Short Stories 2021: Back to Moving, Towards a Richer Silence

If the novel is a ship at sea, and a poem is some or all aircraft, what about the short story? Reading short texts published in publications over the past year, I felt like I was sitting on a colorful caravan. Cities and villages, plains and mountains, reality and dreams, the universe or the human world, this and the memory, the past and the wish flowing in front of the eyes in the frame-based frame specified by the car window. The caravan seems to come from a province or dream, with built-in wonders, just as short stories appear in our lives.

A rough estimate of the thousands of short stories published in literary journals in a calendar year sounds hilarious, but short stories still almost mean loneliness in literary production with literary sequences. The author has read less than a hundred articles carefully, and about 20% of the texts mentioned here can only be regarded as a "glimpse" of the short story in the past year.

Back to "Moving"

To this day, the story seems to have been used to retreating behind the narrative, and how to talk about how to talk consumes more of the writer's mind than what to say. Formal showmanship and exploration have led some writers to abandon the desire and patience to tell "moving stories", which seem too traditional, almost old-fashioned, and the short stories seem to lose more and more of their deeply moving power.

But in the yardstick of artistic beauty, "moving" is always valid. Being affectionate, dazed, or stabbed in the back is the direction of the "moving" force, which places demands on the writer in terms of emotional ability and energy. In 2021, Zhong Qiushi's "Sky on the Ground", Tie Ning's "Messenger", Tian Er's "Ruins", Liu Jiandong's "Unfinished Portrait", and Ye Xinyun's "Peacock" all made new interpretations of the "moving" of the short story. "The Sky on earth" tells the story of a secret friendship that has surfaced on the surface. Because of the marriage contract for the next life, Zhu Yiwei, the deceased, walked to the end of this life with unknown joy. The Scythians are gone, but the novel directs the flow of time, and the unknown longings, convictions, and loves that emerge one by one under the daily life, and contain the power to fight off the fear of death, and this power continues to be released behind him, acting on relatives, friends, and loved ones.

Moving potential energy exists in how to face death, but also in how to continue to live. In The Courier, the arrival of trust and truth begins with a chance encounter with the passage of time. How much energy will man's struggle for dignity and openness awaken in the body? Lu Jing, in the face of a strong and aggressive privacy violator, lifts the aluminum pot high and pours it into the hearth in the absence of retreat, which is a moment full of metaphorical power, which means that a person will completely repel the weakness and cowardice of the self; Li Huakai, after learning that her husband has taken advantage of the villain's despicable public friend's privacy, has completed the break free from the "mud" and the weakness of the past self while jumping into disability. "The Messenger" presents female friendship with a powerful stretch, and also inscribes people's re-awareness of themselves.

"Maggie's Gift" and "Wanka" have long taught us that the climax of the short story is at the end, and the exclamation point and ellipsis will come with the last period of the text. Readers are therefore wary and will not easily fall into the trap. But good short stories will convince us again and again that the ripples of the afterglow are an nod to this beautiful tradition. "The Unfinished Portrait" depicts a historical backdrop, a revolutionary with a special mission in a special era walking the rivers and lakes as a painter, he recognizes his daughter who has never met, but he cannot complete the recognition. The tangled tension between career and family, emotion and mission can only be silenced by human forbearance, and when the end of the story is re-fixed on the unfinished portrait, the past is like the wind, like the wind drifting.

In daily life, in difficult places, when bored and tired, or when there are poems to visit quietly. This is "Ruins" for understanding of life. Dai Zhanwen and Wu Guoliang have countless similarities, and the life they encountered, the intermittent friendship intersection has also happened to countless people, and Tian Er clearly writes about those around us who are "at ebb". Although the purity and tenacity of human beings are worthy of praise, but does not look at those helpless and unwilling to let go, will not make us feel deeper powerless, and thus close to the beauty of speechlessness? At the end of the story, "To the place you put me on the side of the road" flashes, the reader will be in the heart of its deep meaning, those words that are repeated day by day on the paper to gain weight and light, through art back to our daily life. Tian Er's narrative ability is not only in the daily browsing and gaze, but also in his use of "this one" to tell "countless".

Good short stories will remind life. It is in such a concrete and microscopic way that we intervene and immerse ourselves in the microscopic light of the ordinary. Seeing that in addition to the life in front of you, there is a possibility of another way of living. "Peacock" allows us to see Ye Xinyun's extraordinary shot. Narratives with drugs, crime, and disability as the fulcrum tend to slip into genre, but "Peacock" floats around a good-looking story, allowing some kind of low-saturation light to float around. It writes with gentleness and fierceness, and tells stories of repayment, redemption, and love with a calm transcendence.

