Wang Yao
I don't remember seeing Lin Jianfa in the spring or autumn of 1999, when he went to Shanghai and Nanjing to make an appointment. A friend told him that you could go to Suzhou to meet Wang Yao, and that's how we met. I didn't expect the famous editor-in-chief to occasionally show shyness in chat, and that this look has remained in our later interactions. He listened attentively to what I said, but he was not swayed by my opinion, and he absorbed what he thought was right, but always insisted on his own opinion, a feature that had not changed before he left the editor-in-chief. Many friends should have this feeling, so they will think that Jianfa is a stubborn person. Later, some friends thought that I was the one who could persuade Jianfa to change his mind, but in fact, it was not necessarily the case. I rarely recommend papers to Jianfa for publication, and he has a difficult thought about every column, including which ones to write for the articles in this column. After almost twenty years of getting along, I know that this stubborn personality is not unbiased, but it has fulfilled Lin Jianfa as an editor, and the magazine "Contemporary Writers Review" has maintained a distinct academic style for a long time during his tenure.
More than a year later, I went to Soochow University in Taiwan as a guest. That year, Jianfa became editor-in-chief of the Contemporary Writers Review, where he became deputy editor-in-chief in January 1987. At that time, we all started to use the Internet, but the means of communication were not as diverse as they are now, and if you didn't use an email, you had to make long-distance calls. We sometimes made phone contact, and just as we were so proud of each other later, two mandarin friends with a rural accent were able to fully understand each other. That's fate. I heard the phone call in this room that he felt that the magazine's thinking and columns needed to be adjusted, so that I could think about it too. I suddenly felt that this was indeed a big thing, and I had to think about it seriously. The end of the century has passed, the new century has arrived, and the order of literary creation and literary criticism has changed. How a magazine that mainly reviews contemporary writers can intervene in the current literary creation in the new academic context and cultural reality and participate in the process of classicization of contemporary literature is indeed a problem that needs to be taken seriously. At this point, Jianfa realized that he wanted to implement his academic ambitions to run the journal. I remember that I gave him a principled opinion, that "criticism" and "contemporary writers" should be broad, the former should include "literary criticism" and "literary history studies", the latter should include writers who have become "history" and writers who are "now". These opinions are, of course, common sense, but they are in line with the idea of jianfa to "expand" and "deepen" the magazine.
Lin Jianfa and Wang Yao
A large number of scholars gathered around Jianfa, who enriched the ideas of Jianfa with their own research and writing. Jianfa also used his insight and courage to create conditions for these scholars, and supported a group of critics, most of whom are still active in the critical circles today. Unlike the pattern of literary criticism in the 1980s, after the new century, more critics worked in universities, and the characteristics of literary criticism as a mode of knowledge production were gradually strengthened. As a publication of the Provincial Writers' Association, Jianfa is not limited to the Writers' Association system and region, and he cooperates with universities and research institutions in various ways to make the "commentary" of the Contemporary Writers Review academic. During Jianfa's tenure as editor-in-chief, the Contemporary Writers Review has almost played a leading role in the study of literary trends and writers' works, and its attention to important issues and research methods in contemporary literary history has also become a feature of the magazine. Magazines usually have fixed columns that are stable for a period of time, but if the columns are too fixed, they may lose their vitality and new possibilities. The academic personality of Jianfa is also fully reflected in the column setting. In addition to those fixed columns, Jianfa has set up some new columns according to literary trends and creative trends, so that the Contemporary Writers Review has always been at the forefront of contemporary literary research. One year, Jianfa even opened a column of original works of novels in the magazine, which seemed to stop after two issues. Jianfa may be aware of the academic structure of the journal, and the editor-in-chief can have personality rather than willfulness. This flourishing history is the history of the academic transformation of the Contemporary Writers Review under the leadership of the Construction Law, and this academic style still continues in today's Contemporary Writers Review. I still feel that this is an important contribution of Jianfa to the Contemporary Writers Review and contemporary literary criticism. On this point, Jianfa said in the preface to the thirty-year anthology of the Contemporary Writers Review: "It can be said that it is precisely in response to the new crisis that the Contemporary Writers Review has completed its historical transformation, inheriting the characteristics of the past and presenting more new styles, and my personal style of running periodicals has gradually matured during this period. Just as there are many people who affirm me, there are inevitably others who disagree with my style of running a journal, and I don't think it matters. It is impossible for a magazine not to leave the personal imprint of its editor-in-chief, but more importantly, it has left traces of generations of observing and thinking about contemporary Chinese literature. He also thanked the other editors-in-chief for their help and contributions to the magazine, and on the occasion of the thirty years of the founding of the Contemporary Writers Review, Jianfa remembered the successive editors-in-chief Si Ji, Chen Yan, Zhang Songkui, Xiaofan and Chen Juchang who had contributed to the magazine, and especially missed Mr. Chen Yan, who still cared about the magazine in his later years. Jianfa said that caring for this magazine with my own life and faith has been consistent with my predecessors, although the idea of running the magazine is not completely the same.
