Chapter 451 Internal Perspective

After pouring water for them, Zhou Yan sat on the sofa and asked with a smile, "Teacher Su, where are you staying in Yanjing this time?"

"I live in the guest house of Yan Normal University, and other people don't know about it." Su Tong said.

"I know that most of the troops are at Hongsheng Hotel." Yu Hua said.

Zhou Yan nodded and asked, "Who else will be here today?"

"Another Han Shaogong will arrive today."

Zhou Yan nodded, "Okay, I'll go and tell the cafeteria later."

Today Zhou Yan did not plan to take them out to eat, but asked the cafeteria to prepare a table.

After the studio's canteen was moved to the new building, the space became much larger. In addition to the lobby, there were also two private rooms, each of which could accommodate up to a dozen people for meals.

Kong Chao and the others were good at cooking, and the ingredients in the canteen were very good, so Zhou Yan simply ran out without Su Tong.

"Teacher Su, let's fight in the cafeteria tonight." Zhou Yan said to Su Tong with a smile.

Su Tong smiled and waved her hand, "I didn't come to Yanjing just to eat. If I can see you, it doesn't matter what I eat. The cafeteria is also very good."

He didn't think much about it, thinking that Zhou Yan wanted to eat in the cafeteria and just had a simple meal.

Of course, what he said was not polite. Eating in the canteen was nothing to him.

Yu Hua and Shi Tiesheng smiled and said nothing. They knew that although they were in the cafeteria, it was definitely no worse than a restaurant outside.

The few of them chatted for a while, and then Yu Hua asked Su Tong, "Do you have any new works recently?"

Su Tong nodded, "There is a novel, and the first draft has been published."

Hearing what Su Tong said, Zhou Yan and the others became interested.

"A short story?" Yu Hua asked.

"Long story."

"Oh, it's a long story." Shi Tiesheng was a little surprised.

Su Tong actually writes very few novels. Over the years, he has only written one novel, which is his debut novel "Mi".

Apart from "Mi", they haven't released another feature in so many years.

And his short stories are very prolific, with several short stories published basically every year.

In this regard, he and Yu Hua are two completely different types of writers.

"What kind of story?" Yu Hua asked.

"A ghost story."

As soon as Su Tong told the ghost story, Zhou Yan remembered it. He should be talking about "Bodhisattva Man".

"Bodhisattva Man" is one of Su Tong's few full-length novels - of course, "few" is only relative to the number of his short stories. In fact, compared to the number of Yu Hua's novels, Su Tong's There are already a lot of novels, but Su Tong's novels were all written in the middle period. He rarely wrote novels in the early and late years.

This "Bodhisattva Man" tells the story from the perspective of an undead. The protagonist "I" is a soul, so Su Tong said this is a ghost story.

"A ghost story?" Yu Hua asked curiously, "What kind of ghost story is it? Is it scary?"

"It's not scary." Su Tong paused, then took out a pile of manuscripts from the backpack next to him, "Actually, I brought the manuscripts of the novel."

Shi Tiesheng looked surprised, "You came to Yanjing for a meeting, and you actually brought the manuscript with you?"

The first draft has just been completed and needs to be revised later. In fact, I don’t have to do much when I come to this meeting. Instead of wasting time, I might as well bring the manuscript with me and make some changes when I have time.

"Are all the manuscripts here?" Yu Hua asked. He saw that the manuscript in Su Tong's hand was not very thick and did not look like the length of a complete novel.

"This is the first third. After all, it's only five days, so that's all I brought."

"You should have brought them all." Yu Hua took the manuscript from Su Tong's hand unceremoniously, "There is only one third of it, and I don't even want to read it."

He said he didn't want to read it, but his actions were very honest. He had already opened the manuscript and started reading it carefully.

Su Tong pursed her lips and smiled, but said nothing. Once someone read the manuscript, everyone else fell into a tacit understanding that no need to say anything.

After a while, after Yu Hua read the first page, he handed the first page of the manuscript to Shi Tiesheng on his right.

Those who meet each other have a share, which is also their tacit understanding of each other.