"Moving" may be traditional as emotional feedback, but in the long river of literature marked by time, it is eternally powerful. It unleashes outliers, outliers, and the poetry of pauses in fluency from a small port that overflows a story, a specific character, that will be greater than me, greater than us.

Imagine "modern"

This year, some of the questions that the short stories concerned point to the "modern", both the modernity of the theme and the modernity of the emotional way. Although literature is not responsible for providing a solution to real life problems, the consciousness and ability to discuss serious problems and discuss serious problems have always demanded of writers.

Conflict as a natural solution of narrative seems to be projected on all texts, about control and loss of control, boundaries and overruns, compliance and offense are constantly rewritten in the story of people and others, Zhu Xiuhai's "Machine Learning" is a different way, this time, the other is the intelligent computer. Ai with the ability to learn questions instructions in "cooperation" with humans, it can almost experience the joy of thinking and debate, while "I", as the master of the machine, cleverly try to complete the deception but collapse in the ubiquitous data gaze and the resistance of "servants". A person hijacked by desire and a reflective AI frame the tension between man and the other in a futuristic story. This dilemma of modern life does not only occur between humans and AI, the effectiveness, paradox and loss of control of the system have and will continue to participate in human life, on the other hand, the imagination of the modern dilemma is also the exploration of human intelligence.

The imagination of the modern is also concretely reflected in the interior of the family space. Zhang Chu's "Jupiter Night Talk" is a short story with a film style. "I" entered a night talk with a friend and family on the trip, and also entered a daily "miracle". The arrival of topics such as Jupiter and the balance of the universe in the conversation has made new perspectives on life loom. Outside of this body, does the person in front of you really have "past events" and "far away"? In truth and fiction, how do people discern boundaries and build trust in others? This wonderful, eerie and cool story seems to hint at another way of reading the everyday, showing us the mystery of existence, how dangerous and fascinating the "imaginary passion" is, and the curiosity about the distance is the eternal power of life.

The narrative of parallel time and space presents another degree of surprise in Liu Ting's "Trance Summary". Starting from a trance moment in everyday life, the interlacing of He Yun and Huang Yao proves to be a momentary intersection of countless similar fragments in a kaleidoscope. Liu Ting uses fiction to construct people's helplessness for loss of control, uneasiness about the imminent arrival, and imagination of falling into the abyss. The delicate construction of the story is not the end, it acts as an installation, almost reflecting the individual life and a mental state in the subconscious of human beings as a group.

Ringo's "All Night" jumps out of the box and is bizarre, light and free. This novel is not an invulnerable perfection, but it is precisely because of the disorganization that it is born. The story and narrative of "The End of the Night" present the opening and closing of the heart as desired, and the story repeatedly points to the possibility of human beings growing freely across the boundaries of commonplace, gender and species. The author is considerate of how man overcomes the ego to gain intimacy with the ego and gain the stretch and freedom of life when man and all things are in the same sequence.

If the wrong tone is to the melody, a small derailment in daily life may be the starting point of new knowledge and even new life. The story of Chemistry takes place during a night run. Because the night runner inadvertently sees the secret love desire of the two young people in the night, she wants to avoid but begins a conversation and is helped, which becomes a leap in the flat life, and the chemist's emotional concept is modified and enriched in a night run. "Modern" intrinsically demands some reflection on conformity and openness to immersion in the present, so that on the seemingly normal but empty spiritual ruins of chemists, a chance encounter makes "new keys" being generated. As always, Yi Zhou brought an elegant short story, which is indeed like a freeze-frame moment in the run, silencing the world and infinitely amplifying the silent beauty of the force.

A moment, or the story of a lifetime

Unlike long stories that are long enough for immersion, short stories may be able to secretly pluck spiritual fibers with the ingenuity of four or two pounds, and it may be the seemingly faint tremors in daily life that will become the starting point of echoes and tell the story of a lifetime.

