(Courtesy of the author/image)
"Why Should I Write a Novel So Well", Liu Press, Phoenix Literature and Art Publishing House, June 2021
Liu Bao's collection of novels is only called novels for the sake of following the local customs. It's actually a bunch of whispers, language games, pop-up sentences. A bit of a shadow of Andy Warhol or Joyce or Pynchon. Contemporary literature is too earthy (earthy, no pejorative. I am referring to some kind of local knowledge of literature. Mo Yan was awarded for this. ）。 Avant-garde writing flourished in the late 1980s and early 1990s. This kind of writing once gave contemporary literature a kind of cosmopolitanism, and then disappeared, and continued to be active in only a few corners of the language, such as the poetry circle of the third generation of poets. Does Liu Press mean that the avant-garde has been resurrected from the younger generation of authors and has gone to the masses? Indeed, looking back, the reading vision of the younger generation is no longer local.
This kind of novel is more appropriately called a text, just like the wizard's chanting, what sound, what meaning, what style does not matter, sentences create a dream space. Countless apparent sentence fragments, these sentences are not to narrate, readable, evoke thinking, moving, just pleasant, playful, a second of beauty, like modern art. There are as many appearances in the universe as there is meaning in the world, chaos and uncertainty are inevitable, how to establish order in this chaos? Traditional writing is about imposing only meaning on the reader.
Of course, this does not mean that it is easy to write, it is quite difficult. The author is talented and a bit light.
Zoo, He Xiaozhu, Sichuan People's Publishing House, January 2021
This collection of novels consists of four novels. "Zoo" writes about the inside story of the zoo, this inside story is not a deep meaning, and what is ignored is in front of you. It's just that novelists can't see it, and they're not novels. Not a designed story, but countless records in one scene (zoo). Deeds are not stories because they still happen. Great fiction, if you care about the insensitive, superficial, perishable parts of life like "her breasts flutter again" — and that's the depth of life. That's the thing, confess truthfully. These things are the main things, and they are things that are ignored. Words are deeds. This is what He Xiaozhu said in language, not in a story. Zoos are this way of feeling. Half dreaming and half waking.
The poet's novel is more superb than the writer's novel. Han Dong is like this, Zhu Wen is like this, Yang Li is like this, and He Xiaozhu is also like this. They also have one thing in common, which is making movies. This means that fiction is seeing, seeing details. Instead of making up a story and taking it for granted.
"Before Death", Chen Peng, Beiyue Literature and Art Publishing House, December 2021
This collection of novels consists of four novels. Eerie imagination, absurd plot, between reality and surreality. Mandarin, dialects, and new nouns are mixed together, like a collage of languages. And the story and details are like news (it is true, the author was a journalist). "This book (which he grabbed in his hand a scrapped book of about 600 pages, translated by Don Quixote by Yang Chen) can produce 5 degrees of electricity when fully burned." "You go back, sit down, write documents, read materials, drink tea. That's it. That's all there is to it. This is your life. Maybe you should kill yourself. "Contemporary cities are bizarre, fragmented, magical, from cement, plastic, Coca-Cola barrels... Witchcraft. A ruin of reality and nothingness. He tried to write novels only as language, stories at the service of words.
The three novels I recommend have in common, that is, the language is prominent, the meaning is relegated or suspicious and absurd. Milan Kundera says there is no point in celebrating. Either or the other has bored the writers, and they all pretend that the world is meaningless, so that the language gives them a certain recognizability. The three are very different, all are solo dancers.
Happy (poet, translator, editor-in-chief of World Literature magazine)
"Sai YingJi", Ma Ping, Sichuan People's Publishing House, March 2021
Ma Ping's novel "Sai Ying Ji" tells the story of a centenarian Lei Gaohan, which on the surface is a personal history of ordinary people, but how can personal history leave the history of his home country. Strictly speaking, the history of the family and the country is precisely composed of a specific and small personal history. Without personal history, there is no history of the homeland. It is with this realization that the author wrote this book from an angle that was both humble and light, close to the dust and facing the heights. Whenever Lei Gaohan raised his head, he would see the huge shadow of Hongzhen Sai, who had lived in this shadow all his life, so the dialogue with Hong Zhensai and his shadow became the main content and spiritual support of his long life. And this dialogue, which is often dominated by silence, contains many bittersweet, love-hate feelings, which are both personal and home-country. In the novel, it is the long shadow of the plug that connects the individual and the home country. The critic Jing Wendong said: "With the lightness of the secret, Ma Ping dug out a secret passage for the huge 'Hongzhen Sai' in his new novel "Sai YingJi". The dark passage is the 'shadow' narrative of Sai, and they help each other to effectively alleviate the heaviness of history in the past hundred years. "Relieving heaviness with lightness, replacing nobility with humility, and dissolving high-pitchedness with whispers, such a writing strategy makes "Sai Ying Ji" read particularly kind and natural, always touching people's hearts unconsciously.