Shi Tiesheng naturally took the page of manuscript and read it carefully.

After a while, Shi Tiesheng finished reading the page of the manuscript and handed it to Zhou Yan on his right.

After Zhou Yan read it, he returned the manuscript to Yu Hua and asked Yu Hua to put it behind him.

In this way, the three began a cycle.

It's just that this cycle is not very smooth, because Zhou Yan reads the manuscript very quickly. After he got the manuscript from Shi Tiesheng, he read it quickly. Before Shi Tiesheng finished reading the manuscript, he had to wait for Shi Tiesheng .

And Shi Tiesheng read the manuscript faster than Yu Hua. Shi Tiesheng had to wait for Yu Hua after reading the manuscript.

Finally, Shi Tiesheng suggested, "How about we change the direction and let Zhou Yan look at the front first. I will be second and Yu Hua will be third."

It is reasonable for Shi Tiesheng to take pictures like this, because in this way, people behind will no longer have to wait for the front.

Although Yu Hua was reluctant, he finally agreed.

After Zhou Yan got the manuscript, the communication between the three of them immediately became much smoother, and no one needed to wait for others to finish reading.

Although there was only one-third of the manuscript, it still contained tens of thousands of words, and it was still a manuscript, which greatly affected the reading speed, so it took Zhou Yan more than forty minutes to finish reading the manuscript.

However, after he read the manuscript, Shi Tiesheng still had a dozen pages of manuscript that he had not read, and Yu Hua also had a dozen pages of manuscript that he had not read.

Zhou Yan and Su Tong looked at each other and smiled. They raised their teacups and touched them, then quietly waited for Yu Hua and Shi Tiesheng to read the manuscript.

After another twenty minutes, Yu Hua finished reading the final manuscript.

Yu Hua carefully organized the manuscript and sent it back to Su Tong, "Interesting."

His evaluation was very brief, but Su Tong was quite satisfied. He knew Yu Hua's speaking style.

Shi Tiesheng followed up and said, "I have actually thought about a similar story before, about what I will see and hear after I die, but the angle is not as interesting as yours. The key is that I can't write it myself. "

"Why can't I continue writing?" Su Tong asked.

"Because I always think the worst of people." Shi Tiesheng frowned: "I haven't attended a funeral for a long time, but based on my previous experience of attending funerals, it is difficult for most people who attend funerals to maintain respect for the deceased. , not to mention real love. When I was twelve or thirteen years old, I attended the funeral of a clan uncle. There was a lot of crying at the scene, which was quite moving, but as soon as the specific part was over, the two brothers returned to their normal appearance. He yelled at the other person because of the ownership of the gift money. If there weren't too many people in the room, he would have wanted to hit him. "

Su Tong exclaimed, "Actually, I have seen many similar situations. In my novel, the living people are not that good either."

"Yes, but your writing is quite interesting."

Zhou Yan said, "Teacher Su's narrative perspective this time is quite interesting."

"Narrative perspective? How do you say it?" Yu Hua asked.

"This is a very special perspective narrative."

"Internal perspective...isn't this the first-person perspective?"

Zhou Yan nodded, "It is indeed a first-person perspective, and first-person narration, most of the time, is an internal perspective. The so-called internal perspective means that the narrator is equal to the character. Theoretically speaking, in works of first-person narration, the narrator is also It is a character in the story, and the narrative perspective moves inside the work, becoming an internal focal narrative.”

Hearing what Zhou Yan said, Yu Hua rolled his eyes, "Why do I feel like you are like those critics, making simple things so complicated? Isn't the first person the first person? Why do you still say it? Internal perspective?”

"Didn't I say that most of the time, first-person narration is from an internal perspective, but that doesn't mean that first-person narration is from an internal perspective. 'I' is not necessarily a character in the novel. For example, if I want to write a story now, The protagonist is my grandfather, and the first person is me. So, although this novel is in the first person, it is from an external perspective. The external perspective is smaller than that of the character, which means that what I can know is actually very limited, and I can only The things my grandfather told me, or the stories I heard about my grandfather from other places, cannot enter into the consciousness of any character.”