Lin Jianfa, editor-in-chief, 1984-2013: A 30-Year Anthology of Contemporary Writers' Review:
"Faith is an Infallible Flag", "Novelist's Pulpit"
Liaoning People's Literature Publishing House (2014)
I once talked about some of the details of the Jianfa Journal in two short articles. In jianghu legends, Jianfa is a person who often does not give face to others. Jianfa is indeed not the kind of person who handles things in a harmonious manner, and if he feels that some personnel affairs are in conflict with his principles, he really says that "turning his face" will "turn his face." Of course, the "principles" of the founding law are not completely correct, and some aspects can also be deliberated. However, Jianfa always insists on being oneself, not pretending, not being pretentious, and this is also a valuable quality of intellectuals. In the eyes of some friends, there are some aspects of the construction of the law that do not conform to people's common sense. He respected the leader, but refused to interfere in academic affairs, and the academic activities he organized rarely asked the leader to give a speech. I once suggested that he should not adjust it, he said that academic conferences do not need to be polite, and that to run the conference well is to be responsible to the leadership. I later thought that this was not easy for both sides, and the provincial writers association's tolerance for the construction of the law was both a kind of demeanor and a kind of support. Jianfa has indeed run the magazine well, and in the atmosphere of the northeast's economic downturn, the Contemporary Writers Review is one of the highlands of Chinese academic journals. Jianfa has its own judgment on the writer's work, and is very cautious about the selection of the theory of works. If his familiar writer friend has a new one, he must also make judgments after reading them, rather than asking critics to write articles. Of course, it is impossible for the editor-in-chief of a magazine to have an accurate judgment on the works of all writers, and sometimes it is inevitable to make mistakes, but one of the experiences of the journal is that the editor-in-chief of a literary criticism magazine should be familiar with the works and make his own judgments. In the long-term extensive reading and thinking, the vision, education and insight of Jianfa have also expanded and deepened together with the journal, and it may be said that Jianfa is an academic editor or a critic in a broad sense. Jianfa successively wrote some articles, and later published "Thoughts and Thoughts in the Age of Dialogue" in Fudan University Press. The articles in the collection are long or short, but they all express the unique insights of Jianfa on ideological trends and works. In addition to these literary criticism texts, Jianfa spent a lot of time compiling the thirty-year anthology of contemporary writers' reviews and writers' materials such as "Speaking Mo Yan", "Saying Jia Pingwa" and "Speaking Yan Lianke".
Lin Jianfa and Wang Yao and Zhang Guangguang were in Yixing
Jianfa may be a person who was born to run a magazine. While editing the magazine Contemporary Writers Review, he was briefly invited to edit the literary magazine Western Chinese Literature, and after the founding of Soochow Academic, he was invited to serve as the first executive editor. After retiring from the post of editor-in-chief of the Contemporary Writers Review, he overcame the problem of illness and insisted on it for a period of time before resigning as the editor-in-chief of Dongwu Academic, and he felt that Dongwu Academic had taken shape and could put it down. In his decades of editorial career, he always wanted to run the best magazine in the magazine of jianfa, whether it was criticism, academic type, or literary creation type. It can be said that he basically realized his academic ambitions. After his deterioration, Jianfa's reading was not affected, but writing gradually became difficult. You can also write emails and text messages on your phone. When we can still call, we will contact every other day, and Jianfa will usually say what impression he has seen.
