The Death of a River Guide, by Richard Flanagan, translated by Liu Yuhan, Edition: New Classics| Nanhai Publishing Company, January 2022
The Death of a River Guide is Richard Flanagan's first novel and the second to be published in China, and Chinese readers have previously read The Path Deep North. The Path Deep North is a remarkable novel in which Flanagan presents with fictional power the experiences of his father, the experience of a military doctor named Evans, the experience of love in Australia and the construction of the Thai-Burma Railway after being captured by the Japanese during World War II. Frankengan's novel dedicated to his father brought him a lot of fame and came to China smoothly, but I want to tell you that before "The Path Deep into the North", Flanagan was already one of the outstanding writers in the world today, and the story of Tasmania, Australia, and the story of his hometown, which he wrote, has occupied an indispensable place in contemporary world literature.
Flanagan is a year younger than me, and I always have a kind curiosity when I read the works of foreign writers of my generation, what are they writing when I write my own story? So when I read "The Death of the River Guide", I couldn't help but think of my first novel "Shouting in the Drizzle" several times, of course, these are two completely different novels, what they have in common are the author's first novel, I had almost nine years of short story and novella writing training before writing "Shouting in the Drizzle", "The Death of the River Guide" is Frannagan's first novel writing, this rookie shot is a masterpiece, there is no bit of hardness in reading through it, The author seems to be a veteran who has written ten novels, and he has only written a few non-fiction works before. Another common denominator is that when we wrote our first novel, we were all pursuing the freedom of narrative, we did not want to be bound by the integrity of the story, what I did in "Shouting in the Drizzle" was to cut the story into pieces, and Franagen did more absolutely in "The Death of the River Guide", not only shredding the story, but also cutting a lot of plots into pieces, and strangely did not affect the reading process, so that I could not read it.
In this novel, Frannagan has the best narrative angle, and it is also the window of perspective for the success of this novel—Aliash, the narration of a dead river guide, the narration of a wandering soul, telling us from time to time, a space without time telling a space with time.
Richard Flanagan is an Australian writer. Born in Tasmania in 1961. In 1994 he published his novel The Death of a River Guide, which was named "one of the most promising debuts of Australian literature" by the Times Literary Supplement.
I was born, I died, I appeared
I can understand that Frannagain, having gained the freedom to write, also brought the greatest challenge to his own writing. Flanagan undoubtedly likes the challenge, otherwise he would not have the audacity to cut the plot all apart, often one plot is not completed, another plot begins, this other is not yet completed, another one comes out, one plot will not be finally completed after some other plot, so he must make every piece brilliantly presented, such writing requires extraordinary insight of the author, requires superb skill and talent, and also needs a good body, these Flannagan have it, so he did it, I was attracted to this book, and I finished reading it with a few drums, and if I had been twenty years younger and my eyes were not yet old, I believeD I would have finished reading it with a single stroke.
The novel has many characters, and since Frannagan wants to make each piece memorable in the narrative, his characters must be full of life when they appear. Maria Magdalena Svivo, who appears intermittently in the narration of the wandering soul of Alias, first appears as a midwife, untie the umbilical cord that wraps around Ariash's neck and brings Ariash into the world. The woman, who was always laughing, liked to smoke cigars, a local Australian brand of cigars, and liked to say an Australian proverb that "if you don't go to Sydney, go to the wilderness," at the funeral of Aliash's mother, "She flicked the soot into the grave with one finger while the priest solemnly recited 'Dust to Dust, Soil to Earth.'" Naturally, the priest looked at her with disgust, and the others stopped looking down at the tomb and went to look at her.
Maria Magdalena Svivo appears at the beginning of the novel, and Flanagan devotes almost five pages to her, which are made up of different fragments, fragments of Maria Magdalena Svivo, fragments of Aliash, fragments of Alias's mother. Maria Magdalena Svivo's narrative style laid the foundation for the novel's narrative, and Flanagan found his own narrative logic, not according to the story, not in order, time is staggered, the previous paragraph is still past, the next paragraph is later, but the narrative is so smooth that there is no sense of interruption in reading. Flanagan is a master of transitional narrative, the transition between details, the transition between fragments, which he completes without the reader's attention, and it is wonderful.
Arias knew that he was not born in Tasmania, Australia, but in a small town called Trieste on the border between Italy and Slovenia, and that when he was ten years old he heard that Maria Magdalena Svivo was returning to visit his family, in a bazaar in Trieste, he was hit by two drunken students on a scooter, "Two students died without a day, and Maria, who was in her eighties, returned to Australia after lying in the hospital for three months, Even more alive than before departure."
