I don't read much, don't lie to me

Chapter 1 General Preface——Let's comfort life with novels
Preface "Short Tone" novel series

Let's start with the novel.Fiction is not imitating the world of life.It is life itself, the world.

Pamuk, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature, recently taught at the famous Norton Lectures at Harvard University. He said that "fiction is a second life."It makes readers feel that "the fictional world they encounter and enjoy is more real than the real world", and there is a kind of "illusory experience".This statement is reasonable but not new. The famous couplet in "Dream of Red Mansions" is the imaginary world. The confusion with the real world was created by my own writing, so "Jia Yucun (false words exist)" and "Zhen Shiyin (real things are hidden)"—in other words, the novel is a world of "false words", and the false words are Fiction, the world is a construction, so we often say that fiction is the art of fiction.

But I especially like the term "Second Life".Why do cats have nine lives, but humans live and die?God is fair, saying that human life is fragile, so let's live a few more times based on experience.Experience is to create an environment. It is an experience when you go to the south of the Yangtze River to see "look for osmanthus in the moon in the mountain temple, and watch the tide head on the pillow in the county pavilion". It is another kind of experience; you "you don't know the feeling of sorrow, you fall in love with the upper floors. You fall in love with the upper floors, and express your sorrows to write new words" is an experience, "now you know all the sorrows, and you want to say it. Hugh, but said it was a cool autumn" is another experience.

The environment of experience is not only based on physical space transfer, but a better method is the fictional world on paper.You may not be vain, but one of your personalities becomes Madame Bovary, and you feel that there is an irresistible desire that drives you to pursue the passion of life; Lun's Tang Juan or Jin Yong's Wei Xiaobao; you are really dissatisfied with this noisy and vulgar first life scene, the novel opens a random door for you, and you enter Haruki Murakami's end of the world and cold fairyland after 1 minute, there is enough for you Enjoy solitude and weirdness.In this way, the writers who created this second life are indeed talented. They are architects and liars. Drawing a bunch of characters gives you another experience, another life.I once said that the greatest function of a novel is to talk nonsense but make a big deal out of it. Good novelists actually accurately draw the extension lines of real life, and those extension lines we have learned in geometry class are dotted lines, but they show a fit. possible worlds.Therefore, God has many messengers, and this is one category.

Let's talk about the short story.

A short story is a miser, but also a hard-working genius.A miser is one who saves money for himself and refuses to give more to others; a hard-working genius knows talent at first glance, but it is over soon.But I don't underestimate short stories, or relatively short novellas, among which the good stuff is much more refined.I have an impression that in the past ten or so years of reading Chinese contemporary pure literature novels, the achievement of short and medium stories is much higher than that of novels.This should not be my own opinion.And what's interesting is that because the traditional literary world is a paper culture, the order is like this-first publish short stories in literary journals, then publish medium-length ones, then publish long-form ones, and then publish books.As a result, I have seen a lot of good short and medium writers' long-form works are really horrible or mediocre.I can't help but think that maybe a good short story and a good long story are two abilities that cannot be combined.

Fortunately, online writing and publishing have no threshold, no cost, and no background. Depending on the "three nos", it is inevitable to have "three haves": there are those who are obsessive, those who are novice, and those who fill redundant texts—what I mean Yes, first, online novels, no matter stallion novels or danmei novels, are the paradise of YY (obscenity); second, many YY novels have collectively reduced to the writing and intellectual state of idiots, there is no difficulty, nothing to talk about Skills, not to mention originality and depth; third, the longer the writing, the longer the writing, the longer the writing, the long long long long long long, without seeing the Yellow River skyline flow. There are 300 million characters, 500 million characters, 800 million characters, and 1000 million characters. This is "one" novel, everyone.I remember a meeting where the critic Wang Gan couldn’t help but compare it, saying that this is an “amazing output” and “more than 400 million words, which must surpass Ba Jin’s lifelong novel creation. I know that there are a few traditional literature that can be written particularly well. Su Tong, for example, has written less than 400 million characters so far. Jia Pingwa may have a little more, and the total is estimated to be 900 million characters.”Of course, this has something to do with the exchange of words by writers for rice in a certain period, with the literary production in the context of the cultural industry and the habit of the audience waiting for you to add [-] words every day like waiting to watch a soap opera.However, are there any writers of really well-written short stories who plan to find a place to open a new auspicious shop?In particular, are there any spirits of heaven and earth who have emerged from the "three noes" environment of the Internet? !
So, we set up a big banner and wrote: short accent.If there are left and right facades, write respectively: one inch is long and one inch is strong; one inch is short and one inch is dangerous. ——Wen fighting is also like fighting in martial arts, with strong strengths and short dangers.A well-written novel is naturally strong. Lao Tzu said, "He who knows others is wise, and he who knows himself is wise. He who overcomes others is powerful, and he who overcomes himself is strong." A well-written novel is completely a process of self-conquerment, and the mind must have a deep dive. The structure must be solid, and the physical strength must keep up.Well-written short stories are naturally dangerous. Sun Tzu said: "That's why a good fighter has short momentum and short knots. The momentum is like a crossbow, and the knot is like a machine." It means that short stories not only have momentum, but also pay attention to the momentum. rhythm.

Therefore, the famous American short story Raymond Carver will quote VS.Pritchett draws our attention to the word "glance" when he defines the word "short story" as "a glimpse out of the corner of one's eye as one passes by", "It is the task of the short story writer to devote as much energy as possible to this glimpse." in which, to the fullest of his intellect and the literary skill at his disposal (his talent), his sense of proportion and what is proper in things: how things are there and how he sees them—unlike any other people see".These are the "dangers" of the short story, that is, the ways in which power is used.As for the rhythm of short stories, the Chinese still have their own inheritance. If you think of such works as Shen Congwen's "Border Town", Wang Zengqi's "Chen Xiaoshou", and A Cheng's "Chess King", you will definitely understand a certain short "tone". .

In an era when online novels are getting longer and people's thoughts are becoming more and more microblogged and fragmented, the quality, complete, short-length, and good-looking novels advocated by "Short Tune" are, in my opinion, the best. Very timely.Refining the wonderful author's words, not wasting your precious time, but also accumulating decent creativity, imagination, and irony for the "great development and prosperity of socialist culture".I want to say that we guarantee that this open book series is human and sexy, which is the best comfort for real life.

(End of this chapter)