Seeing a few people coming in from the outside chatting and laughing, Zhou Yan said with a smile, "It seems that the performance is quite satisfactory to you."
Yu Hua smiled and said, "Haha, Xiao Fang specially asked the orchestra to sing a whole song for us. Yue Lin was also there, and the conductor did it. Of course we are very satisfied."
"The main reason is that he is satisfied, because it satisfies his motive of showing off." Liu Zhenyun still did not forget to insult Yu Hua.
Zhou Yan smiled and said, "The band has not practiced this piece for a long time, and the overall presentation is not good enough. If you listen to it again after a year, the feeling will be different."
"Don't be too modest, it's already very good."
Entering the office, Yu Hua offered a circle of cigarettes, and then asked Zhou Yan, "Is Editor Zhang still here today?"
Zhou Yan glanced at Shi Tiesheng and knew that it was Shi Tiesheng who should have told them what happened in the morning.
"He said he would come in the morning, but I don't know exactly when. They have a meeting in the afternoon, and it's still a long way from there. It might be quite late."
Zhou Yan looked at his watch. It was only half past three, which was still early. Even if Zhang Shouren wanted to come, he would have to wait for a while.
When Zhang Shouren comes over tonight, he will definitely stay for dinner.
"I asked the cafeteria to arrange a table in the private room tonight. If you want to eat anything, you can order."
Yu Hua smiled and said, "I can do anything. I'm not picky about food."
Mo Yan and the others were also very polite, saying that Zhou Yan could just follow the arrangements.
"Okay, I'll let the cafeteria take care of the arrangements." Zhou Yan nodded and asked, "Are you going to continue playing cards?"
Yu Hua shook his head, "I won't play cards anymore."
"What are you going to do if you don't play cards?"
"We're going to read a book."
Zhou Yan nodded, "Okay, then I will take you to the reading room, but I told you that smoking is not allowed in the reading room. If you want to smoke, you have to go to the smoking area..."
"We're not going to the reading room."
"Not going to the reading room?" Zhou Yan was a little confused: "Do you want to read it here?"
There are also books in Zhou Yan's office, and there are quite a lot of them. Yu Hua and Shi Tiesheng came here before and often read in his office.
Sometimes, they would also go to the lounge downstairs to read. There were also many books in the lounge downstairs, but most of them were music books.
"I'm looking at it here, but not on that wall. We want to see..."
Yu Hua cast his eyes on the desk drawer, and Zhou Yan immediately understood that they wanted to read the manuscript.
Knowing what they wanted to do, Zhou Yan didn't hesitate, opened the drawer and took out the manuscript of "Don't Let Me Go".
Although it is not finished, the manuscript is quite thick, with two to three hundred pages.
Seeing Zhou Yan take out the manuscript, Yu Hua stepped forward and took it.
After getting the manuscript, he didn't care about anyone else and sat down on the sofa, ready to start reading.
Shi Tiesheng asked anxiously, "Why don't you care about us?"
"I'm not ignoring you. I'll look at it first and then show you. Everyone takes turns."
Shi Tiesheng disagreed, "No, you read the manuscript too slowly. Letting you read it first will slow down the progress, so let me read it first."
Liu Zhenyun immediately raised his hand, "Although I am not very fast at writing manuscripts, I am very fast at reading them. Let me read them first."
Not to be outdone, Mo Yan said, "Not only do I write the manuscript quickly, but I also read it faster. Let me read it first."
"Let's do this, let's draw lots." Yu Hua directly took out A234 from the table and looked at the four cards for everyone to touch.
The final results were Mo Yan first, Shi Tiesheng second, Liu Zhenyun third, and Yu Hua himself fourth.
Seeing that he was in fourth place, Yu Hua was a little reluctant. Just as he was about to say something, Mo Yan directly grabbed the manuscript in his hand, "Comrade Yu Hua, you have to be willing to accept defeat."
"Yes, the brand is not good, but the character must be preserved." Liu Zhenyun followed up with a stab.
Yu Hua pouted, "Look, I'm going to make some tea."
"Well, make some for me too," Mo Yan said.
……
After Mo Yan got the manuscript, he quickly read it.
"My name is Yang Kebei, I am thirty-one years old, and I have been a caregiver for eleven years..."
Probably influenced by Latin American literature, novels in recent years often have similar beginnings.
For example, the first sentence in Yu Hua's "To Live" is "When I was ten years younger than I am now, I got an idle career and went to the countryside to collect folk songs."
When some people see the beginning of "Alive" and see the identity setting of "I", they will think of Gu Hua's novel "Sister Village" published in "Harvest" in 1982.
