New scene | He Jiayu: starting from Meiman, mooring in the "wounded death"

Depart from Meiman and anchor at "Wounded Death"

——Read the leopard short story collection "Happy Man"

□ He Jiayu

The first collection of short stories by The Pale Leopard is titled "Happy Man", but none of the stories in "Happy Man" are happy, and even more or less start and anchor in "wounded death".

There are nine short stories in "Happy Man", which mainly tell three kinds of stories: "Daughter", "Health", "Do you remember to do magic for me in Shangzhou?"? " and "The Traveler" are the encounters of "those two people" as "a pair of people" and "two people" at different times of life. The four articles seem to recount the situation of the same person and the same pair of people at different times from different aspects, they return to the common life paragraph from time to time with the identity of lovers, friends, family members, and deceased people, and intersect for a moment to become a background for their later lives; "Mountains and Rivers", "Overheated" and "Parents" have a clear story background, telling the growth and sinking of icebergs within the family, starting from the life triggered by "mother" and "daughter", "daughter" and "missing father", "father" and "son", "mother" and "missing son", single-parent families, The subtle, secret tensions within the families of the orphaned and the fear of losing their children are perceived; "Gone with the Wind" and "The Sea and the Sponge" are the presentation of the evening scene of man, the former entering from the memories of "Mrs. Lee", the latter starting from the last journey of the "professor's" life, recounting how the husband's infidelity and the long war of silence within the marriage ended with the death of the husband. Nine kinds of daily with few terrifying parts. Or yes, but the end of the wave at the beginning of the story has subsided. The author seems wary of the "drama" in the narrative dynamics, and the nine stories are constantly returning to the volume and timbre of the everyday itself, so that the progress of the "story" is like white noise.

Tampa has professional academic training in sociology and anthropology and media experience, and her life radius can be seen from the location where the novel is placed. Professional discipline training and the use of words shape her way of thinking; wandering the world, the anchor of "Happy Man" is repeatedly thrown to the edge of family life and daily wear and tear. The person who wrote "Happy Man" is drowning, unconscious or used to it. They whisper, sleepwalk, struggle or stop struggling, and they are forming a new relationship with the water. A brief outline of the story is not enough to explain what kind of a collection of novels "Happy Man" is, because it essentially dissolves the telling of the story.

People whose names are omitted

The main characters of the nine short stories in "Happy Man" are almost devoid of appearances, and even the names are intentionally or unintentionally erased. Either the habit of using the narrator's personal name, or the deliberate weaving of scattered points, the author does not define the characters by the face, but by the trajectory and way of the mind's actions. The text mostly refers to the character in the third person, first person, and a certain social identity, and cancels the "name" as a transition: "she" and "he" ("Daughter"), "I" ("Health", "Traveler"), "Father", "Father", "Mom" ("Mountains and Rivers", "Parents") throughout the text; or named after some part of the body, such as "Lame Liang" ("Overheated"),more specifically, "Mr. Lee", "Mrs. Lee" and "Little Lee" ("Gone with the Wind"), "Professor" and "Gone with the Wind"; The Wife" (The Sea and the Spongy Body), is the "W" and the "Mathematician" (The Traveler).

This must not be a coincidence. In "Do You Remember Magic Tricks for Me in Upstate?" In the opening sentence, the first sentence of the opening paragraph is "one is called Jiali, the other is called Jiaming", so that "randomly" two names are assigned to the characters, and later "she" and "he" refer to the two. The characters with names in "Happy Man" are a minority, and are often the more marginal ones in the narrative. "Parents" begins with the titles of "father" and "mother", which means that all life is actually looked at by the eyes of the lost child, as if the child is witnessing in the dark how the parents who have been assigned identity continue to live in "nothingness".

The use of personal pronouns will sometimes subtly alter reading relationships. In "Happy Man", the omitting of the name gives the narrative a sense of witnessing. Men and women who have been in love with each other may, have or will never enter into a marriage relationship, and the lives of those who lively and die are not hearsay, they are happening and are witnessed by us. This "intentional" blur actually gives "him", "her", "father", "mother", "professor", "wife" a universal face and more names, which is the story of all sentient beings seen from the eyes of all sentient beings. The leopard is not writing "one", but "every".

"Daughter" is the first in the novel collection, although narrated from a third-person omniscient perspective, the author subconsciously or consciously tilts the center of gravity of the narrative, and the judgment of attitude in the novel is almost all from "him": he thinks, he believes, he does not think so, he gradually believes, he feels, he is obsessively always considering, he should have known, he really regrets, he realizes, he has found, he is very willing... Obviously, the author is more empathetic to "him", or even only empathetic to "he", which makes the face of the novel basically based on "his" judgment, perception, speculation, speculation, so that the narrative power of the novel is most likely to come from the author's grasp and uncertainty of the world, from the author's sight, so "Daughter" although in the third person relatively "omniscient" perspective, but more like "first-person" third-person writing.

