2022 marks the 20th anniversary of the death of modern Chinese writer Sun Li. In recent years, Sun Li’s works have not been submerged in the depths of time, but have become more and more common in bookstores, appearing in various versions, and have a large number of loyal readers and fans, showing strong artistic vitality.
According to Huang Dehai, a young critic who has intensively read Sun Li’s works and planned and published Sun Li’s collection of essays on reading “Wild Delicious Reading”, Sun Li is a writer who has never been forgotten. The main reason is that many of his works have been included in primary and secondary school textbooks.
Teaching materials are important and leave a particularly deep impression on the minds of children and youth. Mr. Sun Li probably did not expect this during his lifetime. In addition to the early novel series of “Lotus Lake”, Sun Li’s “Yunzhai Novels” in his later years are naive and old-fashioned, “I personally think that it is written for myself in a larger sense, with simpler words and more straightforward conclusions, but in the end, It became a special style.”
In addition to novel writing, Sun Li’s prose on reading is also very popular among fans. “Wild Game Reading” is an anthology of Sun Li’s life about buying, acquiring, collecting and reading books in his life. As the editor of this book, Huang Dehai is generous with praise. “From this book, we can see brevity, restraint and love. Conciseness is Sun Li’s writing. Condensation is the restraint of expression. Love is the love of the world. From the process of compiling these collections, I have I have learned a lot. It might be said that I have gained the above experience. In fact, in the process of compiling a book, the first person to benefit is always myself.”
In addition to Sun Li, there is also Jin Kemu who makes Huang Dehai remember his way of reading. 2022 is the 110th anniversary of Jin Kemu’s birth. Jin Kemu (1912-2000), professor of the Department of Oriental Languages and Literatures of Peking University, proficient in many languages, learned both Chinese and Western, is one of the “Unknown Four Olds” of Peking University, and has written “Indian Culture Essays” and “Comparative Culture Theory” Collection”, “Old Learning and New Knowledge Collection”, etc. As a generation of scholars, Jin Kemuqi has his own unique and subtle aspects in reading and studying. As early as 2007, Huang Dehai planned and edited a collection of works by Jin Kemu on reading and studying, “The Book is Finished”.
Huang Dehai selected more than 50 articles on the methods of studying and studying from Jin Kemu’s about 30 published works during his lifetime, helping readers to get a glimpse of the mystery of everyone’s study and study. The book has been well received, with good sales and word of mouth, and an updated edition was released in May 2017.
It is a pity that Jin Kemu has no detailed chronology or research biography. In June 2022, Huang Dehai compiled a book “Reading, Reading, Reading – Jin Kemu breaking latest news” in the chronological style, which was launched by Writers Publishing House. Huang Dehai once again intensively read Jin Kemu’s works. From Jin Kemu’s life experience, making friends, meditation, epiphany, and the universe alone, he uses the method of citation + statement to outline how a person is in the turbulent times of the times, relying on self-study and not giving up, Create your own spiritual world. Although this book is non-fiction, it has the look of a coming-of-age novel because of the vivid details.
Who is Huang Dehai? Why is he so interested in the reading and life of Sun Li, Jin Kemu and others? In fact, editing books is not Huang Dehai’s job. Huang Dehai, born in 1977, graduated with a master’s degree from the Chinese Department of Fudan University in 2004. Now he is the deputy editor-in-chief of Sinan Literature Selected Journal, a literary magazine sponsored by the Shanghai Writers Association, and a distinguished researcher of the China Modern Literature Museum.
Huang Dehai is especially good at literary criticism, and is the author of “The World‘s Articles”, “The Book of Songs News”, “It’s Too Late to Read Books in This Life”, “Domestic Life”, “Fictional Modern Art” and so on. He has won the 8th “Tang Tao Youth Literature Research Award”, the 17th “Chinese Literature Media Festival·Literary Critic of the Year”, and the 3rd “Shanhua Literature Biennial Award·Prose Award”. Books, storytelling, writing books. Let him have his own profound judgment experience and sharp eyes of observation on literature. In July 2022, the cover reporter interviewed Huang Dehai exclusively.
