在创建我的文学领地“高密东北乡”的过程中，美国的威廉·福克纳和哥伦比亚的加西亚·马尔克斯给了我重要启发。我对他们的阅读并不认真，但他们开天辟地的豪迈精神激励了我，使我明白了一个作家必须要有一块属于自己的地方。一个人在日常生活中应该谦卑退让，但在文学创作中，必须颐指气使，独断专行。我追随在这两位大师身后两年，即意识到，必须尽快地逃离他们，我在一篇文章中写道：他们是两座灼热的火炉，而我是冰块，如果离他们太近，会被他们蒸发掉。根据我的体会，一个作家之所以会受到某一位作家的影响，其根本是因为影响者和被影响者灵魂深处的相似之处。正所谓“心有灵犀一点通”。所以，尽管我没有很好地去读他们的书，但只读过几页，我就明白了他们干了什么，也明白了他们是怎样干的，随即我也就明白了我该干什么和我该怎样干。
what i should do was simplicity itself: write my own stories in my own way. my way was that of the marketplace storyteller, with which i was so familiar, the way my grandfather and my grandmother and other village old-timers told stories. in all candor, i never gave a thought to audience when i was telling my stories; perhaps my audience was made up of people like my mother, and perhaps it was only me. the early stories were
narrations of my personal experience: the boy who received a whipping in \the boy who never spoke in \i had actually done something bad enough to receive a whipping from my father, and i had actually worked the bellows for a blacksmith on a bridge site. naturally, personal experience cannot be turned into fiction exactly as it happened, no matter how unique that might be. fiction has to be fictional, has to be imaginative. to many of my friends, \very best story; i have no opinion one way or the other. what i can say is, \symbolic and more profoundly meaningful than any other story i've written. that dark-skinned boy with the superhuman ability to suffer and a superhuman degree of sensitivity represents the soul of my entire fictional output. not one of all the fictional characters i've created since then is as close to my soul as he is. or put a different way, among all the characters a writer creates, there is always one that stands above all the others. for me, that laconic boy is the one. though he says nothing, he leads the way
for all the others, in all their variety, performing freely on the northeast gaomi township stage. 我该干的事情其实很简单，那就是用自己的方式，讲自己的故事。我的方式，就是我所熟知的集市说书人的方式，就是我的爷爷奶奶、村里的老人们讲故事的方式。坦率地说，讲述的时候，我没有想到谁会是我的听众，也许我的听众就是那些如我母亲一样的人，也许我的听众就是我自己，我自己的故事，起初就是我的亲身经历，譬如《枯河》中那个遭受痛打的孩子，譬如《透明的红萝卜》中那个自始至终一言不发的孩子。我的确曾因为干过一件错事而受到过父亲的痛打，我也的确曾在桥梁工地上为铁匠师傅拉过风箱。当然，个人的经历无论多么奇特也不可能原封不动地写进小说，小说必须虚构，必须想象。很多朋友说《透明的红萝卜》是我最好的小说，对此我不反驳，也不认同，但我认为《透明的红萝卜》是我的作品中最有象征性、最意味深长的一部。那个浑身漆黑、具有超人的忍受痛苦的能力和超人的感受能力的孩子，是我全部小说的灵魂，尽管在后来的小说里，我写了很多的人物，但没有一个人物，比他更贴近我的灵魂。或者可以说，一个作家所塑造的若干人物中，总有一个领头的，这个沉默的孩子就是一个领头的，他一言不发，但却有力地领导着形形色色的人物，在高密东北乡这个舞台上，尽情地表演。
a person can experience only so much, and once you have exhausted your own stories, you must tell the stories of others. and so, out of the depths of my memories, like conscripted soldiers, rose stories of family members, of fellow villagers, and of long-dead ancestors i learned of from the mouths of old-timers. they waited expectantly for me to tell their stories. my grandfather and grandmother, my father and mother, my brothers and sisters, my aunts and uncles, my wife and my daughter have all appeared in my stories. even unrelated residents of northeast gaomi township have made cameo appearances. of course they have undergone literary modification to transform them into larger-than-life fictional aunt of mine is the central character of my latest novel, frogs. the announcement of the nobel prize sent journalists swarming to her home with interview requests. at first, she was patiently accommodating, but she soon had to escape their attentions by fleeing to her son's home in the provincial capital. i don't deny that she was my model in writing frogs, but the differences between her and the fictional aunt are extensive. the fictional
aunt is arrogant and domineering, in places virtually thuggish, while my real aunt is kind and gentle, the classic caring wife and loving mother. my real aunt's golden years have been happy and fulfilling; her fictional counterpart suffers insomnia in her late years as a result of spiritual torment, and walks the nights like a specter, wearing a dark robe. i am grateful to my real aunt for not being angry with me for how i changed her in the novel. i also greatly respect her wisdom in comprehending the complex relationship between fictional characters and real people.
自己的故事总是有限的，讲完了自己的故事，就必须讲他人的故事。于是，我的亲人们的故事，我的村人们的故事，以及我从老人们口中听到过的祖先们的故事，就像听到集合令的士兵一样，从我的记忆深处涌出来。他们用期盼的目光看着我，等待着我去写他们。我的爷爷、奶奶、父亲、母亲、哥哥、姐姐、姑姑、叔叔、妻子、女儿，都在我的作品里出现过，还有很多的我们高密东北乡的乡亲，也都在我的小说里露过面。当然，我对他们，都进行了文学化的处理，使他们超越了他们自身，成为文学中的人物。我最新的小说《蛙》中，就出现了我姑姑的形象。因为我获得诺贝尔奖，许多记