Where exactly is the gravitational pull of the short story
——From Zhu Hui's narrative method
Look at the ideation and language of short stories
Wen 丨 Ding Fan
Ding Fan
The short story hopes to bring time to a standstill. If a novel is like a movie, then a short story is like a snapshot.
Short stories tend to portray to us a life that has not yet ended, or a life that has long since ended: painful fragments full of regret and loss. It can be playful or anecdotal, suggesting the elasticity of comedy. In either case, though, the short story wins by brevity.
In less than an hour, everything is condensed and unforgettable.
David Mikkes, "Slow Reading in the Fast Age"
It is difficult for the average reader to chew and swallow a novel in a fast age, but our writers favor this grand narrative style as the path to master success. As everyone knows, thousands of novels every year pour into the stands, becoming a huge meal that cannot be eaten, scaring off readers. However, the WeChat Internet era has given miniature novels and short stories a huge reading space, and of course, non-fiction short stories seem to be more favored. Can a quick read grab the reader's eye and produce short story masters like Chekhov, O'Henry, and Maupassant? I do not deny that the long novel represents the comprehensive level of literary creation of a country and a nation, but in terms of artistic quality, the short story can better reflect the artistic talent of the novelist in language and conception, because they are soul dancers wearing shackles of time and space, and a difficult action can both make him successful and make him fall into the abyss. Such a dancer is often ignored by critics in China, and in an era suitable for short stories, people ignore it, which is the sadness of the literary world.
In fact, reading Zhu Hui's two short story collections, "Three Moments at Noon" and "Want You to Look Good", is more time-consuming and labor-intensive than reading two novels, because you have to ponder the intention and conception of each novel, and you have to pay attention to the narrative connotation behind the language tension of each work, so how to break into the core area of Zhu Hui's novel expression and make evaluations different from others has become a problem that I can't write for months. Therefore, I re-read the works of the world's three major short story masters to compare the advantages and disadvantages of Zhu Hui's novels, and I had the urge to comment in my heart.
Zhu Hui, like Bi Feiyu, has lived in the water town of Xinghua in northern Jiangsu since he was a child, but his subject matter points to rarely fall on the fertile soil of local novels, and he is good at urban theme writing, especially the depiction of petty bourgeois life and low-level citizens. Some people think that his short story "Seven-Story Pagoda" is a vernacular novel, on the contrary, it is an image of a remnant of the era that has lost its soul paradise by the migration of agricultural civilization to a modern small city, the shadow of Chekhov's novel hangs over Donald, the collapse of the seven-story pagoda indicates that the ethics of Donald's world have been abandoned by this era, and the pleasure and glory obtained by Donald in the past surrounded by agricultural civilization collapse in an instant: "That night, the breeze blows, and the cold moon shines." He stood in the courtyard for quite a while. The pagoda was full of bright moons, and he could accurately find the original location of the pagoda, but he could no longer see such an old scene. In the hopeless mental collapse, the author let Papa Donald "have a cultural stroke", and the work came to an abrupt end, leaving a huge space for the theme of excavation.
If I had to choose the best short story from Zhu Hui's many good novels, I would not hesitate to choose "Three Hours at Noon", because it reminds me of the way O Henry's short stories were conceived, especially its ending, which is an "O.Henry-esque ending". I would venture to say that a good short story often depends on its ending, in other words, the ending is often the key to success or failure. The ending of "Three O'Clock in the Afternoon" is certainly much more clever than "The Seven-Story Pagoda", and it reminds people of the textbook "Maggie's Gift" and "The Last Evergreen Leaf". Like O Henry, the old-school writing of "Three Moments at Noon" is a strange flower that blooms in the fast era, although the story narrative is mixed with many modern elements, but from the conception to the end, it is "European version", especially the unexpected ending, the black humor overflowing from "O Henry's End" is injected with tragedy, not the comedic elements in "Maggie's Gift", which deeply lays the Chinese brand of the petty bourgeoisie of our time. When Qin Mengyuan returned from abroad for the last time to face the portrait of her own father, and heard her adoptive mother tell about her illegitimate daughter's life, the storyline was completely reversed, a meaningful ending gave the modern novel a glimmer of life, only a well-conceived, good ending of the short story can make this small pendant playing in the palm of the hand shine with a shining luster, and the ending that can surprise and reminisce is the leader of the short story.
