Reasoning writer Mao Te: Some readers subconsciously believe that women should not be involved in investigating crimes

Original title: Reasoning writer Mao Te: Some readers subconsciously think that detectives should not be done by women | Interview

Although in recent years “The Hidden Corner” and “White Night Chasing the Murder” and other works that are often regarded as reasoning by readers have a wide audience, in fact, many popular “theory novels” on the market are social reasoning works, and may even be criminal investigations. , Supernatural, horror, suspense and other types of literature. The orthodox and mainstream of mystery novels are innate reasoning, which is based on logical inference and understanding of mysteries, focusing on tricks, and often allows readers and detectives to solve mysteries with the same number of clues. The reasoning writer Mao Te, who recently published the novel “Mystery Case Player”, is known for his rigorous and strong logic style. He believes that Bengue Reasoning is one of the most difficult types of novels to write, although not many audiences in China. one. In an interview with Interface Culture (ID: booksandfun), he reviewed the initial history of Chinese Benge inference and his thoughts on this type of literature.

Maote wanted to incorporate classical music elements into the reasoning of the case when he wrote “The Enigma Player” to make the case more readable. In his own preface, he said that classical music is very similar to Benge. They are both niche circles, and they have the feeling of high and few songs. Music stories are used to package the core of Benge’s reasoning. Maote also talked about how music is compatible with reasoning, and how musical elements compromise for reasoning.

As a male writer, the social element that Mao Te added to “The Mystery Player” is sexism. Sex discrimination in the music industry is not uncommon. In 2020, one of the hotly discussed news in the classical music industry is the Domingo sexual assault scandal. This man with great power and prestige in the industry seems to have always been an open secret in the industry. The female characters described by Maote also face a similar fate. In an interview, he shared his thoughts on this topic and reflected on the gender stereotypes reflected in the detective role in the mystery.

01 Mystery is best to happen in the real world

Interface culture: The length of the novel “The Enigma Player” is devoted to logical reasoning. It can be seen that you are a writer who sticks to the original style. You mentioned in the preface that you did not choose a trick to construct, but went back to pure logical deduction. Why did you make such a decision?

Cat special:The two main schools of Bengue reasoning are the flow of tricks and the flow of logic. The flow of tricks generally refers to the construction of the whole novel around one or several core tricks, such as alibi, secret rooms, disappearance of corpses, and no footprints in the snow. It often has one or more unbelievable mysteries. The final answer lies in revealing. Trickery.

I have written a novel of trick flow before, and this time I want to challenge to see if I can create a logic flow work similar to Ellery Quinn. Conan Doyle borrowed from Sherlock Holmes and said: “The whole life is a huge chain. As long as you see one of the links, the whole chain can be inferred.” This is a very vivid description, and the logical flow is to convey Give the reader this effect.

In the flow of logic, the mystery itself is not important. The point is to recreate the incident layer by layer. For example, if stationery is placed on the left side of the desk, you will think that the owner is left-handed. This is a kind of reasoning, although this reasoning may not be rigorous. Starting from one clue, there may be infinite possibilities, but there is only one situation that actually happens. The task of a detective is to start from clues, continue to reason, from a to b, and then to c to d, and finally reach a conclusion-what the logic flow needs to do is to rigorously find out the only possible path.

Interface culture: When you are conceiving a reasoning work, is it the logical construction that you value most?

Cat special:Correct. The writing is not good, the story is too simple, and the characters are too flat. These critical reasoning writers can accept it, because this may be the “original sin” of reasoning. After all, unlike literary works, such works themselves are more inclined to puzzle games. But if the reader criticizes the reasoning process, it is a fatal blow. Therefore, I value the reasoning process more than trickery. The mysteries and answers of many works are good, but the reasoning in the middle is broken. For example, when you see a clue, you think you will definitely come to such a conclusion. Without ruling out other possibilities, the works are flawed.

Interface culture: Compared with the wild imagination of the new style, your works are still closer to the traditional style.

Cat special:My work is retro, and you can see many shadows of the golden age, such as John Dixon Carr, Agatha Christie or Conan Doyle. I always think that mystery is best to happen in the real world. Now more and more works will construct new worldviews and make some settings, such as writing partial sci-fi works, or putting stories in ancient times. It is not that this is bad. In a sense, a novel worldview is also It’s interesting. But I personally think that only stories that can happen in the real world will have a sense of substitution. Otherwise, readers will drift away from the work and just see what tricks the author wants to play.