Contempt, [Italy] Alberto Moravia, translated by Shen Caomei and Liu Xirong, Jiangsu Phoenix Literature and Art Publishing House, July 2021
The Italian novelist Moravia's novel Despistion explores the issue of marriage. After reading this novel, I was once again amazed at Moravia's ability to dig into psychology and was once again convinced that he was definitely a master of psychological realism. In the 1980s, I read several short stories by Moravia translated by Mr. Lü Tongliu and still remember them vividly. There's one called "Female Star" and the other is "Sleepwalkers." At that time, reading such a novel, both in form and content, was particularly shocking to us. I remember that in those short stories, Moravia was particularly fond of narrating in the first person, and often merged reality with dreams. You don't even know what reality is and what a dream is. In Sleepwalker, he went one step further, writing about dream dreams and, through dreams, "solving" the marital crisis. It turns out that novels can be written like this, and I think many readers like me will feel open after reading such novels.
In the novel "Contempt", Moravia shows us the boundless psychological possibilities, and also provides us with countless understandings, or paths into this novel, but the wisdom of his novel is that you will never be limited to any single path, countless paths are open at the same time, each path is a possibility, in this sense, this is a novel that cannot really be read through, and the complex human situation, and the secret marital situation, and the subtle psychological state, often so. Elusive. They are all part of existence. Moravia pays special attention to play skills when writing short stories, but when he writes long stories, he is completely psychological and solid. This novel, written in the 1950s, is still quite realistic even today. The story of the novel can take place in Italy, in China, or in any country in the world. Moravia is also great in that he writes about a universal marital situation, a universal human condition, and therefore Despise has the universality of the world, the universality of existence.
The Ugliest Woman in the World, [Poland] Olga Tokarczuk, translated by Mao Yinhui and Fang Chen, Zhejiang Literature and Art Publishing House, September 2021
After Tokarczuk won the Nobel Prize, many of her works were translated into Chinese one after another and presented to Chinese readers. In 2021, we were delighted to read works such as "The Soil of Bones", "Anna Yin in the Grave of the World", "The Ugliest Woman in the World", and the short story collection "The Ugliest Woman in the World" gave me great enjoyment of reading. In fact, reading any of Tokarczuk's works, even novels, feels like reading short stories. Her novels such as "The House by Day, the House at Night", "Taikoo and Other Times", and "Cloud Travel" are like novels composed and supported by a series of short stories.
"The Ugliest Woman in the World" includes Tokarczuk's 19 short stories, each of which tells an intriguing and unforgettable story, some warm, a little grotesque, some poignant, some sad, some bitter, some dreamy, some simple, different, but the protagonists of all stories have a common feature: they are all lonely. Therefore, we can think of The Ugliest Woman in the World as a book of loneliness. In the novel of the same name, The Ugliest Woman in the World, a circus manager marries the ugliest woman in the world, out of a very special and complex psychology, he feels that this behavior can make him different. But the concrete life with the ugliest woman is terrible, even cruel. He became a divisive man. His feelings for her were also divided: both disgusted and dependent, both happy and desperate, both fearful and curious. And the ugliest woman realizes that people pay attention to her because they lack uniqueness in themselves, they are lonely, pale, boring, and empty. What a special short story, with all sorts of meanings between the lines. Another short story I particularly like, "The Female Dancer", reads a little bitter and miserable, but there is a surge of infectious and impact that reaches the heart without moving. The story actually has two main characters, the female dancer present and the absent old father. The female dancer's hidden pain, loneliness, special psychology, father's stubbornness and incredible emotions will deeply impress the reader. Words and emotions are very restrained, so there is more tension. This, coupled with the author's careful blank spaces and deliberately used jumps, adds a touch of ambiguity and mystery to the story, which in turn stimulates the reader's imagination and calls for reader interaction. The precision of the words had to be impressive. In addition, two of the most prominent details in the novel are also unforgettable: the frescoed audience and the final dance. The audience reveals a complex and subtle psychology: loneliness, fantasy, obsession, self-esteem and narcissism. And the end of the story is like a stroke of God, unexpected, but also extremely appropriate, completely logical. In the creation of novels, short stories can actually show their ability the most. Artwork-like short stories are sometimes like miracles, encounterable but not sought. In The Ugliest Woman in the World, you can meet a number of art-like short stories.
Yu Jian (poet, writer)