"North Stream"
Lindbergh/lynx
October Novel, Issues 3 and 4, 2021
Lin Bai, a native of guangxi and northern Guangxi. He is the author of many novels such as "Words from the North", "One Man's War", "Women's Small Talk", and "All Things Blossom". The poetry collection "Process" and "Mother Bear" are two parts. He was nominated for the Novelist of the Year Award at the Chinese Literature and Media Award, the Novel Award of the Lao She Literature Award, the Biennial Award for People's Literature Novel, and the Top Ten Nominations for the 9th Mao Dun Literature Award. Long and novellas in Japanese, Korean, Italian, French, English, Spanish and other languages have been published.
Synopsis
This is a long new work by Lin Bai for eight years, and it is also a summative presentation of the writer's theme and world view for more than 20 years. The folk experience of the southern matriarch, the memory of women's growth, and the intellectuals' reflections on the history of China in the 20th century are all integrated into this rich and majestic work. The author has taken great pains in terms of structure and language, the text structure of notes, omissions, notes, and different words disrupts the linear time narrative threads, and the Cantonese dialect of the "Li Yuedou Dictionary", the folk vocabulary of different words, and the poetic expression of "Flora" make the language of the novel flexible and extremely expressive. The unique text structure not only provides multiple meanings of interpretation, but also alludes to the spatial clues of the narrative, and the annotated scroll can be seen as Lin Bai "walking from the world back to the north stream", and the loose volume can be seen as "out of the north stream". The clues of time and space are related to the fate of the characters, and they show the worldview of the writer after deep thinking. If Lindbergh deals with the history of contemporary urban mobility after the reform and opening up, Beiliu focuses its narrative on local life in Guangxi before the 1990s, with potential narrative ambitions including revisiting tradition, place, and personal experience with a contemporary perspective. The "North Stream" river, hidden in the spiritual blood of the writer, rushes from the grass and jungles of the south, from the dialect and local language, and from the historical memory of the local decades of modern process.
A unique river that stretches through the world
- About Lindbergh's "North Stream"
Huang Dehai
There is no river that does not flow into the sea; there is no region, not in the world; there is no present moment that is not the result of history. For some reason, after reading Lin Bai's "North Stream", the first thing that came out of my mind was such a sentence.
The starting point of "North Stream" is the north stream of the small border town located in Guangxi. Despite being in a remote corner, the Beiliu City in the works for sixty or seventy years is not closed at all, but has always been open in the wind and rain of the times. The major events that affected everyone at that time did not directly envelop everyone in the novel, but always landed on people through flowers and trees, through every concreteness of daily life. One detail pushes another detail, one action pushes another action, it seems that the magnitude is not great, the change is small, but the times and people are slowly becoming vivid and vivid.
Although immersed in the times, "North Stream" does not deliberately use more than half a century of events to build the structure of the novel, but instead turns the pen and writes densely about the lush, cornered corners of this small city—those trees with branches and leaves have their own names, those stretching blades of grass have their own flavor, and those unique altar jars and jars with unique names support the daily life of different families. The big things that come in through various gaps are fermented, deformed, transformed in everyday things, and then rooted in the ground, growing into the unique appearance of the town.
Or it can be said that in "North Stream", Lindbergh is not standing outside of life, but diving deep into life, solidly recording every day that belongs to people. These days look unremarkable, and even at first glance it will feel a little cumbersome, once you go deeper, you can feel the boundless richness of it, understand the noisy colors and sounds, small but accurate psychological speculation, and the new details leaked out of the edges of the details. In this way, the handsome and rich god of the times was resurrected. Yes, through the first difficult moments, we will see the sharpness and agility of the author's intuition, and appreciate the richness, richness, and brilliance of the novel.
If you are careful, it is easy to read the feeling of "Border City" or "Long River" from "North Stream". It is not that the two are written in similar regions, nor because both write about rivers and water, but that they have the same patience for everyday things and a dedicated understanding of people. However, after all, the times are different, whether it is "Border City" or "The Long River", people seem to be waiting for some kind of return or "coming" in the same place. The people in "Beiliu" have already begun large-scale mobility, from the parents' generation to the children's generation, the branches and leaves are scattered, and different characters in the provincial capital, other provinces, Beijing, and the small city of Beiliu are all over the country.