Interface culture: In your self-preface, you have been thinking hard about what constitutes a good-looking original mystery. Is there any answer?

Cat special:There are two important points here: Is it to write the story first, or to build the core of the reasoning first? If you build the kernel first, then the story is derived. To serve the kernel, it is really difficult to make the story very perfect. However, many socialist works have very good stories first, and there is no reasoning. The average reader will think this story is good, but the original writers will think that this is not reasoning, so “good-looking original mystery novels” is an ideal, which is realized. It’s too difficult to get up.

Interface culture: You also mentioned that China’s original reasoning has just started, and it is still a baby. Can you talk specifically about the development process of Chinese Principal Reasoning you have experienced?

Cat special:Chinese authors began to write inference stories around 2000. At that time, there was a website called “The Gate of Reasoning”. The works on it were mainly pure puzzles and solutions, and there were almost no long stories. Some words were more inclined to public security literature or suspense stories, which were fundamentally different from reasoning. Suspense works are often suspenseful for the sake of suspense, and the result is anticlimactic, and the mystery makes you want to read the book in one go, but the answer will often disappoint you. The reasoning in this case is not like this. If the author of this case does not have a confident answer, he generally dare not write.

My creation was after the publication of “Deduction World” magazine. This magazine was launched in 2007 and has translated many short articles by famous foreign authors, as well as works by domestic authors. Seeing that short reasoning can also be published, I also wanted to try it, so I started writing. Many reasoning writers have experiences similar to mine. This magazine has almost collected all those who are interested in creative reasoning and those who are interested in reasoning. It also has a forum, and the works are often discussed by readers after they are published.

The magazine also held a Chinese Reasoning Competition, which was the first real Chinese native reasoning competition. The first time I participated, I entered the final of the best rookie and won the first prize the second time. When I was doing my best, the magazine published 4 copies a month, but I couldn’t do it later. The reasoning authors lacked the main channel to publish works, which prompted us to write long stories, because only long-form works can be published if they are submitted to the publishing house. Although there are no more magazines, domestic reasoning is slowly rising. In the past few years, more and more authors have begun to create long stories. At the beginning, everyone was deeply influenced by Japanese reasoning, and even some of the author’s stories were written in Japan. But now we see that reasoning creation is constantly being localized, and the story is indeed getting better and better, even if it is far from the reader’s request.

Interface culture: Some people think that Benge is not popular in China. What do you think of this situation?

Cat special:Many people say that the original reasoning has declined, not only in China, but the original reasoning in Japan is not as hot as it used to be. Honkaku means classic and traditional in Japan, a bit like classical music. Although no one is composing classical music anymore, there are still people composing mystery novels.

There are many reasons why Bengue reasoning is not popular. The most important point is that there is a threshold for reading inferential reasoning. Readers can read infernal reasoning only after reading a certain amount of reasoning works. This is completely different from reading social reasoning. Benge’s creation is not simple. To write a decent book, it takes several months to write quickly and more than a year slowly, because it is necessary to design the core tricks, to find ways to wrap the tricks, to design the red herring ( Note: The reasoning process of shifting focus and attention), design foreshadowing, design reversal, and design solution should not show loopholes.

The domestic benign reasoning has always been in a hot state in the circle, which also makes the benign reasoning less concerned. Compared with the success of the socialist reasoning in film and television, the film and television industry has not yet touched on the original reasoning in depth. If there is a well-produced Bengue reasoning drama on the screen, I believe that the audience and readers will have a new understanding of Bengue reasoning, which will be a great thing for Bengue’s development.

Interface culture: So, does the original reasoning that focus on solving puzzles need to be packaged in order to reach more readers?

Cat special:Japan has gone through a similar process. In the 1960s, the Japanese style was completely unreadable, so in the 1980s, authors who wanted to revive this type of style made a new style.

One of the big problems that Benge is criticized is that he is relatively “secondary”, that is, there is almost no possibility of reality. Which criminal would have such a complicated idea and devise a trick that would fail if there is a little deviation? The cost is too high. Moreover, no matter which country you are in, a criminal case must be handled by the police. Even if there is a private investigator, it is impossible to participate in the investigation of a criminal case. Many people think that this kind of novel is too far away from real life, so Xinbenge writers simply follow the set line-since the story is out of touch with reality, it is completely out of touch with reality, and another world is created. This is a way out of Benge.

