Chapter 56 Changmeixuan party

On a spring day in 1936, Shen Congwen invited Lin Huiyin, Zhu Ziqing, Yang Zhensheng, Zhu Guangqian, Li Jianwu and others to a gathering at Changmeixuan in Zhongshan Park. This year, Ta Kung Pao launched two activities in order to expand its influence among readers.The first is to publish "Ta Kung Pao Literature and Art Series·Selected Novels", and Lin Huiyin is responsible for the selection and compilation of novels.The second is to set up the annual "Ta Kung Pao Literary and Art Prize", rewarding one to three authors each year, mainly hiring writers from Beijing and Shanghai who are closely related to "Ta Kung Pao Literary Supplement" and have a certain influence as referees. Lin Huiyin is one of the referees. one.The Changmeixuan gathering arranged by Shen Congwen was to discuss matters related to these two activities.

After everyone talked and laughed and agreed on this year's winners and bonus distribution, Lin Huiyin talked to everyone about the selection and compilation of novels that she was in charge of. She introduced that the works of the collection of novels have been basically confirmed, and 30 novels by 25 authors including Lao She, Yang Zhensheng, Shen Congwen, Xiao Qian, Li Jianwu, Jian Xianai, Sha Ting, Zhang Tianyi, and Ling Shuhua have been selected. Selected from hundreds of works in the supplement of Ta Kung Pao over the past three years.During the selection process, she had many feelings.

Lin Huiyin said that this anthology of novels is a "joint exhibition" created by new and old writers in the south and north in the past three years. She hopes that readers will have a comprehensive and perceptual understanding of the current literary situation after getting this book.Of course, during the selection process, she also saw some common problems in the creation of novels: "These works seem to have a tendency in the choice of subject matter, that is, most of them choose to describe rural life or the life of laborers. This kind of It tends to be better, because our era has strong sympathy and concern for them—farmers and laborers; to say worse, it is a phenomenon of blindly following the trend. Describing labor society and rural colors have become a Writers tend to follow this style unconsciously, and they have made some achievements in the literary and artistic circles. They put aside the life they are familiar with and do not write, but become interested in the poor and remote areas of the countryside."

"Nowadays," Yang Zhensheng continued unhurriedly, "'Provincial Literature' can be called fashionable." Lin Huiyin responded quickly and said: "Emphasis on general literature cannot conceal the lack of creativity and the impure motivation of writing. Excellent literature is excellent literature, no matter what the author's starting point is!" "In terms of description," Lin Huiyin talked about the lack of artistic expression of the selected works, "I feel that most of the works adopt the method of writing a story, or center on one or two characters, or focus on a certain place. Using pile events as the main body, simply writing the development and ending of the story. This is a very weak way of expression. I wonder if some authors have misunderstood the characteristics of short stories and view the possibility of short stories expressing life too narrowly reason."

"It is a pity that few people boldly try to intercept sections of life, and few analyze the contradictions in their own lives." Speaking of this, Lin Huiyin was a little excited: "The most important thing in literary works is honesty. Honesty is more important than the freshness of the subject matter, the integrity of the structure, and the fluency of the words. The so-called honesty does not mean that the author must actually experience the life described in his works. , but to say that even if the content of the novel is completely fictitious, the emotion must be real, and must be the scene and human nature that the author can experience emotionally. Many people deliberately choose some romantic, personal The life he doesn’t understand is the subject of expression, and then he exaggerates the emotions he doesn’t have to deceive readers’ sympathy.”

Lin Huiyin's views have been approved by everyone. In August 1936, "Ta Kung Pao Literary and Art Series·Selected Novels" selected and edited by Lin Huiyin was published by Shanghai Liangyou Book Company.It was sold out soon after it was launched, and it was reprinted only three months later.