Works in this issue
"Snow Covered"
Thank you
Author of this issue
He is the author of "The Woman from the Province", "To the Other Side of the Shema River", "The Inflorescence Between Life and Death" and so on.
Special Guest: Suitable
Assistant researcher at the Institute of Literature, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences
Each little hairy head grows from the germ to a complete individual, and at a moment when the eyes are wide open and inexplicably realize that there is not only one "me" in the world, it begins his/her long way from self to group step by step. With the overlapping identities of the growth process and the degree of socialization, the units of "groups" are also expanding. How to place oneself in the group, and how to get an independent self out of the environment, is often accompanied by subtle sharp changes in people's hearts, which are not known to outsiders.
In the novel "Snow Covered", the author focuses on this, amplifying and showing the struggle and deformation of the spiritual world of teenagers in the process of socialization and grouping. The protagonist You Liang, the child who carries all the sight and reprimand of his parents, the "all-nighter" who is ridiculed by his classmates, the poor student who is seen as transparent by the teacher, is afraid of all the towering and upright things, and longs for "an ideal world with no competitive relationship in Pingchuan", only Xiao Yan understands the rich artistic treasures in his heart. Yu Liang is kafkaized in the author's pen, desperately longing for the comfort of "identity" and the cover of "group", whether it is a white sports school uniform with dark blue stripes or a colored polka dot of Yayoi Kusama, all of which have become the protective colors that he can temporarily eliminate his "personality". The rare "hope of life" in You Liang's eyes, in the illusion of a house full of colorful polka dots, turns into eternal transparency, soars, and eventually becomes a pool of dazzling blood caused by traffic accidents on the snow. The white snow was like a white polka dot, absurdly and heavily falling on Youliang's fading body and thoughts, and the white expanse of the earth was really clean.
Zhao Tiancheng
Young teacher of minzu University of China
How to express and extend a painting in a novel, and how to realize the classic tribute bridge section commonly seen in movies in the novel, are the two cross-genre questions raised by "Snow Covered". In my opinion, the author was inspired by The famous paintings of Yayoi Kusama and tried to create a resonance between Yayoi Kusama, Kafka and the present life. This is an ingenious and challenging idea, with three threads initially unfolding in parallel, the intersection of art (confusing the polka dots of the front and back scenes) and reality (uniform middle school uniforms) mediated by "discoloration", which takes place near the end, when the protagonist uses a polka dot sticker to "disappear" himself in the home for a few days:
You Liang sat in the room, indignant. He rushed out of the room the moment his father pulled open the door and stopped him.
You say look, everything is really because of me?
To his surprise, his father did not hear him at all, nor did his mother, and they continued what they had just done. ......
mother! He yelled. Tears welled up in his eyes.
His mother couldn't hear or see him. She sat down at the table and continued to write something. ...... He tore off the polka dots on his face and stood in front of his mother. His mother still couldn't see him.
After this homage to "Metamorphosis", the novel suddenly turns into a "surreal" logical track, and finally re-solidifies from Youliang's death to a painting (still life) - blood covered with snow. The 18th-century Lessing's Laocoön explores the boundaries between poetry and painting, i.e., pointing out that epics are the art of time, and that the art of language/narrative is better than the process of movement that expresses things. The far-fetched feeling at the end of this novel is not at the level of "stillness" but "movement", and the basic story line - the life world of the students in the problem is not solid enough, neither can it be socialized in historical time (micro, reality), nor is it difficult to abstract in cosmic time (macroscopic, eternal). The art of fiction requires a precise grasp of "time" in order not to be abrupt and lead to what Benjamin called tremor and dizziness.
Han Xintong
Ph.D., Chinese Min University
When I saw words such as "uneasy black mountains" and "ideal world", I couldn't help but be dazzled and reacted to it, which is a work that tries to use literature to reveal the psychological problems and family education flaws of adolescents. The potential of this theme, rather than depicting the banal life of adults, is that it has some potential energy to touch the systemic conceptual disorders and psychiatric symptoms of today's society by analyzing the smallest collective unit that makes up the whole society, the family. But the novel's problem lies with this, the fragmented description with postmodern implications, combined with a modern and current theme, has not been able to achieve the novelty at the novel level. Although the author delicately and accurately captures the sensitive inner world of the teenager, and also vividly presents the cruelty of the dark tide of family education and school education, he regrets to miss the opportunity to provide some kind of vision and planning, and the end of a heavy snow covers the body of the teenager, this literary expression on the one hand hinders the possibility of the novel's trek towards a deeper spiritual hinterland, on the other hand paradoxically prompts the fact that literature has more expository power than psychology in exploring the spiritual inner nature of individuals or collectives, or rather, The novel should not be merely the presentation of some kind of knowledge, but should provide insights that only the novel can provide in the freedom it has possessed after the generation of social events. Perhaps the fondness for the subject made me a little harsher, expecting the author to achieve some sort of breakthrough.
Li Yuxin
Master of Chinese University
The theme of the novel surprised me, but the description made me lose. The extremely unequal power relations between strong parents and (minor) children undoubtedly evoke strong resonance among contemporary young people, and there is also a very rich space for interpretation – this is an intergenerational issue, a universal problem of power persecution, and closely related to the contemporary social reality: the modern subject
The conflict between the demand for independence and the constraints of the family; the proliferation of success and social Darwinism... Unfortunately, the author failed to reveal the rich possibilities under this theme, the description of the parents and surrounding classmates and even the protagonist was deliberately flat, flat, fragmented collage and magic color point dyeing can not remedy the thinness and simplicity of the text subject. To put it bluntly, to some extent, the author plays the role of an authoritarian parent in the novel, and after the theme is determined, she relies on the identity privilege of the creator to realize her own oppressive power in the characters, forcing them to play their roles step by step, rather than showing us the behavioral logic and complex ecology behind the characters. The novel touches on important themes, but the plot portrayal is almost as different from our usual imagination, so it doesn't actually offer anything new.
Duan Jiarui
Lefebvre pointed out in The Production of Space: "Where there is space, there is existence. "Social relations can exist only when they are expressed in space: they project themselves into space, solidify themselves in space, and in the process produce space itself. However, Kusama Relies on Polka dots to change the inherent sense of form, creating an infinitely extended space that makes it impossible for those who are in it to distinguish between reality and illusion. So, at Kusama's solo exhibition, Yu Ryo completed his own space production.
As You Liang said to Xiao Yan, "Is it painting or mathematics?" "Does the future belong to art or science?" The premise of duality makes it impossible to place itself in the secular daily space and the social relations it produces, and can only choose to "escape", when reality has nowhere to escape, then a fictional art space. This seems to be a solution to "aestheticism", that is, the belief that art can maintain an essential externality to everyday life, creating moments of structure and exceptions. Nihilism, however, is deeply embedded in modernity, so that everything can only be a "vanishing house that empties all thoughts." You Liang's behavior of posting wave points from all corners of the living space to the body to the natural world, space continues to disintegrate, the self is constantly being worn out, it seems to be a hearty escape, but all the escapes are full of danger, so the snowflakes in the sky are also wave points, only this time, no longer active escape, but passive erasure, blood is particularly bright, and then the snow covers the body, leaving only emptiness.
Edit | Court Month
Image source network