Most of these people whose names were omitted were accustomed to silence, but "made small speeches in their hearts." "He" and "she" are always open to the inside, and the sensory nerves are unusually developed, but they are curled up in a transparent float, floating in the vast waters of the world, in danger of drowning, but they do not struggle, and each of them dies downstream. They will either go ashore or they will always sink and float in the flow of life. They gradually become whisperers and sleepwalkers in some kind of closure, and they become drowners who are not wet by the water. This is the human being that the leopard cares for in "Happy Man", they are chattering, but not aggressive, with a sincere heart, they seek difficult love in the peaceful prosperity.

The nine short stories fix the characters, not the looks or names, not the symbolic external references, the trajectory and shape of the thoughts of "she" and "him", and the author is carving the existence of people in this way. They more or less experience loss, and then silently reconstruct themselves in "loss" and "wounded death", they are those human beings who are self-aware or unconsciously subjective, which makes the large-density conceptual projection in the text more appropriate and "legitimate".

There is a density of ideas and thoughts

Fiction is about the art of "storytelling". How to define the "story", how to complete the "telling", the light leopard answers her preference with text. Her writing may be in line with readers who are not attached to the storyline, but rely heavily on narrative methods and concepts.

What drives the development of the story in "Happy Man" is not the arrival of conflict or dramatic twists, but the daily fluency and hardship itself, the endless thoughts of the characters, and the jumping out of the author's sometimes slightly unrestrained words and ideas. The peculiarity of "Happy Man" is also the density of this concept. Instead of using drama as a narrative driving force, the part of "art" beyond "life" grows out of the concrete everyday. As a result, displaying the details of life, adjusting the light that shines on the words, making the background silent or suddenly making a sound, all become heterogeneities that can be fished out in daily life. In this sense, the leopard's writing may be called a "conceptual novel". She weaves a moment of thought, a moment of darkness, a moment of multi-voice reverberation from within. And it is those who "make small speeches in their hearts" to be vigilant, not only the attachment and variation of the author's concept, but also the "self".

The narrative of the various chapters in "Happy Man" is basically not motivated by the character of the character, not by the result of the summoning or domination of a "decisive event", but by the author giving the protagonist a stylized gaze, with what he sees and what his heart touches, and his re-grasp of memory to stack up the perception of a person and a relationship.

Instead of unfolding the story in terms of the course of events, but making a ruminant analysis of the process and the result, this makes the leopard's novel insight unique, but it also cancels the possibility of the reader going through the event without "prejudice". Perhaps it is the enthusiasm for writing and world affairs, the "ideas" in the light leopard novel rise and fall like fireworks in many details and joints, the fragments of ideas are clearly extinguished in the narrative, the author looks at everything in life with a stylized gaze, and goes with the protagonist's thoughts, but the parts that are open sometimes belong to the author, sometimes with the alienation of the critic, they do not belong completely to the characters. As far as the "story" is concerned, subtraction of thinking is sometimes necessary, and those too dense points of thought light will reduce the brightness of the character itself, and the brightness of the character may be more regulated by its actions and personality. The greater the density of the author's ideas, the easier it is to push the story into alienation and emptiness. In different stories, the author should approach the voices of different characters and try to erase similar selves, which is not only in the shaping of the characters, but also on how the characters observe and perceive the world. In the case of the leopard, it is to let those "who make small speeches in their hearts" give different speeches, and the authors have never written a draft speech.

The leopard has an irrepressible urge to speculate, a daily decoration or gesture can also become a metaphorical ontology, the world is open, cognition is everywhere, and the way she experiences and understands the world has thus become the most convenient handle to advance the novel. But at the beginning of the novel, she also walked a period of "traditional" road, so there was "Over the Fire", but it was quickly bypassed. Texts outside of Overheated are unconventional because they are not storytelling. From the time of creation in 2014, "Over the Fire" may be a starting point for the creation of light leopard novels, and it is the initial presentation of the author's concept of fiction. If eight-quarters of the text comes with jazz, "Overheating" is a song. The pale leopard wrote an "authentic" story, from plot to language. But in the rest of the text, she is wary of "traditional," "authentic," or some sort of writing within track. The writing of "Overheated" lasted for six years, which means that when the author has left a certain narrative starting point, her writing patience still accompanies the style of the past or has been abandoned, and if it is not curiosity about the possibilities of the novel itself, vigilance against some kind of inertial expression, "Overheated" may be difficult to complete. This suggests that for novel writing as a skill, the leopard is aware, practiced, studied and self-demanding.

The convoluted tones of the speculation in "Happy Man" are particularly clear, and they are like split tones, rising from the "white noise" and have a clear value orientation. These "ideas" either come from the actions and words of the characters, or from the narration, or from the moment when the story ends, and the power of the ideas rises completely from the scene, the characters, and the dust of the moment. The fascination with ideas in "Happy Man" is accompanied by a vigilance against drama, so there is almost no "inconceivable" in the narrative dynamics, no "unexpected ...", and some are microscopic observations of daily life after the death of the injury. There are also a few small accidents in the story, but then all of them are followed by the dissolution of the accident (such as the mother in "Mountains and Rivers" did not win the lottery prize), humans run in the life program, they are the coders of this set of instructions, at the same time the instructions themselves, but also the bearers of the instruction results, there is a huge force to make everything difficult to escape. Behind the character speech and chatter is the author's speculative motor in operation, foreign objects constitute the starting point of thoughts at any time, and her head seems to have a perpetual motion machine for thinking.

