Chapter 17 "The Screwdriver"——The Pioneer of the Fertile Ground of Fiction

"Screwdriver" will be the culmination of Facebook's series of Hammett's novels. In fact, this was the last one published by Hammett at that time. Compiled by Lillian Hellman, Confidante. Well, these are all of the fabled Hammett novels, the fabled milestones that rewrote the entire history of American mystery writing - how?Is it better to be famous than to meet?Or does it deserve its name? First of all, let’s talk about the part that Facebook’s batch of Chinese translations of Hammett failed to help you successfully translate—this is of course not the translator’s mistake, but the success of Hammett’s novels, which will inevitably be left in history. In time and space, the most important thing is the revelation of Hammett's writing and its historical significance. We have to take Steven Spielberg or Tinker Bell's time machine back to the past to find it smoothly.

Go back to the 1920s and 1930s in the first half of the 20th century. At that time and now, there is a huge difference in the writing landscape of American primary school novels, as if developing countries are compared with post-industrial countries, as if rural areas are compared with large cities, and as if the fertile fields with few people are compared with the overdeveloped and crowded cities , this is an accurate reading of Hammett's novels, we have to keep in mind more or less. At that time, the United States was a new land in the ascendant compared with Western Europe, which was fully mature and even shrinking. Therefore, before that, American novelists wrote novels with their desks facing the Atlantic Ocean. They inherited, learned, imitated and Concretely put into practice is mainly the Continental novel Dahe tradition.After all, political independence is relatively easy, as long as a war, a revolutionary action, and the signing of a contract document successfully cause changes in the source and structure of power on the spot, but the writing of novels is different. It is "sticky" to people's consciousness, value, daily life and their yearning and pursuit. The inertia and friction in this aspect are far greater and more stable than the political structure-to use the vocabulary that everyone is familiar with today, Western Europe It is still the "center" of the novel kingdom, and the United States is still the "border".

Therefore, for more than a century, American novelists have been based on the "European style" of the thirteen states of New England, and they are still European-style writers, like Edgar Allan Poe, like Hawthorne (when I was young, I always mistakenly thought he was a European writers) or Henry James.This is why Mark Twain is so special in the writing of early American novels. His themes of the Mississippi River and southern town life, as well as the frank and direct tone of the words of the language of American folk life, are the first American novels to move towards themselves. This is a clear turning point, but Mark Twain is a lonely pioneer, a rare flower and a rare plant, and has not been able to give birth to many great torrents such as the 6,000-kilometer-long and fertile Mississippi River in his writings. In fact, this is also the history of human thinking. The usual "pattern" - one or two strange and single individuals are far ahead, and it will take decades or hundreds of years for the whole human race to catch up.

It was not until the 1920s of the twentieth century that this turn unfolded in an irresistible and fertile form—that is, Hammett and Hemingway, as well as Chandler and Faulkner. Here, with Hammett and Hemingway in the lead, let my personal higher ratings of Chandler and Faulkner come later, because we are not discussing here their true novel-level achievements but the historical significance of evoking . Turning must clearly present a gesture of rupture, which must be recognized at a glance. Therefore, the subject matter is obviously more important than the meaning, and the form is prior to the content, and the most powerful weapon of rupture is language.Since God confused human language in the Tower of Babel in the Bible, language is the first sign of isolation, isolation, and going their own way in the world (we often say that language is a tool of communication, which is the remedy for this break), the emphasis of language, usually It is to reconfirm this rupture and declare its complete and uncompromising sovereignty. Therefore, it always clearly carries or implicitly invokes regional and national passions, and quietly connects with politics, just like Taiwan a few years ago. Like local literature.

