Awards ceremony
On the afternoon of October 25, 2019, the second "Blancpain Literature Award" jointly launched by the Swiss brand Blancpain and the publishing brand Republic was announced in Beijing. This literary award, which aims to create a literary award that combines authority, influence, persistence and international dialogue, was won by the writer Huang Yuning, and the winning work was "Eight and a Half Parts" published in August 2018. The winners of this year were jointly selected by dai Jinhua, Huang Ziping, Jia Zhangke, Lu Nei and Zhang Dachun, and Zhang Dachun presented the award on behalf of the judging committee, and the award speech was: "Huang Yuning showed a very rich literary accomplishment, with a clear observation of the world and human feelings, so that the form of short stories is deeply vividly displayed. Different types of works also demonstrate the author's outstanding ability to bridge the modern Western novel tradition with Chinese writing. ”
Huang Yuning, the winner, said: "Thank you to the judges for awarding this youth literature award to me, a middle-aged woman who only started writing in her forties, to be honest, I didn't know how much energy I could devote to novel creation after that, but I think today there should be an answer, and my next creative path will be more determined." ”
Huang Yuning's "Eight and a Half Parts":
I never wanted to be atwood in China
In 2018, Huang Yuning, who spanned the three major fields of translation, publishing and criticism, completed the transformation from a literary evangelist to a novelist with a collection of novels, "Eight and a Half Parts", which is reminiscent of Fellini's novels of the same name, which includes 8 short and medium stories, as well as a non-fictional long article with fictional overtones. Huang Yuning said that her novels are a bit like "transvestites", and she likes to write characters who are very different from her living environment.
Huang Yuning
Huang Yuning claims to have had imaginary impulses since childhood, although the real release of such impulses is after the age of 40. But as soon as you make a shot, you are already a veteran. Cherishing Western modern and contemporary literature, she does not hesitate to conduct complex and exquisite narrative experiments in her debut novel. As Li Jingze said, Huang Yuning is "too international", a Shanghai native who has lived in Shanghai for most of his life, and has not planted his own flag in the territory of contemporary Chinese literature with local as the mainstream with distinct regional colors like many of his peers. But at the same time, Huang Yuning's writing does not have a "translation cavity", in the words of Teacher Huang Ziping, "This is a very pure Chinese writing, and there is no translation cavity, which is very rare." ”
Award-winning work "Eight and a Half Parts"
"Eight and a Half" has a core theme - medium. Modern or pre-modern media such as mobile phones, WeChat, magazines, and television all constitute narrative carriers, connecting the short streams, social news, or "Black Mirror" science fiction fables in modern urban society. In the words of Huang Yuning, who has been a literary critic for more than a decade, she writes about a new type of interpersonal relationship and desire structure developed based on the Internet and other media, deception and self-deception, role and role dislocation, and questioning the future fate of the novel.
Judge Huang Ziping spoke highly of the originality of "Eight and a Half" as a collection of novels, as well as his concern for the important theme of the times: "Huang Yuning wrote eight different novels, almost each of which was operated as an independent short story, and this concern was not the same as the previous one, with its own axis and development path. This is an original collection of novels, not an anthology from many years later, so each one is more true. Of course, she can still read some of the focus of her attention, she is particularly concerned about the problem of the media, but she is not willing to use the same routine to write, she strives to make each one different, from different angles, different paths to show such a theme that makes us more and more anxious at the moment, can see the painstaking management of each article. ”
In an interview with the media after the award, Huang Yuning reiterated the profound influence of literary predecessors on their own writing, but he did not want to be the second of them: "Writing begins with reading, and Atwood and McEwan must have had an impact on my writing technically and conceptually. Their influence has always been in my text, in every corner, but I don't want to be the second of them, and it doesn't make sense to copy one person. China doesn't need a copycat of McEwan and Atwood, and Huang Yuning wants to find his own voice. ”
She recommended readers to read "Literary Patients" in "Eight and a Half Parts", "My own work has a lot to do with various international literary awards, so I imagined that the Nobel Prize in Literature was challenged by other awards, and there was a competition between robots and writers, which had a lot of material, I wrote it with a sense of ridicule, at that time I did not think that I would one day be on the stage of the literary prize, and then think about this problem, I think it is very interesting." ”
Blancpain Prize for Literature in the Republic:
Fresh sensitivity, fresh imagination, fresh life
Since April 10 this year, as of May 15, the Blancpain Ideal Country Literature Awards Awards Office has received nearly 100 novel works from writers and publishing units to participate in the competition; on August 1, the Literature Prize Committee announced the 8 works that entered the preliminary selection list; and on September 1, the final list was announced, and five works from young writers Ban Yu, Guo Shuang, Huang Yuning, Yang Hao and Yuanzi were shortlisted.
The Blancpain Prize for Literature is the first award in the field of Chinese literature to identify and encourage outstanding young writers under the age of 45. Impartiality, authority and professionalism were the principles established by the Blancpain Prize for Literature at the birth of the Blancpain Prize for Literature and will be consistent. The Literary Prize Committee said that the purpose of the award is to discover the potential of literary talents with long-term self-expectations and motivation, support talented young writers, and promote contemporary Chinese literature that is both literary and readable.