To some extent, it is also speculation that makes the chaotic moments in life clear, and popular stories have a good charm. But as a novel in the art category, will the density of ideas give the text a harder texture or will it block the flow of the story? Will too much judgment and judgment weaken the potential energy of the protagonist's personality and action itself? So what are the essential characteristics of being a "novel" and not for other texts? When the ups and downs of speculation and ideas somehow obscure the story, how will the author be present and invisible? These are questions prompted by "Happy Man" and can continue to be discussed.

There is no "abrupt" "stop"

The nine short stories in "Happy Man" clearly mark the time and place of writing at the end. "Health" and "Over the Fire" began to write in 2014, which is the two longest articles in the collection, "Over the Fire" lasted for 6 years, and "Health" had 7 years. The length of time spent writing may not indicate the degree of struggle between the author and the text, but it means that the novel writing is continuous and stable in the life of the leopard. In seven years, the life of the nine novels has traveled long distances through many parts of the world, and the footprints of the jumps have hinted at its opposite, and about writing novels, the leopard has a constant thought. In the rush, in the friction with the world, in the flow of various landscapes, fiction writing is a creation in the flow, a slow arrival in the process for a long time.

These texts, which are not in the middle of the change and begin or complete in the journey, actually have doubts about the "arrival" itself, just like the end of the nine chapters, which is not even "abrupt", which is a re-vigilance and doubt about "drama" as a narrative driving force, and an insight and forgiveness of the nature of life. "Mountains and Rivers", "Parents", "Overheated", and "Gone with the Wind" all have signs of an "accident", but the accident did not fall in the end. The author dissolves the fantasy sense in the short story and resists the overly "dramatic" component of the narrative, which makes the end of the novel constantly return to the daily calm. There are no surprises in "Happy Man", only the familiar daily life and the difficulty of swallowing the unspeakable alone, whether those things happen in Beijing, Shenzhen, New York, or Jakarta, at the end of the novel, people still have to live, to live as before the end of the story.

Until the penultimate article "Do You Remember Magic tricks for me in Shangzhou?" It is only in the novel that the number sequence number appears. This makes the seven stories that were previously subsected with "*" suddenly fall into parallel floating, as if the time in "Happy Man" does not happen linearly, and life is the accumulation and intersection of multiple possibilities in parallel. Where the story begins is okay, a glimpse, a casual part, which makes the ending a temporary suspension, with no results, only a moment when multiple possibilities intersect. Therefore, the light leopard presents people who are about to or have reached the edge of life, to a place where there are no accidents and no scenery, how to go on. This may mean that what she wants to express is not the only one, but the abundance that is immersed in the world and has a different taste. "Happy" is dissolving the stereotypical expectation of the ending of the short story, and she is no longer the dissolution of "accident" or "unexpected encounter", but the hesitation of "arrival" itself. Therefore, I would like to call the "journey" of "Happy Man" as a "aimless" novel.

"Happy Man" is a collection of short stories with a realistic orientation and woven in a modernist style. The author is careful and even meticulous in detail, but when depicting the passages of the great era, he sometimes lacks the necessary friction with contemporary history, such as the juvenile experiences of "Mr. Li" and "Mrs. Li" in "Gone with the Wind", which are suddenly distorted by the times. In terms of language, she cares about the words and the rhythm of the language, sometimes long sentences hold up parasols and carry servants gorgeously, suddenly small animals flash by, and the author intentionally or unintentionally balances the pressure difference in the dense narrative, which makes the reader get a faint and delicate pleasure at any time.

"Happy Man" actually writes about the death of the injury, but the author does not sing the elegy. She never mourned the "death of injury", but tried to make it everyday, as if this was closer to the true nature of life. Those whose names were omitted still walked through the world, and the leopard "saw" and wrote about the back of this group of humans. The title "Happy Man" is easy to remind people of the moon, but the author seems not to mean to write "moon", but to have a crush on "moon" itself. She strives to use the telescope of feeling, observation, and speculation to make the crater and the moon sea on the surface of the moon gradually appear after passing through the darkness, but for the novel, the concept can only be woven into the "narrative" and "characters", and the damaged, dark matter, and objective essence on the harmony can be seen by us one by one.

—END—

Yangtze River Literature and Art, No. 4, 2022

Responsible Editor | Wu Jiayan Xiong Mengrou

▲He Jiayu |

Jiayu He, Ph.D. in Literature, Beijing Normal University, And Ph.D. in Joint Training, New York University. He works in the Creative Research Department of the Chinese Writers Association. Research on the history of contemporary Chinese poetry and criticism of novels. Some articles have been published in Literary Review, Literary and Art Controversy, Modern Chinese Literature Research Series, Contemporary Writers Review, Southern Literary Circle, Shanghai Culture, etc.