Are there any good masterpieces?

Born in 1927, originally from Zhejiang, China.

Graduated from Shanghai Academy of Fine Arts.

1982, settled in new york.

attempt

Random thoughts of Joan Meka

An episode of prose

Temporary judgment

Go where you are.

Malag project

Fish Li Zhiyan

Sympathy interrupt record

A few years ago, I watched Li Ao's Fall in Love with the Mountain and marveled at Li Ao's familiarity with China's historical allusions. In the 100,000-word "Love the Mountain", Li Ao held an exhibition of historical allusions through the method of an old man telling a story to a young woman. There is a word called "drop book bag", which can be used to describe Li Ao's writing style, while Li Ao's drop book bag is undoubtedly puffed up and has traces of selling.

Guangxi Normal University this year

The publishing house published a collection of essays called Reflection on Colombia. The author Mu Xin is little known, but his student Chen Danqing enjoys a high reputation. Last year's "The Backward Set" was very good. His admiration for the teacher, coupled with Chen Chencun's drinking, made people reach for the book with the ochre cover printed on it, so reading began.

Then, also think of Li Ao. Because in this collection of essays by Mu Xin, you can also see the skill of "dropping your schoolbag". However, compared with Li Ao's crazy "book-dropping bag", Mu Xin is meaningful. Take the essay "The Reflection of Colombia" as an example. Mu Xin talked about the afternoon walk. Through what he saw and heard during his walking, he aroused his understanding of history, people and the world. Mu Xin walked very leisurely. When his left leg is marching with ancient steps, his right foot is stepping on today's drum. When his left leg assumes a western posture, his right foot follows the footsteps of the East. But you can't see anything wrong with Mu Xin walking. He's not harmonious? One foot high and one foot low? No, not at all. On the contrary, it seems that he should walk like that. That kind of walk is a real walk, a wonderful walk, a leisurely walk, and an enviable walk. So when I think of Li Ao's "Come on, let me tell you a story. Once upon a time ... ",seems to be a bad state.

However, there is nothing wrong with the way Li Ao tells stories. Li Ao is a teacher of primary school students, and his "off calligraphy" is clumsy but easy to read. On the other hand, it seems that Mu Xin only wants to invite people at the same level to walk together. He seems to walk leisurely, but as readers, we have to make great efforts to keep up with him. When I have a reflection of Colombia in one hand and a dictionary in the other, I will keep looking up a word or its meaning. Reading has become a tiring thing. Without aesthetic feeling, I can't feel the meaning of leisure, or even the function of keeping fit. The difficulty of reading is like a stone in the way. You have to lift them one by one to keep going. Therefore, the reflection on the first reading of Columbia University is heavy, congested and slow.

But if you want to put it down after reading it once, in fact, you just did a groundbreaking job, just buried yourself in your work, and never thought that you could see the beautiful scenery when you looked up. You must read it again. This time, you will feel the beauty of walking. Think about it, you look up at the clouds in the sky, look down at the brocade scales swimming by the pool, whisper softly in your ear, and your chest is clean. What is this state! What an honor! Moreover, if you like, Mu Xin can also lead you to freely shuttle between East and West, ancient and contemporary, childhood and maturity. He can take you to Moganshan to enjoy the bamboo exhibition, read love letters in the spare room, and sit on the streets of Manhattan to listen to the drums of Lincoln Center. He just introduced you to Seven Sages of Bamboo Forest and Beauty Theory, and then turned around and pushed you to Rooted Wanderer Milan? In front of Kundera, * * * played "Two Shawna Ladders" ... You will sigh that Mu Xin knows so many people and knows so many things. His ability to slowly integrate these people and things is really high! Moreover, Mu Xin is such a person. If you are tired of walking with him, he will say to you in a friendly way-"Don't go tomorrow".

The collection of essays "The Reflection of Colombia" is divided into two parts. The first part is a collection of essays, which are really "essays". The next series describes the history, human feelings, customs and folk customs of Shanghai with the general name of Shanghai government. The first series is like an empty mountain and a new rain, and the second series is like a rain bath on a green hill. Mu Xin combines "Chinese style" and "world concept" in one furnace, forging a unique prose treasure. Chen Danqing said twenty years ago that a comprehensive evaluation of Mu Xin is far in the future. It's still a bit exaggerated to use this sentence now. Mu Xin, a unique artistic creation, has maintained its development trend, which will make him and his works get more and more comprehensive evaluation.

Colombian Reflection/Zhu/Guangxi Normal University Press, 2006, 1 Edition/Pricing: 22 yuan.

Mu Xin, his real name is Sun Pu. Born in Wuzhen, Tongxiang, Zhejiang, 1927. Graduated from the Western Painting Department of Shanghai Fine Arts Institute, he was the president of Hangzhou Painting Research Association, the chief designer of Shanghai Arts and Crafts Center, the secretary-general of Shanghai Arts and Crafts Association, the editor-in-chief of Beautifying Life, and the professor of aesthetic theory of Jiaotong University. 1982 moved to new york to engage in artistic and literary creation.

