It is always at the end of the year and the beginning of the year that I can concentrate on reading a batch of the latest novel works, and such attention, tracking and reading cannot be said to be timely, refined and in-depth, but I have gradually realized the benefits of this rapid and concentrated reading. To me, they were all fresh, as if they had all just been baked and came out at the same time. More importantly, it is as if they are related to each other, in dialogue, discussion, argument, competition, and it seems that some main theme can be heard in the noise of the crowd. In my imagination, they are racing on the same track, like a marathon race, with crowding and strategy at the beginning, ups and downs and gaps in the process, and highlights and gasps in the last moment.
What are the important points to watch in the 2021 novel? I think there are two impressions that deserve special comment.
First, deliberately strengthen the dynamic sense of the story
The storytelling methods and story elements of popular novels are wedged into the framework of serious novels in the traditional sense, and the story is strengthened while the theme is highlighted, which is becoming a way and method for novelists to seek creative breakthroughs.
In my review three years ago, I used the word "fusion" to summarize the current trends in fiction. I think that most of the magical realist novels that we once worshiped have a characteristic, that is, they stitch together, collage, or integrate multiple artistic elements and artistic techniques in a work. They are serious literature, but they seem to be popular novels. There are regional customs, national history, serious politics, folk legends, and a vast world. The writer strives to invoke and integrate these elements into a novel, making them interrelated and intertwined elements of the novel, thus forming a synergy and forming a novel power. To this day, I think this judgment can still be confirmed by the latest novels.
In 2021, Dongxi published a long new work "Echo", which seems to be a work far from its usual creative pursuits in terms of novel form. The novel writes a female policewoman Ran Dongdong who does her best to investigate and solve a murder case, the victim is still a young woman with a family background and a good level of education, and the curiosity to explore the mystery will naturally trigger the interest of reading. This is the typical popular fiction path. However, the novel unfolds a different scene of life. Tracking down the truth is certainly the duty of the police, but ran Dongdong saw a landscape of life that made his spirit constantly and strongly shaken in the investigation. Her investigation begins with the pursuit of the murderer, but it opens up a family and marriage situation that is unbearable for her, and uncovers the broken emotional world that everyone has to face. In the process of increasing the sense of involvement, Ran Dongdong even spied the unbearable nature of his marriage. The process of her tracking down social cases is also the process of asking whether her emotional support is there. She and her husband, Mudav, even went to the point of divorce and breakup as a result. The dilemma of life is simply beyond repetition. Under the introduction of popular novel stories, it is the life proposition that the writer thinks deeply about. After reading the whole novel, Fang knew why he chose the police to cut into the story. At the level of storytelling, he strives to be close to the reality of his career, but deeply involved in it is the difficult problems of life that she herself cannot solve. The word "echo" may therefore be understood in this way, the storm, lightning and thunder of the case itself is the basis and the point of view, and what the writer really cares about, pays attention to and explores is the echo they produce, which seems to be nothing, but in fact it lingers, leaving deeper and greater trauma in the soul. The identity of the police is set up because this identity allows the characters to go directly to the core of the story, with the special right to read and flip through "top secret documents". Because of the unexpected opening of his own spiritual archives, the cruel and compelling truth is always with him. The thing is to subtly and deliberately design a police image, but at the same time can't help but bring in their own familiar profession. Ran's husband turned out to be a literary critic, and two diametrically opposed professions combined into a family. After complex transmission, the murderer of Xia Bingqing described at the beginning of the novel is a young Yi Chunyang who is also writing poetry, and the two completely contradictory and divisive behaviors (intentional killing and writing poetry) are embodied in one person. This is almost reminiscent of the title of the traditional classic "Crime and Punishment" and even the story of the novel.
In 2021, Fan Wen's "The Sun Turns" was published at the end of the year. As a writer who is good at carrying the big picture in the creation of novels, Fan Wen's identity is the major themes of nationality, religion, and history. This time he focused on reality and completed a thematic writing. Fan Wen was clearly trying to make a difference. He insisted that a novel with the theme of poverty alleviation take on the color of a popular novel. The first sentence of the novel is: "Zhuo Shimin, the former director of the Criminal Investigation Bureau of the Provincial Public Security Department, is now a person waiting for the death sentence." Although the verdict was issued by the doctor, it evoked his memories of his own battle legend and the scene of sending the death row prisoner to the execution ground, unfolding a story of searching for abducted children. Behind the story is another large picture of great changes in the mountains and countryside. In this way, grand themes are constantly opened and reproduced in the layers of the legendary story. Critic Pan Kaixiong's impression is indeed the same: if you do not understand the multiple clues and complex processes of the story, "but only the first look at the work, it is not impossible to regard "The Sun Turns" as a criminal investigation novel. "The novel uses the coincidental appearance of various characters to open up a rural world that is undergoing great changes, presenting the cultural history and folk customs of the Zhuang people of a specific ethnic group in the southwest border. "The Sun Turns" incorporates poverty alleviation into a broader social era and cultural background. It can be said that the novel not only writes the gorgeous turn that occurs in the remote countryside under the light of the eternal sun, but also the conception and force of creation, the incorporation and application of popular novel factors, is also a conscious and light turn in Fan Wen's creation.
