Text/Xing Tianding
one
Darkness is the protective color of truth, which protects the truest life from being discovered by us so easily.
We stand in the vacuum of this impetuous society and belief, standing in the material as full as sunshine, seeing only darkness, but never seeing the truth under the protective color of darkness. This truth is another truth, which makes people sad and makes the words extremely heavy. But this truth is far from modern times full of ridicule and shallow reading, so the writer's pen can't be touched-if it is touched, it will be deliberately bypassed, because it is a thorn and will hurt the person who touches it.
And I heard a person say two words: one is "When I write these works, I think more about some dark corners in our society now. I hope to approach them with my pen, expose them to the sun, and let the darkness become bright from now on"; The other sentence is "the growth of each thorn is really more difficult than that of a flower".
These two sentences, before all Lu's novels, are deeply imprinted in my mind like two nails. Even if there is blood attached to the pain of meat, it is difficult to pull these two nails out of my memory.
The Bible says, "My lover stands in the crowd like a rose among thorns." . This is also the line of sight of the world. Everyone knows the beauty of roses, but they also forget the thorns in the dark corner-these thorns have defended the fragile beauty of roses all their lives. These thorns grow quietly like grass. The life of the people at the bottom is hard. Because of the darkness, too many such truths are covered up. As real as the most painful wound in the world.
In these darkness, there is the most real oppression, the most real hardship and the most real pain ... In these corners, the sun never patronizes, and the spotlight and literature pass by, leaving no soul nutrition. When many intellectuals shouted "human feelings" in their study, only Lu drank in an untimely low voice: Go into the darkness! But few people hear it, those who hear it don't care, and those who care don't care. Only a few people who take it to heart suddenly find that this is the voice of inner shock, because it is the vibration from another heart.
Lu Yao once made such a low amount of alcohol, so he had a shocking ordinary world. So when Lu's novel shocked me, I didn't think it was too strange.
two
He used to be the author of the original literature website under the banyan tree, and I was the editor of the banyan society, which made me feel more cordial, such as meeting my long-lost brother in a foreign land.
His novel "Running to the Street to Complain" was highly praised by famous artists such as Yu Hua, Mo Yan, Acheng, Wang Anyi, Yu, Chi Li, and won the short story award of the third global online original literary competition held by the website under the banyan tree. This is a blockbuster movie, but it is a special case in every way. It itself is a thorn in the dark, and it will encounter more difficulties and twists and turns in its growth, so it is rejected by many magazines because of its sharpness. The wording of the same rejected papers is strikingly similar: "The masterpiece is well written, but it is not suitable for publication in our magazine because of its sharp thinking, ..."
This is in line with the law of modern market operation, just like a flower shop can't accept the arrival of a bunch of thorns, even if there are the most dazzling flowers in the thorns-because if the customer's hands are slightly injured, it is difficult to pass them on to Kong Fangxiong from those hands.
This is a realistic society, even at the expense of truth.
The dark truth is like silence in calm, just like Lu Xun said: if it doesn't break out in silence, it will perish in silence. Many truths are like bubbles of time, which burst silently, and only a few can be ignited like sparks, which are destined to become the warmest sunshine in the hearts of those who are still in the dark, and a warm river in their hearts is no longer cold. But who can write silently in the dark, take the truth as the bottom in the dark, bear loneliness in the dark, beat our souls and conscience in the dark, torture our hearts in the dark, bleach our bodies in the dark, and silence in the dark slowly wears away our patience like a bamboo knife. ...
Lu went through such a stage, and almost all his novels were written in the dark with real shouts and howls. In those days when there is no reply, only his own words and conscience accompany him, while those poor people at the bottom who have almost no right to speak can only sympathize with him, but he doesn't need their sympathy, because although he stands in the dark, he has a bright yearning in his heart.
He said that he was "writing alone with his conscience, paying attention to human nature, fate and the bottom of society", and so was his novel. I think even when he has nothing, he still has the care of the bottom, while many writers have everything, but they have lost their interest and enthusiasm for the bottom.
three
It is far from enough for a work to have the courage to go into darkness, because no matter what literary works, what you can finally filter through time can only be: what kind of spiritual nutrition, beauty or truth it left for future generations, which can nourish everyone's inner world forever. Without this kind of nutrition, even if the works can be a hit, the long river of history will tell you helpless news: they have been submerged, but some once lonely words have been washed away and presented to people for a long time, becoming a good meal for the soul.
