Convex (poet, novelist)
(Courtesy of the author/image)
Clara and the Sun, Kazuo Ishiguro, Shanghai Translation Publishing House, April 2021
Clara and the Sun is Kazuo Ishiguro's latest novel. The protagonist of the novel, who is also a first-person narrator, is called Clara, a solar-powered high-intelligence robot AF that accompanies young friends and dispatches loneliness for young friends. It is difficult for humans to write a work so honestly because it is written by unbiased robots. This novel seems to belong to the science fiction category, but its technological flavor and fantasy flavor are not strong, and there are idealistic "superstitious" content, such as Clara as the savior Josie, to destroy the polluted machine and other ways, and make an agreement with the sun that nourishes all things. In fact, it is more like a realistic theme work that honestly bends over daily life. Judging from the age of the protagonist, Angelica children's literature, but the narrator Clara's brushwork and tone have a more profound and mature mind than adults.
In addition to Clara's delicate and comprehensive independent observation and reflection on the complex, changeable and sensitive universal human nature and individual human nature, especially the foci of selfishness, desire, and self-deception, the novel basically contains the dialogue between Clara, Josie and the two people who are related to each other.
All the starting points and destinations of Clara's thoughts, suggestions, and actions are for the good of her good friend Josie, even if the good deeds are quiet, even if the bone marrow-like "P-E-G9 solution" that may endanger her life is removed from the shoulder and neck. To human beings, she has only good intentions, and there are no eternal unfathomable common diseases in the hearts of human beings. She is a mirror that allows us to see love, humility and reconciliation, but also to see our own poverty, incompetence, vulnerability, selfishness and shame. Clara's large-scale worship, chase, and supplication for the sun god is heart-wrenching and admiring. But the birth of such robots cannot escape the shackles of the product of human selfish desires.
Wencheng, Yu Hua, Beijing October Literature and Art Publishing House, March 2021
The time point of Yu Hua's long new work "Wencheng" is stuck in the turbulent and chaotic era of the absence of officials in the late Qing Dynasty and the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, and the whole book is narrated in two sections with plain words. The first plate, "Wencheng", writes the life of the male protagonist Lin Xiangfu, and the second plate, "Wencheng Supplement", writes the life of the female protagonist Xiaomei. Xiaomei was a child daughter-in-law who was divorced by the Shen family, and after she eloped with her husband Ah Qiang, she conspired to deceive Lin Xiangfu because she could not continue the economy.
The title of the book, Wencheng, is a virtual place name that Xiaomei's husband casually said to Lin Xiangfu, after Xiaomei did not quit for the second time, Lin Xiangfu left the family business, carried himself and Xiaomei's daughter (later named Lin Baijia) from the north, and resolutely embarked on the road to the southern Wencheng to find Xiaomei. He spent eighteen years, after experiencing various extremely difficult problems such as floods, snow disasters, military disasters and bandit disasters, he threw a life and hard-earned wealth in the town of Waixiangxi, and the novel ended abruptly on the way to his hometown in the north by the loyal and righteous tian brothers of the Lin family.
Lin Xiangfu, the only son of a landlord who grew up reading family line-bound books and was obsessed with carpentry while ploughing the fields, his stupid and intelligent, rich and industrious, generous and brave character, let us see what is a good son, a good husband, a good father, a good friend, his only "stain" is the special period to go to the "private nest" to carry out nominal prostitutes. Yu Hua portrays the kindness of Xiaomei's heart and the subtlety of human choice, the helplessness and contradiction in the whirlpool of love, and portrays it particularly firmly and hesitantly, so that Xiaomei's character performance in her own destiny is just like the name Xiaomei, not Damei. The novel presents the cruelty and bloodshed of a group of bandits beyond measure, and in this dimension, the bandit "monk" is an exception.
A life of a person like Lin Xiangfu who has made a real life for a vain goal, or a vain life for a real goal, is not meaningless—I think this is the main idea that Wencheng wants to tell us, or a reflection it proposes.
"A Knife, a Thousand Words", Wang Anyi, People's Literature Publishing House, April 2021
The "one knife" in the title of the book "A Knife, a Thousand Words" is the first kitchen knife of the "Three Knives of Yangzhou", and the "Thousand Words" is quoted from Yuan Ming's couplet "Moon Ying Bamboo into a Thousand Words, Frost Gao Mei Pregnant With a Flower". Yangzhou, Harbin, Shanghai, Tianjin and other towns in China, along Metro Line 7 in the United States, are the places where the novel takes place. The novel is based on huaiyang chef Chen Cheng's taste of growth and survival, and the multi-dimensional perspective presents the life story of him and those around him, especially his sister, father and mother.