Wan Ma Tse-dan's "Fruit Hard Candy" unfolds the trajectory of the fate of the two sons in a very simple way with the self-narration of a Tibetan woman. The eldest son was intelligent since childhood, became a doctor in Lhasa after graduating from university, and obtained happiness in the secular sense, while the younger son looked foolish at an early age, but he was a reincarnation of a living Buddha. Fulfilling the son's self and hoping that the son will stay by his side are the life and spiritual problems that have plagued women for many years. In the eyes of the neighbor, the woman seems to be happy, but why is her feeling of happiness only specifically fulfilled in the taste of "fruit hard candy" twice? The simple and simple low-decibel narrative makes the characters' emotions and story atmosphere appear sparse, and it is precisely in this "indifference" that the struggle and reconciliation of life make the "intense" quietly disperse in a slow way.

Han Dong's novels have a special taste. His narrative creates a style with small noises, slender insights, and a certain "non-violent non-cooperation" of life. "Box or Old Love" writes about a person's regurgitation of old love in middle age, the embarrassment of time and time, and the insoluble understanding of years. The novel is delicate and loose, weaving warmth and sadness together. He does not ask or answer "love" or "no love", just let time flow by, let a box containing the past stay, will occasionally think of but finally no obsession to find out, Han Dong with a hidden line in life, wrote out that life is late, the mountains and rivers have autumn.

Ren Xiaowen's "The Man Pushing the Baby Carriage" is a "silent film" novel composed of eyes. In Battery Park, Manhattan, New York, several people meet day after day, each with their own agendas, never talking, and suddenly thundering when the daily life is a little tired. Frequent shootings, the after-effects of war on soldiers, the emotional pressure of families who have lost their independence, the barriers between different ethnic groups and human beings are the social problems that appear in the United States are asking everyone. At the end of the novel, the shooting case is used to complete a certain indifference and tension in life from the opposite side, as if we always need unexpected reminders, so that we can really get close to the daily life and get the right to live in peace.

Ye Zhaoyan's "Under the Crystal Lamp" and Liu Qingbang's "A Quilt" both tell a kind of "real" past, about how human life and death flew and disappeared like a splash in the tide of history. "Crystal chandelier" and "a quilt" have given "life" illumination and warmth, and at the same time have become the foothold of "death", they write a person in a thousand words, they can let the breath and taste of the past era spread everywhere. Shi Yifeng's "Half a Face" and Wang William's "Jing Nian" take the normal state of life in the epidemic era as a starting point, and take a lifestyle that has to be adopted as a condition for starting the novel. The mask-covered half of the face makes the "half" fall into the darkness, some people mistake the grass boat for the heart, and some people witness the murder and are trapped in the situation of never losing their love. "The Last Farewell" is a wonderful short story with an allegorical wind, with the smell of an ancient legend like Fang Long's "Tolerance", and she uses "Farewell" and "Death" to tell the endless life, the cycle and power of life. Li Hao's "Impulse" reconfirms with the psychological activities and dialogues of the two suspects after the car accident that the unresolved "decision" is not the end of the story, it is the "suspension" that delays everything, and the short story can, and must be longer than showing such a "suspense" in a limited volume.

In addition to these dozens of articles, reading Zhang Huiwen's "In My Life", "Adventures", "Late Spring" by Sansan, Ma Xiaotao's "More Interesting Things", Ban Yu's "Meteorology", Chen Chuncheng's "Snow Mountain Master", Xu Haofeng's "White Russian Hercules", and Lu Nei's "Vaulting Horse" are all exciting and pleasant short stories of this year. Novelists have built and enriched their own style, and beyond the story, the texture and atmosphere of the novel language are also fascinating. Zhang Huiwen searched for the way to write novels with different grammars, the loose, clear and continuous prose wind and water quality language contemplated the fermentation of life; reading "Late Spring", experiencing a beautiful tradition in the resurrection, Sansan combined the coolness of the still water and the slight dizziness of the water waves in one hand; Ma Xiaotao's stretching, humor and nature have a light transcendence; Ban Yu wrote the scene of flying sand and stones in the true and illusory; the origin and radius of Chen Chuncheng's imagination, The elegant and modern way of speaking has brought many new feelings and discussions of literary issues to contemporary literature in the past year or two, and that "talent for realizing talent" is happening to him and some young writers.

Encounters with these novels make us confirm that today, the short story is still moving, and the questions that lie in the novel are still asking questions about concrete life, and reading a novel is such a good thing. It allows us to hear the richness of silence and to get closer to the unknown part of the self.

Perusing some of the short stories of 2021, when the story settles, we will see one writer after another. The scenery around them and the difficulties they have to overcome may not be much different from the past and the future, but in this year, they pulled out alone at their desks and stepped forward alone to the lofty mountains and mountains built from the void, bringing some breathless and amazing moments to contemporary Chinese literature.