The Talent Doesn't Dry Up

Zhang: The alienating nature of your works, their impermeability, nearly closed a literary era and started a new age of narration. From early on you were pursuing a special, difficult kind of writing. Is it because you purposely want to make the reader work?

Yu: Just as you say, when I started writing, that I didn't win the national literary prize for three years actually saved my literary career. When someone first starts off on a trip, they can't grasp themself. Giving them setbacks at that point is good, but you can't finish them off with one blow. I have a writing habit where I essentially refuse to write fiction without hardship. If a place has hardship, I will write about it and with zest and enthusiasm. Speaking of alienation in the 80's, you could say that nominally, I was actually seeking out difficulty. "To Live" was the result of that exploration, and was written in the simplest language possible. I virtually didn't use any idiomatic expressions. From this I slowly learned the true significance of the "narrative challenge". In "Brothers", I wrote more freely, essentially not needing to consider this because "Brothers" is "our" narration. It is not a specific, concrete "me". In it there may be beggars, local politicians, intellectuals, and perhaps very vulgar people. Only in using the narration of "us" can that resulting revelry be realized. Ten years ago how could I dare use so much ink to write about a pageant of virgins?

Zhang: Violence and punishment are among the core of your early fiction. In "A Kind of Reality" for example, ther exists that kind of continuous, cyclical, violence that even happens amongst relatives. From where did you come out with this focus-- is it based on a judgment and criticism of history? Or is it a prosecution of universal, general elements of humanity?

Yu: Hong Zhigang helped me calculate how many have died, how many have been tortured... I can't remember the exact numbers now, but I didn't think much of it then. Oftentimes, something's significance only becomes apparent after it is repeatedly explained by others. "Violence and punishment" is tied to the Cultural Revolution. I personally experienced the Cultural Revolution. At age seven and eight I had already seen people beaten to death. That chaos and violence in history lasted from 1967 to 1969.

Zhang: That is the first memory for people of our generation.