In this sense, Hammett and Hemingway are indeed in a clearer position than Chandler and Faulkner.Just like in the conclusion of reality, it is Hammett rather than Chandler who is recognized as the master of American hardliners, and it is Hemingway rather than Faulkner who represents the "lost generation" of the United States.It is very clear that in terms of the language of the novel and the external expression of the novel directly constructed by the language, Hammett and Hemingway obviously have a stronger and more localized style. Therefore, today we praise Hemingway, including the most expert Mark Schmidt and Calvino, highly focused on his journalistic, crisp and clean style of writing, as well as his position in the framework of the history of American primary school fiction; the same is true for Hammett, for half a century, regardless of reasoning inside and outside, The constant praise for him is nothing more than his unparalleled writing style, strong realistic style, neat novel writing skills, and the master of American mystery novels. In short, relatively speaking, Hammett and Hemingway are undoubtedly It is a purer aesthetic novelist, and its most striking feature and achievement is the language of the novel, as well as its historical influence and location.

However, this is where the trouble lies. Sensitive people may easily find that if I were a reader in Taiwan in 2000, all I wanted was to read novels in peace. I have no intention of getting involved in the entangled national complex of Britain and the United States, so what does this have to do with me?British writers, American writers, European languages ​​and American languages, aren’t they all imported and foreign to me? The founding significance and historical value of written language are exactly what cannot be translated, what is left in a specific historical time and space. Therefore, here we come across a puzzle that is not uncommon when rereading classic novels—why do I find it so boring to read some big and small novels that have a great background and whose status in literary history has been truly confirmed from generation to generation?So relieved?Is this a historical collective deception?Or am I so low that I can't recognize the good stuff?

Here we would like to give another more extreme example of the history of fiction—Henry Miller’s masterpiece that broke through taboos. This is a very sad real story, involving two respectable old friends of mine, Zhang Dachun and Wu Jiwen, two experienced professional novelists who both read and wrote by themselves. A few years ago, Times Publishing Company translated This masterpiece of Miller, Zhang Dachun focused on the consideration of the true content of the novel, brazenly picked up a pen and wrote an instant book review, criticizing it as a "bad novel", severely stimulating to mild, with the identity of a literary editor, and always interested in literature. Wu Jiwen, who traditionally has a very pious heart, openly staged an offensive and defensive pen battle between the pros and cons.

I have to say, purely from a reader's point of view, I agree with Zhang Dachun's accusation almost wholeheartedly. Miller's is really a bad novel. From the beginning to the end, there are only explicit, vulgar, and nauseating sex. However, in this repeated scene where sexual organs are flying all over the sky, there is no superficial depth and depth, and there is no need to expect any deep contemplation. The superficial plot), the external world is as blank as walking through the wilderness, and the inner psychology is as shallow as a sheet of white paper. We only see an excavator crane incarnated as "I" who can speak simple human words, nine to five every night Digging endlessly, boring to the extreme.

The whole novel is a sharp javelin aimed at writing about the social taboos of the time and nothing else. Have you succeeded?Yes, but success also means the end, just like the Liberal Party in the UK, when its single appeal is satisfied, the enemy no longer exists, and no one needs it anymore-today, if we need more sex , You can spare time to take a trip to Guanghua Mall, how to get sex, and the sound and picture also include various yoga stunt changes, so you don't have to work hard to browse the two-dimensional space, and you have to convert from black and white to three-dimensional actual combat pictures.

With Henry Miller, we may have more accurately found the large distribution center of these "classic novels that are not necessarily good-looking".Generally speaking, these are a group of pioneering new novels. They are given the status of classics mainly because of their historical achievements, but not necessarily because of their substantive content. These are two different things. They are just in the name of historical significance. are often confused. After all, the reversal of the historical trend often only hits a certain point accurately, just like a reckless gunshot of a revolutionary action with the right time and place, and all the people are in place. Others, the conditions for changing the overall social reality that are ripe for change will naturally take over and will continue. This intentional or accidental breakthrough gap unleashes a huge stack of energy and becomes a torrent - so all you need is to get one thing right, a new concept, a hearty language display, a downright, Even sex provocative with ugliness, a female detective who appeared in the crime world for the first time to arrest murderers for the first time, a little beauty who was lifted into the sky in a sunny afternoon just relying on a white sheet.The so-called "accurately hitting a point", translated into the vernacular into the immediate feelings of the viewers and followers, is roughly "Oh, it can be like this, if I said it earlier, I would do it too".

