Chapter 37 postscript

I finished writing in June of 1998, and said in the epilogue: This may be my last novel in this century.This is the truth.This one was planned while I was writing it Yu Xin, I could have written it in 1999, but I couldn't finish it. Sometimes I was entangled in this kind of thing, and sometimes I was delayed by that kind of thing. Two thousand years must not leave the manuscript.It can be seen that how many words a person writes in his life, when and what to write, are not transferred by the will of the person.Others may say that this is fatalism and idealism, but I have a lot of experience.I have a wide range of hobbies, one of which is to collect pottery pots from the Qin, Han, and Tang Dynasties. I often get one thing, and soon there will be another thing of the same size and color. , I just waited for the rabbit, and the collection became more and more abundant.I have been doing what I do for a long time, and when I say what I do, it seems that there is always poison in my mouth. The lesson from the emperor is not to dare to joke, and the woodcutter is absolutely forbidden to say "get lost".I thought that writing was a matter between heaven and earth, and I didn't dare to mess with paper and words casually. I also thought that whether it could be written or not, and what kind of writing it should be, was not forced.

Literature is not judged by the passage of time, and its quality has nothing to do with the age of the writer. Cao Yu wrote "Thunderstorm" in his twenties, and Zhang Ailing completed her literary maturity as soon as she debuted.Some people only sharpen a sword in ten years, and some people rely on a horse to say a thousand words, so we cannot generalize.There are local specialties in various places, such as wine from Guizhou, tobacco from Yunnan, and vinegar from Shanxi. Alcoholics certainly admire Guizhou, but there is no need to believe that Guizhou is a paradise on earth. I thought of a painter, Morandi in the West. There was an article saying that he had painted several pots in small towns in Italy for decades, and he had made great achievements, so I also checked my writing. Some confusion.Ten years ago, I wrote a series of ultra-short novels "The Tale of Taibai Mountain". For the first time, I tried to write fiction with reality, that is, to write a kind of consciousness with real scenes. I want to make novels have multiple meanings, or to make real life into poetry, or to combine metaphysical and metaphysical like fire to flame, like jewels to precious energy.But I am troubled by not being able to find a way out, even if there is a way out, the handling is so blunt or even the traces of imposition are obvious, so that the original idea cannot smoothly enter the eyes of the readers, resulting in neglect or serious misunderstanding.Here, I did my experiment again, and I no longer value the partial imagery, but directly deal with the plot as imagery.I don't know whether this kind of experiment can produce the expected results, but it is true that writing has brought me pleasure.If, in the past, the novel tried to use cement to make a certain branch of a tree to shape it, then now I must be a tree, a tree, and its water is transmitted to every branch and every leaf through veins. Let the tree as a whole give shape to itself.Facing the people and things to be written, observe things with things, so that the essence of all things can be realized.The painter Giacometti told a story about him. When he finally gave up the traditional realist painting in 1925, which only focused on the "existence" of entities, he tried all methods until that "morning when I Woke up to a chair in the house with a towel over it, but I broke out in a cold sweat. Because the chair and the towel had lost all weight, the towel wasn't on the chair, and the chair wasn't on the floor," as Looking at the world in the water through the transparent water.His story made me realize Lao Tzu's explanation about containers and windows again. Objects exist as objective things. Determined by the space of existence, existence becomes the image of nothing, and nothing becomes the basis of existence.However, when writing is handled as an image as a whole, it needs to be completed with specific things, that is, the process of life.Life has its own law of flow, day after day goes on, smooth or difficult will pass, this is life itself, so it is chaotic and fresh.In this way, the more realistic it is, the more life-like it is, the more imaginary it is, the more imagery it has.Using the facts to write the fiction, and the body without evidence, this is exactly what I am interested in when I finally finish writing.

In the postscript of the book, I mainly talked about the spirit conveyed by the writers outside the text in the works, and now we attach great importance to it.It is impossible for contemporary Chinese literature not to pay attention to society and reality. It is true that paying attention to society and reality does not necessarily mean only writing about real life subjects, and even writing about real life does not necessarily mean realism.At the end of the 20th century, maybe at the beginning of the 21st century, the exploration of form may still be very popular. In my opinion, this kind of exploration should be based on the new Chinese literature. Chinese literature has its national characteristics, which is unique to Western literature. Human thinking and aesthetics.It is true that the culture of the United States and the West is popular, and there may be a day of global unification, but this day is not a short day for China after all.

It is completely different from the subject matter I have been familiar with before, and the writing method has also changed. I guess it will make some people uncomfortable or not interested in reading it.But it had to be a book I was going to write.Writing is for self-entertainment and entertainment. Of course self-entertainment has my existence, entertaining others rather than catering, including political and secular ones. In the new century, the literary world is, after all, a stage for younger writers. I am old, but I don't feel outdated.It is my first book in the new millennium. When the manuscript is about to be finished, there are celebrations everywhere. There are reporters who come to interview me. I need to talk about my feelings. , any festival seems to have little to do with me, as a writer, I am like a farmer, the plowed land sows and grows crops, and when the crops are ripe, they reap, and when they are harvested, they plow and sow, and when they grow, they reap again, year after year, Month after month, day after day.After finishing writing, I will definitely have to recharge my batteries to plan and write again. I only hope that in the years to come, there will be fewer chores, fewer diseases, and more freedom.

January 16, 2000