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The opening volume | Jiang Shuzhuo: The Invariance and Change of Zhu Shanpo's Novel

Text/Jiang Shuzhuo

In China, there are countless literary and artistic young people who have come out of small towns, and in my impression, there is Jia Zhangke in the north and Zhu Shanpo in the south, one is a director, and the other is a novel.

Like Jia Zhangke, Zhu Shanpo started with a shock from watching "The Dancing Girl of Izu" in the movie theater in the town, stepped into literature, worshiped classics, and then fell into the "black hole" of the novel and went all out. Film was his initiation teacher, poetry was his first love, and fiction was his lifelong companion, and he was obsessively wandering the short story realm, either writing novels or preparing for them. What does not change is that he strives to get closer to the creation of classics, to compete with his ideal novel, to rebuild the ambition of short stories; what has changed is that he always has to write each novel differently, is not willing to just go around in a certain field, achieve a gorgeous turn in "change", and move towards the ideal classic in "change".

Compared with his short story collections Egg Town Cinema and Thirteen Fathers, his newly published short story collections "I Have No Friends in Nanjing" and "Somali Camel" published in "Yangtze River Literature and Art" and "Sahel Wasteland" published in "People's Literature" are obvious changes.

In addition to his Thirteen Fathers, he set aside the series of father figures he had originally written to create the fourteenth "father". This father sank to the bottom of the river just after appearing in "Returning Guest", but he was a brave man who died for his own reputation. His death paved the way for the appearance of "Mother", and Zhu Shanpo began to portray "Mother" in a rare way. On the surface, strangers from unknown sources in "Returning To The Returning Guest" occupy a lot of space, but the wisdom and warmth of the mother reflect the true feelings of the world, occupying the center of the novel from beginning to end. "Somali Camel" also writes about the father, a doctor who aided Africa, but he rode back on a camel to pick up his mother, but created an extraordinary heroine in the eyes of Africans. Like "My Father and Mother" written by Bao Shi, Zhu Shanpo's father and mother must also be a classic in literature.

Now, Zhu Shanpo has begun to write about his sister again, "my" sister and someone else's sister. In Scream, I intuitively sensed my sister in distress. In Shenzhen, the experience of sisters and brothers relying on each other touched the murderer's sister, as a mute, the murderer's sister to meet "I" has died lying in the morgue, so as to persuade "my" sister not to make a vendetta with her brother in the underworld, to embarrass her brother, and to be able to return to her soul. She made an incredible move in the morgue, stabbing herself seventeen times with a knife in order to die so that she could communicate with "my" sister. This act of sacrificing herself to achieve others made her sister a divine elf.

Paying tribute to the classics and learning from the folk is the norm for Zhu Shanpo's novels. In his novels, we can often see the shadows of Jack London, Mark Twain, Gogol, Borges, Lu Xun, and folk tales. At the end of "Scream", two strange water birds are written, they often walk side by side on the river, like a pair of twin brothers and sisters, whenever "I" and my wife and my sister's three children pass by that section of the road, they fly from the old docks in the south, make an ultra-low and long-distance gliding in front of us, and make a warm gesture and then turn away to the south. This may seem a bit absurd, but it fits the context and state of mind of "me." Animism, here is the infusion of emotion. Drawing elements from folk culture to write modern stories and adding magic to bizarre experiences is Zhu Shanpo's best play. Therefore, his "Eel Catcher", "Cow Bone Soup", "Bird Missing", "Dividing the World in Half", the magic taste always hides the color of "south of the south". Again, this is a change in the midst of immutables.

"Bank of China" is his special work, in the face of bitter reality, he learned Lu Xun's brushwork and appropriately changed, writing a contemporary "Xianglin sister-in-law". Feng Xuehua is a retired employee of the nitrogen fertilizer factory, after the factory closed, the pension also stopped, she held the hope of impossible to go to the bank every day to brush the passbook, hoping for a miracle. When she saw the situation of others worse than her, she would get a little lucky comfort. When she is quiet, she will become kind, and in addition to telling the bank staff some interesting stories, she will also send them some flower seedlings. She would mention that she once had a happy home and had saved 8 yuan for the first time, but soon withdrew it because she had a crazy son in the family. When it was time for another big Chinese New Year's Eve, she suddenly appeared next to the cash truck and tried to grab the cash box in the carriage, only to be knocked unconscious by the escort. Long after the Spring Festival, when she had not heard from her for a long time, her old, thin and dirty hand slowly reached the window sill of the bank. The novel's description of the atmosphere at the end of the year, the attitude of the bank staff to her: sympathetic and helpless, occasionally thinking of her, and the image of Feng Xuehua at the end of the novel: gray and unkempt hair, thin clothes torn and dirty, the whole body is constantly trembling, arching her waist, trying to make herself stand, her head even if she leans up, it is estimated that she can not reach the high window sill... Zhu Shanpo, in his tribute to Lu Xun's "Blessings", created a literary classic of a low-level old woman besides his father and mother.

Zhu Shanpo can tell stories, and will change the pattern of storytelling, the first half of his "Send Me to Zhangshu Town" created a rainy night horror bridge section, but at the end he used a radio news, four or two thousand pounds, gently disintegrated the horror and absurdity he personally created. As the novel of the same name as the collection, "I Have No Friends in Nanjing", it portrays a bastard Zhao Qiu who brags that never pays taxes, and "I" vows not to help him again, but finally puts "I" into an extremely embarrassing situation, and the absurdity revealed in reality inevitably reminds us of Mo Yan's novels "Waiting for Moses" and "Poet Jin Xipu" and "Cousin Ning Saiye" in recent years. Like his other two novels, Fat Man, Go, Eat America Into Poverty, and Xun Slip Away, he uses his talents for satire and humor to the fullest. This is the result of his constant quest for innovation.

The original article was published in the A6 edition of Yangcheng Evening News on May 8, 2022

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Source | Yangcheng Evening News Yangcheng Pie

Editor-in-charge | Wu Xiaopan

Proofreading | Pan Liling

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