It should be almost 15 years ago, when I was still working at the People's Literature Publishing House, I finally reviewed Luo Weizhang's novel "Sharpening the Tip", which was a work that exposed the inside story of China's manufacturing of "College Entrance Examination Champions", which also left the impression that this writer maintained a high sensitivity and deep humanistic concern for reality; Last year's long story "Who Knocks on the Door", which won him countless reputations, refers to the main theme of the development and change of the times with the alternation of "father's exit" and "descendants entering the church", which also continues this characteristic of the writer, of course, his artistic expression is more skillful and rich; In the first "Phoenix Literature Award" competition hosted by the Phoenix Publishing Group and undertaken by the Jiangsu Literature and Art Publishing House last year, this work, together with Lu Min's "Golden River" and Ye Mi's "Immortality", was jointly selected as the winner of the "Excellence Award" by a jury composed of more than ten famous writers and critics, and said that it "magnified the distortion of human nature in the dying local society under the focus of the long lens of the real world", which can be seen. Wei Zhang's concern for the actual social situation is still very deep.
When talking about the finale of his "History" series composed of "History of Sound" and "History of Silence", Luo Weizhang frankly said: "'Hidden History', as its name suggests, is the revelation of 'hidden facts' or 'dark facts', but disclosure itself does not constitute the purpose, and it is the responsibility of the novel as I understand it to have a sincere, solid and equal dialogue with the characters in the work, to share their weakness, distress, fear and even sin, and to jointly repair the mediocrity, lack and mutilation of the spirit. ...... I personally advocate interventional, socially caring literature, novels, especially novels, whose powerful background is the times and life, the earth and everything. The focus is still on "social care."
However, when I see the so-called "history of sound", "history of silence" and "history of secrets", I still have some mutterings in my heart: how should such a "history" be written? And how to reflect the "social care" of writers? It was still Luo Weizhang's master who gave the answer to these mutters of his own: "Although the name is history, it is actually just a rhetoric, of course, it can be said that it is the future direction, and the real object of writing is the observation of reality and the analysis of human nature." ”
Although Wei Zhang's own confession of "the real object of writing" is still the consistent "observation of reality and the analysis of human nature" in his novel creation, does the revision of "history" for the state of "sound", "silence" and "secret" with a certain abstract nature also mean or determine that Luo Weizhang's foothold, observation point and focus on observing reality, expressing reality, and analyzing reality are all undergoing some changes?
The shell of The Hidden History is a murder. When the protagonist Gui Pingchang enters the mountain to dig mai dong, he accidentally falls into a hidden cave, and a human white bone enters his eyes. Who was the deceased? Who is the murderer? The reason for the killing, the motive for the murder? ...... A series of question marks followed. This is a typical suspense novel routine, so some commentators call it "extremely readable". As everyone knows, these are just illusions on the surface, the so-called "suspense", the so-called "readable", the so-called "good-looking", basically limited to the part before the 96 pages of the work, less than one-third of the total 305 pages of the book. Looking back, two-thirds, although it is not particularly difficult to read and incomprehensible, is definitely not extremely readable, and some places are not without small "brain-burning", which is about the kind of "hidden facts" or "dark facts" that Luo Weizhang himself said. If you insist that this is a suspense novel, it is at most a cluster story of why the heart is hidden by the shell of suspense, but the direction of the author's consistent social concern "turning inward" is very clear.
