"Write through the blur of youth life and the sharpness of adult life", in the introduction to the young writer Li Lu's new novel collection "The Chrysalis Incident of 1997", this sentence may represent the time direction of the six stories in this novel collection, or people's eternal time state, "You can't go back to the past, but the past, present and future always exist at the same time." "What Chestnut Deer wants to write is the truth of time and self. Recently, the book launch ceremony of the new novel collection was held at the Fuzhou Road store of Shanghai Book City, where writer Cai Jun, young critic Wu Hao and Li Lu explored childhood, growth, breakthrough, the world and literary writing on top of it.
Published by Jiangsu Phoenix Literature and Art Publishing House, "The Chrysalis Incident of 1997" is a collection of six short and medium-length stories written by Li Lu between 2020 and 2023, focusing on topics such as the family around the millennium, the growth of teenagers and girls, the history and future of modern individuals, and the connection between mental space and the universe.
Map of the event site
Li Lu said that the novel collection was originally intended to be titled "Fourth Person", that is, the fourth work in the novel collection. The concept comes from the Polish writer Tokarczuk's Nobel Prize-winning speech for literature, "The mysterious, tender image of the narrator is incredible and significant." He forms a standpoint, providing an angle from which anything can be seen. This perspective of all things means acknowledging the ultimate fact that all things that exist will be connected to each other as a whole, even if the connections between them are unknown. She then came up with the idea of creating a collection of short and medium stories, exploring different aspects of fiction and novel genres, looking for such a voice. The fourth person "This narrator appears in a different identity and appearance in each of her works. They have to do with the inner voice, and what they are, "cannot be seen, only walk under its shadow, only hear echoes, see ripples, guess its image." ”
In Lilu's view, there are as many "I" images as there are others, and when their eyes are reflected on her, it is possible for her to continue to write. "In looking back again and again, history is constantly being rewoven by the current me. That's what I did with this collection of short stories: to go beyond the boundaries of my own self and to create a more nuanced and complex version of myself by writing fiction and putting myself in the shoes of others. ”
Chestnut Deer "The Chrysalis Incident of 1997"
The perception of Chestnut Deer is often inseparable from her life. She has a unique stargazing experience, about the universe, about herself, about the inextricable and subtle connections that have been inextricably linked, and which also adds a veil to her writing. Some people say that the story of Chestnut Deer has a dreamlike feeling, and Wu Hao believes that she is good at transformation and transformation, leaving all kinds of metaphors after throwing out piles of concepts. For example, the metaphor of "fog" in her novel "Calling Mirage" is more like her "chrysalis" in this collection of novels. "In "The Chrysalis Incident of 1997", the six stories are six containers. In these stories, through the inquisitive eyes of the protagonists, we can obtain traces of what was once left in the world. Concepts still emerge from time to time, but the driving force for the development of the story rises from concept to action, and the element of knowledge is inserted into the 'arrow' of time under the long-term tempering and refinement of the chestnut deer - 'they' begin to move, and the story begins to grow itself. The sense of fantasy is the gift of the early creation of the chestnut deer, and the next stage of writing is the entanglement with the 'fog' and 'dream' that permeates the story. All these spiritual details are confined in the 'chrysalis', brewing butterfly changes. ”
Whether it is "dream", "fog", or "chrysalis", they are indeed important references in Lilu's writing. For example, "dreams", she explained, "Dreams are children's literature. The vague, incomprehensible, novel, and terrifying worlds are all stored in a small dream and become another reality. And "Chrysalis" has to be reminiscent of her novella "Empty Chrysalis", which won the 2022 People's Literature Award Newcomer Award and was also included in this novel collection. It carries the memories of the chestnut deer about childhood, this "chrysalis" devours dreams and memories, "It is an all-encompassing existence, it stores all human thoughts, it feels our pain, it knows that we are always looking for love and meaning." ”
Cai Jun used "crossing" to refer to himself and Lilu's writing process, "Looking back on the process of our literary creation, in fact, we are going through the process of growing up one after another, in fact, we are also spending time through different islands in our own creation, just like the Odyssey wandering on the Mediterranean Sea is an adventure, any change in literary creation is an important adventure, because there are often more unsuccessful than successful, different styles, different themes, different ways of writing, Every change requires a lot of deep thinking and may eventually fail. Returning to the collection of novels "The Chrysalis Incident of 1997", we can find countless ideas about growing up, thinking about childhood, time, and space through this process. Under the gentle surface, the dark tide surges, and it can be seen that the chestnut deer is writing with consciousness, and this change is a manifestation of maturity. ”
Writing is also a process in which a writer constantly recognizes himself and the outside world. Lilu has his own views on this, "In fact, you can't recognize a person's wholeness, and we ourselves can't see our own whole, you need to introspect again and again in your past life, and ask yourself to be able to gradually wake up." This state allows me not to get lost in the emotional years, and I use the introspective part to open a channel for the future novel: it is a state of breakthrough, like the pieces of a puzzle put together, I am slowly building my past, and this past is also growing. In the process of building, Chestnut also discovered the part of her escape, which may be what makes "The Chrysalis Incident of 1997" different from all her previous novels, "I saw things that I had obscured and that had never been spoken. ”
This is also what Cai Jun said, "How to deal with the relationship with the world, how to realize the relationship between ourselves and the world, is also the reason why we write." From the perspective of the universe, individuals are so small, but perhaps even if we can change ourselves with words and works, let alone change more people, it is meaningful. ”
New Media Editor: He Jing
Picture: Provided by the organizer and photographed
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