When I read Lu's novels, I use the eyes of a critical gourmet.
The stories in his novels are all easy to read, and the characters are almost all simple farmers who have just come out of the countryside. The plot is touching and tortuous. They are full of emotion, critical and introverted, unlike some writers who pursue poetic obscurity in their novels.
There was once a critic who explained the difference between novels and poems in a very simple way: novels write falsehood into truth, while poems write falsehood into truth. This is of course a joke, but it also shows that the most important thing in society is the realistic concern of novels. What I want to read is: What does his novel care about the bottom people? Is it the tone that officials forced the people to resist and experienced twists and turns to reach a happy ending, or is it the tone that reflects the real pain of hard life like Xianglinsao? In reading, I found that as a writer who speaks for the bottom, he is destined to have these tones, but few of them surpass him.
For example, his novel "Running all over the street to complain" tells the embarrassing experience of a person going to the city to complain and complain. First, he found an official and could not enter the city. Then, under the guidance of a tramp, he went to the city block to complain, so as to attract the media to intervene (which also made the evil village head taste the fear and tried his best to get him back to the countryside without complaining). The result of the last complaint is that the ending of the novel is metaphorical. When the village chief saw him as a beggar in the street, he left with confidence. He just entered the role selflessly, distorted the role that survived after being raped by life, and gradually forgot everything under the paralysis of material. The violence that this kind of life exerts on the lowest human nature is better reflected in another novel, Looking for a Brother who Flees into the City. Finally, the protagonist finally abandoned his biological brother under the paralysis of urban material. There are also two articles "Village without Gamblers" and "Mida is a thief", which are about the violence of most people and distort human nature to a greater extent. It can be said that the perspective of his novels is deep-seated, humanized and three-dimensional humanistic care, which I appreciate most and is worth learning.
If literary works lack aesthetic feeling and skills, then no matter how thoughtful and caring they are, their charm value will be greatly reduced, which is like the regret of "However, she lives alone in an empty valley and is peerless". In Lu's novels, I also saw this kind of aesthetic feeling and skill, which made the peerless beauty in his words appear in front of our aesthetic eyes.
The beauty in his novels is that kind of faint poetry, not the beauty of roses. More like the beauty of French writer Baudelaire's Flowers of Evil. Beauty in darkness is so integrated with darkness. You have to admire his subtlety and propriety, but it is as mysterious as Mona Lisa's smile. For example, "for Lotte, the foundation of wheat has become distant again, and his fiancee is still deadlocked with him. Relationship is like a taut string, which may break at any time. ""Since Zheng Dongshan went in, he has been wearing a gloomy face, as if Zheng Dongshan raped his daughter "... These inspirational pens often amaze us and give people intellectual happiness and enjoyment like reading contemporary Yu Hua's novels.
The skills in his novels are not very strong, but if they are strong, they will flow into the novels of pure novelists-things that are too like novels will not be good novels, just as people who are too smart will be mistaken by cleverness. The skills in his novels only bring meaningful effects to his novels, which seems to inherit the metaphor of Borges' great novels. The most prominent story is "A Village Without Gamblers". Everyone in a village is a gambler, and a migrant worker who has been working for many years has been treated strangely because he does not gamble. This village is an exaggerated metaphor, and all the beautiful stories take place under this meaningful metaphor. This reminds me of Borges's Garden with Two Crossing Paths, which is very interesting and meaningful. Maybe this is the classic in the real classic novel. Because the ideological direction of these metaphors is not nothingness, but equally profound and can give people endless inspiration.
four
Of course, Lu's novels also have some regrets. For example, sometimes he pays too much attention to readability and pursues the originality of his thoughts, but ignores the sublimation of his thoughts. He often reveals the chronic diseases in people's hearts without giving hope. Perhaps it is the same ideological direction as Mr. Lu Xun's Ah Q spirit: "Point out the symptoms of thought to attract the attention of treatment."
However, some novelists in modern times have gone beyond this ideological orientation. For example, Tie Ning's novella "How Far Is It Forever" pulls the ideological orientation back from nothingness to persistence and persistence in life itself, rather than Lu Xun's courage to resist despair: this courage is more aimed at a few elites with hard personality and profound thoughts, but for those who are tightly oppressed by life violence and material violence at the bottom, this ideological orientation is obviously a bit high.
I heard that his collection of short stories, Dog's Bike, was finally published in a zigzag way. I was as surprised and excited as finding a bright spark in the endless darkness, because I saw the direction of hope and an encouraging coordinate, not to mention that the person who insisted on this starlight was his brother who came out from the banyan tree.
