Wang Yao is an essayist, critic, professor at the School of Letters of Soochow University, Jiang Scholar Distinguished Professor of the Ministry of Education, and chief expert of major projects of the National Social Science Foundation. Recently, he has added another title: novelist.
Scholar Wang Yao
A few days ago, after Wang Yao's debut novel "Folk Songs" was launched by Yilin Publishing House, the title of "Folk Songs" was inscribed by Nobel Prize winner Mo Yan, and the writer Yan Lianke also wrote a 10,000-word long recommendation for "Folk Songs", saying that it "rebuilt the foundation of the novel".
Wang Yao said: "I may become a novelist because of this novel, no longer a critic." Now to write a novel is a novelist, to write prose is to be an essayist, to write poetry is to be a poet. I'm glad I caught up with the era when it was so easy to name.
■ The author said
What is written in "Folk Songs"? Wrote the spiritual history of a teenager's growth, the history of the change and development of a village, and the history of a nation's self-renewal
Before the novel came out, Wang Yao had already navigated between multiple identities:
As a scholar, he is a professor at Soochow University and a Jiang Scholar Distinguished Professor of the Ministry of Education, mainly engaged in the study of modern and contemporary Chinese literature.
As an essayist, he devoted decades to prose creation, publishing columns in various newspapers and periodicals, including "One Man's Eighties" and "Intellectuals on Paper".
Wang Yao won the Literary Theory Criticism Award of the Seventh Lu Xun Literature Award for "Rereading Wang Zengqi and On Issues Related to Contemporary Literature", and his research on the prose of Wang Zengqi's novels has made his words filled with a literati atmosphere that diluted the peace.
Wang Yao prepared his first novel, "Folk Songs", for more than twenty years, and he incorporated his literary ideals, literary pursuits, and literary practices into "Folk Songs". "Folk Songs" writes the spiritual history of a teenager's growth, the history of the change and development of a village, and the history of a nation's self-renewal.
"'Folk' is a melody, a sound, about the history of the countryside." Wang Yao explained why the feature debut was named "Folk Songs". Once, while wandering around a city in the south, he heard the sound of erhu coming from the southeast side of the front intersection. He stood and listened to "Legend" and "Jasmine", "In addition to the lullaby, the folk minor tunes and lyrics I am familiar with are "Jasmine", "Uprooting Reeds" and "Husband and Wife Watching the Lights". Amid the hustle and bustle of the city, the melody of "Jasmine" is still in your ears. That dusk I was on my empty road from the docks and remembered the scene on the cross street. Perhaps, my so-called novel should be called "Ballads." ”
Writing fiction requires abandoning the stereotypes of critics
Wang Yao said that writing novels at his age, some friends described it as "the old house is on fire."
He likened this writing to a marathon, because he had always been in the predicament of writing novels, stopping writing several times in the middle, until one day he had a long-lost impulse to write, which gave up other writing and completed his "rotten building".
"Gengzi has come, and I have experienced a feeling of resurrection from the dead. Like many of our friends, the spiritual history of this time may be an important part of our re-understanding of the world and our understanding of ourselves. "So, during the months when the epidemic was entrenched, he concentrated on creating and completing the work." Resurrect yesterday's words, perhaps for the regeneration of today. Wang Yao said. I've been with my characters for too long, but I've had familiar oddities with each other. They and I have changed. But no matter how it changed, I saw the teenager's me running among them. Hometown is a seed in my writing, and it is also the soil in which this seed originated. Because there is a hometown, there is a hometown. ”
Wang Yao brewed years of hard thinking into the first sentence at the beginning of the novel: "I sit on the dock, and the sun is like a thin paper pad under my ass."
Wang Yao claims to be a person with no experience in writing novels, but his mind is full of concepts about novels, which are related to his identity as a "critic", and the process of writing novels is a process of constantly abandoning many concepts and reading experiences. For novels, Wang Yao has his own views: "I stubbornly believe that novel writing requires thought, learning and multi-faceted cultural accumulation. We are not attaching ideas, learning, and cultural accumulation to novels. ”
■ Others say
Mo Yan personally inscribed the title of the book, and Yan Lianke recommended reading in a long text of 10,000 words
In December last year, after the release of "Folk Songs", it was praised by many writers and critics such as Mo Yan, Yan Lianke, Su Tong, Mai Jia, Cheng Yongxin, Cheng Depei, Wang Chunlin, Zhang Xuexin, etc., and was selected into the 2020 Harvest Literature List Novel List, Yangzijiang Literary Review 2020 Annual Literary Ranking and other professional lists.
The award speech of the 2020 Literary Awards said: "The extraordinary 'Ballad' lasted twenty years, but it focused on the growth of a teenager in just a few years. In the long process of writing, the ups and downs of the story have long been turned into smoke clouds of history, leaving only trivial details and irreparable fragments. "Folk Songs" says too many things and at the same time makes us hear what is not said; there are too many secrets in "Folk Songs", some secrets that will be declassified in reading, and some secrets that will always be secrets and attract us. ”
Yongxin, the main programmer of "Harvest", said that by this novel, Wang Yao had gained the status of a son of Chinese with a real degree.
Yan Lianke believes: "'Folk Song' reconstructs the foundation of the novel, but also pushes open the door and window of the novel revolution, in the whole current literary creation, it is like the modern pyramid that I.M. Pei erected in the Louvre, it is the entrance to tradition, and it is also the exit of modernity, and everyone who enters and exits from that entrance and exit, love or not, must stop there for a while. ”
"Folk Songs" kicked off the prelude to the series of "Wang Yao's Works" of the translated Forest edition, and the follow-up was launched as a whole
According to the reporter's understanding, in order to present the poetic and avant-garde literary character of "Folk Songs", Yilin Publishing House invited Zhou Weiwei, a designer who has repeatedly won the reputation of "China's Most Beautiful Book", to create the visual effects of the book as a whole.
As Wang Yao's "northern Jiangsu" hometown, Zhou Weiwei has an innate affinity for the water town atmosphere laid out in the novel "Folk Songs". The cover is dominated by black and gold, which is far away, and the collision of black and gold colors brings a sense of golden age. The sparkling water of the river, the back of a sensitive and thoughtful teenager stands in the distance, leading us to retrace the long river of memory. It is worth mentioning that the title of "Folk Song" is personally inscribed by the writer Mo Yan, with strong ink color, elegant and solemn, which complements the entire cover design.
Wang Yao's first novel, Ballads
It is reported that in addition to the recently published novel "Folk Song", Wang Yao's works have plans for a series of subsequent publications. In May, Yilin Publishing House will launch an oral history masterpiece of more than 400,000 words, "Oral History of "Literature in the New Era", which is the only oral history work of contemporary literature in China so far; in the second half of the year, it will continue to launch his two non-fiction works, "Canghai Wenxin: Literati in Wartime Chongqing" and "Everyday String Songs: Echoes of Southwest United Congress". At this point, Wang Yao's writing practice as a novelist, essayist and scholar has been presented.
Red Star News reporter | Chen Mou
Editor| Li Xueli
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