Liang Wendao and judges of the Blancpain Ideal Country Literature Award, Dai Jinhua, Huang Ziping, Zhang Dachun, and Lu Nei
Commenting on the significance of literary prizes, judge Lu Nei said, "All the right work in the world should be rewarded. Compared to sports competition, there are too few literary awards around the world. It is certainly a good thing to have the official highest literary award, but this alone is not enough, we need more literary awards, which is a balance for China's literary ecology, because it is not only the best people who can win the award. Those in a certain field, in a certain age group, from ethnic minorities, and women, should receive the rewards they deserve. Literary prizes are a good thing, and it will remain in the memory of our time. ”
Jia Zhangke also expressed his expectation for the literary award, "China's social change is so fast, it needs the eyes of young people, the bodies of young people, and the writing of young people to present the latest situation in the world." Needless to say, young people are very sensitive to emerging problems in reality because they are very closely related to their age and body. On the other hand, these emerging problems need new literary methods and artistic methods to present, and there will be more new literary languages in their works. Dai Jinhua further pointed out, "We must discover new people, encourage new writers, and encourage originality." We want fresh feelings, fresh imaginations, fresh lives to enter literature. People under the age of 45 today, in a sense, grew up in an unprecedented era in Chinese history, and they have experienced The upheaval of China and the process of its rise. At the same time, they are participants and enjoyers of this great technological revolution. So I hope that this youth literature award can bring a new generation of Chinese who have grown up in a completely different ecology into the literary world. ”
Huang Ziping believes that the literary award is a kind of literary criticism, which provides a reference for reading, is a good reading recommendation, and then slowly establishes a standard of criticism. In Zhang Dachun's view, the awards not only have an impact on reading promotion and writers' writing, but also on the judges themselves, and the process of mutual improvement and completion is also a process of mutual improvement, "finding the dead end of the criticism strategy that they originally held, and using the opinions of other judges as the stone of his mountain to attack." This method of stirring each other up, and possibly giving in to each other during the discussion, is the greatest respect for the work. ”
Lucky Meeting, Youth:
The passion for writing that reconstructs the picture of the world
Among the nearly 100 works participating in the second edition, cold technology, fantasy world, changes in the picture of the times, spiritual slices or encyclopedic writing, the bold introduction of dialects and historical elements, and the eager discussion of talent and art present the current common living conditions and unique inner world of Chinese young people, which shows the abundant forms and themes that are amazing. At the same time, the awards also present the writing ecology of a generation of young writers, their literary appearance, and the passion for reconstructing the world picture.
The five writers with very different styles, Ban Yu, Guo Shuang, Huang Yuning, Yang Hao and Yuanzi, who were shortlisted for the final selection, are also representatives of the current young writers to some extent, which constitutes the richness of the Youth Literature Award. Their experiences and identities are very different, their literary experiences are also very different, and their appearance is also unique. In the words of the judges, "come to this world from a desolate planet and bring the story of that place." At the scene of the award ceremony, the five writers also shared their literary experience and creative pursuits.
Shortlisted writers YuanZi, Yang Hao, Huang Yuning, Guo Shuang and Ban Yu
Ban Yu described it this way when talking about the writing from music criticism to novel writing, "When writing music reviews, it is more about attaching to a work for some cultural or emotional interpretation, but the novel is different, the novel is equivalent to setting up a game for itself, creating the rules of the game and its play path for itself, and there are richer possibilities." I was fascinated by the abundance of possibilities, so that was one reason I chose to write fiction later. ”
Guo Shuang has always felt honored for his identity as a "newspaperman", but the decline of print media is also inevitable. The reason why I chose to write novels instead of other forms of writing is because "novels for me can imagine that they do not exist, the media deals with the things that exist and are visible every day, and the world is very real." But I doubt this reality, and I want to construct something invisible and more real. I care about things that aren't so easy to explain, not so easy to answer. I found fiction to be more free. So, that's it. ”
Huang Yuning's years of translation, criticism and publishing experience, in her opinion, "for my novel creation is a basic preparation, but at the same time a difficult obstacle to overcome." Because my work needs to befriended many literary masters, when translating works such as McEwan, you are easy to have self-denial, it is difficult for you to continue, you will continue to torture yourself, I have spent many years overcoming this obstacle, but the restraint of expression is also a process of tension, which must reflect my text. ”
Yang Hao describes the process of entering literature as a process of "catching ghosts", because of his literary family, "without selectively and compulsively seeing so many names, literature has been a ghostly world for me from the beginning, and I have always been reluctant to face this matter head-on, so I am constantly taking detours, starting from film, and then learning postmodernity, studying art history, and even learning business, I have been avoiding the fact of literature." But it was found that each path pointed to the desire for expression. I found that literature was the ghost that I had to accompany it, and I confessed this fact. After overcoming this obstacle, I found that I could bravely write a novel. ”
Yuanzi had the idea of writing very early, but he has not dared to write, because he has read too many classic literature before, and after being an editor of a literary website, he found that his requirements for himself were reduced, "Many times they do not start from their own experience or the facts they see, but more are imitating the works in the history of literature, and sometimes it is difficult to see the shadow of reality." You find that these things you look at every day are like this, they keep writing, they keep producing, they are not ashamed at all, and we seem to be able to do something similar. The experience was a hurt for myself, but it also brought some comfort to myself. ”
Shortlist for the 2nd Blancpain Prize for Literature
"Winter Swimming" Ban Yu
"Stepping into the Flame of Light at Noon" Guo Shuang
"Eight and a Half" Huang Yuning
"Black Novel" Yang is good
"Daytime Wandering" is far away