Text: Ge Weiping
On November 26, the "Office of the Central Leading Group for Commendation for Celebrating the 40th Anniversary of Reform and Opening Up" released a list of 100 outstanding contributors to reform and opening up through the People's Daily.
There are only two writers in this list, one is Lu Yao and the other is Jiang Zilong.
Lu Yao has died, and Jiang Zilong has become the only surviving writer on the list.
This list weighs a lot, and Jiang Zilong's appearance in it cannot but give people a little surprise.
Because Jiang Zilong is obviously no longer the most popular writer in today's literary world.
According to the previous imagination, should not Wang Meng appear in this list? Shouldn't Zhang Xianliang appear? Shouldn't there be Mo Yan?
Taking a step back, shouldn't there be ancient Chinese known for its rural life? Shouldn't there be Jia Ping concave? Shouldn't there be Chen Zhongzhong?
The above-mentioned personnel all appeared in the list of writers of the "40 Most Influential Novels for the 40th Anniversary of Reform and Opening Up" announced not long ago.
But no.
Therefore, we had to look at Jiang Zilong a few more times.
Such a deep consideration, I felt that jiang Zilong was included in this list. There are three reasons for this:
First of all, Jiang Zilong is not a stylistic writer.
At present, those who are touted more loudly in the contemporary Chinese literary world are all stylistic writers. These writers, in fancy sentences, are somersaulted in the nest, copying similar images and symbols to each other, and creating works with the same content.
Among the stylistic writers, the most famous is Mo Yan. He brought a series of imagery and plot variations from "The Quiet Don River" to the contemporary literary world, but stripping away his stylistic innovations, his reality in China, mainly based on the pain of his arranged marriage, has been derived from the unchanging inner pain for thousands of years, until "Frog" has reached a condensed density of the collection, but the true face of the whole society cannot be revealed only by the author's imported style.
So the stylistic writer is enthusiastic about critics, but he does have a great distance from social reality. Such works cannot truly reproduce the most central and critical parts of an era.
Second, Jiang Zilong has come the closest to showing the key force field of China's economic system change.
Urban economic reform is a key part of reform and opening up, where is the crux of China's economy? In the reform of the urban economic system, all the answers are pregnant.
But, let's go back and look at the Chinese writers who have written the complex details of China's economic reform?
Unfortunately, no.
Only Jiang Zilong wrote it. Another person who describes the inside story of the Chinese system is Ke Yunlu, who was known as a student of Jiang Zilong.
As early as 1976, Jiang Zilong described the shortcomings in the industrial system with his cold tone, and later in "The Record of The Director of Qiao Factory", he showed the literary imagination of the reform of the industrial system, which was originally a very boring industrial theme novel, but Jiang Zilong wrote a vivid appearance, excitement and ups and downs, and happiness and revenge.
The only person who can make such a profound reflection on China's current situation is Jiang Zilong.
When ordinary writers encounter novels that reveal this kind of reality system, they often use love stories and personal sorrows and joys to cover up the great difficulty of writing brought about by the knife-to-knife and gun-to-gun confrontation of this genre. Let's take a look at how some famous reform novels of that year showed their naïve thinking in novels.
Although Zhang Xianliang has a brilliant talent in describing repressed emotions, in the novels "Descendants of the River" and "The Style of Men", which are known as reform themes, he shows his strangeness and diaphragm of the real Chinese system, and he has to put a lot of pen and ink on personal emotions.
Although Wang Meng used his stream of consciousness to quickly and dazzlingly sketched the precursor of "Little Lotus Only Showing Sharp Horns" since the reform and opening up, his fancy language stayed on the superficial characteristics of things, while the reality of society could never go deeper, which was also the reason why Wang Meng was avoided by people in the future. He used a flashy language system to push himself to the opposite side of reality, and the immense power of language drowned out his own reality. No one wants to cross the barrier of language to touch the true meaning of his heart that he does not want to express unmistakably one or two. Wang Meng became a prisoner of his language.
There is also Jia Pingwo, who describes social change in "Impetuous", but the social reality it touches on is only the skin of a newspaper reporter's observation, and it does not touch the subtle contradictions of people in social relations in institutional change.