From this fictional story, I saw the figure of the martyr Zhang Zhixin and his family, and I believe that it is this vague figure that gives this novel a clear and thick logical correctness, human responsibility and atmosphere. There is not much dialogue between the characters in the novel, and once the dialogue is, it is a tongue-in-cheek stick, the machine edge is hidden, and the witty words are repeated. There are no endless thrilling twists and turns in the story, but only patience, nagging and well-tailored, clean and neat telling of ordinary people's chai rice, salt and vinegar and dreams.
Both the small description noodles and the inside have a taste of Ming and Qing dialects. It's also a novel about "escape"—using escape to find your own remorse, self-help, and personality independence.
"Sai YingJi", Ma Ping, Sichuan People's Publishing House, March 2021
The Hegemonic Bao Family took the military as the main purpose, and in order to resist the attack of cold weapons, poured its people and property into the "Hongzhen Plug", but it was a ridiculous and generous "useless work". But for the life and death of the collective and individuals who live on it, it is the existence, passage and bearing of every minute and every second, and the hard memory of real pain and joy.
The poor Lei Gaohan, who was illiterate and whose fortunes changed again and again, because of his righteous deeds, even in special periods, was "the status of a rich peasant but enjoyed the treatment of the poor." He has successively developed a love relationship with bao Songyue, a rich sister, Mei Yun'e, a Sichuan opera actor, Ding Cuixiang, a widow who has been a lady and a lady, Yu Wanfen, a "landlord's wife" who has been a young lady, and so on. His long life was filled with countless help relays and patches, stitches and pulls. The novel successfully portrays the character of "Lei Gaohan", an unfortunate lucky person who is also a lucky unfortunate person.
The dark passage is a function and part of the castle, but it goes beyond the territory of the castle. It is an open existence, and it is an open non-existence. It is also because the protagonist's luck, of course, including misfortune, is established by the dark path, and it is all delivered by the dark night and the sun of the dark road. More importantly, I believe that the super inspiration chain and imagination of "Sai Ying Ji" are opened by this dark passage that connects life and death, has two entrances and one exit, and is both funny and local.
"Sangtian Sun Nuan", Wang Shu, Beijing October Literature and Art Publishing House, July 2021
The time in "Kuwata Sun Warm" is the time of the lunar calendar, from the autumn equinox in 1983 to the 1985 mango seed. The location is on the alluvial plain not far from the East China Sea in the lower reaches of the Yangtze River, in a village called He Jiayuan in Yuzao Township. After the countryside entered the era of family contract responsibility system, the heroine Xinglan's family of five (and a mouthful of Zhenjin, which was passed on to Xinglan's parents) saw the beautiful life of eating "pure white rice" beckoning to them, and the days had a head start, so they germinated the dream of taking the lead in building a large tile house in the village, and began to take action to realize this dream. Who knows, just after two battles to defend the boundaries of the field terrier, huang Tao and the eldest son Chun jin, two laborer husbands who seemed to stand on top of the sky like beams and pillars, were out and about to "pick up snails" day and night in the middle of the ship and died. The family's newly ignited hopes were shattered and fell into the ice cellar. At this point, a rural woman in her early forties who could not read a few large characters, Xinglan, dragged the two girls and one son who were not yet underage, and with incredible resistance and stubbornness, once again launched the goal dream of building a large tile house.
Native China is undoubtedly the world's largest producer of rural novels. Wang Ke obviously cannot stay at the level of writing about rural areas and even writing about rural changes. "Kuwata Rinuan" is written about the battle of concept inheritance, the battle of interests, the battle of life existence, and the battle of dignity defense and acquisition. Those parents are short, seedlings and seedlings, and the trivial matters that are as fine as dust and insignificant in the city people fall in the growth bones and blood of the individual life of the "plain people", and each piece is bigger than the sky. Wang Shu is writing with three hands, one holding a pen, one holding scissors, and the other holding a video camera, contributing simple and sturdy words, and the sword and light sword shadow that collides with the structure, rhythm, air, order and the mechanism of elite military simplicity, as well as the holographic sense of picture, dynamic and contradiction conflict. These conscious artistic techniques make "Kuwata Rinuan" very readable.
