature and Doctoral Supervisor of Qingdao University, Wen Fengqiao, Chairman of Qingdao Critics Association and Doctoral Supervisor of Ocean University of China, and A Zhan, author of "Houhai" and vice chairman of Qingdao Writers Association, attended the sharing meeting.
"Houhai" is written from the sixties and seventies of the twentieth century, describing the growth and ill-fated fate of the five brothers of the Feng family who grew up under the sea breeze, and constructing a record of the contemporary customs of Houhai with the life of small people in the grand history.
Since 2019, when he published his debut novel "The Piano Maker" in "Chinese Writers", Ah Zhan "debuted at the peak" and received many attention and praise from the literary world. "Houhai" was first published in the 3rd issue of "Chinese Writers" in 2023, and the single book was selected into the "Hundred Flowers Novella Series" and published by Hundred Flowers Literature and Art Publishing House.
Before writing novels, Ah Zhan was first and foremost a painter, prose writer, and senior media person. From prose to fiction, is it a light leap or a long accumulation? Talking about the "transition" of the genre, Ah Zhan believes that this is a kind of inevitability, "in the writing of the years, he has unconsciously established a path to connect the past and the future, made corresponding preparations, and even generated a certain hidden spirit of contract." In this sense, Ah Zhan's previous twenty years of column-writing and parallel career as a journalist, including his professional painting training since childhood, were all about preparing for writing novels, "or rather, for understanding and practicing textual leaps." In fact, every writer struggles to find the path of truth to fiction. ”
Just as he has been writing for nearly 30 years and taking into account painting at the same time, Ah Zhan believes that it is more accurate to say "both" from prose to fiction, "Art is a fusion of each other, a foil to each other, and there is no sense of disobedience to the inner principles and rhythms." If you look back, you will find that my prose is closer to notebook novels, and I have been practicing 'prose novelization', including scene capture and cross-sectional connection, unique character dialogue, detail refinement and white drawing, structural setting, etc., and strive to depict it in a rigorous manner, without being empty, scattered, imaginary, and unruly. ”
In Ah Zhan's view, the novel is still a backlit "big thing". "It's very difficult to write a novel. The novel expresses the truth of the mind, not the reality of the eye. The imaginary city has the shadow of reality, but it is independent of reality. The narrative structure of the novel involves the permutation and combination of the storyline, which requires strong and hard logical analysis ability. Ah Zhan said, "If you want to write a good novel, you need to have rich life experience, and you also need to internalize the experience of reading all the lives into deep self-realization and reflection, complete multiple developments in your heart, and then write 'common' and 'common pain' with the universal significance of the times." ”
Literature and the city are intertextual and symbiotic. Over the years, Ah Zhan has devoted himself to writing about his hometown Qingdao, the old city and the old sea, a person's "city sorrow", the present and past of the city, the craftsmen and the obsessed, the frustration of the people in the city and the hope after the frustration, and the craftsmanship hidden in the market, and thus interpreting the city, people and culture. And because of the focus on the field of "pan-art", the dissolution or superposition of "urban sorrow" falls on the craftsmen, and makes them mission-oriented figures.
In the creation of novels, Ah Zhan has been thinking about how to hide the truth in the endless illusions, how to build a flickering narrative space, and how to constantly open the narrative space to a broader external time and space. How to continuously achieve the perfect integration of inner and outer life experience and life experience, and how to achieve the moisturization and transformation of human nature everywhere in the logical and rigorous narrative...... In Ah Zhan's view, these are also the meaning of the writer's life.
It seems to be the fate of the writer to write from "hometown", and Ah Zhan believes that he does not need to fictionalize a hometown, "my hometown is endless". In Qingdao, where the city is dependent on the sea and mountains, "the sea teaches freedom, teaches and learns to look back and look back, and the sea has shaped my philosophical system and aesthetic standards." In addition to showing the characteristics of Qingdao city, I plunged headlong into the landscape writing with the sea as the core, and let the characters in the novel participate in the construction of the era and become the internal composition of the marine landscape. ”
In the eyes of literary critic Wen Fengqiao, Ah Zhan is like a literary elf, a literary genius, and his artistic talent has been more vividly displayed in the creation of novels, with a kind of flavor that has been born out of nowhere, and firmly maintains his artistic personality, "I feel that A Zhan's talent is better than novels, and it is very fully displayed and played in the novel style, bringing a different scene, so her novels are very recognizable, with a unique 'Ah Zhan flavor', such as "The Ink Pool", "Flowing Water in the World", " Full of Stories", "Houhai" and so on. ”
Wen Fengqiao believes that "Houhai" is a self-breakthrough work of Ah Zhan. In Ah Zhan's novels, the ocean is no longer a landscape or a kind of installation, but is transformed into an ontological aesthetic existence, trying to present a more inner and more essential image of the city through the form of literature, and therefore, from the perspective of spiritual temperament and soul, the city of Qingdao is shaped and painted. The sea gradually precipitated into an aesthetic style, transformed into a cultural and aesthetic image. In the construction of contemporary urban poetics, there have been new explorations and breakthroughs. Wen Fengqiao said, "In Houhai, Ah Zhan turns from the writing of strange people and strange things to the daily life of fireworks, which is a novel that truly describes the daily life of Qingdao, which is not only the history of the change of a person's fate, but also the history of the change of a city, and the history of the change of an era." I think it shows a more open pattern and atmosphere of Azhan. ”
Liu Dongfang, Dean of the School of Literature of Qingdao University, felt very good when he read "Houhai", and was deeply impressed by two points: one is Ah Zhan's language talent and language style, and the other is Ah Zhan's depiction of Qingdao's urban culture, which has increasingly become one of her characteristics. These are very unique places in Ajan. I hope that she will follow this direction more and more persistently and broadly on the road of creation in the future. ”