The "I" in "Sister Village" is also a commissioner who goes to mountain villages to collect folk songs and polls.
The first sentence in "Sister's Village" is: When I walked into Sister's Village, the sun had already fallen into the embrace of the mountains.
It can be seen from this that in the early 1980s, domestic literature had been influenced by Latin American literature and European and American literature, but by the late 1980s and early 1990s, these influences may have been more profound.
Seeing such a beginning, Mo Yan subconsciously thought that this novel might be narrating events in the past, that is, this novel might use flashbacks.
Mo Yan's guess was correct, the rest of the story did unfold in flashback.
It's just that it's different from the general flashback method. The narrative perspective goes back and forth between several time periods. "I" talk about the present things, the past things, and the past things in the past.
Seeing this narrative method, Mo Yan thought of Marcel Proust's novels, such as the world-famous "In Search of Lost Time".
In other words, Zhou Yan's novel feels a bit like a stream of consciousness, and the development of the story relies entirely on memories.
When Liu Zhenyun read this novel, he had more things on his mind than Mo Yan, because he himself is a Chinese major.
In terms of literary criticism, he is more professional than the few people sitting here.
The West believes that memory is a psychological mechanism, and recall is not only a reproduction of past experiences, but also an aesthetic mechanism with far-reaching poetic origins and aesthetic character.
Plato once wrote in "The Republic" that if the soul can recall the knowledge of virtue and other knowledge it once had, then we need not be surprised.
Heidegger regarded memory as the source of poetry. The mother of art, such as comedy, music, dance and poetry, all came from the gestation of the goddess of memory.
The thing he was holding in his hand was obviously not an ordinary science fiction novel. In fact, he didn't even see where science fiction was in the first few pages.
But as "my" memories go back more and more and farther and farther, the story begins to really unfold.
At the beginning of the novel, "I" seems to throw out an answer.
"I" was once a student of "Haier Xiangshe". The students of "Haier Xiangshe" are all special, but why they are special was not explained at the beginning.
So the answer "I" throws out is vague.
Setting up suspense is the basic skill of a writer, and there is nothing surprising about this. However, the suspense setting in this novel is more like the suspense in "A Murder Case That Was Announced in Advance."
From the beginning, tell you the result.
However, the result of Zhou Yan's novel is not as clear as that in "A Murder Case that was Publicized in advance".
What is a donor?
What kind of place is Haier Xiangshe?
In order to figure out these things, they had to follow "my" memory to explore. When reading this novel, Liu Zhenyun was a little surprised at first, because this novel was different from Zhou Yan's "Tree Hole" and "Death of the Mayor".
But then he suddenly thought of "The Knife in Clear Water" and thought that this might be Zhou Yan's style.
The narrative style in "Knife in Clear Water" shows signs of this.
Mo Yan read the manuscript very quickly. It only took him more than an hour to read the two to three hundred page manuscript.
After reading the manuscript on hand, Mo Yan looked at Zhou Yan who was working hard and asked, "Is there nothing more below?"
Zhou Yan raised his head and smiled, "You have finished reading."
"Well, I've finished reading it. Your manuscript is very neat and doesn't look like it took much effort."
Zhou Yan's manuscript is indeed very neat. First, his handwriting is very neat and not very sloppy. Second, there are not many places for corrections in the middle of the manuscript. Even if there are places for corrections, he leaves enough space so that they will not be sloppy. Because the space was small, it was dark.
"The novel is definitely not finished yet, but there are only so many manuscripts."
"Ah?" Mo Yan looked surprised. Shi Tiesheng had not told them that Zhou Yan's novel was not finished.
"Why didn't you write? Did you encounter any problems while writing?"
Different writers have different ways of creating.
Some writers, before writing, like to make a very detailed outline before they start writing.
Some writers have a complete story in their mind and then write it down.
There are also some writers who don’t have a specific story in mind at all, but just have a rough idea and start writing. As for the story, they just think about it while writing.
Mo Yan was not familiar with Zhou Yan and did not understand his writing style.
If Zhou Yan belongs to the third type, it may be that he hasn't thought about how to write it later.
Zhou Yan smiled and said, "Actually, I didn't encounter any difficulties. On the one hand, it was because I was a little busy and didn't have time to write. On the other hand, it was because the enthusiasm for writing this story at the beginning gradually faded away."
Mo Yan couldn't understand Zhou Yan's explanation at all.
If you're busy, wouldn't it be enough to work overtime at night?