Yu Hua could probably understand what Zhou Yan meant, but he still felt that Zhou Yan made the narrative method too complicated.

"Is this division necessary?"

Zhou Yan smiled and said nothing, just picked up the tea cup and took a sip.

Su Tong said, "It is very necessary. If there is no such thing, how should we study literature?"

"What's the point of studying literature if it just complicates the problem?"

Su Tong waved his hand, "Literature research is not to teach people to write good novels, but to study literature itself. Research is historical and unified. I have always believed that the study of literature serves sociological research. Literature The study of literature is also part of sociological research. Changes in literature can express the changing direction of human history to a great extent, but I think literary research is necessary.”

This is a roundabout way of saying it, but it sounds a little bit reasonable.

After all, Su Tong graduated from the Chinese Department of Yan Normal University, and his attitude towards literary research was completely different from that of Yu Hua. He was also very able to understand what Zhou Yan just said.

This is not the first time that Zhou Yan has shown his knowledge in literary research. When they first met at Zhao Jiping's house, Zhou Yan made a critical review of "Wives and Concubines" and put forward a very interesting literary knowledge point "auditory space" .

At that time, Su Tong was surprised when Zhou Yan mentioned "auditory space". After all, most people didn't know about this kind of thing, and even Chinese students might not be able to understand it.

This time Zhou Yan talked about the narrative perspective again, which once again made Su Tong feel that Zhou Yan graduated from the Chinese Department rather than the Music Department.

"Tell me more about it, from the perspective of literary research." Yu Hua said to Zhou Yan.

Zhou Yan smiled, "Why I say that the internal perspective of this novel is very special is because 'I' has become a soul. Internal focus narrative has two characteristics. First, as a narrator and role, this character is not only a narrator but also a character. He can participate in the process of events and describe and evaluate the story to the readers without leaving the environment of the work. Secondly, his perspective as a narrator is limited by his character’s identity, and he cannot describe content that the character himself does not know, which results in the subjectivity of the narrative.”

“However, when we study various works with first-person narrative methods, we will find that the position of the narrative perspective is actually different in different works. This is usually because the narrator’s role in the story is different. Some narrators are the protagonists of the story, such as Lu Xun’s "Diary of a Madman", in which the one who is to be eaten is "I". Some are just minor characters, such as Lu Xun's "Hometown", the protagonist is Runtu, and "I" is just Runtu's friend."

“In Mr. Su's novel, "I" should be a major character, because the subsequent stories are closely related to "I". But because "I" ' behavior has no effect on the story being told, and will produce a sense of powerlessness and sadness. "

Yu Hua couldn't help but nod, "I have to say, what you said is really interesting. But there is one thing, you just said that literary research can't teach people to write novels, and I feel that it can. If someone listens to your theory just now, they can also try to write novels from this perspective and achieve the same effect. "

Zhou Yan shook his head, "In fact, it is unlikely. A good novelist can write a subtle narrative perspective without understanding these theories. For example, your "To Live" begins with the first person inside the first person, letting the story unfold in time. The space is divided into different levels at once. Before this, have you ever understood the narrative perspective? "

"No, I just feel more comfortable writing this way."

"That's right. When novelists are creating, they rarely follow theories, but rely more on feelings. Sometimes, reading too much theory will affect the creation. "

"But I don't think you are affected much. Your theory is very solid and your novels are well written. And Su Tong, he studied literary theory for several years at Yanshi University, and doesn't he write novels so well? "

Su Tong said, "What Zhou Yan said is right. I write novels because I started to create before I entered the Chinese Department. I have done it. And the students in our class are basically not engaged in the writing industry. For a period of time, because I learned too much theoretical knowledge, I felt that I couldn't write novels well. For example, when writing novels, I had to spend a long time thinking about which person to use, and then thinking about which character to focus on. The final result was that the novel was delayed. "

"If you say so, I can understand it. This is probably why those critics don't write novels. Maybe when they write novels, they don't think about constructing the world in their minds, but those literary theoretical knowledge. "

"Well, that's true." (End of this chapter)