介绍:
If a novel is the dancing queen, then essay collection is most likely the wallflower in today's literary scene. Due to its succinct, desultory and personalized nature, it is so easy for haughty and impatient readers to skim through this particular genre.
Yet for the multi-award winning author A Yi, essays occupy a significant position in his mind.
"For me, essay is a casual and openminded literary form, much like the art of charcoal drawings. My inspirations come from some smattering of thoughts while traveling on the roads, interrupted dreams and story ideas that randomly comes to mind. These writings have been largely influenced by Franz Kafka, whose stories are short yet ingenious. To a certain extent, Kafka liberated me. When I failed to publish my works, he taught me to care less, since writing is a personal matter. So although novels make my name, I still prefer essays over fictions. "
Born in a humble and remote county of east China's Jiangxi province, A Yi is considered a late bloomer in the Chinese literature scene, since he spent years staggering along his career path as a rural policeman, sports journalist and editor. His blog entries have become the outlet of emotion and 156 of them have been included in his latest publication "Ins and Outs", or in Chinese, "Yang Guang Meng Lie, Wan Wu Xian Xing".
"I borrow the editing mode of a dictionary in this book. Every article is classified under a certain term, which showcases my personal interpretations of various words. Compared with traditional glossaries, they are quite different, since I explain through proses, micro-narratives and fictions. "
In this collection, subjects range from relationship to control issues, styles stretch from movie review to poetry, while the number of words in each article could jump from one sentence to thirteen pages. At first glance, the whole book appears to be a confusing and wacky hodgepodge of ideas. But the more you read, the easier it is to be attracted to the author's outlook. From life's trials, the undercurrents lurking in the society, to human's inexorable crawl towards death, no matter how weighty the topic is, every piece is delivered in a thought-provoking and deadpan manner, seasoned with restrained humor and sympathy.
"(Due to my previous life experience), many mistake me as an angry man. Actually, I don't express anger on paper; instead, I tend to demonstrate kindness and honesty. In other words, I don't like using, impelling, censuring or irritating my readers. I respect their wisdom and understandings. "
Filtered through A Yi's imaginative and polymath words, there is nothing mawkish or sermonic. Spiced with an allegorical and philosophical touch, the collection examines some of the grandest narratives, such as individual sanctity, freedom and identity, with sheer candor and sharpness of a sensitive mind.
More than that, the writer is not shy of dissecting himself. In one of the stories named "Barrenland", he shares his last days as a policeman and his inferiority and shame with no mercy.
"I am not afraid of revealing myself. As we all die one day, it is unnecessary to restrain or protect today's feelings. I am the kind of person who wants to leave something behind. Thus I will try my best to stay true to everyone through my writings."
Coming to the end of the book, sharp readers may recognize it as a miscellany of A Yi's inspirations over the years. Compared with his crime fictions,some pieces might be too fragmented, but if you want to know how a writer comes into being, "Ins and Outs" is still a book worth reading.
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