If he has a novel to be completed, he can put down everything he is doing and concentrate on writing the novel.
And in his opinion, Zhou Yan was not so busy that he had no time to write this novel.
For example, yesterday, they were still chatting together, and this morning too.
Even when they were playing cards, Zhou Yan was also watching. Couldn't this time be used for writing?
As for the second reason, he couldn't understand it even more.
Tens of thousands of words have already been written on this novel. Did you stop writing just because your enthusiasm has waned? So what does all this that has been written count, and what should I do? Has it been left in a drawer to gather dust?
And in his opinion, the novel was clearly well written.
If it is so well written, why does the enthusiasm fade?
Also, since the manuscript has not been finished, what kind of manuscript did Zhang Shouren come over to read?
"Are you still ready to write?"
"It depends."
Shi Tiesheng, who was immersed in reading the manuscript over there, said, "It doesn't matter the situation, it must be written. No matter how busy you are, this manuscript must be finished."
Hearing Shi Tiesheng's words, Mo Yan laughed, "Yes, you have to finish the novel, otherwise wouldn't you have tricked the rest of us? How much space is left in the future?"
Zhou Yan thought for a while and said, "There are about two-thirds left."
"There are so many more?" Mo Yan was a little surprised.
The manuscripts he has read are at least 50,000 words, and it is estimated that there are 60,000 to 70,000 words. If two-thirds are left, the whole article will be about 200,000 words.
A novel of 200,000 words is not very long. After all, "Big Breasts and Wide Butts" he published last year had 500,000 to 600,000 words.
But he didn't expect that there were so many left.
There are still hundreds of thousands of words left. When will this be written?
Mainly because Mo Yan didn't understand Zhou Yan's writing speed. If Zhou Yan's writing speed was the same as Yu Hua's, it would probably take another year to complete the novel.
If Zhou Yan was as fast as him, it would be faster.
After all, he wrote the 500,000 words of "Big Breasts and Wide Hips" in just over 80 days, less than three months, and he wrote an average of 7,000 words a day.
Mo Yan actually wanted to ask about the story behind the novel, but he resisted asking.
Then he sighed, "I should have known better."
Hearing him sigh, Zhou Yan stood up with a smile, ready to add some water to his cup.
But as soon as Zhou Yan got up, there was a knock on the office door.
"Come in."
The door opened, and Xiao Li at the front desk said with a smile, "Boss, Mr. Zhang is looking for you."
Zhou Yan had already seen Zhang Shouren standing next to Xiao Li. He stepped forward with a smile, "Editor Zhang, please come in."
Upon hearing Zhang Shouren's arrival, Liu Zhenyun and Yu Hua, who were reading the manuscript, also stood up and greeted him.
Zhang Shouren thought that Yu Hua and Shi Tiesheng were here, but he didn't expect that Mo Yan and Liu Zhenyun were also here.
Seeing the manuscript in their hands, Zhang Shouren's eyes lit up, "Could this be..."
Shi Tiesheng smiled and said, "It's Zhou Yan's manuscript."
"Are you already watching?"
Mo Yan smiled and said, "I've finished reading it."
"How..."
Zhang Shouren almost asked how Mo Yan was doing, but he held it back.
Since he is already here, there is no need to ask others about the manuscript, he can just read it himself.
"Come, come, show me the manuscript you have read."
Yu Hua was the last one in line, and he had all the manuscripts he had read, so he handed all the manuscripts in his hand to Zhang Shouren.
Zhang Shouren weighed it up, said nothing, found a place and started looking.
Zhou Yan didn't expect Zhang Shouren to be so anxious. He originally wanted to exchange a few words with Zhang Shouren.
Seeing that Zhang Shouren had already sat down, Zhou Yan went to pour him a cup of tea and added water to the others
After about half an hour, Yu Hua also finished reading all the manuscripts and ran to the side to chat.
Several people gave full approval to this half of the novel. Only Yu Hua mentioned one shortcoming: "It's a little wordy."
Hearing Yu Hua's wordiness, Shi Tiesheng disagreed, "This way of narrating is to be wordy. It combines the state of people looking back on the past, and the perspective is from a woman, which is more normal."
Liu Zhenyun nodded and said, "It's not too long-winded, but it describes more details, and many places are trivial daily life. For an impatient person like you, it's a bit long-winded."
Mo Yan smiled and said, "Isn't your "The Story of Xu Sanguan Selling Blood" verbose? You write one thing over and over again."
"That's different." Yu Hua paused, "I still think the writing is a bit verbose, but that doesn't stop it from being a very good novel." (End of Chapter)