What I see now is a Jiang Liang standing in the dark truth. Like a soldier, he touched the darkness with his brush strokes in order to bring light to the bottomless darkness. The courage needed during this period is long and painful-more likely despair. There are not many people with such courage in today's literary world, but very few.
Go into the dark! Go into the dark! I also heard such an anxious and sad cry in my brother's words. In the dark, people from the bottom of my heart are almost desperate and circling around me. Text/Zhang Ning
It is inevitable that Lu's novels will attract widespread attention on the Internet. I thought at that time that he must have caught the attention of the print media. Now, his novels are published in many professional magazines. I have read his short stories, such as Who Hit the Dog of the Lame Village Party Secretary, Running in the Street and Crying for Injustice, Dog's Bike and so on. The language of Lu's novels is concise and powerful, the narrative is clear and the story structure is unexpected. More importantly, he turned his attention to the countryside and the fate of the helpless in the countryside. He exposed the absurdity of contemporary peasant life to the fullest. I don't want to name Lu's novels with the concept that people are used to-local novels. I'd rather say this is a miracle. A miracle is something that people think impossible has happened. In contemporary rural areas of China, this kind of miracle undoubtedly happens frequently. It has attracted the attention of the whole intellectual community and even people with higher status. As a writer, Lu can't control the miracle in the countryside. Jiang Liang just caught them sensitively. Therefore, we should not be surprised at the strange structure and tragic ending of Lu's novels. What surprises us is life itself.
The absurd miracle in rural life often appears in people's field of vision, but it is often ignored by people. Because in this so-called information explosion era, any information will be submerged, just like the posts in BBS, which have just been posted and then covered by later posts. In order to prevent some posts containing important information from being covered, BBS moderators have to adopt the method of topping, that is, keeping some posts at the top of the page for a long time. Literary form (narrative) is to structure and formalize the scattered experience that is happening and let it stand on it. Lu's novels, through his unique narrative form and story structure, put information, stories, the fate of farmers and various spiritual secrets in people's reading field of vision.
The short story "The Child Escaped to Heaven" that we are reading now is not his best novel. Compared with novels such as Who Beats the Dog of the Lame Village Party Secretary and Running All over the Street, the first half of this novel is a bit slow and the structure is a bit loose. But it is undoubtedly a typical fable of rural childhood life. A narrative language as calm as water can produce a chilling effect. I once wrote an article called Wandering with the Circus. This is my childhood dream. Dream of joining a circus that has no fixed place in the countryside and wanders around, so as to escape from the countryside. I regard vagrancy as the core idea of rebellion. I am more determined here. With escape as the core idea, he fled to a place called heaven. In the eyes of the two children, this paradise is a place where there is food and clothing, and there is no abuse and insult. The expectations of the two children are undoubtedly high. Where can we find a place where we can eat and wear without being insulted? But because you are a child, any request can't be too much and should be met. But no one in their village is willing to meet this requirement. However, the traffickers were very frank and immediately agreed to their demands and took them to the road to heaven.
Lu can always find stories in the countryside. This is an ability. When all writers think they know all the stories of our time, they are obsessed with how to tell it. As a result, writing has become a story-telling competition. Lu is the discoverer. He took pains to pay attention to the movement in contemporary rural areas of China, and put it at the top of the messy contemporary cultural forum in time. Text/Luo Wei
Lu once again put the absurdity in front of the readers, but this time he seems to want to carry it through to the end. The novel The Road Without Crossing is full of absurdity from its title to the whole story, which criticizes the reality naked.
Looking at Lu's novels in recent years, such as the short story "Dog's Bike", "Running around in the street crying about injustice" and "Mida is a thief", including the novel "City Ant", he has been obsessed with integrating absurdity into reality, and he is getting deeper and deeper. However, the absurdity of Lu's novels often contains heavy practical problems, which also forms the unique style of Lu's novels.
Unbreakable Road is Lu's most successful absurd novel for many years. An old woman who goes to town can't cross the street all day and all night. Later, because of a reporter's report, it attracted the attention of the media, and finally touched the mayor's adult, which made the old woman's status improve at once, better than Li Laoguai, who had been a township head. At this time, the old woman hoped that she would never cross the road, but the good times did not last long. When the new mayor took office, she was immediately persuaded. When crossing the road, the old woman couldn't help crying, and the more she cried, the louder she cried ... The old woman couldn't cross the road, but the media reporters actually took this as a report and made a big fuss. This episode can't help but remind people of the "Brother Sharp Incident" which was very popular on the Internet some time ago. Isn't this old woman "Grandma Sharp"?