Dialogue with Huang Dehai: “Good literary criticism is a collaborative journey of exploration towards the unknown”
Cover news: The “Book Reading” series you participated in planning, in addition to Jin Kemu’s “Book Reading”, Sun Li’s “Wild Game Reading”, and the abandoned title “Youth Reading”, Lu Shuxiang’s “Too Many Books”. In addition, you have planned and published a set of Zhu Guangqian’s selected books, one of which is “Reading and Writing Guidance”, which is also about reading. Why are you willing to use reading as a clue to plan a set of books?
Huang Dehai: Actually, I just want to convey a little bit of the lessons I have gained from reading these gentlemen’s books and share them with you. At the same time, I also want to make up the unique face of the writer involved. These compiled books can be regarded as a kind of “liberal arts” or “general education” related to self-study, paying attention to the readability of the articles and the integrity of reading, not limited to a specific discipline, Try to present the words of the professionals who have come from the field of reading as plainly as possible, so that people who like reading can have a way to enter.
Cover news: In “Reading · Reading People · Readings – Jin Kemu’s breaking latest news”, you can see the education Jin Kemu received at home in his childhood, especially the reading method taught by his eldest brother is very special and almost impossible to copy. How did you feel when writing this content?
Huang Dehai: The set of reading methods mentioned by Brother Jin Kemu, if we look carefully, about the old school, it should be a common understanding of the reading family, step by step, taking care of people’s temperament and practicality. Regarding the new school, it should be because his eldest brother went out very early and saw too many changes in the times, so it was considered slightly ahead of the times at that time. When we read it, we will probably envy such traditional education, lamenting that our old school foundation is poor, and no matter how hard we try, we can’t keep up. But what we may overlook is that the education of this so-called scholarly home is not the useless reading we imagined, but has its special practicality. After graduating from primary school, Jin Kemu received traditional training from the private school, Master Chen, for two years before realizing the practicality of the traditional so-called reading. In his own words: “In the past, scholars in China were called scholars. They lived on books, that is, they lived by writing. In this line of business, people could be promoted and rich, but most of them were poor and miserable or depended on bureaucrats and wealthy owners for food. . . . …As far as I know, the old tradition is that children who are trained in this industry rely on Chinese characters, poetry, and books to eat, just like the apprentices in the store rely on planning and accounting. Stepfather’s business. Just want to change careers, but other industries are unwilling to accept them. Similarly, it is not easy to enter this industry from other industries.”
“Every possible epidemic actually provides us with an opportunity to understand the world“
Cover news: We often see many people on the subway using their mobile phones to swipe short videos or read online novels. Perhaps it is a matter of course that online novels can provide entertainment functions and do not need to be changed?
Huang Dehai: This issue is not something we can judge. What’s more important is to observe, to observe what online literature and short videos have to offer and why they are so appealing. This is perhaps a more important question than approval or disapproval. Every possible fashion actually provides us with an opportunity to understand the world, and we don’t need to rush to agree or disagree. If you want to oppose a certain trend, you need to find the deepest root behind it, and then clean up the source. Simply opposing or disliking it is tantamount to using naive thinking to correspond to naive thinking, which will have no effect except for mutual hatred between the two sides. For example, let’s say that online novels provide entertainment functions, so what about American dramas? Anime isn’t it? Is it a movie? You know, less than a hundred years ago, that’s how movies were supposed to be. Less than three hundred years ago, fiction was thought of as such. Was the earlier Homeric epic considered the same? So, popularity is not a criterion for judging good or bad, what matters is what these works offer. Of course, it’s always worrying if there are minors or partial adults indulging in (only in the sense of indulging) certain types of things. But then again, what kind of addictive things don’t need to worry about? We should all remember that when Lin Daiyu was reading “The Story of the West Chamber”, Xue Baochai persuaded him earnestly, didn’t he?
COVER NEWS: Your literary review is well-received. But it has to be said that reviews are always considered to be an appendix to the work. What do you think?
