China News Service, Beijing, January 29 (Reporter Shangguan Yun) "Whether it is form or implication, I hope to make some attempts to provide readers with some new narrative characteristics." The famous writer Xu Zechen commented on the novel "Yu Gongshan".
Just some time ago, he won the 7th Yu Dafu Novel Award for this work.
When he was a child, he lived in the rural areas of northern Jiangsu. Herding cattle was a part of his daily life. When he was in college, he dreamed of becoming a writer.
After he started writing, he successively won many important awards such as Lu Xun Literature Award and Mao Dun Literature General.
For him, the road of literature was once difficult and long.
From childhood to the present, Xu Zechen's vigorous life experience has brought great inspiration to his writing, and has also prompted him to create many novel characters who are closely connected with reality.
For him, writing is a compensatory act and an instinct.
Writer Xu Zechen.
Photo provided by the interviewee
Cowherd's summer
Xu Zechen was born in the rural areas of northern Jiangsu. He was an out-and-out "cowherd boy" when he was a child.
During the summer vacation, herding cattle is almost his unshakable job.
The summer in the countryside is very quiet, but the temperature is very high at noon. Xu Zechen will first find a shade under a tree for a while, and then go out to herd cattle at two or three in the afternoon.
He often takes two snakeskin bags with him and mows the grass while the cattle are grazing.
When the cow was full and the grass was cut, he rode on the back of the cow and walked home.
Those two bags of grass are the rations for the cattle the next morning.
It might sound boring, but for him, it was a rare time to relax.
In the first grade of junior high school, Xu Zechen started the life of boarding and studying.
Schoolwork, leaving home...all kinds of pressure intertwined. He suffered from insomnia for a period of time in high school and had nowhere to confide in, so he wrote down his strong sense of loneliness in a diary, slowly saving a thick pile.
This became the bud of his writing. In college, "being a writer" became his dream.
After graduating from university, Xu Zechen became a teacher, and gradually felt that some content was very difficult to teach. "Undergraduates go to teach undergraduates, no matter how many books I read, I always feel that I lack accumulation."
He decided to continue his studies.
In 2002, Xu Zechen successfully passed the postgraduate entrance examination and "went ashore" and entered the campus of Peking University, which changed the trajectory of his life.
Yearning to go far away
In Xu Zechen's writing career, "graduate study" is a key part.
Writer Xu Zechen.
Photo provided by the interviewee
After graduating from graduate school, Xu Zechen applied to a magazine and became an editor.
At that time, the household registration and establishment had not yet been settled, and he took a very low temporary salary, and there was not much left after deducting the rental fee, and his life was quite tight.
After arranging the necessary expenses of life, he spends most of the remaining money on buying books. Sometimes he really likes a book but has no money to buy it, so he runs back and forth between two bookstores. For the same book, each bookstore runs more You can watch it a few times.
Almost at the same time, his writing was getting better.
During his postgraduate study, he won the "Spring Literature Award". After work, the manuscript fee is also an important source of subsidy for living.
In 2014, Xu Zechen won the Lao She Literary Award Novel Award for his novel "Jerusalem", and then, "If Heavy Snow Closes the Door" won the Lu Xun Literary Award Short Story Award.
In 2019, the list of winners of the 10th Mao Dun Literature Award was announced, and he was on the list with his novel "Going North".
Some time ago, the 7th Yu Dafu Novel Award was announced, and Xu Zechen's "Yu Gongshan" won the short story first prize.
He has written many literary themes, such as small trains, airplanes, rivers... Xu Zechen said that these almost all stem from his yearning for distant places as a rural child, "I have always been full of imagination about the vastness of this world."
About "North Drift"
Among Xu Zechen's works, "Beipiao Past" is an important collection in recent years.
When he first arrived in Beijing to study, Xu Zechen was a little uncomfortable with the unique busyness and prosperity of big cities. Because he was short of money, he seldom went out for fun. Most of his activities were in the western suburbs of Beijing, and the surrounding small markets and bookstores were the ones he was most familiar with. field.
Chatting has become a channel for him to quickly understand the surrounding environment.
Slowly, Xu Zechen got to know a group of "floating" friends in Beijing, peddlers who sold pirated discs, literary youths who pursued their dreams... Gradually they became part of his life circle.
"Northern Drifters Past".
Photo courtesy of the publisher
"Walking on the street in those years, watching the busy traffic, there will be a very strong sense of strangeness." Xu Zechen said, but through the lives of these friends, he saw a kind of spiritual stability and determination.
After staying here for a long time, he has established good interpersonal relationships with friends who are full of goodwill around him, "This kind of feeling will slowly bridge the cracks in the hearts of some 'foreigners', endowing cold and hard things with a kind of warmth, endowing you with the ability to accept color".
The steaming life brought great inspiration to Xu Zechen's writing.
In 2022, "Northern Drifters" will be published as a collection.
He regards it as a review of the life of the North Drifter, "I have relieved all the entanglements I have had."
writing is a compensatory act
After the pattern of life and work is basically settled, Xu Zechen occasionally still thinks about his childhood, the countryside in northern Jiangsu, and the process of pursuing his literary dream.
"When I was a child, I liked fried shredded pork with celery, but I seldom had it. My family ate the vegetables grown in the vegetable garden all year round." This memory is deeply rooted in his heart. Xu Zechen once especially liked watching "Eating and Broadcasting", It seems to be a kind of compensation for childhood experience.
Writer Xu Zechen.
Photo provided by the interviewee
Writing, too, is a compensatory act.
When he was a child, he yearned for a distant place, so many of the novels he wrote later were related to this, such as those who ran boats on the canal, and often brought back some stories, delicious and fun things from outside.
"Now when I read books and newspapers, I always take a pen, and I am ready to pick up wrong words at any time; when I see pedestrians and scenery when I walk on the road, I will naturally think from the perspective of a writer." For Xu Zechen, reading and writing have changed. became an instinct.
The novel he is currently writing can be divided into two series.
One series has a style resembling a detective novel, such as "Yugong Mountain", which is set on the Grand Canal; the other series consists of short stories set in foreign countries.
"Whether it is form or implication, I hope to make some attempts to provide readers with some new narrative characteristics." In "Yu Gongshan", Xu Zechen introduced the writing style of "three words and two beats" and Liaozhai to express the current theme, trying to A fusion of tradition and modernity.
He hopes that in the future, his works will be closer to life and more natural and smooth, "that is, to present readers with vivid, sensible and real life in natural language."
(Finish)