Li Hao's novel "The Legend of the Stove King": "Legend" under the name of "legend" sense of reality and pioneering

1, Li Hao said, there must be a story, a Chinese story. Thus, a new world "comes out of nothing" - in the social and historical context of the Ming Dynasty's "tumu fort change", the king of the stove, a character in the genealogy of ancient Chinese mythology, "lived" from the niches of every household and became the protagonist of the novel. In Li Hao's new novel "The Legend of the Stove King" ("Fangcao" No. 6, 2021), each household has its own corresponding stove king, the tofu stove king, the cake shop stove king, the blacksmith stove king, the Tianjia stove king, the Cao family stove king... The stove kings still retain the identity and function of the gods and immortals in folklore, using "good cans" and "bad cans" to record and report to heaven the good deeds or ugly deeds of the world. At the same time, they are given more "humanity" and "worldliness" in the novel, and the kings of the stove are ranked in the immortal class but shuttle through the fireworks of the human world, and they perform joys, sorrows, and greed and anger in the same way as mortals. Moreover, behind the Stove King, there is also a large number of gods and immortals with complex structure and clear hierarchies, the Stove King, the Jingcheng, the City God, the Star King... Until Emperor Dongyue, this immortal society has its own rhythm of operation and interpersonal patterns, and the people and things in it make us feel strange, familiar and strange.

"The Legend of the Stove King" adopts a first-person narrative, following the perspective of the protagonist of the novel, the King of The Stove in a small tofu factory in Ulju, we enter the southwest fort during the "Change of Tumu Fort" period of the Ming Dynasty, and enter the dual world of the human world and the immortal world. This Tofu Stove King, before his death, was a Confucian intellectual who read the sages, probably because of this background, after becoming the Stove King in reincarnation, he still retained some bookish temperament, and while performing the duties of the Stove King, he even remembered the worries of the country and the people, the compassion of heaven and the people, and even his "worry" and "compassion" clashed with the duty of the Stove King from time to time - when he became the Stove King, he was repeatedly warned that "you must give up the set of honor and disgrace in the world, those who care...", and must abide by the "Rules of Conduct of the Stove King" and "The Rules of the Stove King's Behavior" and "The Rules of the Stove King's Behavior" and "The Rules of the Stove King's Behavior" and "The Rules of the Stove King's Behavior" and "The Rules of The Stove King' Behavior" and "The Rules of the Stove King' Behavior" and "The Rules of the Stove King' Behavior" and "The Rules of The Stove King' Behavior" and "The Rules of the Stove King' Behavior" and "The Rules of the Stove King' Behavior" and "The Rules of the Stove King' Behavior" and "The Rules of the Stove King' Behavior" and "The Rules of the Stove King' Behavior" and "The Rules of the Stove King' Behavior" and "The Rules of the Stove King' Behavior" and "The Rules of the Stove King' Behavior" and "The Rules of the Stove King' Behavior" and "The Rules of the Stove King' Behavior" and Detailed Rules of the Cooker's Chronicle of the King of Stoves. The battle between the Ming army and the Wallachian army in the middle of the night caused a large area of nearby houses to burn down, and the families of ordinary people were destroyed, including the Tan tofu family where the king of the tofu stove was located. The Tofu Stove King moved his heart of compassion, and could not bear to see that the son of this family, Xiao Guan, was still not allowed to be born after his death, so in his own immortal world, he went up and down, and because of the coincidence of inadvertently saving the life of the Dragon King of Ulju, he actually "operated" a "road" in the Immortal Realm with strict grades and complicated regulations, not only the small crown could be placed, but the Tofu Stove King himself was also hot and easy in the Immortal Realm...

This is the basic character, plot and situational setting of "Legend of the Stove King". Yes, just like those works with mythological or magical overtones that we are familiar with before, such as "Journey to the West", "Dream of the Red Chamber", "Metamorphosis"... At the beginning of the novel, the reader is clearly informed that the characters and stories that the novel will tell are entirely from the imagination and creation of the writer, rather than a true reflection of the real world. Here, new characters and relationships, new logics are generated, defamiliarization and heterogeneity emerge. Although, "when it is false, it is true and false".

2. Structure is essential for a novel, and in a sense, length is the art of structure. It is a technical problem, but also a matter of ideology. As the narrative genre that is given the most "holistic" expectations, the structure of the novel corresponds to the writer's general literary values of looking at and presenting the world. The structure of the characters and stories is usually exposed to the writer's perspective and ability to grasp reality in stages.