A B (novelist)
Handbook for Cleaning Women, Lucia Berlin, Beijing October Literature and Art Publishing House, September 2021
Discovering Lucia Berlin is as meaningful as discovering Carver. As the editor-in-charge of the short book translation put it: "Lucia was always like this, no matter how ordinary and inconspicuous it was, she could always write it either elegantly or playfully." ”
"Night God", Sun Yisheng, Shanghai Literature and Art Publishing House, September 2021
A stalwart novelist who appears with a signal. It is said to be a "collection of CaoXian stories", but the author's style is "to the story". Claude Simon says that the trend in literary development is that depiction takes the high place of the plot. Sun Yisheng, whether consciously or secretly, walked on Simon's path. In Sun's novels there are Chekhov and Faulkner, no Stephen King and suspense.
I gradually formed a view: Yu Hua is not pandering to more readers, but importing a literary value to more readers. Avant-garde novelists have basically changed from sharp bayonets to wide rivers, which is self-conscious and inevitable.
"Teenagers, Rouges and Spirit Monsters", Zhou Kai, CITIC Publishing Group, July 2021
This later book was an indispensable prelude to Zhou Kai's previously published novel Moss. Zhou Kai's writing has its own qi vein, and it can also be said that he picked up a localized qi vein. This almost doomed him to be an inexhaustible writer.
Zhao Yu (Critic, works at Henan Provincial College of Literature)
"Golden Branch", Shao Li, People's Literature Publishing House, January 2021
Shao Li's "Golden Branch" is a mature work that asks questions to her original family. Not all writers have the courage to tear open their wounds. This time, Shao Li's reflection was very sharp. The opening and ending of "Golden Branch" echo each other, fully presenting a woman's thinking about life through the world, which is a rare reflection on the wonderful structure of China's original family. I believe that every reader can find some of their own shadows in "Zhou Yutong". All the scrutiny that points to oneself is bound to look at more people, and in this respect the Golden Branch is broad and compassionate.
Yu Hua's latest novel, Wencheng, is the first fictional work to read in 2021. Good looking, smooth, but popular. "Wencheng" as a writing of China's low-level small people, is successful. Yu Hua completes a portrait of an era through a person's search for the child's mother. At the same time, it also allowed this man to complete his escape from the times. At least, when Lin Xiangfu died, I felt sad as a reader. This sadness comes both from the story itself and from my imagination of that era.
And Lin Xiangfu has not found Wencheng, more like a metaphor, in his time, civilization has not yet arrived. His death is almost at the beginning of the novel, and it is doomed. When I think about it this way, I feel that the title of the novel is clever.
"The Liar Comes to the South", A Yi, Yilin Publishing House, April 2021
Ah Yi's new work "The Liar Comes to the South" uses a novel to explain what is called a ragtag crowd. The crook's logic is so transparent, yet so useful. In the novel, Ah Yi jumps out of the narrative scene from time to time, so that the novel has a sense of scene and non-fictional temperament, which is a narrative exploration.
After reading this collection of works, you can feel that the writer Ah Yi is turning from a technical writer to a realistic writing, and he has more and more desire to intervene in reality, and all of this is something that a writer will inevitably do at a certain age. So, it's worth the compliment.
"On the Clouds", Zhao Bo, Guangxi Normal University Press, May 2021
"On the Clouds" is more like Zhao Bo's spiritual autobiography. Reading such works can sometimes be embarrassing, like accidentally opening the door to Zhao Bo's bathroom when he was sixteen. Sometimes, there will be a kind of shyness that peeks into each other's privacy, and Zhao Bo truthfully records his marriage and illness.
In "On the Clouds", Zhao Bo almost tore herself apart, and she used words to illuminate herself in the darkness for others to see. In the work, Zhao Bo incarnates as "Ermao", her careful combing of the original family, the incompatibility between the mother and the father, so that she has a natural distrust of marriage or feelings.
In Watermelon Candy, Richard Brautigan, People's Literature Publishing House, June 2021
After reading In Watermelon Candy, I became very interested in the author, Brautigan. Sure enough, after taking a closer look at his introduction, I immediately understood where his weird wording habits came from. It turned out that he was really a mental patient. After graduating from high school, he was arrested for throwing stones into a police station window and was later diagnosed by doctors with paranoid schizophrenia and depression.
Reading "In Watermelon Candy" feels a bit like reading Angela Carter, an imaginative American female writer. She also writes dark fairy tales. Brautigan's novel is a bit like a dark fairy tale. For example, he designed two locations, and one place name was actually called "My Death", which is really absurd, and there is a novel called such a place name. This may be a boundary in my reading, the first time I've seen such an unorthodox place name in a novel: My Death. "In Watermelon Candy" is more like an explanatory narration for a photographic collection than a dream novel, full of blankness, ambiguity, unclear directions, and colorful imagination.