Literary review 丨 comment on "First Person Singular": The interesting and meaningless nature of Haruki Murakami

Haruki Murakami's new collection of novels, First-Person Singular, may show his new style and new turn. On the one hand, he pays more attention to drawing nourishment from the Japanese aesthetic tradition and pursuing Zen emptiness in style. On the other hand, it also has many influences on the structure and narrative: for example, in order to pursue blank implications, it creates emptiness and mystery; in order to pursue the epiphany of rationality, it continues to weaken the plot. Overall, this is a tendency to "essayize fiction", with less regard for control, abruptness and layout, but patiently writing about the emptiness after boredom. The differentiation of evaluations brought about by this turn is not without reason. Perhaps, what Haruki Murakami wants to write about this time is the survival of the unconscious, the naked face of life.

Style: Waka tastes, absorbing traditional aesthetics

Haruki Murakami loves Carver, but is much more poetic than Carver. In the past, from language to consciousness, he was full of American breathing - jazz, rock, whiskey, like the three elements, almost became the logo. He belongs to the category of writers who are far from the Japanese tradition, neither as viscous and damp as the Meiji Taisho period, nor do they pursue the classical aesthetics of mourning and mystery. But "First Person Singular" may have a temperamental shift, with no shortage of tail rhymes, like the Japanese waka style, which is both light and light, both empty and illusory. Like the contemplation of Ango Sakaguchi blooming under the cherry blossoms, the story is full of fear and loss, and life is empty. In my opinion, Haruki Murakami's new work is "Fork and Return".

The story begins with suspense and a lot of social psychological reasoning, and even if it is compared with Edogawa and Kiyoharu Matsumoto, it does not feel much difference. The background of the story is cold and desolate, decadent and lonely, and it is connected with the breath of Junichiro Tanizaki and Osamu Dazai. There are some "strange talks" mixed in, or strange, or inexplicable, but it is not interesting. "On the Stone Pillow" is like the dew love affair in "Liaozhai", "I know her almost nothing, even her name and appearance can't be remembered." "I accidentally spent a night together and never saw them again. Apart from being extremely lonely and cold, the two are warm and comforting each other, what can they write?

The writer wants to touch and reminisce about the various situations between joy and sadness. Just like the short song collection sent by the woman, all written are a high degree of integration of love, loneliness and life and death. From this, he thought, the two bodies were "moving towards irreversible destruction." The verse is done by sacrifice, with the head placed on "the cold stone pillow illuminated by the moonlight of winter nights." "This is a work that does not rely on the plot, but relies on the imagery, emotions and aftertaste to evaporate."

Carnival Carnaval is the story of the "masquerade". A woman whose appearance is comparable to Zhong Wuyan has a very high musical taste. That kind of vitality is very attractive. The story rises to aesthetic contemplation— the fission of beauty and goodness, and the woman is eventually arrested for fraud. Aesthetics are sometimes masks, which embellish sin.

However, while absorbing The Japanese aesthetic, the writer returns to himself and strengthens the style. The first-person singular is essentially a mego narrative, continuing his previous works as either single or divorced narrators. That weird "sheep man" image is also highlighted in "The Confession of The Shinagawa Monkey". Like strange talk, Shinagawa monkeys can take care of the bathroom, rub people's backs, and exchange music, but they are excluded by monkeys. The writer writes a new level of loneliness across species. Shinagawa monkeys satisfy spiritual love through spiritual power, "stealing women's names", and most of the women are temporarily lost in consciousness and amnesia. The story may be an irony that human beings are obsessed with carnal desires, and it is not as good as the pure love of monkeys. The Shinagawa monkey traveled from possession to existence. But the story may have stemmed from hallucinations that could not confirm the existence of the monkeys.

Structure: The story is not developed and the meaning is not complete

Murakami's new work has the meaning of "emptiness". But is this "emptiness", is it emptiness, nothingness, or Zen? It is thought-provoking, and it involves the investigation of the story, form and meaning layers. In this short story collection, many of the stories are considered to be nothing. Haruki Murakami wants to perfunctory into a story, which is actually quite difficult. The short story of the same name, "First Person Singular", is a single form, that is, "the unfinished story", which is better called "undeveloped" or "non-complete". The characters tossed and turned for half a day struggling with whether to wear a suit on the road. Because this is too formal, it is weird. Finally, he went to the bar in his formal clothes and read a mystery novel in the midst of the noise and chaos. A strange woman provokes him for no reason, thinks he is serious, pretends to be a pretense, and finally brings up the old story of many years ago (even at the end of the novel, I don't know what it is).