In order to "turn inward", the focus of the writer's focus is naturally on the heart and psychology of the characters, but the root that triggers or touches the inner heartstrings of the characters and ripples in the characters' psychology is still the "social concern" that Luo Weizhang has always insisted on. There is a scene in "Hidden History" that is both interesting and representative: when the work is nearing the end, the protagonist of the work once again enters the cave that once made his heart palpitate, but at this time Gui Pingchang's performance is no longer fear, he even holds the white bone that seems to be a bully in the village in the past, and kindly counts for him how many people are still left in the village, but he can't count the eighth, and even the two tables of mahjong are not together. This kind of withering in the village actually appeared soon after the work began, and when Chen Guoxiu planned to carry Pyeongchang to the outside of the mountain for medical treatment, he had to give up because he was not strong enough, and even the youngest Yang Lang was more than half a hundred years old, and this situation was only more shocking when Pyeongchang was holding a white bone. The village is withering, the villagers are aging, and although the few left-behind people are not sad because of their attachment to the land and the connection of blood, it is an indisputable fact that the village is disappearing as a whole. Such a scene is naturally only a typical literary presentation, and the social concerns reflected behind it are nothing more than the advancement of the entire modernization and urbanization process of the country, those small villages with inconvenient transportation and lack of resources are disappearing, and the former peasants are being transformed into new citizens. As far as social development is concerned, this is undoubtedly a huge progress, but for the individual left-behind people, the phenomenon of "nostalgia" and "more inconvenience in life" is also completely logical and psychological. The performance and attention to this contrast is actually a motif that has always been concerned and written since the "May Fourth" new literature, and Luo Weizhang's "Hidden History" should be the inheritance of this context, but its artistic presentation of "turning inward" is not without its own innovation and personality.
In addition to the above-mentioned important cultural motif of inheriting the new literature of "May Fourth" in its own unique artistic presentation, "Hidden History" also writes about the various secrets about the fate of individuals hidden in the courtyard of the old second house of Qianhekou Village hidden in the mountains: the first to bear the brunt of it is the protagonist Gui Pingchang, who in him brings out the legendary village bully Gou Jun, who went to Work in Sierra Leone, Africa, chen Guoxiu, about his wife, and all kinds of fears and cowardices about his inexplicable life; Then there is that Zhang Dawei, who can predict his return date, is also the oldest and most compassionate in the village, and there is still a love story that shocks the world and weeps ghosts; There are also Wu Xinggui and Tao Yu, two outlaw Mandarin ducks, who are still singing their own songs despite their embarrassing lives; There is also Xia Qing, a left-behind woman who waits for her husband all day, and Yang Lang, a silent person who has already appeared in the "History of Sound", who as always collects various voices in the village, recording and awakening people's memories in the passage of time... All these are all kinds of things, and they stubbornly stick to their secrets. These "hidden histories" that appear in Luo Weizhang's pen seem to show the daily living conditions of ordinary people at the bottom with an exaggerated, distorted and even deformed artistic means, called the "history" of the past tense, but in fact, the "present" that is underway. All kinds of fears, humility and sadness hidden in the hearts of ordinary people, triggered by an accidental event or inadvertent detail, constitute the unique artistic expression and full artistic charm of this "Hidden History".
To sum up, in the "History of Secrecy", Luo Weizhang used the judgment sentence "Nothing in the world will disappear, they only disappear on the surface" to interpret his "secret" word, and then used the artistic expression of "turning inward" to connect the two coexistence of psychology and reality. What emerges is to turn the passing years and the villages that are going to be deserted into the hearts of the characters, revealing the secret history of the soul of ordinary people that are "chicken feathers in one place", recording the years of passing water hidden in the depths of human nature, including the delicate relationships between themselves and others, including those who are the most secret, those who try to forget, ignore or even try to deny the emotions; The objective effect of the actual formation is through this kind of subtle and complex "secret" splicing and refracting the vivid silhouettes in the tide of the big times. If these characteristics of "Hidden History" are compared with Luo Weizhang's past creations, it seems that they can also be summarized in one sentence as impervious to change, and they are pioneering in the continuous exploration of art. Whether direct or indirect, whether directly or implicitly, the concern for society and reality is consistent, whether it is writing things or writing people, people are always the focus of writers, nothing more than behavior, or emphasis on the mind, "Hidden History" obviously belongs to the latter. And the exploration and cultivation of such a variety of pen and ink is worthy of praise and affirmation for a writer in any case, not to mention that this is still a successful cultivation.
Author: Pan Kaixiong
Planner: Shao Ling
Editor: Xu Luming