There is no doubt that O.Henry's narrative style of fiction is humorous, witty, and sarcastic, linguistically, making good use of puns, slang, slang, pronunciation, and canonical renovations. All these elements can be found in Zhu Hui's short stories. In fact, carefully read Zhu Hui's short stories, you will find that the author is a person who is very good at using the traditional music art cross-talk language art means, the short story's ups and downs and twists and turns of the storyline is not the decisive factor for winning, the key is in the use of language tension and explosive power, it is enough to make up for the lack of plot extension temptation. The eighteen martial arts in cross-talk are the most important "shaking baggage", then, storytelling is not important in cross-talk art, what is important is that the driving force for the advancement of the novel is to rely on the language full of gimmicks, and the short story is better than the language, rather than the powerful narrative function. You will see the frequent laughter, forming the artistic effect of "teasing", just like the "poverty" of the northerners when they kan dashan, so humorous, witty and ridiculed, you can even see the "protagonist" played by Zhu Hui as a "storyteller", he even changed his hometown voice, or the accent of Mandarin, many languages have brought the "child's pronunciation" of The Beijing uncle, a very talented Zhu Hui turned short stories into language dinners, which was handy and humorous in his short stories Of course, it is not the kind of hilarious laughter, because the novel has become funny to the point of laughter.
How come we weren't aware of such manifestations in the past? For example, Qin Mengyuan's beautiful classmate said that "my mother's stomach is a plastic surgery hospital, and I came out after I was straightened out", no doubt, this is the driving force that stimulates Qin Mengyuan's continuous plastic surgery, making her a masked woman who "hides a scalpel in her smile". The author's description of Qin Mengyuan's husband's black and fat is even more shady, "the fat pig finally shows its fangs, it is a wild boar." And The language description that Qin Mengyuan tries to improve through hue has a gimmick of adding oil and vinegar, and the narrator's narrative is obviously dramatic: "Her advantage is that she has a good body and good moaning - no, no, typo, is a good voice." This is the linguistic pun effect formed by the "black sound" adopted by O.Henry in his short stories, allowing the reader to enter a unique situation, so that the storyline is submerged and digested in the language of witty humor, becoming an invisible existence, and the storyline, even if it is empty, will get a complete link in these ethereal and lively language jumps. Because short stories can only leave room for flying white rhetoric to get more mutated artistic identity in this era of online language.
The opposite of "Three Moments of Noon" is "SpitTing Performance", one is an ugly woman who does not appear on the radio station and is a voice spokesperson; the other is a provincial television station's news anchor, who is an image spokesperson. The difference between the two is a huge gap formed in the context of social survival, the same is the woman who eats the open mouth, the former Qin Mengyuan's voice is sweet, magnetic, but the charm is insufficient; the latter is a mature woman who has both voice and beauty. The title of the novel, "SpitTing Character Performance", should be a pun, and its superficial semantics are suitable for their professional identity, while the deep meaning (including Yi) is a battle of power trading. Needless to say, this work is a reclusive erotic wind and moon novel, Qin Mengyuan works with her voice and conquers the audience; han yi works with her body, winning the favor of the stage director for many years, which is her magic weapon to occupy the center position on the stage. Contrary to the tragic ending of Qin Mengyuan, although Han Yi's story has no plot reversal, the effect of comedy is still very obvious. In a "political intercourse" or "politics of intercourse", a kind of ironic comedic effect with black humor was formed, when a symphony of good music suddenly stopped, immersed in the contemplation after the madness, when considering the fate of the director's political ups and downs, he did not forget to go to the small bedroom to delete the voyeuristic video installed by her husband in time. Undoubtedly, the author gave the heroine such an action design, seemingly random, in fact, this "gimmick" is a helpless move to set off the theme in the absence of a reversal of the fate of the characters in the novel, but it is this stroke that strengthens the comedic style of the work, which is also a good ending. This is the reason why Zhu Hui worships Flaubert's maxim that "we find the abyss through the cracks", and the "pain point" of his novel is here to cast the soul.
