Back to 80: My Literary Life

The Chinese Prose Society is not a copycat organization. It was founded in 1984. It is a national first-class literary group and a national professional literary group. It accepts the business guidance of the China Writers Association. Jia Pingwa is a member of the society. He became famous for his essays such as "Shangzhou Chulu" and "Shangzhou Youlu" and became one of the directors of the society.

The president of this term is Lin Fei, a famous scholar and writer in my country. He has made many achievements in Lu Xun research, prose theory and prose writing.

Fang Minghua received the letter, thought about it for a long time, and wrote a reply.

The general idea is that I am very happy to join the Chinese Prose Society, but due to my lack of qualifications and ability, I am afraid that I will not be able to serve as a director of the society. I implore President Lin to select other outstanding writers.

Fang Minghua has his own clear understanding.

The "Cultural Journey" written by myself is expected to have about 25 or 26 articles. It is enough to be published as a collection of cultural essays. I can't repeat Yu Qiuyu's mistakes.

Some people in later generations commented on several books of Yu Qiuyu:

"I was quite shocked when I read Cultural Journey. Later, I read Notes from a Mountain Dwelling, and the shock was mixed with a hint of aftertaste. The reflection on Chinese culture is still valuable. Later, I read A Sigh of a Thousand Years and The Traveler Without Borders, and felt that they were just flattering foreigners. There was no point. Moreover, the same stuff was repeated over and over again. I fell in love with it at first sight, and I fell in love with it again and again. After reading it for the third time, it became tasteless."

In addition, this kind of prose is prone to errors in historical facts (i.e. cultural flaws) and is criticized. It is said that someone published a book pointing out more than 120 errors in the book Cultural Journey. Of course, there is nitpicking in it.

Isn't it related to Yu Qiuyu's excessive high profile after he became famous?

He should be more clear-headed.

Maybe he will write prose in the future, but not necessarily cultural prose.

Although Fang Minghua repeatedly insisted on refusing the position of director, the handwritten reply from Lin Fei, president of the Prose Society, was also very interesting. He quoted the comments of the famous critic Lei Da on four essays written by Fang Minghua in the Literary Gazette:

"Now we are in an era where the development of contemporary Chinese prose is facing a new crossroads."

"Before this, there were two important literary events: the re-evaluation of Yang Shuo's prose and the completion of Palladium's "Random Thoughts". The accumulation of literary thought changes has been completed, and what is urgently needed next is works that have both the independent personality of the writer telling the truth and the artistic and aesthetic characteristics of prose. Fang Minghua's prose appeared under the requirements and calls of such a literary era."

Mr. Lin wrote a reply in person, and Fang Minghua had to accept it.

Okay

I have another title of director of the Chinese Prose Society.

Fang Minghua spent the whole of May and June looking up information and writing articles.

Originally, Fang Minghua wanted to hurry up and finish it, but he received a notice.

The Chinese Society of Prose Writers notified him that he, as one of the directors of the Prose Writers Society, would go to Zhengzhou to hold a seminar on prose writing.

He had just been elected as a director of the Prose Writers Society, and he was notified to attend a meeting? !

Fang Minghua was really helpless.

Shouldn't he go?

Isn't this simply not giving face to the chairman of the society?

Go, there will be many writers anyway.

This is common sense. Fang Minghua has to go out to attend three or four meetings every year. In this era, the management is not strict, and the meetings are also a trip.

In addition to Fang Minghua, the Qin provincial director Jia Pingwa also went to the Prose Writers Society meeting.

Anyway, the meeting place was Zhengzhou, not too far from Xijing, and the two of them each carried their travel bags and boarded the train to the east.

The journey was long and boring, but fortunately they were sitting in a sleeper berth, so they lay on the berth and chatted.

"Minghua, although this essay writing seminar did not specifically mention what to discuss, as far as I know, as long as the discussion is centered around the cultural essays you wrote, the appearance of your essay collection is like a spring thunder, shocking the essay world."

Jia Pingwa's words are a bit exaggerated, but they illustrate a fact.

In the past 1980s, the highlight of literature, novels and poems made rapid progress and achieved remarkable achievements, but essays were relatively bleak, and the creative achievements were far less than those of novels and poems. There was less social sensation, and there was a lack of prose talents, and the concept of prose was too broad.

Influential essay collections include Palladium's "Random Thoughts", Chen Baichen's "Yunmeng Broken Memories", Yang Jiang's "Six Notes from the Cadre School", and Sun Li and Ding Ling's essays.

They are basically reminiscing about the past and reflecting on history.

Until the great cultural essays flourished.

In fact, there is another person who cannot be ignored, that is Jia Pingwa himself, who is also a master of writing essays.

Now Fang Minghua heard Jia Pingwa say this and smiled and said: "Brother Jia, don't just talk about me, talk about yourself. I admire your "Shangzhou Chulu" and "Shangzhou Youlu" very much."

"What I wrote is outdated, outdated." Jia Pingwa shook his head.

I don't know if it's modesty or if he really thinks that what he wrote is outdated. Since then, Jia Pingwa rarely writes prose, but writes novels one after another.

Yes, in this era, novels are what people pay the most attention to, because there is the Mao Dun Literature Award.

We set off at noon and arrived in Zhengzhou in the afternoon. We stayed in Zhongzhou Hotel. It is said that before the reform and opening up, this place often received Chinese and foreign guests, and there were sentinels standing guard. However, it was opened to the public in the late 1980s, and the sentinels disappeared.

In addition to the directors of the Prose Society, the conference also invited editors from magazines such as Tianjin Prose Jia Baoquan, Shanghai Literature and Art Publishing House Chen Xianfa, Zhengzhou Prose Selection Zhang Ruoyu, and Guangzhou Essay Guo Lihong. It was a relatively large conference.

As Jia Pingwa said, at the conference, all the delegates praised Fang Minghua's essay, and even believed that cultural prose poetry would be the future direction of prose development.

"Next, please invite Comrade Fang Minghua, director of the Prose Society, director of the China Writers Association, and vice chairman of the Qin Province Writers Association, to come to the stage and talk about his creative experience. Everyone welcomes him!"

The audience gave warm applause.

This was not a difficult task for Fang Minghua. He had made such a report in the West Auditorium a few months ago, but this time, he was facing people in the prose world.

Fang Minghua's brain was clear.

"Thank you leaders and colleagues for your affirmation of my collection of essays. I am also happy to share with you the creative ideas and techniques of cultural essays, but I think that cultural essays are not the future development direction of essays, or just a branch of the development of essays." Fang Minghua clearly stated his point of view.

"Cultural essays have their own shortcomings. I have already explained this problem in the article "Casual Heart: Theory and Practice of Cultural Essay Writing" published in "Yanhe" magazine, so I will not repeat it here. "

"I will first talk about my personal superficial views on the development direction of essays in the 1990s. "