Dongxi and Fan Wen chose the image of the police as the protagonist of the novel story, which is fundamentally different from Lu Zheng, who wrote "Hidden Front", who is a policeman, writing a policeman is to write the basic position and describe his duties, while The thing and Fan Wen use this identity to open up another life world more quickly and deeply. Zhou Daxin's "Flowers in Los Angeles" makes a profound and meaningful exploration of the potential crisis faced by contemporary people's marital status, and the complex and subtle nature of people's emotional world and human nature. The novel does not start from life itself, but takes the court record of Yuan Youlan and Xiong Renshen's divorce case as the narrative angle, allowing the subtleties of human nature to shine directly in the sun. This change in narrative strategy greatly enhances the "documentary" nature of the novel and teases the reader's stronger interest in reading.
These writers borrow the elements of popular fiction while not forgetting their identity as serious writers. Even by the end of the novel, I don't forget to "turn around" again and return to my original position. A common approach is to make the closure of the story conform to its own original serious positive requirements. In "Echoes" of things, when Ran Dongdong has guilt for her husband Mu Dafu because of reflecting on her own secret psychology and series of actions, things use the word "guilt love" invented by herself to summarize Ran Dongdong's complex state of mind, and use the promise and echo of love as a constraint. The whole story goes from complete to broken, and finally gives the biggest touch of light. At the end of Zhou Daxin's "Los Angeles Flowers", when the wife knows that her husband has contracted AIDS for accidental reasons, so she is estranged and snubbed by the pain, her immediate reaction is to issue a cry to the judge to "save her husband". This is the last and largest expression of love and warm affection in the whole book. Fan Wen's "The Sun Turns" also chose to let the sinful person seek redemption and repent as the final plot.
The combination of the novelists' narrative style and thematic appeal is quite interesting and interesting.
Second, the hometown of allegory
In my opinion, a more concentrated feature of Chinese writers in the creation of novels in 2021 is how to deal with their relationship with their hometown. The point where the hometown has become more different from the past in the writer's pen is that the hometown has been highly allegorical. On the one hand, the hometown is more in line with the reality of reality, including the real geographical orientation, which is completely consistent with the author's own background. They deliberately do not make any fiction, highlight documentary color, and sometimes even deliberately reinforce this. However, on the other hand, the writer's attitude towards his hometown is no longer the nostalgia of the small bridge and the flowing water, nor is it the sigh and sigh of going back and not going back. The homeland became some kind of metaphor, some kind of fable. Writers use this to convey certain abstract ideas and complex emotions. Here there is not only reflection, examination and reflection on the countryside, but also reflection and questioning of the self. There is nostalgia and nostalgia, as well as uneasiness and uneasiness that have become distant and strange.
Liu Zhenyun's "One Day and Three Autumns", Lin Bai's "Beiliu", Luo Weizhang's "Who Is Knocking on the Door", Yu Hua's "Wencheng", Shao Li's "Golden Branch", Chen Jiming's "Ping An Batch", and even Wang Anyi's "A Knife, A Thousand Words" can support my analysis of this phenomenon.
Liu Zhenyun's "One Day and Three Autumns" is still written about his hometown of Yanjin. If you must find out what is the difference between Yanjin this time and Liu Zhenyun's Yanjin, I think that Yanjin's hometown status has not changed, but it is covered by a concept, and this concept is a "joke". Liu Zhenyun abandoned the original "humor" positioning and replaced it with "jokes", which seems to be a simplification, folkization and popularization of the characteristics of his hometown, in fact, it won a liberation for it. Jokes are no more written and cultured than humor, but it points more, especially can be sharply directed to the absurd. Once it points to the absurd, the flavor of the novel is actually more heavy, and the meaning is more complicated. When the writer points out that no one in Yanjin does not tell jokes, and the expectation of life is to wait for jokes, jokes can make people relax, can not tell good jokes and may oppress people to death, the allegorical pursuit of the hometown is clearly visible. There are naturally real character stories here, especially Li Yansheng, Chen Changjie, and Cherry who have performed a play "The Legend of the White Snake" since they were young, and even performed an absurd tragicomedy in the course of their lives. The design of this main plot is constantly twisted and distorted into a story that has a sense of absurdity from the inside out. The cherry that died because of a handful of leeks turned into a ghost, and she could attach herself to Li Yansheng's body, and as he went south to Wuhan to find her husband Chen Changjie, who had married another new person, she extended to show more and bigger life worlds. From Yanjin to Wuhan, then to Xi'an, and back to Yanjin, the transformation of the field has become free and even arbitrary because of the peculiarity of the character design. But the core of the novel's story has never wandered, that is, the tragicomedy staged in the city of jokes, Yanjin, where there are both heartfelt laughs and absurd laughs, both momentary joy and bitter laughter that can be seen everywhere, both the pleasure of laughter and the humility of not being able to laugh. Yanjin's living customs and human affairs are still there, but it is obviously not the main body that Liu Zhenyun wants to show, and the highly allegorical hometown emits the atmosphere of people living in it or are not aware or unaware. This atmosphere has a high degree of symbolic meaning, making the hometown itself a fantasy place of uncertainty.
