Tian Er's Academic Review

Effective narrative: the world regains its charm

Li Jingze

Tian Er is a storyteller. Tian er is wearing a mask. He tells stories, but his stories never point to himself. It seems that he is neither a writing center nor an "author". There are endless stories circulating in the world. And this man, he is a story carrier-he captures and tells any story he meets properly. It seems that every story has its own life and will grow in countless retelling. Tian Er is just one of the narrators. Tian Er's novels were written by Tian Er, but it seems that they were also written by more than a dozen people named Tian Er.

In The Clothes Bowl, a college student returned to his hometown to become a village head and a Taoist priest, which contained Shen Congwen's homesickness for China. But Zheng Zishan's confession, if written by an intellectual, will break the irony between personal narrative and official legal narrative; "Tian Xing Shu" allegorically depicts the genre paintings of county towns and villages, which is almost Balzac-style social investigation; The Man in the Rocking Chair and Hunting are like Kafka's nightmares. In the hands of some critics, "Dog on a Dog Day" and "Letters from afar" must be the testimony of "bottom" and "morality"; Overlapping Images and A Man Decorated with Lights are greatly appreciated by periodical editors for their gripping detective novels, while the latter won the Lu Xun Literature Prize for its obvious generosity and propriety ... So far, Tian Er is difficult to define and grasp, and various interests and paths in his works are mixed. This impetuousness is easy. I know, then I should advise Tian Er to make his face clear and have personality-the so-called "personality" here is almost equal to the theme and the specific point of view on a specific theme, so Tian Er with personality should write about the police or the bottom, suffering or morality. ...

This "character" is not difficult for Tian Er, he is too smart. There is a fox flying in his heart, and this fox may also be tempted-the changefulness of Tian Er is partly due to the wait-and-see and temptation of the trend of literary interest. He is not a stubborn narrator. He has a quick premonition and judgment of the audience's reaction. He is always ready to perform another magic trick to win applause.

But the fox has another nature. He is curious, active in thinking and impatient. He can't stay on the same road for a long time, nor can he fix himself at a certain angle, an angle or even a certain tone. Fox does magic not only to please people, but also because he likes it.

-This temperament is Tian Er's special talent that distinguishes him from most writers in this era. In the literary atmosphere of this era, novelists are more and more like small farmers who have moved to another place. They painted a firm picture not only in experience but also in the world outlook. And Tian Er, mainly out of thinking, but out of nature, became a homeless and homeless man.

Tramps and foxes are not without worldviews. In Tian Er's novels, there is a vision between different themes, experiences and chants-not a view or a perspective, but a complex and ambiguous attitude, and an instinctive but gradually developing interest. This is not only reflected in the words and deeds of the characters, but also in the composition principles of the whole novel world.

The so-called "the whole novel world", for Tian Er, refers to "one person decorating with lights", which is indeed symbolic. The world of Tianer has begun to take shape here and gained some integrity-its geography, climate, customs, politics, its drama and its gods.

Location: A city named "Steel City". We can't match this place with the map in the text unless we do a biographical study of the author. When I was talking about the clothes bowl, I rashly asserted that Tian Er had Shen Congwen's feelings, but even though Shen Congwen was his important source, he obviously did not have Shen Congwen's geo-strategy. Tian er has no intention of establishing a base area, or his base area does not need to borrow a general map. What Tian Er occupies and builds is a writing city, which is introverted and lonely between urban and rural areas, between the present and the past. Outside the city is a wilderness, infinitely far away from places like Beijing and Shanghai, and there is almost no communication. The night in this city is very long, and the city is full of chaotic and narrow streets. During the day, the city is depressed and gloomy, as if recalling its crazy nightmare in the dark.

This city has a mysterious magnetic force in "A Man Decorates with Lights", "Ghost" and Tian Er's recent novel "Loop Car". It's attractive and can't escape. In A Man Decorates a Lantern, the assistant director who is about to leave suddenly dies: because of his sin, because he tried to escape; In Overlapping Images, the policeman finally faces the question of whether to leave, but we know that even if he leaves, he will still go to this place. In The Man in the Rocking Chair, a man is imprisoned here, watching all the nightmares repeat themselves. In this world that can't run out, all people are chasing each other: chasing is a grand sports meeting that is staged every day in the city on the second day. People are chasing, people are on the run, and people become hunters and prey: sometimes people don't know whether they are chasing or on the run, and the people who are chasing are also the targets of being hunted (hunting, ghosting, letters from afar, damn it). No one can go or leave, which is the mantra of this world. Tian Er secretly sealed the city, which became a "story".