The man remembered where and what had offended her, and could not remember it after all. The story touches on a central question – where is the ending? It's even more important than how to get started. This requires that the writer's cognition be reconciled with the reader's identity: there must be a preliminary consensus on the integrity of the story. For example, it cannot end in a situation where no substance appears, and it cannot end during the gestation period of the story. It has a "should" ending judgment, not just the writer's simple "solipsistic" freedom. It may be the most boring piece in the collection of novels, but it is the main title of the same name. I suppose this importance can only be given by the writer from the outside of the story. In other words, it needs to be understood by additional interpretation, attached to the narrative. It's similar to if you stand in front of a painting and you have to rely on the painter to talk about what he wants to express in order to understand it.

"Go left or right, you can go anywhere." In times like this, I sometimes choose left and sometimes right (sometimes there are reasons for me to firmly choose one side, but there may be more times when there is no complete reason. And it's not always me who chooses, there are a few times when the other party chooses me), and then there is the person I am now. In this way, the first-person singular me is really here. If I had chosen a different direction in any of these places, I might not have been where I am today. "Its existentialist traces are very strong, and the subject matter is nothing more than free choice, the gaze of the other, the hell. The first half considers passers-by's evaluation of their own dress, and the second half comes from the woman, as an inexplicable judgment of the other. As a result, the story appears "very Sartre", making not very good annotations to existentialism.

Narrative: Both rejecting allegory and being like a philosophical sketch

One of the models that First Person Singular lays for writers is the tail of narrative plus commentary. In this regard, the writer and Pu Songling are in the same position. The paradox is that he seems to be disdainful of writing meaning, but also wants to find some "reasoning" in the story to draw inspiration or lessons. On the one hand, it rejects the core of the story, denies the existence of substance, and only writes the story of the appearance. "Where would there be any theme or revelation in such a story?" On the other hand, he wrote the story like a "philosophical sketch". Each story wants to discuss life circumstances: both impermanent and normal. But in the end, they were all written as fruitless, unsolvable and hopeless. This may be a technique of Haruki Murakami: give you "meaning" but not meaning, give you emotions, but do not give discharge. It causes the story to be completely unintelligible, like an inland river flowing and evaporating. From the positive point of view, this is a narrative that pays attention to the blank implication, but what about the negative side? That is, the writer himself is confused, and the expression of emotion must be vague and hazy.

And Haruki Murakami sincerely puts this "lost" state to the reader - do you want to drink whiskey together, help me think about the strange, how to end? I prefer the writer's attitude to an inquiry, the essence of which is to confuse the writer, to tell the reader about the doubts of life, the unsolved mysteries. He obviously didn't need an answer either. "Cream" is an example: a former female classmate holds a recital and sends an invitation. After "I" went to the appointment, I found that the location was strange and there was no performance. Suddenly an old man appeared like a dumb puzzle: Are there several circles with no circles around them? Think about the puzzles and you'll get the "cream of life."

Illogical, unexplainable, and illegitimate things that disturb the mind, which are hopelessly boring things. Because it is meaningless, it is difficult to understand. Haruki Murakami's writing is more willful, more obsessed with intuition, and those feelings are not like the feelings of the elderly. On the contrary, he also retains an almost fleshy and tender mind, coupled with a slightly wordy language, as if giving birth to a girlish feeling. A lot of descriptions, positive and negative, fold back to say, in fact, a sentence can be sent. But in terms of perception, it is clumsy and cute, like a girl writing a diary and writing love letters, how will she write? Probably like this, thinking about it, repeating it over and over again, it is inevitable that there is some nonsense. Haruki Murakami always has the young heart of the "narrator", which is a feeling that many writers are difficult to find again.

Nevertheless, I read the novel, half obligatory and half habitual. I've always been like this, once I start reading a book, I don't want to give up halfway, thinking that maybe it will suddenly be interesting at the last minute, even if the probability of this actually happening is very low. "I picked out this description, which is also the feeling of reading the new works of well-known writers. Whether he was laughing at himself or not is unknown, but it was clear that Haruki Murakami knew the problem. He hovers between "somewhat interesting" and "not very meaningful." If we analyze the root causes, it may be that writers have a new trend - the essayization of novels. He became more fond of writing "enlightenment" in the form of long essays. The climax becomes cold, because the plot sudden turn is mostly absent, it mutates into a highlight of reason, a moment of epiphany.

Author: Yu Gengyun

Editor: Fan Xin

Planner: Fan Xin

Editor-in-Charge: Li Ting

*Wenhui exclusive manuscript, please indicate the source when reprinting.