"Dating Writers" is one of the regular columns in the official WeChat account of October College of Literature, and writers are invited to visit regularly.

Have a cup of tea and talk about good books at October College of Literature, Yousheng Temple, Yongdingmen Park. Talk about life, literature, and life.

On this month 12, at the launching ceremony of the second "Beijing October Literature Month", October College of Literature launched the "October Contract Writer" program to realize "publishing forward and integrating with creation" and innovate the generation mechanism of literary works. Alai, Liu Qingbang, Ye Guangqin, Ning Ken, Guan Renshan, Hong Ke, Li Er, Qiu Huadong and Xu officially signed up as "October signing writers". October College of Literature will conduct a series of interviews with these nine "October contract writers" in the next few issues of Dating Writers. In the last issue of Dating Writers, we invited Ye Guangqin, a representative of Beijing-style writing and an October signing writer, to share her views on literature, Beijing and the world.

In this issue, we invited a famous writer and Jia, a special correspondent of October College of Literature, to have a dialogue. In Liu Qingbang's novels, he constructed a literary world close to the earth and people, where people were not ashamed of tears and were not afraid of suffering. Mr. Liu Qingbang, it is in the form of water that he overcame all the heaviness of collapse in this world.

Brief introduction of the author

Liu Qingbang, October signing writer. 195 1 was born in Shenqiu rural area, Henan province in 65438+February. Worked as a farmer, miner and journalist. He is the author of nine novels, such as Fault, Poems in the Distance, Songs on the Plain, Red Coal, Moonlight Everywhere, Black and White Men and Women, and more than fifty short stories and essays, such as Walking in a Kiln, Beautiful Cattle Pasturing Sheep, White Flowers Everywhere, Organ and Yellow Flower Embroidery.

The short story Shoes won the second Lu Xun Literature Prize. The novellas Shenmu and Squib won the second and fourth Lao She Literature Awards. The novella Into the City and the novel Red Coal won the 4th and 5th Beijing * * * Awards respectively. The novel Moonlight Everywhere was nominated for the 8th Mao Dun Literature Award. Ten times won the Beijing Literature Prize; "October" literature prize five times; The Novel Monthly was published in Hundred Flowers Award seven times. The film Blind Well, adapted from his novel Shenmu, won the Silver Bear Award at the 53rd Berlin Film and Art Festival. He won the first prize of both virtue and art in Beijing.

Many works have been translated into English, French, Japanese, Russian, German, Italian, Spanish and other foreign languages, and six foreign language collections have been published.

Liu Qingbang is currently the chairman of China Coal Mine Writers Association, the vice chairman of Beijing Writers Association, a first-class writer, a member of Beijing CPPCC, and a member of the 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th and 9th National Committees of Chinese Writers Association.

Movies turn the infinity of literature into finiteness.

Jia: Writer Marquez has been trying to prevent his works from being made into movies since he wrote his masterpiece One Hundred Years of Solitude. His reason is that he wants to maintain a personal relationship between the work and the reader. Your work "Shenmu" was made into a movie "Blind Well" and won a series of awards such as Silver Bear Award and Golden Horse Award. What do you think of this personal relationship? Do you think it will destroy this personal relationship to adapt the work into a movie?

Liu Qingbang: Literary works and movies are two types of art. Literary works are written things with infinite imagination. Once it is made into a movie, it should be a limited thing. For example, Lin Daiyu, a literary figure, has a hundred imaginations when watching a dream of red mansions, but once it is made into a TV series, the image of Lin Daiyu is fixed. The process of adaptation is the process from infinite to limited in art, which is the limitation of film and television works.

But I hope someone can make my literary works into movies. Because film is a powerful means of communication at present, it is equivalent to inserting a pair of wings into literary works, which can fly farther and fly all over the world. I think Shenmu benefited from the adaptation of the film. Although many selected magazines have been selected before, their audience is still limited. After being adapted into a film, it won more than 20 film awards internationally and spread very widely at once. This novel has been translated into English, French, Japanese, Italian, Spanish and other languages. This has to be said because of the spread of movies.

Shenmu

Good novels are all "released"

Jia: When I read your works, I feel two completely different temperaments: one is very gentle, such as your beautiful cows and shoes. The other is a particularly cool temperament, such as Shenmu and red coal. How do you master these two qualities of writing?

Liu Qingbang: My writing is summarized into two styles by critics. I write rural works with more feminine elements. Because I have been away from the countryside for decades, I can only look back at my hometown when writing. This kind of looking back is a kind of distant view, and it is easy to imagine my hometown as an idyll with genre paintings. Most of my short stories are of this temperament.

I think writing a novel is nothing more than two attitudes: one is aesthetic and the other is criticism. What about these intense novels? Most of them are critical. Most of them are about coal mines, and life in coal mines itself is more severe. Out of criticism of reality, it is more intense, or more cruel.

