Ten years ago, on a sunny afternoon, the comrades of the Writers' Association invited me to the writers' bookstore for a meeting, and thus began the eight-year birth process of "Literary Journal".
Literary Chronicles has been around for 60 years, and many of those influential old writers have already passed the age of sixteen or entered the age of antiquity. I had a sense of urgency on the one hand, and on the other hand, I had to think about how I could deal with them smoothly. I started by making a list of the interviewees' ages, places of origin, and their previous employers, so that I could roughly figure out how to ask them for an interview. If the old writer is from Jiangsu and Zhejiang, I will make an appointment in dialect through **. I also designed the opening remarks in advance, and there are only three sentences to be concise and concise: the first is to report my home and state the reason; The second is to point out the other party's creative achievements; Again, it is a request for an interview, and the time and place are decided by the other party. Such a trilogy usually works with old writers, and as a result, I not only completed the task of compiling long materials, but also got to know a group of old friends. Now, several of them are gone, but their voices and smiles still haunt me.
The compilation of the Literary Chronicles is actually to comprehensively sort out the development process of Shanghai literature in the past 60 years. In my opinion, finding out and recording some special features of Shanghai's literary creation is an indispensable aspect of the compilation work. Shanghai's workers' literature, maritime literature, and literary and historical prose all have unique creative characteristics, so I spent a lot of energy collecting and organizing these materials.
Lu Junchao is a representative writer of marine literature, and his mind is as broad as the ocean. The first time I talked to him, he not only readily agreed to be interviewed, but also said that it would be good to talk to him at home. Mr. Lu, who is in his 80s, was in good health, and personally introduced me into the study, and in addition to answering my questions, he also chatted with me until he revealed his heart. He said that there seems to be no concept of marine literature in Chinese mainland, but in Europe, not only is there a classification of marine literature, but French sinologists also solemnly list his ** as China's marine literature. Based on his reminder, I later sorted out several writers who wrote about marine life, such as Zhang Shimin, Zhang Jinjiang and Tong Menghou. Maritime literature shows the inclusiveness of Shanghai's literature.
When I met Lu Junchao again, I was surprised to hear his opinion on his work. He said that when he learned that the French commented that his ** was "a little watery", his first reaction was a little surprised, and his excitement suddenly cooled down. Later, after some serious reflection, this statement was recognized. He told me that many writers in that era had this kind of problem, and the over-intensified politics diluted the artistry, making it very watery and bland. Then he said categorically that once the work came out, it was like a child coming into the world. You have affection for this child, but you can't change it. "Once a work is published, it cannot be changed when it is reprinted. Its strengths and weaknesses should be judged by the reader. All we can do is to learn from the lessons and improve our future creations, so that literature will develop in a good direction. ”
Kim is a very popular essayist with intellectual readers. In his later creations, he focused his interest on short literary and historical prose, completely abandoning the extroverted style of replacing guns with pen in the early days, and working negative rhetoric, which made his literary and historical prose produce a unique linguistic charm. I have visited Mr. Kim Seung-yao 5 times. It can be said that we hated to meet late when we first met, and immediately became New Year's friends. Mr. Jin is a native of eastern Zhejiang, has a distinct dialect accent, and has a back of his ears. But every time we meet, he tries to talk as much as possible, and this kind of care for the juniors makes me very moved. In addition to talking to me about literature, he also talked about life. He said that although he has a lot of books at home, when it comes time to use them, he always has no energy to look for them, so he simply goes to the ancient book publishing house of the original unit and asks the staff of the library to find books, which saves time and effort.
After talking to him a lot, I felt that Wen Ruqi was still very reasonable. The formation of a person's humanistic style is closely related to his life experience. For an essayist, those who like to use colorful and positive rhetorical devices are generally proud; For those who have gone through hardships, their rhetoric will also become calm and delicate, and they will use less complicated figures of speech, but use sentence structure, words and tone to express themselves implicitly.
I remember the last time we met, he knew I had moved. He hoped that I would not stop coming to the door because of the distance, and that I would not lose my junior friend, but he did not express this directly, but said euphemistically: "It's a good thing for you to move, but the road is far away." At this time, Mr. Jin was skinny and in his last years, but he still had a deep love for literature and a passion for his friends.
There are still many such old writers in Shanghai, which is a fortunate thing for Shanghai literature. (Ren Liqing).