Undoubtedly, most of Zhu Hui's short stories are comedic, and "Swallowing" is a divorce comedy, which makes people see the utilitarian nature of the relationship between husband and wife in modern society, and is full of the author's energy to mobilize various rhetorical means. It is worth noting that Zhu Hui's time lags behind the time of shaking away the "baggage" of his carefully set storyline, adding a "tail" with a comedic effect to the work, is this a "snake foot"? This is a dilemma for the author, and from the perspective of the short story being unexpected and leaving room, this "baggage" is a good ending if it stops abruptly when the stock market downstairs turns red. However, the author concludes with Xu Dao's psychological activity - fantasizing that tonight can be with Meng Jia's scene of "sowing clouds and rain", although it has a comedic effect, but it is too clear, but it blocks the reader's imagination space, and the author sometimes casually explains, often not the stroke of God.
"Lang Love Concubine" is a very high -- "cheating marriage" story, is a kind of inevitability in life, the novel is based on dogs as a medium, Su Li's trap was originally for Carla to obtain the right to free mating and carefully designed the plot of the dogs' secret love, and it is the dog's mating that triggered Su Li's mating with the young handsome Brother Ning Kai, this series of processes are successfully completed according to Su Li's design trap, Su Li made love to Ning Kai after pregnancy, while "patting her own happy belly, 'Your life is his life, my son's life.'" Such an ending has both satirical comedic effects and leaves a certain amount of room. More importantly, the driving force of the work to promote the novel all depends on the author's humorous and witty jokes and the explosive power of various rhetorical languages, such as the ambiguous pun of "Su Li and Ning Kai also began to have regular contact", if it is not revealed by the mystery of the later pregnancy, in the process of reading, readers often only use it as a "recurring" everyday language, but this is the "eye of the storm" promoted by the plot of the novel, and when you look back, you can clearly see the author's painstaking loneliness.
"Night Facing Dusk" is also a wind and moon novel, Ma Binghe and Ye Yan's secret love story is written vividly, the same is a dog-mediated design, this time Zhu Hui left an unsolved "baggage" for the novel, suspense left, an ending without an ending, but also let the novel attract people's reverie.
"Want You to Look Good" is undoubtedly a leading work, very dramatic, a scene constitutes the "polyphony" meaning of the short story, which rarely appears in the short story of the multi-voice loop effect, so that the novel has more space to interpret, several sets of contradictions and entanglements in the form of bridges, conflicting with each other, taking care of each other. A teahouse, a few tables of men and women, a comedy, which is much more exciting than Satin's "In its Fragrant House Teahouse". Romantic words, petty bourgeois mood, but did not stop Zhu Hui's strong desire not to shake away the "baggage", the work suddenly braked in a senseless ending, nor did it give a satisfactory explanation, like a suspense novel - he shaved all her hair with a razor when he was drunk, "When he left the door, he couldn't help but look at her again. Zhu Hui put the end of the novel with a dead button and left everything to the reader, which is the author's greatest wisdom.
Zhu Hui is not without writing a tragic story, "Medicine is Love" is a romantic and emotional tragedy, and as soon as the name of the virtual character "Zijun" appears at the beginning, the tragic ending of the work's love "wounded death" is seen. The work uses a set of storytelling methods, and the heroine's parents painstakingly design a wedding on a hospital bed in order to make Zetian a "complete woman". What the author wants to ask is another philosophical question of marriage—what does marriage really mean to people? Li Yang's confusion is precisely the confusion of society. Is this kind of well-intentioned deception the goodness of human nature? This reminds me of Maupassant's famous "Necklace", what is the difference between unintentional deception and well-intentioned deception? "Medicine is Love" and "Necklace" also throw out the "baggage" at the end, but the interpretation of human nature is different.
"O.Henry's Ending" provides short story writers with unlimited opportunities to write, and we cannot ignore the infinite vitality of classical writing just because this is an old-school way of writing more than a century ago. Finally, I would like to conclude with a quote from David Mikkes in The Slow Reading of The Fast Age for writers who are passionate about short stories: "Simplicity gives the short story a clear ending, but it is also full of possibilities, so we ponder, judge, sympathize, and all kinds of emotions go on at the same time—like Borges's Hladic, caught in the bubble of time." ”
What kind of ending you choose is really important!