Black and white men and women

These two modes must be written alternately. Sometimes I always write these cruel and nervous things, and it is easy to become very nervous and tired. In order to adjust, I will write some soft novels to neutralize. Writing is actually a kind of practice and a spiritual need. So these two styles can actually be combined. Of course, I prefer that kind of soft novel, because a good novel is "free", which makes people out of body, releases their souls and distracts them. Another novel with a strong sense of reality, it is actually "catching people" and holding on to you until you finish reading it.

"Honesty" means listening to your inner voice.

Jia: In your rural works, besides those masterpieces that are particularly feminine and pure, there is also a kind of work that describes "ugliness". For example, the novel Foreign Women describes the phenomenon of rural prostitutes. Is your attitude towards the countryside full of complexity?

Liu Qingbang: Yes, I still keep close contact with rural life. I go back to pay attention to the reality of the countryside every year. I always find some ugly things, so I can't help but want to write these ugly things through my works.

It is not only a short story, but also my novel Ballad on the Plain, which is about the three-year famine. Known as the first novel to show the three-year famine in China. There is also a novel "Yellow Mud Land", published by October Literature and Art Publishing House, which criticizes the "mud nature" in the national character. Criticize the inferiority of our national character by writing about the entanglement and trap of yellow mud. These works all have doubts about reality and reflections on history, bearing heavy historical and social contents.

Jia: I can't help but praise when I meet something particularly beautiful, and I can't help but criticize when I meet something ugly. This reminds me of your unique expression when talking about your style. You said your style was "honest". Why do you use "honesty" to summarize your creative view?

Liu Qingbang: A writer's writing starts from the individual, from the heart, and writes about himself. To write about yourself, you must first find your own heart, which must be an honest heart. A writer needs to listen to his inner call and be loyal to his feelings and thoughts, that is to say, to keep his own nature, not to go with the flow, not to follow the fashion, and to insist on independent thinking under any circumstances. This is my understanding of honesty.

Jia: Baudelaire said that writing in any era is a combination of eternity and the times, and writing should keep up with the times. China is now in a huge transition period, and urbanization has become an irreversible trend. In the context of urbanization, how do you think traditional local writing can keep its own times?

Liu Qingbang: I don't think there is anything out of date about the writing of local culture. There is no difference between the object of writing and the material of writing, but the question of "how to write" is actually more important. For example, the fact of the three-year famine I just mentioned, including the life of the contract responsibility system after the reform and opening up, can still be written and worth discussing. Literature is often a state of memory, a review. At the same time, it is a spiritual thing, an eternal thing. It's totally different from the news. News emphasizes timeliness, and the newer the better. Novels don't need to be so fashionable.

But the novel also has the mission of recording the times and preserving the memory for the nation. So we still need to pay close attention to contemporary life. Concerns don't have to be written immediately, we need time to precipitate and refine. But there is no doubt that we should keep enough enthusiasm for contemporary life and be in a state of discovery forever, so that we can continue to write works.

Writers need to "bend over"

Jia: I know you used to be a reporter. 1996 after the Pingdingshan gas explosion accident, you wrote a documentary literary work of nearly 20,000 words, Pity for Life. On 20 13, you went to daping coal mine in Henan province to live in depth, interviewed many families of workers killed in mine accidents, and published the article "collecting wind and collecting wind". How did these experiences affect your creative ideas?

Liu Qingbang: "Be merciful" has had an unexpected impact on coal mines across the country, which shocked me very much. Up to now, the national coal mines still regard this work as a teaching material for safety education. When new miners arrive at the mine, they should not only learn new technologies, but also watch my documentary works. Even when I went to the mine, they knew I was the author and wanted to propose a toast to me. I am very touched. There is a saying that if you go to the iron furnace kiln in northern Shaanxi, someone will bring you rice, and if you go to the coal mine in Liu Qingbang, someone will bring you wine. It is because of this "compassion for life" influence.

This reportage has had a wide, deep and lasting influence in coal mines all over the country. When I went to the coal mine, the miners told me about the job, and many people cried. I dare not go back and read it again. I will burst into tears when I watch it. This work inspired me. We sometimes say that literature serves the people, which seems to be a big lie. Through this work, I know it is not. To serve the people, going to the mine is to serve the miners. You wrote their thoughts intimately, and they were really touched and welcomed. So this "service" is effective. Based on this understanding, I think that "serving the people" means asking writers to bend down and act in a down-to-earth manner. I think writers need this idea.

Jia: Last year, your short story Caution published in People's Literature continued the theme of Shenmu and black and white men and women, and wrote about the sufferings and living conditions of the bottom people that you have been concerned about. This theme has been going on for decades. Why insist?