In China literature since 1980s, the fate of the story is the most intriguing. Telling stories or not telling stories in novels has become one literary scandal after another. Up to now, few writers in his novels don't tell stories, and few writers dare to resist stories, except young people who don't understand the world. The authority of the story is almost the power of the market. The writer's transformation of the story is actually due to the submission to the imaginary reader. No matter what name this "reader" is called, he is essentially assumed to be a short-sighted person-a person who is limited by his own experience and his own world view, and a person who is instinctively suspicious and angry about any heresy. His reading is to confirm his knowledge, so he is right.

-this is almost a cautious and mediocre middle-class reader in the western sense. He is not only the product of China's contemporary history, but also the result of the novelist's vision becoming a reality: he is constructed and shaped. In this process, the soul of the "story" is stolen, and the narrator's personality and strength are only related to intonation and rhetoric, and only to his suspicious knowledge-the superficial extension and superficial differences of experience.

However, the true spirit of the story is not here. The basic consensus between the storyteller and the audience is that something did happen, which is beyond the "impossible" barrier that pervades our experience. Because of this transcendence, we realize the limit of our life, and there are still miracles in the world-that is, there are still miracles in people's hearts and actions. In this sense, the narrative of the story is similar to religion and myth. It expresses itself, and it must be able to seal itself off.

Tian Er became a storyteller in this sense. His character is trapped in his city. They are in a silent and rotating tower of Babel, doomed to chase and have nothing to say.

Of course, we all know that there is a noisy world outside Tianer, a world of TV, mobile phone and internet, and an infinite world of rap, but this city has its own special situation: its residents often have language barriers, and there is a mute in "A Man Decorates with Lights"; In the overlapping images, the pursued (also the pursuer) is a person whose tongue is bitten off. The novel begins with the frequent childish and manic slogans and pictures-difficult to express means the fundamental problem of this city, and people can't speak, either because they can't say it or because they can't hear it. In almost all Tian Er's novels, there is a deep anxiety: Who will listen to me and what can I say?

Therefore, the city is essentially silent, silent and crowded-full of people's movements, expressions and limbs. Tian Er's novels are very real, but the virtual reality revolves around silent running and breathing.

-this is a constant sight in Tianer City. It is hard to say whether people are escaping from this silence or moving towards it. The horror, sadness, comedy and noise of the novel are all revealed from here.

So what is this silence? I really want to abstract some seemingly universal metaphysical propositions or metaphysical nonsense from Tian Er's novels, and then demonstrate Tian Er's "profundity" from them. Since 1980s, if literature tries to be profound, it will fall into the metaphysical trap outside literature. This bizarre thing is like a person having to hang a rope from someone else's beam. There are only a few writers-just the most noisy and talkative writers in general, such as Wang Shuo, Wang Xiaobo and Liu Zhenyun. -Can we see the silence that discourages critics, philosophers and all ideological gods? It is no accident that the above three writers are famous, but critics seldom talk about them.

It's a long story, so let's stop for a while. I resisted the impulse to be a silent translator. I admit that I must keep silent. For a novelist, trying to convince his contemporary readers or listeners that there are some unspeakable things in this world that are "profound". And my interest lies in how such a quiet city has become a "story" and a "novel".

Because there is a god wandering in this city: it exists in the gray line of grass snakes, and when people look forward to it and pay close attention to it, it exists in the opposite of absolute inevitability-absolute contingency.

There are ubiquitous coincidences in A Man Decorates a Lantern, Ghost and Circle Line. All unrelated people are finally woven into an accurate net. Of course, this seems to be just a theatrical trick. For thousands of years, human beings have been convincing themselves that if a person looks for another person in the vast sea of people, he will face to face one day, and only the great and unfortunate Don Quixote's search will go away, thus he has a profound doubt about human quirks: I believe there is a written script to guide human activities, in which all details will inevitably become the link of meaning generation. The gun hanging on the gun is bound to ring, because the gun falls into a edited world. In this world, contingency is the slave of necessity, or in other words, there is a god sitting in this world. In his view, there is no accident, and nothing can escape his planning and design.

