Read "Father on the Rooftop": Under the iceberg| Fan Jinfeng

"Father on the Rooftop" Shao Li / author | Beijing October Literature and Art Publishing House September 2021

Synopsis

"Father on the Rooftop" is the latest collection of short and medium stories by the famous writer Shao Li, including "Father on the Rooftop", "Mother in the Wind", "The River Going North", "The Story of the Yellow River" and so on. "Father on the Roof" always focuses firmly on the suicide of the father, writing about the profound alienation of a man in his career and the hardships it brings to his family members. "Mother in the Wind" portrays a first generation of "new" old people who are completely different from China's industrious and intelligent traditional women in the process of urbanization in the countryside. "The Story of the Yellow River" meticulously writes about a father who had a fanatical dream of food and cooking, and outlines the living conditions of that generation in the special era... In these works, the author looks back at his fathers, salvages them from the depths of history, creates a distinct and different "father" and "mother" image, and uses this as a coordinate to connect the family past, and puts the fate of the characters in the torrent of history to show. The collection of novels not only reflects the ethical life of Chinese and the emotional structure of the Chinese family, but also shows the fate of individuals and families in the torrent of the times and the continuous change of historical environment.

Under the iceberg

——Reading Shao Li's "Father on the Rooftop"

Fan Jinfeng

Hemingway famously proposed the "Iceberg Principle" in Death in the Afternoon, saying: "The iceberg movement is majestic because it is only one-eighth above the water." "Excellent literature not only allows people to see the exposed parts, but more importantly, it can guide the reader to explore and see the deeper and more hidden things under the iceberg." Shao Li's latest collection of short stories, "Father on the Rooftop", focuses on the current people's life dilemmas, and strives to unveil the surface of family life, so that we can see the hidden inner secrets outside of daily life and the complex and subtle moments between people.

"Father on the Roof", ten stories, ten states of life, almost every story has an absent father, these fathers are not clear, as if there is nothing, like a shadow. They are silent, lonely, and even a little cowardly and inferior, but they profoundly affect the "we" in the story, whether it is warmth or shame. The father in the opening "Father on the Roof" chose to jump off the roof, and the father in the "Yellow River Story" finally walked into the Yellow River, and the father's departure was not interrupted by their death, but forced "us" to recall the various connections with the father over and over again, and all kinds of memories about him came and went, those pain, loneliness, cowardice, shame, and rare warmth, more and more clear, the inexplicable disappearance of the father made everyone in the family feel that the father (or husband) was related to himself, like a wound. It's more like an internal wound wandering around, and there's no way to soothe it.

In "The Yellow River Story", my mother is an assertive and strong woman, her dream is obviously much bigger than her father, and her desire for success is more urgent, she is disappointed in him because of her father's gluttony, then disgusted, and finally developed into hatred, when she was a child, "we" no one dared to talk about eating, as if eating was a shame. But when my father died, all my struggles seemed to prove to my mother that eating was not a shameful thing, it was an ability, and it was precisely because of my father's influence that "I" and "my" brothers and sisters invariably started catering together and made a living from it, and "I" even envisioned using catering to pry a market with great potential. At the end of the novel, the author tries to untie the shame knot of the Yellow River father through the "I" in the novel, and at the same time says what he wants to do as a writer - to see the light of the dreams of the most humble people, "My father's name is Cao Zengguang, he was born in the Yellow River, died in the Yellow River, and will eventually be buried on the bank of the Yellow River." He is no longer a disgrace to our family, and what I want to accomplish is exactly what my father's unfulfilled dreams are. ”

"Silence in the light, chattering after escaping into darkness." Shao Li confessed to the reason for writing about these fathers, "They died so resolutely, but they were unwilling. Their heavy sighs in the depths of the universe often brought me to tears. I had to salvage them from the depths of time. Their souls and skeletons are calcified together, waiting to be awakened. That's why they're dead. I saw that under the faint light of history, their humble life was gradually magnified and magnified again, until it covered the entire universe. ”

With the memories of his father, one "abnormal" family relationship after another began to emerge. In "Father on the Rooftop", in the last moments before the father walks to the roof, our relationship with the father becomes a hostile relationship, we guard against him, and he guards against us. In "The Great River", the delicate confrontation between the mother-in-law and the daughter-in-law, if the previous confrontation is still in the dark, leaving room for each other, the outbreak of the evening after the father-in-law's burial, everything has changed, the mother-in-law and daughter-in-law in the past in order to live together the only tacit understanding is broken, "that is much deeper than the quarrel involved, but also much more distant." In "Festival", a couple who seem to be in love with each other become chickens and dogs because of the appearance of "she", they quarrel, from doubts about love loyalty, to dissatisfaction with family contributions, to denial of personal value, the two people quarrel with excitement and anger, discouragement, "she was stunned, looking at him in a daze, as if looking at a stranger." In "The Story of the Yellow River", the relationship between children and mothers, the relationship between fathers and mothers, is full of estrangement, indifference, torture and hurt. When I made overtures to my mother, my mother thought I was torturing her with filial piety, "Are you doing this to others, or is it to get revenge on me?" When I was a child, I was not good to you, you were good to me, where did I put my old face? You want to make me die of shame like that, don't you? In the face of such questioning, "I" suddenly had a mischievous satisfaction. The beginning of "Dear, Good Snow" is "The two of them have become cautious now even talking", after many years of marriage, the love and warmth of the past fade away, and what remains is the unprovoked quarrel and the silence day after day, which obviously does not come suddenly, it penetrates into life little by little, grows slowly, spirals upwards, and then one day changes its face, and they begin to alienate, wary and hostile to each other.

There is an insurmountable chasm between people, hidden and deep. Everyone is lonely, everyone has a past that is difficult to let go of, and the pain that is almost impossible to get rid of in the present, even in the closest relationship, it is still necessary to open up an island for themselves. Writer Shao Li wrote behind a superficially calm family, those deep estrangement and secret confrontations, silent stalemates, angry quarrels, rough insults, mutual torture, the writer revealed the truth of life little by little, wrote a person's love and hate, entanglement and pain, critic Li Jingze commented, "Her (Shao Li's) novels, all her stories are out of tension between the water and the embankment. That tension, that anxiety, that pain, that kind of broken bones, that kind of paranoia that can't let go of yourself and can't let go of others, that kind of sleeplessness when you go to the West Building alone..."

Reading "Father on the Rooftop", first inexplicably gave birth to a sense of anxiety and powerlessness, and then gave birth to a kind of reflection and tolerance for their own family, the writer in a real and slightly painful way to let us know life more soberly, to know ourselves. Of course, the truth of life is not only entanglement and pain, but also warmth and expectation. Shao Li, with the compassion and patience of a novelist, also lets us see some warm and beautiful moments, which melt the cold and paranoid parts of the heart, melt the silence and anger, and make a temporary reconciliation between people, just like in "Festival", "She saw him in the crowd." He stood behind a pillar, the light flickering on his face, and you could see the tears on his face. At the moment when they looked at each other, she turned her head and didn't look at him again. Her body trembled slightly, not knowing how to express the mood of that moment. ”

Editor: Deng Jiefeng

Second instance: Liu Ya

Third trial: Chen Tao, Wang Yang