Another way out is to add other elements on the basis of reasoning, such as adding medical content, monster legends, etc., for example, I added music content to “Mystery Case Player”. Readers can not only follow the author’s ideas to solve the case, but also get a sense of another dimension.

02 Music elements are designed to serve reasoning

Interface culture: “The Enigma Player” adds elements of classical music to the reasoning. The story takes place in a concert hall. The detectives, victims, and suspects are all engaged in music-related work or music lovers. Many inferences are also related to the instruments played, the operation of the orchestra, and the repertoire. In your preface, you mentioned that not only do you want music as the background of the story, you also want to integrate musical elements into the core of the story and become an indispensable part of reasoning. How to prevent music elements from becoming a mere listing?

Cat special:The reasoning circle generally calls this kind of creation with added setting and added elements as “Hyun Xue Reasoning”. But if you just copy the stuff from the encyclopedia into the work, and it’s not something the author has experienced, it’s just filling in the number of words. More often than not, the author has been deeply involved in a certain field for a long time and has a rich accumulation. I prefer to look at this kind of listing. Of course, some readers will “debate it”. After all, in life, talking about classical music with people who have no classical music background at all, they have no fun at all, and writing in a book is the same. So simply listing knowledge is not friendly to readers.

Many years ago, I used music elements in my short articles, and the protagonist was also a student of the Conservatory of Music. The editor said, otherwise you will write music reasoning specifically as your label. I was very excited at the time and felt that no one in the world did this. I was the first one. But the good times didn’t last long. Soon I saw Japanese writer Qili Nakayama writing this kind of work. Once you have read it, you know that the author is a fan of classical music. However, Qili Zhongshan can only combine personality and music. With the background of music academies or music competitions, the puzzle to find the murderer is actually to cover a musical shell with the tricks used by others. Remove all the music and replace it with other elements, and replace the protagonist with other identities, and the story is basically true. Therefore, Zhongshan Qili can be regarded as a simple list, and what I wrote is actually “music + reasoning”, and I want to write the real “music x reasoning”.

Interface culture: Writers such as Haruki Murakami and Kazuo Ishiguro also like to write music. The music in their works is sometimes related to the characters and plot, and has some intertextuality with the story. How do you combine music and text when you are creating?

Cat special:Compared to the writer you mentioned, I have not been able to integrate the music with the plot and the characters so appropriately, but I can put the musical elements into the reasoning process, that is to say, there is no way to extract the music from my works. Away, replace with other elements.

There are some musical works in the book that I fabricated. The structure and orchestration of the music are all to serve reasoning. The accidental music mentioned in the novel (Note: one of the Western modernist music genres. Refers to the composer’s use of contingency in his creation. The introduction of factors into the music in the process of creation or performance) is also a deliberate design to eliminate the possibility. Readers can also make some exclusions based on musical instruments. Of course, some of the selected songs are purely my favorite and I want to recommend to readers. Haruki Murakami wrote Janacek’s “Small Symphony” at the beginning of “1Q84”. Most people have never heard of this song, but readers of the song I chose have at least heard it.

Interface culture: You will choose some popular songs, but Haruki Murakami’s selections can be niche. This is also related to the difference between genre literature and pure literature.

Cat special:Pure literature conveys ideas, genre literature is more entertaining, and the entertaining nature of original works is more playful. In essence, music and pure literature fit better. Therefore, when selecting music in genre literature, it is necessary to introduce works that are not so profound in ideological connotation, or that everyone is familiar with, and have preconceived interpretations. Heavy works like Bruckner and Mahler are not suitable for light novel style works.

Interface culture: Because of the need to calculate time when solving puzzles, a pianist in the book is known as a “metronome”. Of course, in reality, a pianist may not be willing to be called that way. So, when you write, do you have some musical elements that compromise the reasoning?

Cat special:Correct. This is for works. When writing logic flow works, we must constantly plug loopholes. The method is to make some settings, which can only come from the story itself. It can be said that every musical element mentioned in the work is not naturally presented, but has been designed. The problem of pianist timing is so obvious that the design seems deliberate.

Some other details are also designed. For example, in a concerto work, I completely abandon string music, which is hard to see in traditional works. For example, some songs don’t need so many people in the voice part. I only keep one or two people, and I don’t have the chief. It doesn’t make much sense to think about it-but I have to write this way in order to deal with the chief character. Another example is the structure of the concert hall lounge is actually different from the one in my novel, and in reality there are so many cameras in the stadium, I can only remove some of them, otherwise it is difficult to prove who is there or not. For example, there are not so few staff in the concert hall, and the relationship between performers and staff is more diverse than what I wrote, but it is difficult for me to present it.