But the author didn't limit the novel to this range, he set a trap for the reader. The absurdity of Lu's novels often reveals profound realism, and this writing technique can be better appreciated in The Road that Cannot Walk. Since the old woman met the city coordinator, the author began to uncover the connotation of this novel. The city coordinator could easily lead the old woman across the street, but he didn't buy it. "If I were a city manager, I would take her." But now I'm the co-manager. Although the coordinator is not a city manager, he also manages the city and does not lead the way for pedestrians. Why should I be worse than the urban management? "After that, the coordinator told the reporter's fellow villagers that the old woman would not cross the road and was reported by the media, which attracted the attention of government departments. The mayor asked the government director Wang to solve it, and the result was not optimistic. " The urban management bureau thinks that the old woman is not an unlicensed vendor and cannot cross the road, which is not within their jurisdiction; The Civil Affairs Bureau pointed out that the old lady is not a beggar and does not belong to the object of assistance. They have no responsibility for her. The traffic police department explained that the place where the old woman stayed was not allowed to cross the road itself; The driver's representative said that where the old woman was located, there was neither an intersection nor a zebra crossing, and there was no requirement for vehicles to avoid. "
Lu is a brilliant writer. His criticism is never superficial. From the assistant manager of a small city to the head of the city, he exposed the disadvantages of the current system in China and the indifference and selfishness of human feelings layer by layer.
The climax of the novel An Unbreakable Road is that after the mayor of this city changed, the difference between the two mayors is that "the former likes to make small things big, but now his hobby makes big things small". After listening to Director Wang's report, the current mayor personally went to visit the old woman. He instructed Director Wang to let her tidy up and take her across the street now. Director Wang was stunned. "This matter has dragged on for so long, so it is easy to solve?" Indeed, it is as simple as that. The core of the novel also exploded here. This system is artificial. When a leader comes to power, it is a system. As director Wang said, "the past is the past, the present is the present, and we must keep pace with the times." The former mayor supported an ordinary rural old lady with financial allocation, and this old lady deserved it, and she lived in peace by playing mahjong. The current mayor ignored the old woman and told her to leave at once. Here, the author takes the old woman as a symbol completely, criticizes her rudely, makes her look extremely pitiful and ridiculous, and at the same time reveals the serious ills of China system implicitly.
Lu has always been regarded as a writer who "writes alone with conscience and pays attention to human nature, fate and the bottom of society". Lu is lonely because he has a literati conscience in his bones. In the novel "I can't ride a horse", Lu dares to expose the bad habits of China people with absurd smiles and curses. This novel seems absurd, but in fact it has a heavy connotation. From this old woman alone, we can see many humble places of human nature. From refusing to eat an egg to taking the initiative to ask the new mayor for air conditioning and increasing "old insurance", the old woman is really a shameless person. Lu has been describing such a group of little people living in the countryside. Even in big cities, it is still at the bottom. The author sympathizes with them, but digs out sadness from them. Perhaps this is also the style that Jiang Liang inherited from Lu Xun's works, that is, "to mourn his misfortune and anger his indisputable".
The reason why Lu's "The Road to Unbreakable" has a very heavy ideological weight in a short space is not only because the novel's unique cut-in angle and concise and powerful brushwork describe a very sharp social reality problem for us, but also because the work blends into an absurd realm and conveys a profound and clear human nature content, which makes us lament the author's profound critical power and the rare artistic value of the novel. -Comment on Lu's novel "City Ant"
Text/Han Xiaoling
"Ant tribe" is not a swarm, but a low-income group of college graduates. The city is as vast as the sea, attracting countless people from all directions into its arms. These "city strangers" are like ants hiding under the roots of the city, moving their cramped lives day and night along the narrow road leading to the city caves. Lu's "City Ant" tells the story of three young people studying, looking for a job, struggling and struggling in the city, and depicts the original ecology of the "ant family" life.
The story of "City Ant" revolves around the little people in three cities, and Lu describes the living situation of "city strangers" and the tragic course of personal struggle with simple and concise brushwork. Everyone in life has ideals and pursuits, and the characters in novels are no exception. Feng Lefa longs for money, Zheng Sangou longs for the comfort of the opposite sex, and Zhao Jiaying pursues beautiful love. The novel tells readers through the experiences of the three protagonists in the city that different people have different choices in the face of the same life, and different choices mean different endings. Simple words express the author's humanistic concern for "city strangers" The exposure and criticism of their inferiority make the works have a strong realistic style.