Li Hao said, "In the nearly ten years of writing "The Legend of the Stove King", what I think about the most is the structure. This is indeed not a novel with a simple structural level, its surface structure is a mythological (allegorical) framework, the genealogy of Chinese folk mythology represented by the King of Stoves; and the inner narrative structure is trying to pursue a sense of reality. As mentioned earlier, this structure is a bit like "Dream of the Red Chamber", "Journey to the West" and even "Metamorphosis". Obviously, "The Legend of the Stove King" is closer to "Journey to the West", and the internal logic and character association in the text, and even the creation of the sense of reality and the growth of the characters, are all within the framework of the pre-given mythological world. The "I" who acts as a narrator in "The Legend of the Stove King" has two identities, in the past life, he was a reader of the Ming Dynasty, and after his death, he became the King of The Stove, he is both the protagonist of the plot advancement and the perspective of the narrative focus, he was once in the human world at this moment and ranked in the Xianban. As a result, our protagonist, the King of tofu Stove, becomes the key to the structure of the novel, and his experience of seeing and hearing connects the beginning and end of the whole story, while at the same time laying out the group portraits and complex relationships of the immortal world around him.

"The characters conform to the logic of people, the details conform to the logic of life, and the creation conforms to the logic of art" (Shi Zhanjun), which should be the basic requirement for long novels - although we all know that many long stories at present fail to meet this basic requirement. The so-called "characters conform to the logic of people" and "details conform to the logic of life", which refers to the correspondence between specific people and things in the novel and the logic of reality; there is also a text logic, which is the basic relationship between the text and reality preset by the novelist, that is, in what way does the writer intend to grasp and express the real world, realistic, absurd or mythical? This basic relationship becomes the first context for writing and reading a novel. When a stone monkey pops out of a stone in the proud country of Dongsheng Shenzhou, when Gregor Samsa wakes up one morning and finds himself lying in bed and turning into a giant beetle, this is another world created by the novelist and the corresponding logic. Specific to "The Legend of the Stove King", the text logic (to be precise, the reality logic in the text) is the mythological genealogy represented by the Stove King, and the writer's setting of the relationship between several groups of characters, in fact, there is also the logic of the human world under the eyes of the Stove King - corresponding to our reality and historical logic. Since the internal narrative structure of the novel is realistic and pursues a strong sense of reality, the character language and narrative language must strive to conform to the identity and situation setting in the text, and effectively realize the validity of the text logic and persuasiveness; and the historical background of ancient China also requires the writer to tighten a string of "historical truth" and be wary of jumping and "crossing" at any time. "The Legend of the Stove King" is quite realistic and convincing to read as a whole, but it occasionally "jumps out" and has a slight gap in the rigor of historical truth.

3. The use of the above novel structure effectively creates the "mythical world unified with the real world" in "The Legend of the Stove King", and the mythical system behind the Stove King that we all know that it cannot really exist has formed a huge tension between the character image, character relationship, and the sense of reality of the character image, character relationship, and the sense of reality in the scene, and the allegorical meaning of the novel is highlighted. Yes, I see "The Legend of the Stove King" as a novel that clearly contains allegories, and the narration in the name of "The Legend of the Stove King" is certainly not intended to truly interpret a legendary story of the Stove King.

In the setting of the novel, it is impossible for the king of the stove to have a direct relationship with the human world, and they are in their own worlds. Although the kings of The Stove were gods and immortals, placed in the shrines of each family and accepted worship and offerings from the world, their mana power was limited to objectively recording and reporting everything in the world, but they could not output even the slightest intervention and change, and even their words and deeds were completely invisible, untouchable, or impossible to feel. Therefore, the stove kings are destined to be just a blind bystander, and their pity and concern for all the ills of the world, their resentment and anger at all evil deeds stop at introverted sighs and sighs, such as the incompetence and powerlessness of the tofu stove king in the face of the filth of the Cao family. It is precisely such a figure that has a kind of symbolism, his inaction and mixed feelings, shaking off a ukiyo-e painting of the world; his ranking at the end of the Xianban class, the dual attributes of "up" and "down" on his body at the same time give the author a huge space to deeply analyze and vividly present the current situation of the immortal world.

