1990: Starting from Baojia Street

Seeing several people coming in from outside chatting and laughing, Zhou Yan said with a smile, "It seems that the performance satisfied you."

Yu Hua laughed and said, "Haha, Xiao Fang specially asked the orchestra to compose a whole song for us. Yue Lin was also there, and the conductor was on hand. Of course we are very satisfied."

"It's mainly because he is satisfied, because it satisfies his desire to show off." Liu Zhenyun still did not forget to criticize Yu Hua.

Zhou Yan smiled and said, "The orchestra didn't practice this piece for a long time, so the overall presentation is not good enough. When we listen to it again after the New Year, the feeling will be different."

"Don't be too modest, it's already very good."

After entering the office, Yu Hua offered cigarettes to everyone, and then asked Zhou Yan, "Is Editor-in-Chief Zhang coming today?"

Zhou Yan glanced at Shi Tiesheng and knew that it must be Shi Tiesheng who told them what happened in the morning.

"He said he would come this morning, but I don't know exactly when he will come. They have a meeting this afternoon, and it's a long way from there, so it might be quite late."

Zhou Yan looked at his watch. It was only half past three, so it was still early. Even if Zhang Shouren wanted to come, he would have to wait for a while.

Zhang Shouren is coming over tonight and will definitely stay for dinner.

"I'll ask the cafeteria to arrange a table in the private room tonight. You can order whatever you want to eat."

Yu Hua smiled and said, "I'm fine with anything. I'm not picky about food."

Mo Yan and the others were also very polite and told Zhou Yan to take care of the arrangements.

"Okay then, I'll let the canteen take care of the arrangements." Zhou Yan nodded and asked, "Will you continue playing cards?"

Yu Hua shook his head and said, "No more cards."

"If you don't play cards, what are you going to do?"

"We're going to read a book."

Zhou Yan nodded, "Okay, then I'll take you to the reading room, but I have to tell you that smoking is not allowed in the reading room. If you want to smoke, you have to go to the smoking area..."

“We don’t go to the reading room.”

"You're not going to the reading room?" Zhou Yan was a little confused: "You want to read here?"

Zhou Yan also had a lot of books in his office. When Yu Hua and Shi Tiesheng came here before, they often read books in his office.

Sometimes, they would go to the lounge downstairs to read. There were also quite a few books in the lounge, but most of them were music books.

"We are looking at it here, but not at the one on that wall. We want to see ..."

Yu Hua cast his gaze towards the drawer of the desk, and Zhou Yan immediately understood that they wanted to see the manuscript.

Knowing what they wanted to do, Zhou Yan did not hesitate and directly opened the drawer and took out the manuscript of "Don't Let Me Go".

Although it is not finished, the manuscript is quite thick, with about two or three hundred pages of manuscript paper.

Seeing Zhou Yan take out the manuscript, Yu Hua went straight forward and took the manuscript.

After getting the manuscript, he ignored everyone else and sat down on the sofa, ready to start reading.

Shi Tiesheng asked anxiously, "Why don't you care about us?"

"I'm not ignoring you. I'll look at it first, and then I'll show it to you. You can take turns."

Shi Tiesheng disagreed, "No, you read the manuscript too slowly. Letting you read it first will slow down the progress. Let me read it first."

Liu Zhenyun immediately raised his hand and said, "Although I am not fast at writing, I am very fast at reading. Let me read it first."

Mo Yan was unwilling to lag behind. “Not only am I fast at writing, but I’m even faster at reading. Let me read it first.”

"How about this, let's draw lots." Yu Hua directly took out four cards A234 from the table and let everyone draw.

The final results were Mo Yan first, Shi Tiesheng second, Liu Zhenyun third, and Yu Hua himself fourth.

Seeing that he was fourth, Yu Hua was a little unwilling. Just as he was about to say something, Mo Yan grabbed the manuscript from his hand and said, "Comrade Yu Hua, you have to accept the loss."

"Yes, even if your brand character is not good, you have to keep your character." Liu Zhenyun added.

Yu Hua curled her lips and said, "Just wait and see. I'll go make some tea."

"Well, make some for me too." Mo Yan said.

……

After Mo Yan received the manuscript, he quickly read it.

"My name is Yang Kebei, I'm 31 years old, and I've been a nurse for 11 years..."

Perhaps influenced by Latin American literature, similar openings often appear in novels in recent years.

For example, the first sentence in Yu Hua's "To Live" is "When I was ten years younger than I am now, I got an idle job and went to the countryside to collect folk songs and ballads."

