High Life

品 18 #8 2017 年 5 月 HIGH LIFE #8 May 2017 19 余先生在回答之前略作思考，“我的早年生活中，父亲曾 经有一段时间是医院里的外科医生。当时单位跟住家是在一起 的。我一直在抱怨父亲，因为我们家就在太平间的对面。而且 我发现，过了凌晨一两点钟以后死亡率要高，那个时候经常会 有哭声，几乎一个礼拜里面，你要在梦中被他们哭醒三四次， 毫不夸张。” 直至今日，失眠仍是余华的一个困扰。他称他只用两成的 时间阅读和写作，另有四成的时间是在努力让自己睡着。他承 认，自己不是一个勤奋的作家。 他解释说，“每个人对于生活的态度不一样，而这与创作 量是很有关系的。此外，我为懒惰的作家找了另一个理由，即 使人类历史上再伟大的作家，最后被人读的书也就一两本。比 如马尔克斯可能就是《百年孤独》，或许还有一两本其他的。 要是读他全部的书，那就是研究者了。假如你写得过多，你写 50 本书的话，连研究者都不会读完的。” 除了“懒惰”，余华小说“低产”的另一个原因是，对写 Casually dressed and fashionably sporting a pair of black Tom Ford sneakers with white soles, he sits down after an initial hello andwe begin by talking about his childhood during the Cultural Revolution, whichwas anything but ordinary. “Death is an element that occurs frequently in your work and scenes in your novels can be very bloody, sometimes violent,” I observe. “How do you see life and the daily struggles humans have to deal with?” Yu thinks briefly before replying, “During a period of my early life, my father was a surgeon who worked inside a hospital. At that time in China, people’s homes were located exactly where they worked. There was no separation between workplace and home. I complained a lot to my father because our home was right in front of the morgue. For some reason, the percentage of people passing away after 2am was very high. The sound of crying (from the deceased’s loved ones) was 作品质的坚持。他指出，如果在早期的作品中建立了一定的标 准，那么在之后的每部作品中，就必须延续或超越这个水准。 在文学界，余华的《活着》被誉为当代经典，但在他自己看 来，迄今最重要的作品是《兄弟》，讲述江南小镇两兄弟经历 剧烈的社会变革和经济改革的过程 。 “我之前还是用先锋文学的写作方式在写，到了《活着》 的时候，发现这种方式写不下去了，后来我换成以主人公第一 人称叙事的写法才很顺利地写完。但因为福贵是一个只有一点 点文化的农民，所以他来讲述自己的故事时，只能用最直白、 最简单的语言来写，因此这本书虽然内容沉重，却是一本人人 都能很容易看完的书。 他指出，“将来我写的书，悲观来看，能超过《活着》的 也很难，但作为代表作，我还是会选《兄弟》，因为这部作品 更能体现出我自己所经历的那两个时代，一个是文革，一个是 现在的时代。李光头、宋钢（《兄弟》的主人公），某种程度 上都有我自己的经历在。” quite significant. In aweek, you could easily bewoken up three to four times during the night. This is not an exaggeration.” To this day, insomnia remains an issue for Yu. He says he spends 20 percent of his time reading and writing and another 40 percent trying to fall asleep. He admits he is not a hardworking writer, pointing out that even for the greatest writers in the history of mankind, readers are only presented with one or two masterpieces. “Every individual has a different attitude towards life and this determines the level of productivity,” he ex- plains. “I have an excuse for lazy writers. In Gabriel García Márquez’s case for example, most people read One Hundred Years of Solitude and maybe one or two more of his works. If someone reads all of his books, that person has to be a research academic. If you write 50 books, even the academics would not read them all.”