Main works:

Prose collection: Joan Meka's Capriccio, Essays, Impromptu Judgment, Journey of the Past, Malag Plan, Feast of Fish and Beauty, Interruption of Sympathy.

Poetry anthology: Three Spanish trees, Baron, my lust meets my heart. Novel: Windsor Cemetery, Windsor Cemetery Diary

How to treat Mu Xin in our literary field of vision?

Mu Xin's first collection of essays published in mainland China, Colombian Reflection, was finally published. This has been my wish for more than 20 years. Today, my wish came true.

I met Mr Mu Xin in new york, and I have been his student ever since. Over the past 24 years, I have witnessed Mr. Wang writing a large number of essays, novels, poems and essays. In the early 1990s, my friends and I listened to the course on the history of world literature taught by Mr. Wang for five years. Talking about my feelings after the course, I said: I can imagine not going abroad, but I can't imagine not knowing Mr. Mu Xin after going abroad.

Today, I am here to introduce Mr. Wang and his literature to you. I still feel as difficult as when I first met Mr. Wang more than 20 years ago. The difficulty is: How should we treat Mr. Mu Xin in our literary field of vision? What is his position in the new literature and even the broader cultural territory since the May 4th Movement? What does this position mean to us and literature?

In the early 1980s, the literature in the new period was just budding, the world literature was just getting started, and the memory of Chinese and foreign classic literature was just beginning to recover. In short, we just woke up from the long literary shock-today, China literature has changed for almost three generations, and its publication is unprecedented; Therefore, it is reasonable to say that we already know what literature is. China classical literature in the past 50 years, near 100 years or even earlier has been widely read, evaluated and studied by us. On our literary map, constellations of all sizes have already occupied their respective positions. Although the fate of China literature today is a topic of continuous discussion, everyone will agree that compared with 30 years ago, we bid farewell to the era of ignorance of literature.

But in this background, Mr. Mu Xin's name is not among them. I believe that in the decades before these days, except for a few mainland writers who have heard of him, most literary readers don't know the name, let alone read his books. On the timetable of China's contemporary literature, Mr. Mu Xin does not belong to any stage. From a spatial point of view, his intensive writing and publishing places are not at home. In short, in his motherland, he was not drowned because he was not recognized.

This is the difficulty of my narration: Mr. Mu Xin lived in the same era as us, but he appeared too late. How should I introduce him?

Mr Mu Xin is not a "new writer". His writing career lasted more than 60 years, and all his early works were lost. However, after rewriting in 1980s, Taiwan Province Province published more than ten anthologies for him. Some of his essays and novels have been translated into English, which has become a model reading material for the course of literary history in American universities, and as the only China writer, they have been included in the same textbook as Faulkner and Hemingway's works. Mr. Mu Xin has many loyal readers on the website of Literature Without Borders, which was initiated by professors from famous universities such as Harvard and Yale.

But Mr Mu Xin is not the so-called "old writer", although he will be 79 years old this year. Since the late 1970s, we have witnessed how the long-forgotten "old writers" were unearthed in China. This list includes Zhou Zuoren, Xu Zhimo, Shen Congwen, Qian Zhongshu, Zhang Ailing, Wang Zengqi, Fei Ming ... and even Gu Hongming, Chen, Liang Shuming, Qian Mu and so on. Mr Mu Xin is not on this list. He gained a belated reputation overseas in the 1980s, but the process of being recognized and read by mainland readers has just begun today.

So, in my ignorance, so far, among the Chinese writers who write in Chinese and foreign languages in our field of vision, I can't find another writer who has the same fate as Mr. Mu Xin for the time being. When I say this, I am not talking about the importance of Mr. Mu Xin, but the uniqueness, and this uniqueness means the importance of Mr. Mu Xin.

Keen people began to "discover" this "Robinson of literature" in the 1980s: As far as I know, the daughters of Acheng, He Liwei, Chen Zishan and Ba Jin first told stories about Mr. Mu Xin in the mainland; Chen Cun, a Shanghai writer, is the first person in the new century to input his articles word for word into the computer and publish them on the website. When he read "Fu on the Beach", he declared that "it is cold-blooded for me not to tell readers the news of Mr. Mu Xin, and it is a blasphemy to the beautiful people of China." He pointed out: "People who try to write in Chinese will have a measure of themselves if they read Mu Xin earlier." Because: "The wooden heart is the elevation of China characters."

In recent years, online readers, especially the younger generation, began to look forward to the appearance of Mr. Mu Xin. Shanghai young writers Yin Qingyi and Wang Shujin are one of them. These readers only realized his uniqueness and importance from extremely limited text reprints.

It is not that we are reading Mu Xin, but that he is reading us.