Some people, when they see the beginning of "To Live" and the identity setting of "I", will think of Gu Hua's novel "Sister Village" published in "Harvest" in 1982.

The "I" in "Sister Village" is also a specialist who goes to the mountain villages to collect folk songs and polls.

The first sentence in "Sister Village" reads: When I walked into Sister Village, the sun had already set into the embrace of the mountains.

From this we can see that in the early 1980s, domestic literature had already been influenced by Latin American literature and European and American literature, but by the late 1980s and early 1990s, these influences may have been more profound.

Seeing such an opening, Mo Yan would subconsciously think that this novel might be narrating events in the past, that is, this novel might be told in flashback.

Mo Yan guessed correctly, the rest of the story did indeed unfold in flashback.

However, unlike the general flashback method, the narrative perspective switches back and forth between several time periods. "I" talks about the present, the past, and the past.

Seeing this narrative method, Mo Yan thought of Marcel Proust's novels, such as the world-famous "Remembrance of Things Past".

In other words, Zhou Yan's novel has a bit of a stream-of-consciousness feel, and the development of the story relies entirely on memories.

When Liu Zhenyun saw this novel, he had more thoughts in his mind than Mo Yan, because he himself graduated from the Chinese Department.

When it comes to literary criticism, he is more professional than anyone else here.

The West believes that memory is a psychological mechanism, and recollection is not only a reproduction of past experiences, but also an aesthetic mechanism with deeper poetic origins and aesthetic qualities.

Plato wrote in The Republic that we should not be surprised if the soul could recall knowledge of virtue and other knowledge it once had.

Heidegger regards memory as the source of poetry and the mother of art. Comedy, music, dance and poetry all come from the nurturing of the goddess of memory.

What he was holding in his hand was obviously not an ordinary science fiction novel. In fact, for many pages before, he couldn't tell where the science fiction was.

However, as my memories go back more and more and further, the story begins to truly unfold.

At the beginning of the novel, "I" seems to throw out an answer.

"I" used to be a student of "Haier Xiangshe". All students of "Haier Xiangshe" are special, but why they are special was not explained at the beginning.

So the answer I gave was vague.

Creating suspense is a basic skill for writers, which is not surprising. However, the suspense in this novel is more like the suspense in "A Forewarned Murder".

From the beginning, I will tell you the results.

However, the result in Zhou Yan's novel is not as clear as that in "A Premeditated Murder".

What is a donor?
What kind of place is Haier Xiangshe?
In order to figure these things out, they had to follow the memory of "I" to explore. When reading this novel, Liu Zhenyun felt a little strange at first, because this novel was different from Zhou Yan's "Tree Hole" and "Death of the Mayor".

But later he suddenly thought of "The Knife in Clear Water" and felt that this might be Zhou Yan's style.

The narrative style in "The Knife in Clear Water" shows signs of this.

Mo Yan reads manuscripts very quickly. He only took him more than an hour to finish a manuscript of two or three hundred pages.

After finishing reading the manuscript on hand, Mo Yan looked at Zhou Yan who was working seriously, "Nothing else?"

Zhou Yan looked up and smiled, "You've already finished reading it."

"Well, I've finished reading it. Your manuscript is very neat and doesn't look like it took much effort."

Zhou Yan's manuscript was indeed very neat. First, his handwriting was very neat and not very sloppy. Second, there were not many corrections in the manuscript. Even if there were corrections, he left enough space so that it would not become a black mess due to the small space.

"The novel is definitely not finished yet, but this is all the manuscript."

"Ah?" Mo Yan was surprised. Shi Tiesheng had not told them before that Zhou Yan's novel was not finished.

"Why didn't you write it? Did you encounter any problems while writing?"

Different writers have different approaches to their writing.

Some writers like to make a very detailed outline before they start writing.

Some writers have a complete story in their mind before they start writing.

There are also some writers who don't have a specific story in their minds at all. They just start writing when they have a general idea. As for the story, they just think about it as they write.

Mo Yan was not familiar with Zhou Yan and did not understand his writing style.

If Zhou Yan belongs to the third type, it may be that he has not yet thought about how to write next.

Zhou Yan smiled and said, "I didn't encounter any difficulties. On the one hand, I was a bit busy and didn't have time to write. On the other hand, my enthusiasm for writing this story at the beginning gradually faded."

Mo Yan couldn't understand Zhou Yan's explanation at all.

If you say you're busy, why not just work overtime at night?
If he has a novel to finish, he can put down everything he is doing and concentrate on writing the novel.

And in his opinion, Zhou Yan was not so busy that he had no time to write this novel.