"Eastern Wu Academic" published a film
Over the years, Jianfa has been involved in the annual selection of literary works by several publishing houses, and is responsible for the selection of annual works of novellas and short stories. In an article many years ago, I called Jianfa's annual literary anthology "Lin Ben." Year after year, there may be dozens of anthologies compiled by Brother Jianfa, which have become his "annual literary rankings". In late December 2019, my sister-in-law called me and said that Jianfa had compiled the 2019 annual novella selection, and Jianfa asked you to write a preface. I knew that Jianfa could no longer speak, and could only type a few words on the computer or mobile phone to express my meaning. I smell it, and it's hard to calm down. Jianfa still expressed his faith in literature and his dedication in a unique way during his illness. At that time, it was already snowing in Shenyang, but the weather in Jiangnan was abnormal, suddenly warm as spring, and the seasons were out of order. I imagined that Jianfa, who was in a wheelchair, would not go out, and he listened to the sound of falling snow in his study. I made an appointment with Lian Ke, Xue Xin, and Ji Jin and booked a plane ticket, and after a while, we listened to the sound of falling snow or snow melting in the sun with Jianfa. Just after I finished writing the preface, I suddenly had a virus called "new crown". This time, it was exactly two years, when I was writing this article this morning, I suddenly received a WeChat message from my sister-in-law, which was a few photos of me and Mo Yan and Jianfa in Dalian in the summer of 2001. Look at the photos, we were so young then.
Wang Yao | "Folk Songs"
| 2021
Yangtze River Literary Review, No. 1, 2022
directory
Famous Editor Vision Lin Jianfa
Mo Yan | Brother Jianfa is all right
Jia Ping | Say Lin Jianfa
Yan Lianke | Sister-in-law and construction law
Chen Zhonghui | The meaning of Mo Yan - a tribute to Mr. Lin Jianfa
Chen Sihe | Bile liver to take care of the real brother - Lin Jianfa and his editorial style
Wang Yao | A personal imprint of a magazine
Zhang Xuexin | Brother Jianfa's "Heart"
Xie Youshun | I often think of Teacher Lin Jianfa
Famous triangular prism Yemi
Ye Mi | Look up
Chi Zijian | Miya Yemi
Li Denan | Mental Traces and Psychology in the Transition Period - Ye Mi Theory
Writer wide angle
Zhang Qinghua | The Question of Drama and Lyricism: The Two Dimensions of Fictional Narration
New Horizons in Literary History
Zhang Fugui | The Historical Evolution and Classical Understanding of New Chinese Poetry
Jingwen Dong | Apocalypse from Dust Settled
Chen Jun | On the subject field of chinese contemporary drama acceptance
Young Critics Forum
Fang Wei | The "excess" of language and the "supergram" of transformation anxiety- Reappraisal of "The Happy Life of poor Zhang Damin" also discusses the secularization of the 1990s
Wang Dongdong | The concept of yuan poetry in modern Chinese poetics
Writer's Work Theory
Liu Jun | Darkness, Local History, Realism/Symbolism: On Li Zishu's "Flowing Place"
West crossing | Intellectual Imagination in Gomeck's Poetry - One of Gomeck's Poetic Methodologies
Zang Qing | The Legacy of the Pioneers and the Cultivation of Style: On Bi Feiyu's Novel Creation
Literary scene
Li Jingze, Ah Lai and other | Ecology: Methods as Literature - Selected Speeches of the Forum on Ecological Literature and Natural Poetry
List of "20 Books/Departments of Literature in the Twentieth Decade of the New Century"