Now everyone can read Mr Mu Xin's book. But we may still encounter difficulties. Why? Because our generation has been deeply surrounded and immersed in our reading experience. I don't know if you agree: We often talk about a work, but seldom reflect on our reading-some people are amazed and full of praise when they first read Mr. Mu Xin, while others are unfamiliar and ignorant. I dare to briefly state this reading experience, that is, when we open Mr. Mu Xin's book, it is probably not that we are reading Mu Xin, but that he is reading us.

What is Mr Mu Xin reading? Read our "reading experience".

What is our "reading experience"? This is a complicated topic. I once said a few rude words (including myself) in an interview that were suspected of offending everyone. I mean, contemporary writers, even those in their sixties and seventies, can't see how much their language has to do with China tradition. As soon as most authors start writing, 1949 is followed by vernacular Chinese, and 1979 is followed by literary accent. If so, then this is the writing habit and reading experience of our generation.

Some scholars have summarized our culture into four traditions. First, the cultural tradition of the Qing Dynasty dating back to the pre-Qin period; Second, the May 4th tradition; Third, Yan 'an tradition; Fourth, the tradition of the Cultural Revolution. If we admit that "reading habit" also means "tradition", then I want to add a tradition, that is, the reading habit formed by various characters and texts in the past 20 years-the order of these five traditions is not parallel and can be chosen, but the process of gradually subverting and eating the last tradition with one tradition in the past 100 years. Is it possible to reverse retrogression? This is the reason why the so-called "Chinese studies education" has been debated endlessly in recent years, because before reaching the so-called "Chinese studies", we have to cross several "new" traditions that cannot be crossed.

Therefore, today we may admit that the classical tradition and the May 4th tradition have been lost in our knowledge and reading habits for two or three generations, and it is difficult to work. The third tradition, especially the fourth and fifth traditions, constitutes our habit of speaking, writing, reading, thinking and all-round criticism.

We should still remember what surprised us when we suddenly discovered that there were writers like Shen Congwen and Zhang Ailing in China more than 20 years ago. It's just another reading experience that we are not familiar with. This strange experience, which has been interrupted and forgotten for a long time, immediately conquered and shaken our reading experience-this process of conquest and shaking has to be combined with the new experience brought to us by western new literature (such as Kundera, Borges, magical realism, etc.) in the 1980s. Think about it, if our writing practice and literary outlook have changed in the past 30 years, it is precisely because of the changes in reading experience.

How to define Mu Xin's literary affiliation?

But I immediately want to announce Mr Mu Xin's "uniqueness". After reading his book, you will find that it is incomparable and inappropriate to compare Mr. Mu Xin with any of the above-mentioned drowned "old writers". There is nothing wrong with him, and the problem that the above five traditions have been swallowed up one after another simply does not exist. If the Zhou brothers in the May 4th Movement, Shen Congwen and Zhang Ailing in the 1930s and 1940s are defined as famous writers after the founding of the People's Republic of China, and they are classified into the 1950s, 1960s, 1980s or 1990s respectively, and then their literary views, times and writing positions are regulated accordingly, I believe they will not encounter much objection. But how do we define Mr. Mu Xin's literary affiliation?

Mr Mu Xin started writing in the 1940s and 1950s, and resumed intensive writing in the 1980s and 1990s. Compared horizontally, the domestic literary writing in the same period is not on the same latitude as him in any respect-the first article of this collection of essays, The Ninth Day of September, was written around 1985, but it gives us an illusion of "May 4th Movement", "Old School" and "China" in words, and looks at history with a kind of. If we look at We Can't Go Tomorrow and Columbia's Reflection again, in vulgar terms, they look unusually foreign, new and modern. I wonder if there is a similar chapter from the May 4th generation to us. As for "Shanghai Fu", I think all the friends who have read it will admit that not only Shanghai has never been written like this, but more importantly, we have encountered an unusually rich and skillful but completely unfamiliar style, which seems to have existed for a long time, but who has seen such a literary "species" in our writing ecology?

When I first read Mr. Zhou's works more than 20 years ago, my illusion was that he was juxtaposed with the May 4th generation, but later I found that even the literary field and writing realm constructed by the Zhou brothers were greatly surpassed by Mr. Zhou. It is both contradictory and true that Mr. Zhou may be one of the few literary writers in our time who completely connected the classical tradition of China with the May 4th tradition. At the same time, among the writers in the May 4th generation and the forties, we can't find a writer similar to Mr. Mu Xin-that's why I call Mr. Mu Xin a big anomaly, a "posthumous child" of the May 4th culture, and his relationship with the later traditions is a mutual abandonment. Acheng made a meaningful speech on this. He said: Mr. Mu Xin is actually "reciting" for the generation of May 4th literature.

I think this is why today's readers are very curious when they suddenly meet Mr. Mu Xin's literature, writing style, sentences and style: Who is he? How can there be such a writer? Our confusion is like finding a "literary UFO": why has it never appeared in our literary field of vision?