On Yu Hua's Popular Novel Alive

Just like a ship bumping in the sea, it will always rise and fall in waves and valleys, and the creative state of a writer who is writing is undoubtedly impossible to be stable. Yu Hua is no exception. If we analyze it carefully, we will find that Yu Hua's literary creation entered a very delicate period around 1995, that is, the early stage of his creation of Living.

First of all, we go beyond the speculation and speculation about the process and reasons and look directly at 1997. We will find that a decision made by Yu Hua in those years was a bad news for the avant-garde literary world in China: giving up the avant-garde experiment. Then we look back behind us. At this time, you will find that it is already doomed at 1995. This year, two other famous young writers, Su Tong and Mo Yan, made similar decisions. Yu Hua's declaration of farewell to avant-garde novels is: "I am now a writer who pays attention to reality", and it is at this time that he finished another novel "Xu Sanguan Selling Blood" shortly after "Living". Then let's pay a little attention to this latter work which the author calls "paying attention to reality". In fact, it has quite obvious changes from Yu Hua's early works. In other words, we will be surprised to find that this article is completely different from Yu Hua's early "Shouting in the Drizzle".

Then we turn our eyes back to 1995, and we will find that Yu Hua's only work with the characteristics of realistic literature and avant-garde novels is sensational living. In this way, Living should be a transition of Yu Hua's creation.

Life is a watershed in Yu Hua's creation. On the one hand, we can continue a truth by living: writing needs talent. Yu Hua completed a great work in the process of changing his creative style. At the same time, because of another truth, "writing can't rely entirely on talent", Yu Hua's avant-garde writing completely fell into a low tide around 1995 after more than ten years. In fact, it is still common in China literature. Among the authors who appeared after 1980, they were all labeled as pioneers, but they quietly entered the mainstream literature they once despised around the 1990s. Of course, there are also a few people, such as Yu Hua, who persist longer.

From this point of view, living is a way out for the author when his pioneering text innovation is exhausted. But I'm afraid the author himself disagrees with this view. From the point of view of the work itself, especially the great randomness revealed in the first half of the work, we can see that Living is not a work that began to be created after the concept was completely mature. Yu Hua may write a beginning like a child doodling (if you compare this beginning with Yu Hua's own experience, you will find amazing authenticity. In fact, being an idle person is the initial motivation of Yu Hua's writing.

The author may not be creative until he carves the work. When Yu Hua's writing was in the doldrums, writing was actually just a habit. To be alive is a novel written at will. For readers and authors, like all good works, it is an accidental discovery, or a piece of luck.

To be alive is a novel that makes people feel heavy to read. The dullness and unhappiness you feel only when you close the book is not caused by the cruelty of the story provided by the work. After all, the stories of broken families, separated families, and white-haired people sending black-haired people are not sensational. At the same time, Yu Hua is not a writer with strong incitement ability. In fact, rendering such an expression has always been Yu Hua's disdain. Yu Hua advocates narration, telling some abnormal stories in an almost cold style. It is in this narrative process that all emotions quietly invade the reader's reading. In this way, Living completes the philosophical inquiry of the meaning of life with an incisive expression.

After that, for a long time, the mainstream literary criticism in China, which flaunted realism, sharply criticized life. For example, the author thinks that the protagonist's ultimate wealth life is compared to a life similar to that of livestock, which he dismisses. However, with the passage of time, the market, especially overseas markets, gave a high evaluation of "living", and other opinions on "living" gradually emerged. For example, in the bleak flower, living is the ultimate concern for the meaning of life; The fate of wealth shows that mankind's pursuit of everything is futile. At the end, the old cow walking with wealth hinted at a fact that another noble person could not accept: in fact, man is really just a kind of existence, as meaningless as everything else. The essence of pursuit and exploration is just a big joke and so on.

In fact, the latter may be very big, because Yu Hua's description of cruelty in coldness is his specialty. Just as a skilled surgeon slowly separates the cruel nature of life from the false kindness, living has shattered one illusion after another that people may have a good direction in a very calm and even slow way. In this way, there will be an ending: people will be impressed by this book. Because reading is a psychological fear experience.

This actually implies another fact of China literature: realism with realism as its slogan is actually the most afraid to face reality. For example, in essence, life itself has no meaning except living. Then if we must give meaning, then the only thing that can be counted as meaning is probably life itself. The great feeling of "being alive" may come from this.

It is precisely because of this that "Living" clarifies a content. Living is a process in general understanding, but living is actually a static state.

Yu Hua wants to tell readers that there is no happiness or misfortune in life. Life is living, living quietly, with a touch of loneliness.

Alive: alive ...

Kou (65438+February 6 12: 20)

Crying and laughing and living with death.

The author Yu Hua explains "being alive" in this way: Being alive is full of power in our language in China. Its strength does not come from shouting or attacking, but from enduring, enduring the responsibility given by life, enduring the happiness and pain given by reality, boredom and mediocrity.

Therefore, when Xu Fugui, the hero of Living, talks about his dead relatives, "there is a wonderful look in his eyes, and he can't tell whether he is sad or gratified." Xu Fugui's living is like watching people around him die one after another. Before this drama about Wu Can was staged, he ate, drank, whored and gambled day and night, and finally changed from a rich young master to a penniless man overnight. His father, after personally disposing of all the fields, died the day he moved from the old house to the hut. Before his downfall, the young master didn't know he was sad, but after his downfall, Fu Gui was not qualified to be sad, because he had become a tenant farmer and planted five acres of land that once belonged to him. In the following days, he personally buried his son, daughter, wife, son-in-law and 7-year-old grandson Kugan. People around him died one by one, but he didn't have this kind of "luck". He can only live, because this is his fate. God won't let his life escape until a cow has plowed all the land that should be plowed, and before a man has shouldered the burden that should be shouldered.

After losing other relatives, Fu Gui and Kugan lived together, and their common wish was to save money to buy a cow. By the time the money was finally saved, Kugan was already dead. Fu Gui bought the cow himself. It turned out to be an old cow dying and about to be slaughtered. It has done a lot of work and suffered a lot. Even if not killed, I'm afraid I won't live long. However, because it didn't want to see the old cow cry, Fu Gui, who stopped crying, bought it. A name is also called Fu Gui.

10 years later, the "two old ghosts"-Xu Fugui and Niu Lao Fu Gui-are not dead, but they are still alive. Fu Gui urged Fu Gui to plow the fields. When he shouted Fu Gui, he also shouted the names of all his dead relatives, as if they were cows with yokes buried in the fields.

Life is a field of life, and every suffering sown will grow into a hope. They are our own riders, no matter what they carry, no matter what they wear around their necks, no matter what they carry on their shoulders.