Later official novels, in fact, are still relatively close to Jiang Zilong's novel style, and strive to reveal the existence of a dimension of human survival factors in the social system, but the official novels provide an individual who has been captured by the system in order to survive, and it is difficult to represent the positive energy field of social system reform since the reform and opening up.
Jiang Zilong's novel model was later transformed into an official novel, and with this model, it was mighty and powerful, showing its vitality.
However, the indestructible and decadent grandeur of reform and opening up displayed by Jiang Zilong in the novel cannot be provided by the official novel.
In Jiang Zilong's novel "Pioneer", the author has created the image of a vice premier, which can not be said to exceed the highest limit of the "high-latitude trembling" of contemporary Chinese novels, to be able to control such a level of officials, and in the novel, through narrative language, the official's actions have been outlined in a long and serious manner, which has touched the most sensitive peak in contemporary Chinese literature.
And after that, which writer wrote about this level of officials that Jiang Zilong touched on in his novels?
However, in a recent book written by Hong Huang, which is ostensibly a crime novel + psychological novel, "Miss Zhang", he wrote about an official at the level of vice minister of public security.
Therefore, Jiang Zilong really understands the reality of China, so he has the courage to write such a high-ranking official in the novel and portray it in literature.
His disciple, Ke Yunlu, whether he acknowledges it or not, is actually bolder and more successful than Jiang Zilong in "New Star", revealing the objective existence of "political wisdom" in China's actual system and demonstrating this wisdom.
It's just that Jiang Zilong and Ke Yunlu did not continue on the road of revealing the reality of Chinese society, and Jiang Zilong regrettably went to write about rural themes later, and Ke Yunlu once fell into a supernatural world, which was incomprehensible.
But Jiang Zilong is still the writer who has most realistically revealed the deep texture and transformation of China's institutional reform in the past four decades of reform and opening up.
He was the only one, and there was no second.
In fact, Zhang Jie, who won two contradictory literature awards, seems that her first award,"Heavy Wings", is a reform novel, but the description of interpersonal relationships in the novel is full of childishness and assumption. Maybe women really can't think about the subtle confrontations and relationships between men. Later, Zhang Jie did not continue along this path, and her second award-winning novel" "Wordless" can be seen that she withdrew to the psychological perspective that female writers are good at.
Third, Jiang Zilong's weakness in portraying sex has become his strength.
Jiang Zilong does not have more consideration for women, he prefers to show the gulf in men's hearts, and women often show male tigers and tigers in his novels.
This is his weakness. He will not focus on women's psychological research like Zhang Xianliang, and show men's tireless interest in women's external signs, which makes it difficult for Jiang Zilong to gain an advantage in the face of the future literary transformation of "turning inward", and he has increasingly lost his position in literature, however, this weakness has become the precipitation of Jiang Zilong's impeccable spiritual character.
Those writers who are immersed in inner desires have carried out excessive excavation of their hearts, such as Zhang Xianliang, who shows most of them are subtle twists and turns in words, which is a kind of literary skill, but has nothing to do with society.
Jiang Zilong's lack of deep excavation of the psychological and emotional world of the character's desire makes him avoid the excessive showmanship and darkness and narrow evil that this psychological portrayal may lead to, but instead makes Jiang Zilong's text haunt an awe-inspiring righteousness.
We have noticed that in the selection requirements of the 100 outstanding contributors to reform and opening up this time, the political criteria are emphasized, and "those who are politically unqualified will not be recommended." "Jiang Zilong's literature lacks interest in Qingqing and me, ensuring that Jiang Zilong will not be trapped in the quagmire of controversial and controversial love, but may put his main ink on the sharp display of social reality." From this point of view, Jiang Zilong's neglect of digging into love has become his advantage.
In fact, according to Jiang Zilong's position today, he should write a magnificent picture of a more magnificent Chinese reality, rather than just pressing his pen and ink all the way to the countryside, this rural theme is really not a region where he can win alone. It can be said that Jiang Zilong's inclusion in the list of 100 people with the greatest contributions should be an affirmation of his early works. He should live up to his expectations and write classic texts and interpretations of Chinese reality with warmer brushstrokes and sharper thoughts.