Huang Dehai: In literary criticism writing, I am actually a learner. Occasional praise is the encouragement to me. In the writing of literary criticism, a big misunderstanding is that it is always regarded as a subsidiary of literary works. In fact, literary criticism is a separate behavior, and it has its own operating logic. I said a few years ago that literary criticism is related to literary works, but we should always return to the moment we are in, grow together with the object of criticism, and obtain specific feelings and respond to specific phenomena on the basis of in-depth and careful reading of specific works. , to draw specific conclusions. Although this generation is related to a specific literary work, the root is that the writer has the surprise of discovery with his own knowledge and experience reserves when reading, and effectively conveys this surprise in a different way from the work. This finding is related to the work read, but not simply dependent. Good literary criticism should be a collaborative journey of exploration into the unknown, looking for the hidden world in the work that the author seems to be aware of but not fully aware of. Together with the author, the commentator clarifies an unfamiliar territory, thereby illuminating an unexplored place in society or people’s heart—a new world slowly unfolds.
COVER NEWS: What qualities do you think reviewers should have when it comes to writing good literary reviews?
Huang Dehai: Like any text-related field, commentators need to have an in-depth understanding of the world and themselves, a personal experience of classics, and a keen sense of the development of the times. There are many things to say, but it is very difficult to do everything.
Cover news: In today’s world with very fast changes and great uncertainty, do you think the significance and function of literature’s existence are more prominent?
Huang Dehai: I personally think that the function of literature is always limited. Even, in the era of reading the scriptures, literature may be rejected even more, right? The traditional four-part study, the Classics and History Sub-collections, which belong to the literature range, are firmly ranked at the bottom. Looking at Brother Jin Kemu’s guidance on his reading, literature accounts for a small share, and he has various precautions against reading literature. In some periods, literary writers are regarded as stars, which is not a good thing. From this direction, literature is actually very gratifying in a certain position that suits itself.
Cover news: Serious literature that requires readers to pay a certain price of concentration and willpower is actually at a disadvantage when competing for readers with easily accessible short videos and online novels. What do you think of this phenomenon?
Huang Dehai: Speaking of the serious literature that we have repeatedly emphasized, yes, there are some works that really require dedication and willpower to read, but you can ask, do more works deliberately create dyslexia? I dare not draw any conclusions, but I am skeptical of overemphasizing seriousness. For example, is it possible to ask whether it is because our writing skills are not enough that we cannot be appreciated by more people?
Let me give you a few examples – is “The Three-Body Problem” a popular work? Is Jin Yong a popular work? Were “A Dream of Red Mansions” and “Water Margin” popular works back then? “Where there is well water, one can sing Liu’s words.” Was Liu Yong’s words definitely a popular work back then? Isn’t the story of “Qingting Painting Walls” popular? It is difficult to draw simple conclusions from these questions. For me personally, I also watch short videos, and I have read several online novels with tens of millions of words. Some online works may have far surpassed the so-called serious literature, just because our reading methods have not changed. Keep up, so it’s hard to identify. These are really hard to draw conclusions. Or, when you find that what you write is at a disadvantage, first see if you are limited by certain concepts or prejudices (in a sense, untested ideals are also prejudices), rather than rushing to find popular The question of works, would be a better choice?
“Literature doesn’t get as much attention as it used to be, it’s a mixed bag in my opinion”
Cover news: In recent years, there have been fewer best-selling authors of genre literature like Han Han and Guo Jingming, and young people who write novels seem to have returned to serious literature. Young authors like Lin Dao, Zheng Zaihuan, Wei Sixiao, and Zhou Kai each have their own characteristics. As a professional literary critic, how do you view this phenomenon?
Huang Dehai: Literature is not as concerned as it used to be, in my opinion it is mixed. On the plus side, it excludes a group of people who try to quickly gain fame or wealth through literature. In the current situation, at least literature is no longer a shortcut to fame, right? On the downside, many people with a talent for imagination have invested in other fields that can attract more attention, and the field of literature will inevitably be left out. In this sense, the so-called return of young people to serious literature should only be within the scope of our attention, and some outstanding young people have appeared. From a larger perspective, it is difficult to say. I have followed several young authors you mentioned. Their works have their own characteristics, and with time, they may even become irreplaceable writers. But any predictions at the beginning are too early, just write it down, including myself, really write a great work, it is not too late to talk about it.Return to Sohu, see more