Recently, a seminar on Xu Kun's novel "Holy Marriage" was held at the China Museum of Modern Literature.
Xu Kun won the Outstanding Short Story Award of the Second Lu Xun Literature Award, and when she was a young scholar, her short stories "Vernacular", "Pioneer" and "Hot Dog" were noticed in a distinctive style. Since then, she has completed the novels "Twenty-Two Nights of Spring", "Wild Grass Roots", "August Rhapsody" and so on. In "Holy Marriage", Xu Kun writes about the lives and destinies of returnees, "foreigners" who come to Beijing, urban Kochi, and cadres on temporary duty in the new era.
The story tells about several marriage relationships, one of which is Cheng Tiantian and Sun Ziyang, who returned from studying abroad and were about to get married, and they decided to buy a house in Beijing because Sun Ziyang was admitted to an accounting firm in Beijing; The second is Sun Ziyang's parents, Yu Fengxian and Sun Yaodi, in order to buy a house for Sun Ziyang, they obtained the qualification to buy a house by applying for a "fake divorce", but they never wanted to have a change, and Sun Yaodi married someone else after the divorce; The third is lawyers Gu Weiwei and Sa Zhishan, Gu Weiwei's strength makes Sa Zhishan very depressed, so he went to the grassroots level to take up a temporary post and started a new work and life.
Everyone lives autonomously and happily in the novel
Bai Ye, a researcher at the Institute of Literature of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, introduced that "Holy Marriage" reveals people's emotional hidden pains and social pains from marriage aberrations and system changes.
Yan Jingming, vice chairman of the China Writers Association, said that he read about "fiery real life" in "Holy Marriage": "In the novel, there is a concentrated description of contemporary urban life, presenting a state of infinite vitality. The characters in the novel are very distinct, everyone's life and emotions have skin pain, but they are still full of love for life, everyone has lived independently and happily in the novel, and the ups and downs of fate and the contradictions and conflicts of life have finally reached reversal and harmony. ”
Wang Chunlin, a professor at the School of Literature of Shanxi University, also felt hearty when reading: "Behind the hustle and bustle of the novel, there is a reflection on society and an understanding of human nature, and the aesthetic style of the novel is witty and ironic, humorous, and comic, among which the very inconspicuous secondary character Lao Huang impresses us." The whole novel is actually composed of two narrative threads, the grand narrative of the era and society, and the clues of the daily narrative. The overall novel not only emphasizes that marriage is sacred, but also that our social life and new age life should also be sacred. ”
Xu Kun
Regarding the characters in "The Holy Marriage", Guo Yiqiang, president of the China Book Critics Society, noticed that Xu Kun wrote about a group of people who adhere to traditional values in the novel, such as Kong Lingjian, director of the Institute of Cosmos, Mao Hao, deputy director, Sa Zhishan, a researcher who died on the job, and Cheng Tiantian who taught in the mountainous area. "There are also characters like Yu Fengxian, although there is not much ink, but in just a few strokes to write the outstanding characteristics of the characters. The novel has no lack of comedy, with the humor of Northeast local dramas, highlighting righteousness in the contest between good and evil, and always harboring strong compassion for the fate of the characters. ”
Liang Hongying, editor-in-chief of "Literature and Art Daily", believes that the most successful figure in the novel "Holy Marriage" is the female image, and the scene of Fan Lihua's tongue fighting "group of heroes" vividly writes the essence of traditional Chinese culture and the courage of governing the family like cooking small fresh food.
Xie Youshun, a professor at the Department of Chinese at Sun Yat-sen University, said: "The beauty of "Holy Marriage" lies in the independent and non-arrogant unique personality of the characters, especially the female characters. Xu Kun's writing for absurdity comes from his love for this era, ironic, but very restrained, inclusive, understanding, and quietly watching the changes. Xu Kun is a writer who believes in his bones, and the vast majority of writers are pessimistic and unbelieved, but Xu Kun is not a nihilist or skeptic. ”
Group photo of the seminar
Sad undertones and sound portraits
Regarding Xu Kun's writing, Meng Fanhua, a distinguished professor at Shenyang Normal University, believes that Xu Kun is a writer who cares about reality, and many of her works are realistic themes, and even if "Holy Marriage" is very enthusiastically written, the background under its irony and parody is deeply critical. The first is the criticism of Northeast culture, after leaving the Northeast China, the writer has a deep understanding of the problems in Northeast culture, and uses marriage as an incision in the novel to criticize, and writes several Northeast marriage chicken feathers; The second is the critique of intellectuals, which is a consistent theme in Xu Kun's writing.
Zhang Yanling, editor-in-chief of "Southern Literary Circle", said that "Holy Marriage" is a portrait of Xu Kun's voice returning after ten years, and as soon as it is opened, Xu Kun's voice is excited in his ears, heroic, dashing, and fast-talking, making people afraid that this voice will break the line. Her novels have the joy of stand-up comedy and book reviews.
Wu Jun, a professor at the School of Humanities of Shanghai Jiao Tong University, said about the narrative characteristics of "Holy Marriage", the author uses narrative speed to cover real life and spiritual life space, and uses condensed and skillful multiple narrative relationships to make the content complex but compact. In addition, when shaping the characters, there is also the shadow of the character design in Mao Dun's "Midnight", "Each character is the embodiment of a very important type of an era and a society in a specific historical period." ”
Regarding the theme of "sacred marriage", He Shaojun, distinguished professor of Shenyang Normal University, said that the novel takes Sa Zhishan as the core character, and writes the process from deconstructing the sacred to reconstructing the sacred, and the sacredness of marriage from fiction to reality. Sazhishan's divorce is a deconstruction of the glamorous cloak of middle-class marriage, and grassroots work is the only way to find the divine and re-give it concrete connotations.
Chen Fumin, a researcher at the Institute of Literature of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, also pondered the relationship between the two keywords of "sacred" and "marriage", he said that the sacred is not a priori definition of marriage, the sanctity of marriage comes from the combination of marriage and love in the historical process of leaving the traditional agricultural society and entering the commercial society, and the historical great changes of China's reform and opening up have once again brought mutations to marriage and emotional relationships, Xu Kun's novel focuses on the issue of the sanctity of marriage in modern commercial society.
Li Weichao, executive editor of the Journal of Modern Chinese Literature Research Series, emphasized the cultural memory of the nineties carried in Xu Kun's novels, as well as the historical memory of the city, the love of secular life and human nature, the belief in the realization of value through practice, the proficiency in the collage form of postmodern texts, and the inheritance of feminist thought.