Interface culture: When other writers combine other elements in reasoning, such as medicine, monsters, science, etc., will they also make some compromises?

Cat special:Those works also have a strong sense of design. Using medical elements to make logical reasoning or design tricks, some content is too incredible for ordinary readers. For example, the author will write that the scalpel was left in the patient’s stomach after the operation, and the patient died of an impossible murder as a result. This is absolutely impossible in reality.

“The Enigma Player”

Cat Special

Ziyan Novels China Friendship Publishing Company 2021-5

03 There is only one true female detective in the world, and that is Miss Marple

Interface culture: Although the whole book is a local work, there are also some socialist elements. The novel explores the topic of sexism, and the sexism remarks made by some of your characters are very straightforward and explicit.

Cat special:Although I am a male, I am quite disgusted with these behaviors. Looking at this matter from the other side’s standpoint, it will feel very unfair. Why should only men be respected, and why should men have the power to harass women? There is so much news of this kind, and we can see it every day.

Some people I know also have sexist behaviors. For example, some people must give birth to sons, or choose men when recruiting, or even directly say that they don’t want girls. When discussing women, many men will regard each other as a conquerable object, as a desire that can be satisfied with money.

Interface culture: When I watch some mystery novels and film and television dramas with reasoning elements, I find that it is usually a male detective or a male policeman with a female assistant. It is the male who plays the leading role in solving the case, and the assistant is in a subordinate position. Your book is about gender issues, focusing on the plight of women, but it is still a setting of male detectives and female assistants. Is it a bit contradictory?

Cat special:It’s ironic. When it comes to nurses, we feel that they are women. When it comes to soldiers and police, we often think of men as men. I use male detectives because my previous related works used male detectives. Of course, you can also say that I have a preconception-after all, the ancestors of all detectives are from Sherlock Holmes, and Sherlock Holmes is a man. People also feel that the role of a detective needs to be wise and courageous. For example, when Sherlock Holmes and Moriarty fight, they will fall off a cliff, so detective work is also dangerous. Although some people later created images of female detectives and made image innovations, the field of detectives has been defined as a male field.

Interface culture: The fighting of wits and courage you mentioned reminds me of Benjamin’s concept of “urban wanderer”. Benjamin saw from Allan Poe’s novel “People in the Crowd” that the “urban roamer” and the detective character are connected to each other. If you think of it this way, it is also a stereotype that the detective is a man, because men are often seen as trespassing outside, and women are seen as staying at home.

Cat special:Correct. Agatha Christie has two series, Poirot and Miss Marple. The characters of the two detectives and the process of investigating the crime are completely different. Poirot is more investigating cases outside, and Miss Marple is more like a housewife.

Readers voted the most annoying detective No. 1 is the female detective Nikaido Ranzi written by writer Nikaido Li Ren. I originally thought that this was because it was difficult for the author to portray a female role as a male, but after reading some evaluations, I found that even writing about female detectives would make men feel dissatisfied. In mystery novels, the detective is more intelligent than the reader, and the assistant’s intelligence level is usually about the same as that of the reader, or even worse than the reader. Some readers subconsciously think that detectives should not be done by women. They think: I can’t do it anyway, she actually did it. A woman who is so smarter than me must be annoying.

The current situation is that male detectives are used for serious puzzle solving, and female detectives are used for light-hearted novels. Especially in light novels, there are more and more female detectives. In fact, many readers of light novels and girl manga are men. They like the image of the two-dimensional, so many female detectives are modeled after the two-dimensional characters.

The second dimension is also the hardest hit area for materialized women. When you open any comic book, the female characters in it are drawn very sexy, wearing miniskirts, exposed thighs, and wearing stockings. So let me say that there is only one true female detective in the world, and that is Miss Marple. I think the other images are all objectified women.

Interface culture: The female detectives portrayed in the recently popular “Mind Detective City Tomb Emerald” seem to have a good reputation. In your opinion, this book is also an objectification of women?

Cat special:This is also a highly criticized book. The women in it are completely described as appendages. Although it is said to be a reversal, this reversal is actually not important, because all the previous descriptions are very offensive. After you finish reading it, you will wonder why it’s this age, and the author would write a female character like this, but most male readers will think it is very good.