In a conversation about The Legend of the Stove King, Li Hao confessed that "in this novel, I admit that I have strengthened the element of fables—here I divide the fables into several levels, some unified, some partial, some microscopic, and some continuous and mutually identifiable." In the process of reading, our constant shock and understanding are also here. Fable fiction, whether the writer uses mythology, science fiction, magic or even animal stories, by keeping a distance from the real world, through deliberately creating strange, situations elsewhere, but this kind of jumping out and pulling away can be exhausted and exhausted from the whole. Although "The Legend of the King of Stoves" is related to those things of the Ming Dynasty, it is not a historical novel, and it still responds to the question that Li Hao has always cared about most: whether literature has the ability and way to solve some of the practical difficulties and spiritual dilemmas of this era. After all, "what matters is not the age of the myth, but the age of the myth." ”

4. Li Hao, who has always paid tribute to modernist masters such as Calvino and Borges, and frequently paid tribute to them in the creation of novels, is closely related to the chinese classical novel tradition in the writing of "The Legend of the Stove King". Zhou Xinmin said that "'The Legend of the King of Stoves' single-handedly recalls the three genres of classical Chinese novels", organically integrating the three types of novel styles of miscellaneous history, zhiwei novels, and legendary novels. This argument is not unreasonable, but I think that for the novelist, Li Hao may not be so clear and clearly planned and aware of these three classical elements carried in his narrative during the writing process. When reading "The Legend of the Stove King", I can clearly feel Li Hao's efforts to "tell a good story", even a little anxiety, probably because he wants to prove his storytelling ability in this novel. I have always praised Li Hao's novels for their pioneering and ideological nature, and have many doubts about his ability to tell stories, and I myself have expressed more than once in a review article the distinction between a novelist's "whether he wants to tell a good story" and "whether he can tell a good story". Therefore, Li Hao wants to prove his storytelling ability, as he himself said, "Before the writing of this "Legend of the Stove King", I set myself up early, one is to tell the story, and the other is to use the standard Chinese Chinese, as concise as possible in vernacular." "The Legend of the King of Vesta" also proves his storytelling ability as the author wishes. For example, in the novel, gao jingcheng in the immortal group portrait, which is only one level higher than the kings of the stove, is also the tail of the immortal hierarchy, his "grassroots" attribute and the human nature and conscience that are formed as a result of the smooth, cunning worldly and occasional flickering nature, his small calculations, small desires, his helplessness and hesitation... All vividly presented in the novel. This novel does prove the novelist Li Hao's ability to "tell Chinese stories in Chinese words in the standard", and in fact reaffirms the importance of this ability for a writer - literary writing, after all, relies on the expression of thought to present ideas. Of course, it doesn't stop there.

In Li Hao's previous novels, there was always a nagging, repetitive, and even stuttering narrative voice, and that voice was a little hesitant, hesitant about his observation, judgment and narration of the world, but it was clearly filled with irrepressible expression of enthusiasm and desire. In "The Legend of the Stove King", in the first-person narration of the Tofu Stove King, this voice resounds again, and the "wedge" part of the novel is full of the narrator's "nagging" about his upcoming narration, and he seems to discuss with the reader "From my previous life?" ...... Or, start with me when I'm at my worst? Or say to yourself, "You have to write something interesting and story-like, don't be true, it's really not interesting, you can add a little oil or vinegar to it, you can legend a little..." The wedge form of classical novels exudes the atmosphere of "meta-narrative", and there are many examples like this that are described as "traditional and avant-garde juxtaposition" in the text, and there are many examples in the text, and they will not be given one by one in the limited space.

Li Hao's novels have always been known as "avant-garde", which has become a distinctive label for his current literary scene. This kind of classification and naming easily identifies the basic characteristics of a writer, but it is actually inappropriate to think about it carefully, and it somewhat exposes our frivolity and laziness in distinguishing between "avant-garde literature" and "avant-garde". The so-called "avant-garde", I understand, does not correspond to some fixed writing skills and textual forms, it is more of a literary spirit and writing practice posture, which today should at least mean the bravery and ability to bravely step out of their creative comfort zone. Born in 1971, Li Hao, 50 years old this year, his novel writing career has been more than 20 years, under the fame, he should perhaps do to tear off the label on his body, just like the creation of "Legend of the Stove King", to practice the real "avant-garde writing".