Liu Qingbang: I haven't written this novel for decades, but I finally wrote it last year. It's a novel that makes me sad and expensive. Why? Because I wrote about my penis. This is a pain point in my heart. I wrote about the process of his life slowly dying. Sometimes I feel that I have written more than 300 short stories, and I feel that it is almost enough. In retrospect, alas, there is such an important little story that I wrote it.

Language is related to breathing.

Jia: Your novel language is very special. A language is very "literary", such as organ. One kind is very "qualitative", such as Shenmu and Meiniu Shepherd. To sum up, your language can be described as "gentle". Many critics also think that you are a writer who attaches great importance to language. What do you think of the language of the novel?

Liu Qingbang: I attach great importance to language. I think Wang Zengqi is right. He said that writing a novel is writing a language. Language is a novelist's housekeeping skill. Only when the language is good can the novel be spoken well. If the language is bad, the novel can be rejected by one vote.

A good language is a personalized, spiritual, tasteful and writer-like language, which has been cultivated for a long time. Language is connected with the writer's breath, and through the breath of words, language will form an aura. The language of a good writer has such an aura. You can read the taste of Lu Xun and Shen Congwen without looking at the name. Language needs to be defamiliarized. Don't use cliches, use fewer idioms and try not to use fashionable language. Use more common languages, which should carry their own unique feelings and unique discoveries. Over time, it will form its own language style.

Jia: I noticed a phenomenon. A few writers like you who were born in the 1950s and are still active in the literary world, such as Mr Mo Yan and Mr Jia Pingwa, pay great attention to writing folk culture in their creations. For example, the paper-cutting folk custom mentioned in Jia Pingwa's new work "Extreme Flowers", the tradition of eating blood onions, and Mo Yan's concern for folk operas. And you also have such works, such as Organ and Yellow Flower Embroidery, which are also rooted in folk culture. Why do you pay attention to folk culture?

Mr Liu Qingbang and Mr Mo Yan took a group photo.

Liu Qingbang: I am very interested in folk culture. Folk culture is a part of our China cultural gene. Folk culture has deep roots and is worth digging. In fact, I have written more than a dozen novels of this type, such as Shoes, which is about the custom of unmarried wives making a pair of shoes for their fiance. Such as taking a new guest, the ceremony of spring, yellow flower embroidery, introduction, tail and so on. These folk cultures have a sense of ceremony and make people feel beautiful. Our classical culture, our folk culture, attaches great importance to ceremony, which is worthy of admiration and promotion.

Jia: How does it feel to be a contracted writer in October College of Literature?

Liu Qingbang: A year ago in October, I attended the opening ceremony of the College of Arts and delivered a speech. Later, under the arrangement of October College of Literature, he became the first writer to exchange writing in Kathmandu, Nepal. I have always been very willing to participate in the activities of the College of Liberal Arts, and I am also very happy to be a signing writer of the College of Liberal Arts in October.

Mr. Liu Qingbang's writer's residence in Kathmandu

Jia: What are your expectations and prospects for this October Literature Month?

Liu Qingbang: October Literature Month is very helpful to enliven Beijing's literary creation and promote Beijing's cultural development. I think October Literature Month and October College of Literature are very important. I proposed in the CPPCC before, and I have been calling on Wen Jian College. Now my appeal has been rewarded. Beijing has established two colleges of arts and sciences, October College of Arts and Sciences and Laoshe College of Arts and Sciences. My consistent view is that if Beijing wants to build a cultural center, it must first build a literary center. To build a literary center, we must combine soft and hard. Software refers to writers and works. The hardware is the introduction and facilities of Liu Qingbang, a literary institution in Beijing. Including the Federation of Literary and Art Circles, Writers Association, Literature Museum, Theatre, October College of Literature, October Literature and Art Publishing House, etc. These are all hardware.

October College of Literature is a good hardware. In the future, it will play an important role in cultivating writers, promoting writers, and promoting and exchanging literature. It is an important carrier for the construction of Beijing Document Center.

Mr. Liu Qingbang's signature

Interview notes

The phone was connected, and Mr Liu Qingbang's voice came. I suddenly have a feeling that all the characters in his novels are suddenly lit up. The perceptual cognition of his works is integrated with the texture of the writer's voice at that moment: tenderness, sensibility, compassion and warmth. The writer's voice revealed some spiritual secrets of his works.

In a few minutes' interview, Liu Qingbang expressed his literary views in a comforting way. He constructed a literary world close to the earth and people. The breath of people is clear, and the scars of the land are also clear. In this world, people are not ashamed of tears and are not afraid of suffering. The more we talk about it in the end, the more we realize the mystery of "softness": the softer it is, the more it can bear heavy weight without being broken. The softest thing is water.

It is in the form of water that Mr. Liu Qingbang overcame all the heaviness of collapse in this world.

Writing: Jia, College of Literature, Beijing Normal University, Master of Modern and Contemporary Literature, China.