Everyone "said I would do it earlier", and history changed course. Because of this, I always jokingly refer to such a group of novels as "Columbus Egg" novels-we have all heard this story, whether it is true or not, it is said that some people are not convinced by Columbus's exploits in finding the New World, so Columbus then He took the egg and asked him to stand upright to see (obviously this did not happen at twelve noon on the Dragon Boat Festival). ), simply let the egg stand up, and the unconvinced opponent protested again, "I will do the same."Columbus only said coldly: "Of course I know you will, but the problem is that you are not the first person to do it." What does a "Columbus Egg" novel mean?There are two meanings, one is that whether you are convinced or not, he is the first person to successfully erect an egg after all; the other is that although the egg is erected, the egg is still just an egg, and its essential content will not be produced Qualitative changes, such as the Queen of England's "African Star" big diamond, or Michelangelo's unparalleled David statue. Speaking of this, we may and should remind our readers of reasoning fans, especially those who spent money to participate in the 100 classic reasoning series of Yuanliu Publishing Company, but were disappointed after reading it and scolded the book selector Zhan Hongzhi on the Internet. Man, it may be true that you think the book is not good enough, but Mr. Zhan did not choose the wrong one, and he did not lie. The overall book list may have slight differences in personal appreciation, but it can generally be called mystery novels from generation to generation. There is nothing wrong with classic.It’s just that we now know that the so-called classics, especially the classics that create meaning, have many such Columbus egg novels. Maybe we can change our appreciation angle and mood, and understand them from the long river of reasoning and writing. Feelings are not polite. Wouldn't it be better to respect their discovery and enlightenment value, thereby diluting some of our demands for substance? My teacher taught me, "Turn big things into small things, and small things into nothing, this is the style of Xingwang people." But in the end, we still have to nervously emphasize again that the historical creation value of a novel and the fullness and beauty of its substantive content are two different things, and they are not necessarily related through two different measurement methods.What we're doing here is trying to separate the two and put them in their place—so, to be correct but crudely, such novels aren't necessarily good, but they aren't necessarily bad either. Are there any novels that are both groundbreaking and terribly good?I still think of García Márquez, a generous gift from Latin America to the entire history of human fiction, a shining diamond, and a time machine with the best performance, the fastest, the smoothest, and the most gorgeous, With it, let us regenerate the fresh ambition of "imagination can go far", which has been languishing after hundreds of years of Western European fiction-my personal, purely personal opinion is that this at least It is the best novel in the entire twentieth century. I know there are Joyce's and Proust's, but it is still the first in my heart. What do we think of a weakened Europe and a vigorous Latin America? What I’m thinking of is a rather huge topic, but it’s really inconvenient to discuss it here. It can be called the problem of “continuous desertification of novel soil”—just like the real land of human beings, there is a common problem of gradual desertification of over-exploitation. The world in the world seems to have the same hidden worries. Western Europe, which has been prosperous for hundreds of years and has been full of strength, has gone down (see Milan Kundera’s), and then North America is also weak. Now, the novel’s vigorous power seems to exist only in Latin America. We don’t know how long these new fertile soils can survive the so-called “marginal locations” of the Americas, Eastern Europe, and even Africa without following the path of desertification?Will this be the inescapable fate of human novels as a whole? The former new fertile land of the United States has only maintained its prosperity for about 30 years. Is this a warning sign that the pace of desertification is accelerating? The prosperity of the United States, to be precise, began with the rise of the generation of Hemingway, Faulkner, Hammett, and Chandler, and almost waned with their passing away from generation to generation.Their appearances, to Western Europe at sunset at that time, were just like how we look at Latin America and Eastern Europe today, fresh, powerful, imaginative, and strange surprises from the new world. It is unavoidable that there are stylized problems due to excessively clear banners, but overall, it is still extremely moving. Today, in the last book of Hammett's book, I recklessly bring my pen here as a tribute, and I hope to point out that he is not only known as the greatest pioneer of American mystery fiction, but also a The pioneers of the once wonderful novel country, this is a few simple words, if you don't say it, it will be too late.