China's novels are all subordinate to this god. No matter what name he appears in, he is far more grand and authoritative than the novel and the author. It is not only a "grand narrative" in the general sense, but also reflected in the preset judgment of the novel: the novel must have a premise, a Platonic picture higher than experience, higher than imagination and higher than people, and a certain "integrity". Novelists should confirm this picture and gain the legitimacy of writing from it. Although few novelists in China have sincere confidence in wholeness, their novel structure and their imagination of people and the world still lead to a "God" who comforts himself.

There are also "gods" in Tian Er's novels, and any novelist can't avoid talking with all kinds of "gods". However, the interest and passion of some novelists are not to find God or prove his different faces, but to find a rebellious and active God relative to any God.

-Tian Er is such a psychic Taoist. In the short story "Nitrogen Fertilizer Factory", the god he called appeared. This novel is difficult to criticize and translate. It was an "accident", and people looked up at its bright light in shock. In this novel, human necessity-the aesthetic, moral and physiological operation of social life. That gas holder is a symbol of all necessities. It is a machine that runs silently according to its logic. But who can imagine? A pair of unlucky men and women, two inevitable prisoners make love on the machine. Crazy actions led to machine failure, and they were launched into the sky luxuriously and happily. ...

When inevitability fails, it is the usual technique of the novel to save the scene by accident. But here in Tianer, logic is reversed, and contingency overcomes inevitability. The chaotic world has occupied the orderly world, and a little accidental spirit has jumped out of the crack. It is willful, bold and has the crazy vitality to disturb the sky. This is a profound metaphor. There is no need to ask if it can jump out, just believe it or not. Novelists are not faced with the inevitability of some kind of construction, but

Therefore, the accidental God is man himself. Tian Er's fascination with coincidence is not only because of his talent for drama, but also because of his belief in people. In his city, people refused to judge themselves. Encouraged by his enthusiasm, desire, eccentricity, weakness and paranoia, they crossed the gap. They acted, acted rashly, cried, laughed and died. They are people with inner confusion, and novels are the miracle they created in this chaotic city: chaos only reaches accurate form in coincidence and accident.

Yes, although I emphasized the gloomy characteristics of the city in Tian Er, Tian Er was not written for the sake of gloom. He wrote to find a lamp in the dark. In "A Man Decorates a Lantern", the old policeman is familiar with the truth of this world:

This winter night, Lao Huang suddenly felt a sense of aging and fatigue. He smoked hard in the cold wind and the fire burned quickly. At this moment, Lao Huang began to lose confidence in this case. An old policeman like him is seldom so discouraged. He looked at the house with lanterns not far away for a while, then his eyes climbed up and poked into the sky. Some slightly white light wandered silently in the dark, which made the concept of "time" in Lao Huang's mind concrete and took shape at once. For a moment, the case was still in my mind. Lao Huang knows that there are actually many unsolved cases. Skynet is long, sparse but not leaking, which stems from people's good wishes. Of course, this is a bit like the general future tense in English-it can't be broken now, and it may not be broken in the future. But Lao Huang has been in this business for too long. He knew that it was tactful to put the blame on time. If you don't say anything, don't say anything. Because time is infinite. Time will go on indefinitely.

Nevertheless, Lao Huang stood and watched a lamp light up, which was an accident and a small miracle in this case. The reason why this novel has universal appeal is not only because of the victory of order, but also because it affirms man and the god hidden in man.

-The world has regained its charm. Yes, the world has disenchanted, and the charm of "God" has dissipated. However, Tian Er believes that the story is not over, and the story of human beings may have just begun-as far as China's novels are concerned, it may be true. After "God" left, there was a great silence, in which people stubbornly imagined miracles.

But first of all, we should be aware of the absence of "God" and the existence of "silence", and then we can tell them effectively. At his best, Tian Er is an effective narrator, but any effective narrator has no personality-a witch must wear a mask, a Taoist above the village must be a psychic and popular person, and Tian Er has an instinctive popularity-at the same time, he is likely to benefit a lot from "low-level novels" and vulgar movies, which also makes him likely to be covered by "knowledge" and floating words.

Early morning of February 13, 2008

(This article is the preface to Tian Er's novella "One Man Fits a Lamp Cage" by Mr. Li Jingze, a famous literary critic and editor-in-chief of People's Literature magazine. )