Chapter 13 Postscript for fear of misreading

The purpose of my writing this novel was originally to examine how many mistakes people can make in their daily life, and to find out how far they can go when they go astray, so I chose this kind of interspersed perspectives of characters. The narrative method intends to completely let the characters in the novel perform themselves, not only showing their mistakes and illusions to readers, but also authentically demonstrating their senses of sight, hearing, touch, smell, and even their hallucinations.However, this is a narrative style in which the characters in the novel have the exclusive right to speak, and the novelist has no place to intervene. I have suffered a lot for this.

In the traditional theory of realistic novels, there is a principle of "you will reap melons if you sow melons".The reason why realistic novelists complete character creation is to give the novel a manipulable and "actionable" character, a spokesperson with the so-called independent thinking ability and personalized thinking, and the development of events in him, It is the main body of the story carefully designed by the novelist.However, such beautiful things can only happen in the writing of an omniscient and omnipotent narrator. If the pure point of view of the character narrator is used instead, when the novelist wants to put these troubles into the selected "skin bag", You have to be mentally prepared to be rid of by the characters, because at this time, "planting melons" may "get beans".

This should be very similar to God’s feeling after creating human beings. I believe that he once regretted it as I do now, because, in the narrative mode of the character’s point of view, once the characters in the novel are created, he will be like a puppet Pinocchio , or Adam, Eve, or any normal person with an independent personality on the street, the novelist can no longer control his actions, his mouth, let alone his thoughts.Looking back and reading this novel again, I think readers can understand my embarrassing situation. At this time, the creator’s words have been kicked out of the circle by the characters in the novel, and I can only watch them doing mischief and being powerless.That is to say, when the techniques of modernist novels discovered that I had introduced them into the creation of realistic novels, they launched violent rejection and rebellion.

The technique of using novel characters as a pure narrative point of view really flourished in the 20th century. Its advantage is that it can reflect the facts of the novel in a close to objective way, and then reflect the facts of life, completing a metaphorical process of life.In terms of technical operations, all impressions, emotions, judgments, speculations, and subconsciousness in the narrative process are all limited to the perspective of the characters in the novel, and the actions and choices taken are also based on the characters' own desires and judgments.Usually, the novelist as a character creator can only control and adjust the narrative structure at this time, such as mastering the time, arranging the narrative order, or controlling the length and number of appearances of the characters in the novel. increase or decrease.In such a novel, if the novelist dares to jump out and point fingers, or even make remarks and judge the behavior and thoughts of the characters, then the reader will immediately find that the novelist has violated the narrative contract and accuse him of being a liar , because, at this moment, he is no longer showing life, but interfering with life.The difference is that the basic premise of traditional realistic novel creation is that the novelist has an unshirkable responsibility to guide the readers. He must make the readers believe that everything he narrates is true and credible. The same can happen in life, so the participation of the novelist at this time is appreciated as the inheritance of the narrative tradition, and his comments and guidance are understandable and welcome.

My attempt in this novel is to introduce the pure point of view of the characters into the narrative structure of traditional realistic novels, let the omniscient narrator withdraw, and let different characters in the novel narrate through their own viewpoints. , to achieve the narrative effect of mutual interpretation and mutual confirmation, and to examine a point I am promoting everywhere, that is, realism literature is infinitely inclusive, and it can accommodate and absorb any deviant literary concepts and creative techniques. Let them be the nourishment on which realism can be enriched and developed.

However, this attempt to integrate the two novel techniques has pushed me into a dilemma. The introduction of new technology has indeed made the novel show amazing flexibility and keen perception when presenting life; the narrative of two or more interlaced viewpoints makes simple contradictions appear without deliberate management. The resulting suspense-filled reading interest; the mistakes and illusions between characters are constantly re-recognized in the process of multiple superimposed narratives; the narrative of the same thing from multiple perspectives makes the truth of the characters obtained on the same reference point. The comparative disclosure has also been self-revealed...so, I think that this attempt is an experience to accumulate in the use of technology.

What worries me most, however, is the content of the novel, which is the other pole of the dilemma.If the characters who acted as narrators were the kind of heroes or saints who could be imitated, then I would dance for them, but unfortunately, in this novel, the thoughts of the characters are often wrong, It's even ridiculous.The independent narration by them really allowed this absurd life to be displayed in detail, and it also gave them ample opportunity to expose their fallacies and exhibit their mistakes and illusions.However, for this blatantly absurd and deceptive "false truth", the novelist, as the creator of characters, cannot enter the narrative to clarify the facts and refute the fallacies. This is really an unspeakable pain.There is actually only one source of this pain, which is the fear of being misunderstood, and the fear that readers will not be able to appreciate that this display is actually a critical way of "the virus spreads on its own".

In order to solve this problem, I have made various attempts and transformations in the narrative structure of the novel, trying to produce the effect of contrastive disclosure and self-disclosure of the characters' thoughts under the comparison of multiple viewpoints, so that the characters in the novel as the narrator are scattered At the same time, they are exposed and criticized by their own fallacies, or exposed and criticized by other characters' viewpoints.Although I think I have achieved this effect, I still worry, because this kind of structural criticism is cryptic, requires a lot of participation from readers, and requires them to have a good memory.Maybe the creation of novels is like this. When you no longer follow the path of the predecessors, but try to find a more convenient and effective method, you will often encounter some unexpected writing obstacles and reading obstacles , Therefore, I am worried that this novel will be misread.