The upper paragraph of this paragraph says that Maria Magdalena Svivo is cleaning the floor of The maternity room after The birth of Arias. The following passage is the complaint of Arias's mother many years later, because Maria Magdalena Svivo was afraid of giving less for the delivery fee and took a bottle of precious whiskey. "My mother's only bottle of whiskey was the reward she received after a night of spring supper with my father. That bottle of wine and my unwelcome son were all my mother had got from my father, who was serving a prison sentence nearby. So Aliash's mother would have lamented that "if Maria Magdalena Svivo had taken me with her and left the bottle of whiskey, she would have been much better off." The time presented in these three paragraphs is like a triple jump, almost a jump is a decade.
I'll go on to talk about how Flanagan brought his characters to life, and about Maria Magdalena Svivo's original depiction, the image of Maria Magdalena Svivo comes to life if you remember two details, one is that two students who injured her died the same day, and she came back alive; and the other is that she bounced soot into the tomb of Arias's mother.
The appearance of Harry, The Father of Arias, is not officially seen in the previous chapters about him serving a prison sentence, and Harry's official appearance is at a barbecue party when he is drunk, "Harry will address a large group of animals, but except for a few stray cats and scabies dogs, the other animal audiences will not be able to see it at all." But Harry claimed that the animals enjoyed the feast."
Flanagan always lets his characters appear at the most appropriate time, Maria Magdalena Svivo is one of the few people in the book who has lived a stable life, her appearance is shown in vivid details of life, Harry is unfortunate, so he appears in a sloppy appearance.
There are also characters who have just exited the scene, when Alias was a young boy, he was bullied and beaten by his classmates almost every day, which made him know how to fight back, even if he was beaten all over the body, as long as he was still fighting back, he thought they would not win. He discovers that a classmate named Eddie is the same way, who has been bullied and has not yielded, and the two people who have been fighting with other children have become friends. But as soon as Eddie appeared, Flanagan asked him to quit, and Eddie's exit was as wonderful as the appearance of other characters. In the fourth grade, the Eddie family was moving north to carry their luggage to an old Austin car, and Eddie used the last of his time to play with Alias. Eddie put on a snorkel and goggles for the rest of the trip, saying that he wouldn't have to smell their farts all the way when he huddled in the back seat with his five siblings. Alias laughed. ”
"The Path Deep into the North", by Richard Flanagan, translator: Jin Li, edition: 99 Readers| People's Literature Publishing House, July 2017
Many wandering souls, many of themselves
The Death of a River Guide is a novel and a guide to narrative, a book worth savoring for readers who are keen to explore the mysteries of literature; a textbook on narrative for authors who have just embarked on the path of literary creation. Here we can read the omnipotence of the narrative, the narration of Aliash, the narration of a wandering soul, there are those who Have seen and heard and experienced, there are those who Have not seen or heard and not experienced by Alias, a drowning wandering soul, a fluttering wandering soul, a sitting wandering soul, an omniscient wandering soul, telling a lot of themselves, telling a lot of others, after birth, before birth, as far as his father Harry's great-grandfather. Flanagan's depictions sometimes advance rapidly, can be a few pages to complete a lifetime, sometimes slow down, carefully describe things, especially the dynamic depiction of the Franklin River, can be called a model of literary depiction of the river, Alias and the adventures of two river guides nicknamed "Cockroaches" with travelers is one of the two clues of this novel, the other clue tells the story of many families and many others, this clue can be said to be a fantasy, It was this whimsical clue that dared Flanagan to cut the plot into pieces in the narrative, while switching back and forth between the third and first persons, as natural as walking back and forth between the living room and the room. It should be noted that when Flanagan gave the narrative complete freedom, his ability to grasp the proportions of the narrative was also highlighted, and he knew that important plots could not be cut open, and they had to be written in one go.
Ariashi and Kota Ho, a woman of Chinese descent, know, love, and separate in one go. Flannagan does not miss any opportunity to narrate, and in this chapter he takes the opportunity to write down the history of the Ho family and asks Aliash to tell Kota Ho about the death of his mother, which is the first time Thataliash has talked about how her mother, Sonia, died. We know by page seven that Sonia is dead, and on page ninety-seven we know how she died. It was Frannagan's style, what happened, what the reason was, he would often tell us separately, and always at the right time.