For example, they were chatting together yesterday and this morning as well.

Even when they were playing cards, Zhou Yan was watching. Couldn't they use this time to write?
As for the second reason, he couldn't understand it even more.

I have already written tens of thousands of words for this novel. Am I going to stop writing just because my enthusiasm has faded? What are the words I have already written? What should I do with them? Should I just leave them in a drawer and collect dust?

And in his opinion, the novel was obviously well written.

Since it is written so well, why does the enthusiasm fade?
Also, since the manuscript has not been completed, what manuscript did Zhang Shouren come to see?
"Are you still going to write?"

"decide as things go."

Shi Tiesheng, who was concentrating on reading the manuscript, said, "Don't look at the situation, you have to write it. No matter how busy you are, you have to finish the manuscript."

Hearing Shi Tiesheng's words, Mo Yan laughed, "Yes, you have to finish the novel, otherwise you will screw us over. How much more space is left?"

Zhou Yan thought for a moment and said, "Probably two-thirds left."

"There are so many?" Mo Yan was a little surprised.

The manuscripts he had read were at least 50,000 words long, and he estimated that there were about 60,000 to 70,000 words. If two-thirds were left, the entire article would be around 200,000 words.

A novel of 200,000 words is not considered very long. After all, his novel "Big Breasts and Wide Hips" published last year had 500,000 to 600,000 words.

But he didn't expect that there were so many left.

There are still more than 100,000 words left. When will I finish writing?
The main reason is that Mo Yan doesn't understand Zhou Yan's writing speed. If Zhou Yan's writing speed is the same as Yu Hua's, then this novel will probably take another year to complete.

If Zhou Yan's speed is the same as his, then it would be fast.

After all, he wrote the more than 500,000 words of "Big Breasts and Wide Hips" in just over 80 days, less than three months, an average of 7,000 words a day.

Mo Yan actually wanted to ask about the story behind the novel, but he held back and didn't ask.

Then he sighed, "I should have stopped watching it."

Hearing his sigh, Zhou Yan stood up with a smile, preparing to add some water to his cup.

However, just as Zhou Yan stood up, there was a knock on the office door.

"Come in."

The door opened, and Xiao Li at the front desk said with a smile, "Boss, there's a Mr. Zhang looking for you."

Zhou Yan had already seen Zhang Shouren standing next to Xiao Li. He smiled and walked forward, "Editor-in-Chief Zhang, please come in."

Hearing that Zhang Shouren had arrived, Liu Zhenyun and Yu Hua, who were reading manuscripts, also stood up to greet him.

Zhang Shouren thought of Yu Hua and Shi Tiesheng being there, but he didn't expect Mo Yan and Liu Zhenyun to be there too.

Seeing the manuscripts in their hands, Zhang Shouren's eyes lit up, "Could this be..."

Shi Tiesheng smiled and said, "It's Zhou Yan's manuscript."

"You guys are already watching?"

Mo Yan smiled and said, "I've already finished reading it."

"How……"

Zhang Shouren almost wanted to ask Mo Yan how he was doing, but he held back.

Now that he has come here, he doesn't need to ask others about the manuscript; he can just look at it himself.

"Come, come, show me the manuscript you have read."

Yu Hua was the last one in line, and all the manuscripts that had been read were in his hands, so he handed them all to Zhang Shouren.

Zhang Shouren weighed it over and said nothing more. He found a place and started looking.

Zhou Yan didn't expect Zhang Shouren to be so anxious. He was just thinking about exchanging a few words with Zhang Shouren.

Seeing that Zhang Shouren had already sat down, Zhou Yan went to pour him a cup of tea and added water for the others.

After about half an hour, Yu Hua finished reading all the manuscripts and ran over to start chatting.

Several people gave full praise to this half of the novel, and only Yu Hua pointed out a shortcoming: "It's a little long-winded."

When Shi Tiesheng heard Yu Hua say that the story was long-winded, he disagreed. "This kind of narrative style is meant to be a little long-winded. This is in line with people's state when they are tracing the past. And the perspective is from a woman, which is even more normal."

Liu Zhenyun nodded and said, "It's not that it's long-winded, but it describes a lot of details, and many of them are about trivial daily life. For someone as impatient as you, it's a bit long-winded."

Mo Yan laughed and said, "Isn't your "Xu Sanguan Selling Blood" long-winded? You write about the same thing over and over again."

"That's different." Yu Hua paused, "I still think it's a bit wordy, but it doesn't prevent it from being a very good novel." (End of this chapter)