Lin Bai's "North Stream" is a highly concentrated work of the writer's explosive force, and the reader can feel a strong emotional flow from the text, and accompany the author back to his hometown with it. From the perspective of time, there are obviously two real times and scenes here, one is the current variety of the novel narrator's way back to his hometown, and the other is the memory fragment of seeing things and thinking about people and seeing people. The fragments focus on the narrator's adolescent years as he grows up. The unforgettable hometown life and the current hometown experience are entangled and intersected, constituting a life situation of mutual reference, contrast, filtering and flavor. Lindbergh did not hesitate to leave a large number of documentary traces, giving people the illusion of reading non-fiction. In the form of entries, the language, culture, and customs of the hometown are fixed, and in the process of narration, the dialect slang, the special expression tone, and the strange use of words and sentences are wedged into it, creating a living world that only the author has the right to lay out and explain, and the reader tries to enter in a state of defamiliarization. The distinct documentary brushwork makes the culture and history of the hometown, its past and present lives, gathered and emerged with the help of descriptions, memories, reunions of old friends, and goodbyes of relatives. The highly realistic story is also highly allegorical, which is the rare charm and unpretentious meaning of this novel. Lindbergh has worked the narrative and used all his strength, and the extent to which this extremely iconic, stylized, and singular approach can be recognized by the reader needs to be tested. But in any case, it was an ambitious, ambitious writing.
Yu Hua's "Wencheng" I read through for the first time, at that time did not know how to evaluate the gains and losses, and now, under the topic of "allegorization of the hometown" that I am describing, I seem to have realized a little bit of the meaning and value of this novel. "Wencheng" left me with a transparent impression, transparent characters, transparent character relationships, transparent environment. The story of the encounter and love between a man and a woman, and the parting of one party and the persistent search of the other, has an allegorical color in itself. Yu Hua's novel writing ability makes him write an impossible story extremely realistically. Of course, I now think that the novel is not so much a journey of suffering for one person to find another, but rather that they are all looking for a homeland to live in. In this sense, this search does not require much of a worldly, practical, worldly and normal reason, and the search and dwelling itself is a symbol, a spiritual and spiritual process of inquiry. Is Lin Xiangfu looking for Xiaomei or Wencheng? Is Wencheng his hometown or hometown? We can only say that Yu Hua has created a very fantastic fiction world, but it is not writing fairy tales, and history, including the history of warlords and bandits, is presented in it, giving the reader a feeling of indulgence.
Chen Jiming's "Ping An Batch" writes about the hometown of someone else, and the culture of overseas Chinese criticism contains family affection and love, contains regional culture, contains national history, and also contains the feelings of home and country. Writing Chaoshan in the context of the world, the connotation of hometown is magnified. Home is connected to the destiny of the country. Shao Li's "Golden Branch" is a tragic story that happened in the family, and the novel is also with obvious documentary colors, real place names and obvious autobiographical colors. The novel is also showing the complex relationship between man and land and homeland. Even in Wang Anyi's "A Knife, a Thousand Words", the metropolis of Shanghai has the same meaning of homeland and hometown because of the contrast of Flushing in New York and the twists and turns of fate brought out by Chen Cheng's shuttle. Chen Cheng's departure and return, setbacks and comforts, have all developed an intrinsic connection with the city of Shanghai.
Luo Weizhang's "Who's Knocking on the Door" is a work of great care. Many of the things that the novel has to express and express are very complex. But one thing we can confirm is that this is still a creation that identifies other places as hometowns, and integrates the hometown where he is hanging up with the hometown where he grew up. This has been clearly stated in the author's afterword, and the story of the novel originally belonged to Lushan, a place where he had not been here for a long time, but the deeper he went, the more he would merge with his hometown. The author frankly said: "The deepest loneliness is given to me by my hometown or hometown." Just as the "Qingxi River" in the novel imagined by the author based on the river in his hometown has "become the same river" as the Lushan River seen in reality, the hometown and hometown are also consistent and isomorphic in a broader sense. The river in his hometown makes the author slow down, touching his own susceptible and fertile heart, while he writes the story of his hometown.
Writers living in China, whether settled in their hometowns or guests, are in an era of rapid changes, striving to have a world vision, while at the same time more stubbornly adhering to a hometown that they were once familiar with and are unfamiliar, standing in the new direction of the times to re-examine, imagine and reconstruct alone. While this hometown deliberately shows a unique geographical, life and cultural identity, it also has a certain transcendent meaning, becoming a certain symbol, metaphor, and allegory. While not abandoning tradition, contemporary Chinese novels must reflect modernity, which is emerging little by little in this complex and changeable emotional entanglement and cultural imagination. Such a novel landscape is especially worth looking forward to!
The above is my superficial summary of the trend of Chinese novel writing in 2021. There are many excellent works here that are not included in the topic of examination. Let's look forward to the new harvest of the new year.