Lu himself is a member of the "ant tribe", which makes him have a unique experience description of life. The author pays close attention to their living conditions with warm eyes and records these simple farmers who have just come out of the countryside with stupidity. With the help of the author's extraordinary insight, solid language perception and writing skills, the novel shows the contradictions and conflicts of "ant tribe" in urban life to the fullest. The author tries to dig out the hidden things in life and whip the endless desire and people's helplessness.
Feng Lefa, who is addicted to gambling and lustful, Zheng Sangou, who is frustrated in love, and Zhao Jiaying, who is brilliant, have brought great vitality to this city, but it is always difficult to get the happiness they crave. This beautiful city is dazzling and many dreams bloom here. The temptation of money and luxury, the temptation of spirit and material are contradictory and blended here. Countless dreams are born in cities, and countless lives are performed in cities. In the long journey of life, how should we embrace life warmly and try to find something called "happiness"? -Comment on Lu's novel "Children who Escape to Heaven"
Text/Qian Kefeng
Two rural children, forgotten by their families, live in a semi-vagrant state, with no food and no clothes, and always dream of boarding the train to a happy paradise. They did go to "heaven", after the train derailed. However, they took their two children to heaven, and there were all kinds of people floating around the children in the country. Unlike children, the paradise in their hearts is a paradise of desire and a paradise of destruction.
Reading Shaoxing writer Lu's new work "Children Escaping to Heaven", we can't help but sigh that the novel's proposition is heavy, the fate of the characters is ups and downs, the history of the desire of the left-behind people in contemporary rural areas is slowly unfolding, and the characters eager to pursue the fate of heaven are vividly portrayed: Feng Tianfu's gambling addiction and ruin, Feng Village Chief's greed and hegemony, Wu Douhua's debauchery and motherhood, Feng Cannon's cunning and speculation, Director Mao's persistence and Feng's utopianism and Feng Mengfa's interweaving of good and evil. When children are pursuing a nihilistic and figurative paradise, these adults, who are smarter and more scheming than children, construct a realistic picture of a materialistic paradise.
Children's eyes are full of innocence, and children's hearts yearn for beauty. Even the rural children Feng Chengsheng and Feng, who don't like learning and are playful by nature, when they are bent on fleeing their homeland to pursue the legendary paradise that can give people happiness, this in itself shows that there is something wrong with their home. This is not only a question of whether happiness exists, but also a question of whether kindness and harmony between people deteriorate. Facts have proved that Guqiaozhuang village, where children live but are eager to betray, has evolved into a testing ground for interests, human nature variation, opportunism and lust. Such a rural area is no longer simple and frank, but has become a besieged city and a city of desire surrounded and tempted by urban economy.
The whole novel takes two children looking for heaven together as the bright line, but it is interspersed with many hidden lines of complicated and changeable interpersonal relationships in rural areas. The author Lu put the story in a village, but expanded his vision to countless villages, put countless rural poverty points under the economic and social test of a village, and reflected the degeneration and transformation of contemporary rural areas with children's "escape", which was inevitably thought-provoking: children were looking for heaven, but then they fled. Is it hell? Or the magic cave? At least, in the eyes of children, this is a swamp lacking warmth and care.
The novels of the famous young writer Lu always adhere to the realistic style, paying special attention to the living conditions of farmers or migrant workers, and satirizing the gloom of social reality with critical methods. Zhang Ning, a famous literary critic, called him "the discoverer of contemporary rural areas in China". Therefore, in this novel, Lu once again found the image of the life group of the left-behind people in rural areas with sharp eyes, felt the pulse of all kinds of villagers after the wind of the city blew into the countryside, dissected the stubborn diseases, and scattered false fire, temptation and desire everywhere.
When reading Lu's novels, there is always a strong feeling in my heart, because his novels are not a pastime of flirting with the moon, but realistic works that pursue the artistic conception of essays, quite like a warrior fighting truth and ugliness with a gun. At the end of the novel, I still have lingering pain in my heart. Two children pursuing happiness went to heaven on the derailed train, while the living villagers fell into the abyss of life with the disillusionment of their desires. Although heaven is empty, it is better than gloomy reality.