Back to 80: My Literary Life

Due to well-known reasons, the last Mao Dun Literary Award has extended the selection year by one year and selected works from 1985 to 1988.

According to convention, the selection year of the fourth Mao Dun Award can be extended to 1989 to 1993, and the selection work will be conducted in 1994.

However, this work was repeatedly delayed and was not launched until 1995, so the selection year had to be extended from 1989 to 1994, a span of 6 years!

The selection of "White Deer Plain" is also full of twists and turns, with many different opinions, but now Fang Minghua can witness what this history is all about.

On May 6, Fang Minghua said goodbye to his wife and children early, packed his travel bag and boarded the train to Yanjing. He rushed to Yanjing the next afternoon and checked into the Ziyu Hotel.

When the Writers Association holds meetings, it likes to arrange members from all over the place in this hotel. Fang Minghua stayed here several times.

The first meeting of the jury was held the next day, but this time the standards were quite high. It was not held in the Federation of Literary and Art Circles Building of the Agricultural Exhibition Hall, but in the conference room on the second floor of the Zhongxua Building on Chaoyangmen Nei Street. Jury member Lu Lu was present at the meeting. Arriving one after another.

The selection committee consists of 23 members. The chairman is still Palladium. However, Palladium is old and in poor health and rarely appears in public. Chen Changben, who serves as the deputy chairman, is chaired.

Fang Minghua sat in the back row.

He looked at the committee members who entered the venue one after another: Ding Ning, Liu Yushan, Jiang Xiaotian, Chen Yong, Li Xifan

Ordinary readers may not know this, and their names are not as famous as those of popular writers, but Fang Minghua knows that these talents are the real bigwigs in the literary world and have the absolute right to speak!

Most of them are over fifty years old. Fang Minghua, a "young man" in his thirties, stood out in the conference room.

However, everyone greeted each other kindly, and it was just like a normal meeting. As long as the organizer did not put out table cards with names written on them, participants usually sat with people they knew well and chatted quietly.

Fang Minghua really doesn’t know many people.

After all, there is a generational difference in age. Apart from meeting Fang Minghua every year at the Writers Association meeting or at individual literary seminars, he rarely interacts with her.

At this time, a man greeted him with a smile, called "Minghua" and sat in the empty seat next to him.

radar! Fang Minghua, associate editor of "Chinese Writers" and a famous literary critic, met him in 1988 at the seminar on Lu Yao's "Ordinary World".

Most of the participants criticized the novel, but Radar supported it, leaving a good impression on Fang Minghua.

Later, I met him in several work seminars and became relatively familiar with him.

Seeing the other party sitting over, Fang Minghua moved to the side and replied with a smile: "Hello, Chief Editor Lei."

"Minghua, when will you return to Lanzhou University and give some lectures to the students?" Lida asked with a smile.

Going back to Landa again?

Fang Minghua was slightly surprised.

He did give a lecture at Lanzhou University. At that time, Fang Minghua and Wu Tianmin were filming "Into the Dust" in Minqin, Gansu Province. Because he wanted to write a literary review about the stream of consciousness, he went to Lanzhou University to look up information. He was attracted by the then Chinese Department of Lanzhou University. Director Ke Yang invited us to give a lecture on stream-of-consciousness literature.

But that was 1982, 14 years ago.

Now I suddenly hear the old story of Radar being brought up again, which is a bit surprising.

"I am currently serving as a doctoral tutor in modern and contemporary Chinese literature at the College of Liberal Arts of Lanzhou University. I have brought several students with me, and I invited you to give lectures to our students. You published a very important article on the theory of modern poetry in Tianya magazine. Not bad," Radar explained.

I see!

"Okay, it's better to obey your orders than to be respectful. I'll go when I have the chance." Fang Minghua replied.

The two were chatting. At this time, someone loudly said that there was a meeting, and the conference room suddenly became quiet.

"Comrades, the meeting is now underway." Chen Changben sat on the rostrum and said:

"In November last year, through the unremitting efforts of 23 members of the reading class, the preliminary evaluation work was completed, and 30 works were selected from 111 novels, and then 20 works were selected from the 30 works and provided to the jury For your reference, the job of our jury is to select the best and most representative works of literature of our time from these 20 novels! "

"Comrades, the general catalog of the 111 recommended works from various places that participated in the preliminary evaluation will be sent to each jury member after the meeting. Everyone can check any works at any time. It is up to you to see if there are any hidden gems in the ocean. "

Everyone laughed after hearing this.

Immediately afterwards, Comrade Zhai Taifeng expressed his opinions on this award evaluation work. The most important thing was to discuss the first draft of the "Award Plan for the Fourth Mao Dun Literary Award."

The first draft is placed on each member's desk.

Fang Minghua has already seen it, and what interests him is this one:

In addition to the 20 works, any judge has the right to propose other works for the jury to read, provided that the other two judges second their opinions, to ensure that no works worthy of attention are missed!

This one is interesting

In other words, among these 111 works, even if they did not enter the scope of the 20 works initially evaluated by the reading class, now as long as they are nominated by three judges, they can directly enter the jury's discussion list and compete with those 20 works for Mao Dun. award!

This power is powerful enough.

Of course, Fang Minghua didn’t have any objections to the first draft of the plan. Many of the judges here are judges who have participated in the second and third Mao Dun Awards and have rich experience. It’s a newbie here, so it’s better to keep a low profile.

The plan was discussed throughout the day. At the end of the discussion in the afternoon, everyone's opinions were handed over to the judges' office for revision.

The meeting continued the next day. This time, the jury office listed the 111 participating works and the list of 20 novels that had passed the preliminary evaluation by the reading class.

Fang Minghua picked up the catalog and looked at it carefully.

"White Deer Plain" is included!

"War and People" is also here!

""White Gate Willow" is also here!"

There is no such thing as the award-winning "The Fall"!

In other words, "The Autumn of Turmoil" did not make it into the 20 list of films in the initial review. Was it recommended by someone later and added to it?

Take a look at the other 20 works on the list:

"Zeng Guofan", "Emperor Yongzheng", "Business World", "Aristocrats of the Century". There is also "Mobile Transformation" by Wang Meng!

Oops, Wang Meng’s work was eventually deleted too!

Fang Minghua was slightly disappointed after reading the list of 20 novels in the preliminary review.

Historically, the four award-winning works announced by the 4th Mao Dun Literature Award were all concentrated in traditional realism and traditional historical novels, while new historicism and avant-garde novels were completely wiped out!

From this list of 20 novels alone, there are very few shortlisted novels in the latter two categories.

Let’s not talk about Jia Pingwa’s “Abandoned Capital”, which is quite controversial.

What about "Edge" written by Ge Fei? What about Wang Anyi's "Documentary and Fiction"? What about Liu Heng's "Ode to Xiaoyao"?

What about Su Tong's "Mi"? What about Liu Zhenyun's "My Hometown and the World's Yellow Flowers"? What about Zhang Wei's "September Fable"?

Also, what about "Alive" by Yu Hua? !

In the hot books of the past few years, it didn’t even make the list of 20!

Damn it!

this this

Isn't it really unfair? !