I don't know whether it is because the novel has never given up the Beiliu dialect, or because the characters in the work have a certain self-consciousness, after leaving the Beiliu, they did not suddenly break away from the life of the small city like the accustomed works, and vigorously accepted or extremely rejected the new urban life. On the contrary, the north streamers who are scattered everywhere, no matter what work they are engaged in or what position they are in, carry the personality or characteristics formed in the north stream, and their immediate reaction to or careful consideration of an event does not completely leave the cultural genes of the north stream. Of course, people who have experienced the world are not all northbound, and they will fine-tune the character and path formed by the early scriptures according to different situations, so that we can see the diverse choices of a local culture in more complex situations.
Interestingly, whether people are in the north stream or out of the north stream, the novel has never been promoted by a long plot, but has maintained a continuous flow of details, as if the sun and the moon are passing through the day, the rivers are moving, and every detail is calmly and gracefully stretched to the point of fullness. In this way, the past years are no longer some kind of post-drying proof of history, but have once again become a living stream of time that can be touched and intuitive. Because of the abundant details, the changing time and space are no longer a scientific framework or cold objectivity, but are closely related to everyone and become an incomparably brilliant human firework.
I have some doubts that this holistic advance of detail is not accidental, but intentional by the author. In the sixty or seventy years written in the novel, no matter how many major events have happened that can change people's destiny, it is implemented to every individual, and it is a life little by little. No one will change all the established personalities overnight, even in the face of a sudden turn of fate, a sudden flying disaster, and an acceleration of being thrown off the original track of life. In the same way, no one will face the times of rushing waves without a single change, even if it is as hard as iron and strong in character. Whether it is embarrassing or majestic, "North Stream" wrote, or it is the appearance of a living person moving in the wind and waves.
Probably because of this integrity, "North Stream" is not limited to a corner of the small city, nor is it anchored in a certain aspect of the times, that Li Yuedou, who is loyal to his feelings, opens his eyes, ears, nose, tongue and body, and connects the entire Land of China and the sixty or seventy years spanned by it, like the flowing North Stream River, and no single section will be called this name. We have been accustomed to the era of divided areas and segments in our works for too long, as if life is really material for some division, and now, following "North Stream", let us try to embrace the coherent life of this.
With the previous understanding, and then looking at the structure of "North Stream", it is probably not so difficult to understand. The beginning of the "sequel: Flora" to the last "Epilogue: Who is Laughing in the Universe", plus the fictional "Membrane / 2066", indicates that this is a novel in the modern sense. The middle part is the "annotation volume" and "loose scroll" of the plum blossom bamboo, and the "Shi Note: Pouring" and "Different Words: The Aunt's Muttering, or the Rice Dumpling Song", which belong to the traditional annotation style without compromise. Isn't such a combination of modern and traditional another manifestation of the aforementioned wholeness? In addition, does this table of contents also suggest that Chinese novels as a modern way of writing may try to create their own traditional bloodline? The North Stream River is a unique river that has a twist and turns, rushing from south to north;
The Beiliu River, like any other river, flows through irrigation and nourishing people. The same is true of "North Stream", which is a unique novel, detached from the habitual segmentation and through-plot, and at the same time, like any outstanding work, it is open to the continuous human world.
This article was originally published in the 3rd edition of The Literary and Art Daily on September 3, 2021
Associate Editor of Sinan Literature Anthology, Editor of Shanghai Culture, Distinguished Researcher of Museum of Modern Chinese Literature. He is the author of "The Message of the Book of Poetry", "The Book Is Late to Read in This Life", "The Mud Hand Gift", "Personal Base", "Domestication Life", "If You Will Fly but Not Fly" and so on. He has won the "2015 Excellent Paper Award" of Southern Literature Circle, the "2015 Young Critic Award", the "8th Tang Han Youth Literature Research Award", and "the 17th Chinese Literature and Media Festival annual literary critic".
Editor: Chen Ming
Second instance: Li Chengqiang
Third trial: Song Song