Flanagan describes the deep peace and sorrow of Ariash and Kota Ho when they were separated, their precious daughter Gemma died two months after coming to earth, Kota Ho sank into the abyss of pain, Ariash tried to comfort Kota Ho, "life must go on" "We had her for at least two months", such words are just Ariash's self-comfort, which is incomprehensible to Kota Ho, and then when Ariash gives Kota Ho a hug or kiss, Kota Ho's reaction is to hate such behavior. Let's see how Frannagan described their separation, eight months after their daughter's death, when the two were washing dishes after dinner, Andarish told Kota Ho that he had thought about it for a long time and that the best thing to do was for him to leave. Kota Ho's reaction was to smile weakly, "As if he were saying nothing more than inconsequential things like going to the corner store to buy milk." 'All right. She said, 'Okay. Then he smiled a second time, as if it meant nothing to her." Then they went on washing the dishes, and it was over between them. The two of them spent their last night together, "lying shoulder to shoulder." He took her hand, but she withdrew her hand and folded it over her chest."
When Flanagan describes the river, people read with the excitement of the noise of the water, and when he describes the separation and loss of relatives, it is a silent heartache.
Harry, who was still a child, followed his father Boy into the deep woods at the beginning of the hunting season, which was the best time for Little Harry to spend time with his father, the father who came home and would only sleep and drink and beat his mother, and became "quiet, happy, warm, and willing to communicate with his son" when he lived in a shack and went out hunting together, and Little Harry learned to make his father's favorite wallaby meat cake and learned to love his father. But my father died, and when he went out hunting, he was killed by a rotten tree, and the wind blew off the trunk of the tree and just hit him. On the first day of his father's death, little Harry lay in bed with a fever, and for the next four days he did not know that his father was dead, and Frankagan spent two pages describing in detail the little Harry's waiting, how he made the wallaby meatloaf, and when he was done, he put the grease and the meatloaf into the pan, not on the fire, he was waiting for his father to return. Four days later he had finished his meatloaf and went out to look for his father, and Flanagan spent almost three pages describing how little Harry had found his dead father and then how he had come home, and the sensible child "went to the leather shed, took the hemp rope and carefully wrapped thirty-six pieces of wallaby skin in Boy's tarp coat and tied it behind his back." He knew that if he didn't carry something back, the hunt would be in vain." Although there are still hundreds of sheets of leather in the shed. Little Harry walked for a day and a half and met his two uncles, George and Bargil, and after a full page of descriptions of the three of them meeting, George asked "What about Boy?" Little Harry's answer was "There is a tree."
That's insight, and Instead of having Little Harry answer "dead," Flanagan said, "There's a tree." Flanagan then accurately wrote down George and Bargil's calm reaction that the death of a loved one was nothing to them under the weight of a life of poverty, "as if it were just a horse race that lost some money." After reading this chapter, recalling harry's drunken speech to a few stray cats and scabies dogs when he appeared, and thinking that the cats and dogs enjoyed it, we may sigh and sigh and read about what life is.
Where are you taking me?
When I read page fifteen of The Death of the River Guide, I realized that the narrator was a dead wandering soul, and as a writer, as I read page by page, I would be concerned with how Flanagan described the drowning of Alias. I have faith in Flanagan and I believe he will write a wonderful chapter, because in the final chapter of "The Path Deep North", I read the amazing stroke of Evans and Amy, lovers who are in love, on the Sydney Bridge after many years. At the end of The Death of the River Guide, Flanagan did not disappoint me, he brilliantly wrote about the death of Aliash, the rapids of the Franklin River put Arias in danger several times, but Alias drowned in calm.
A few years ago, when Flanagan came to Beijing, I was holding "The Path Deep into the North" in my hand, pointing to the catalogue of works in the author's profile and asking him, which book on it is about Tasmania? He told me that except for the one I had in my hand, everything else was written about Tasmania. Now Richard Flanagan's Tasmania has come to China.
At this moment I am reminded of a passage in the book where Aliash's father, Harry, took his mother Sonia from Italy by boat back to Tasmania, Australia, and "the first time she saw it from the boat, Sonia cried." Sonia saw a small town where the wooden buildings were crumbling from disrepair, and she asked Harry, "Where did you bring me?" "I'm going to quote a passage below, I don't laugh at Tasmania in the slightest, I read about lively Tasmania and tough Tasmania in The Death of a River Guide, and I quote it to tell you that Richard S. Tasmania is the only thing I'm going to quote. How vivid and interesting Frannagan's writing is, and such vividness and fun are all over the place in this book. After Sonia disembarked, the first scene she saw in Tasmania was this:
They saw a man arguing with a telephone pole, and a woman pleading with him not to look out of the ordinary.
"Get out of the way." The man said, "It's a private conversation. ”
The author | Yu Hua
Editor| Li Yang
Introduction Proofreading | Chen Diyan