Wu Mingyi's literature walked to the flower bed to talk about the new novels about the epidemic, and the independent bookstore "said that there was such an art" stirred sparks on the ground.

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On April 3, 2019, writer Wu Mingyi posted an obituary saying goodbye to the social media software on Facebook: "there is no special reason (perhaps because there are too many reasons). After this article, this Facebook will not post any new articles and become ruins." We should no longer use any social software in the future. " Because there was no warning, it was like a thunder to many readers, expressing shock and regret one after another. There are hundreds of messages in this post, all expressing gratitude, reluctance and blessing to Wu Mingyi. Everyone's common regret is: where can we meet with the writer in the future?

Fortunately, Wu Mingyi left a glimmer of hope at the end of the farewell article: "in the future, with or without books, every year (starting from 2020) I will have five or six free speeches to independent bookstores (bookstores only have to pay for transportation. I don't interfere with whether the lecture is charged or not), talk about novel and prose creation, or my own recent reading and thinking, until no one comes to me as a small reward for the 'book' world."

This small return for the book has been queued up until 2023. Wu Mingyi wrote down the order of invitations from each bookstore and contacted the next bookstore after one activity was over. The writer practices the measurement of literature at his own pace. This path to an independent bookstore does not lead to any destination, the path is the destination.

Wu Mingyi met with independent bookstores and predestined readers to practice literature in his lifetime. (courtesy of Wu Mingyi) invitations from foreign publishers to create novels in Covid-19

After the first three lectures (cafe Bookstore, Food Book, theme "convection: the possibility of combining Literature with other Arts", Ubuntu Bookstore, theme "Book Travel: literary Festival I have been to" and small study "an author's Daily: self-exercise from Young to not Young"), Wu Mingyi came to the Bookstore "Theory of this Art" in Changhua Flower bed. Share two short stories that he recently accepted foreign invitations but will not publish in Taiwan.

One of the invitations comes from Restless Books in the United States. In the face of the Covid-19 storm, the publishing house invited writers from all over the world to write freely in response to the epidemic. The title of the collection, And We Came Outside and Saw the Stars Again, is taken from the last sentence of Dante's Divine Comedy: hell, which describes the beauty of heaven after the protagonist leaves hell.

Wu Mingyi said that before the theme of "epidemic," he thought of key words such as separation from life and death, alienation, the situation of the general environment, and the history of human life, and then looked back in his pocket for plots or fragments that already had a "sense of novel" and had the potential to develop into a novel, and wrote his later work, "The Descent."

The dusty memories of Wu Mingyi's childhood, "the monk crab dies every time he is raised" and "someone leading the monk crab shopping", are polished by the invitation manuscript on the theme of "epidemic" and become the torch that leads the novel forward. The protagonist of the novel is the father and daughter Ah Le, who specializes in the study of monk crabs. The father went to the United States to look for crabs and visit friends before the Covid-19 epidemic. After the epidemic spread, he was not only unable to return to Taiwan, but also contracted pneumonia. Ah Le, who stayed in Taiwan, was also quarantined because of pneumonia, but she dared not let her father know.

Wu Mingyi uses such a plot to construct a daily life distorted by the epidemic. Father and daughter are not only separated from each other, but both are isolated. The situation of the general environment rewrites the history of human life, and the wayward Hu Wei-Yu of fate is gently carried over by the writer, the more sad it is. Coupled with the fact that all kinds of crabs raised are unable to know who decides their fate, they have become the three axes that support this short story.

During the speech, Wu Mingyi also shared the skills of novel creation. For example, the monk crab is a "straight" social animal with a sense of marching when acting collectively. This hazy symbol can be represented as the intention of the novel, making the reader feel that some meaning seems to be conveyed in the plot.

Jenna Tang, the translator of "Down stairs", is translated as "The Descent" and included in the "And We Came Outside and Saw the Stars Again" collection. (photo taken from Amazon.com) invitation from the Museum of Art: a novel inspired by each other

The second invitation comes from the Art Museum of the Han Nefkens Foundation of the Netherlands in Barcelona, which collects and displays mainly audio-visual art. In order to celebrate their 20th anniversary, they selected 20 works by artists and invited 20 writers from all over the world to create 2,000-word literary works inspired by a particular work.

Wu Mingyi chose Vietnamese artist Thao Nguyen Phan. After showing her video work "Becoming Alluvium" during his speech, Wu Mingyi briefly described the film's three narratives based on the Mekong River: past life, present life, and mythology. The film is intertwined with images, works of art, animation, and other composite media. Wu Mingyi mentioned that all art is changing media and forms, and only the weapons of words remain unchanged, so it is of course difficult to face the challenge of qualitative change among readers.

From the film, Wu Mingyi feels the relationship between water and culture, poetry and the sadness of environmental changes. The novel "becoming an Alluvial Fan" of the same name is a story he has kept in his heart for a long time and can have a dialogue with the film. He said that many years ago, he took his students back to the river because he met a painter who held an exhibition in Hualien for shelter from the rain. He told him a lot about his life, and what attracted Wu Mingyi most was the story that she once opened a hotel in Hualien. Later, when the writer visited again, the painter seemed unwilling to talk about the past of peace, but instead talked about the experiences of other mountain rats and jade pickers who were difficult to tell the truth from the false.

Wu Mingyi's "becoming an Alluvial Fan" weaves the life of the heroine Yuzi in a misplaced sequence. After the hardship of affection and love, Wu Mingyi turned into a mountain mouse and jade picker. "she can carry away hundreds of kilograms of giant wood on her own, and has an almost magical judgment on stones." After that, Yuzi settled in Hotel Paloma Inn because "if you have money, you don't have to rely on men."

At the end of the golden age of peace, the 45-year-old returned to the mountain house and began to paint. Due to the limitation of the number of words in the novel, the writing is like taking an express train, suddenly sending Yuzi's life to the end. She brought 16 paintings of 16 streams in Hualien, as well as a huge piece of flat cypress drifting wood to the mouth of the sea and returned it to the earth. "because of her old age, she moved so slowly that the sea was dark when the transport was finished. There was no moon on that day. "

Similarly, Wu Mingyi also talked about the skills of novel creation. He said that because he interviewed painters, he was able to describe in detail the process of collecting driftwood in becoming an alluvial fan, and because of the artist's memory, "after sucking the milk of Ami women, Yuzi's facial features can seem as profound as aborigines" will become a subtle but heavy plot in the novel.

Wu Mingyi says that if you just want to sit in your study, you can't become a writer who can write for 20 years. He was not good at dealing with people himself, but in order to collect material, he had to cast a bad net in the bustling world and salvage the abstract novel fragments that touched him. Because "there is also the creativity and ability to transfer experience and thinking." I also want to climb a mountain and sail in the direction of the typhoon without hesitation, or go deep underground. " This passage, written on the last slide, made the deeply moved readers in the bookstore confirm that because of a writer like Wu Mingyi, literature has always been our favorite.