Chapter 2 "In Death"—Talking from Scudder's trip in October

, this is the tenth book of Bullock's Matthew Scudder series published in Taiwan, about ten months after the first book, this is a very special Scudder trip in October, something interesting happened thing. Roughly speaking, this is an interesting collision between a group of old genre novels that are too old to describe and a new reading society that is still in its infancy. What's more interesting is that during this trip to Scudder in October, this group of novels did not immediately attract the few detective novel fans in this society (on the contrary, they didn't know what to do with them, and were confused by "It's not like" the mystery novel they expected), but seriously shocked a group of strange readers-the "serious shock" I said, in terms of time, is immediate, immediate, hit-a-guess, like long-lost love; In terms of intensity, the degree to which these people love Scudder's novels will make them put aside their identities, personalities (shy, arrogant or alienated), and their usual behaviors to rush to tell each other, write letters or fax to the publishing house Compliments or inquiries (for example, will other Bullock series be published? Or where can I buy the song "The Last Call" in it?), they even complain politely that the speed of publishing one or two books a month is too fast. is too slow.

Therefore, the temporary relationship between Scudder's novels and Taiwan's reading society is: under the appearance of a small overall sales volume, there are a group of eager readers. What does this image remind people of?I feel a lot like this five billion (plus) old blue asteroid beneath our feet: a fiery, fluid heart hiding beneath a thick, condensed crust. The reason why this group of readers playing the role of underground magma strikes me as strange is that they include a group of the best current creators such as Zhu Tianxin, Zhu Tianwen, Zhong Acheng and others; secondly, these people are almost rare It is a young and promising group under the age of 30, but middle-aged people who are staggering towards the vicissitudes of life; and if my private statistics are correct, this group of people did not have the habit of reading detective novels, and even There are many people who dislike or even disdain the "fixed" taste of genre novels.What attracts them is "others" - Zhu Tianxin, a writer who is also a creator, middle-aged and non-genre novel reader, also publicly declared (at the symposium at the Eslite Bookstore) that Scudder's novels should not be included in the In the category of genre novels, he thought it was an unbearable derogation to Scudder's novels; Zhu Tianxin did not hesitate to quote Benjamin's famous "scavenger" theory and Said's "intellectuals" theory to interpret Scudder's novels. Now, I think that the correct position of this group of novels should be placed in the group of such great writers as Marquez, Green, Capote, and Nabokov.

Ok!A first-class orthodox novelist so solemnly recommends a genre novelist, to the point of disregarding his identity and damage to his reputation; Of course, it's all very strange for my own daily behavior and habits. What exactly did they see that made them so "abnormal"? First, I believe that genre fiction usually doesn't really "touch" these people, and in fact, genre fiction isn't meant to kill us—of course, some readers, especially the younger ones, are prone to egoism. Excitement, although a misunderstanding, is a "welcome misunderstanding" for genre fiction.We can say that the aging of people is actually a process of disenchanting. The dream elements in our lives are gradually shattered and replaced by reality elements. Dreams are inversely proportional to the number of wrinkles.

The reading method and atmosphere of genre novels are usually described as beds, firesides and easy chairs. This is a place to rest, not a battlefield for fighting for life. The return is "comfort". There is nothing more distasteful for genre fiction and its authors than the fact that we keep asking how it corresponds to the real world: don't you wonder why the second generation of royalty or billionaires in romance novels always The man is handsome and the woman is sexy and beautiful. Of course we all know what the Prince Charles of England, Mr. Wang Linglin, the young master of the Liba Consortium, or "Princess Li Anne" look like in reality; Spaceships (or starships, a nice translation) in science fiction novels, it is always easy to see the captain order, "curve space, beam (or more extreme, super beam) flight", and we are on a business trip When you go to Europe and the United States, you have to endure more than ten hours of back pain, extreme boredom, strange-smelling air-conditioning, and claustrophobia; you don’t have nothing to do with Zhu Tianxin’s troubles when she read martial arts novels. "Jianghu" is like another space, like a highway where pedestrians and bicycles are forbidden to go up. In that world, there seem to be two sets of road systems, one of which is only used by people with martial arts. On this road, no matter what you encounter Monks, nuns, beggars, young girls, children and even the handicapped, each one is a peerless master.

This is a country of mythology, and it has a constitution on which it is based. Zhan Hongzhi, a domestic detective novel missionary, imitated Rousseau's "civil contract theory" and called it a contract between a type of people and a type of country-don't be so annoying, Always asking whether it is true or not, always wanting to return to the real world, you have to give up part of your persistence, you have to do a little forgetting, let the text guide of this country take you, here, "people who don't dream and dogs don't allowed to enter". The most accurate picture of this type of world is Mia Farrow's face, where the frustration and sadness of reality fade away, her eyes are fixed on the screen, and she begins to smile little by little. This is Woody Allen's "Cairo" The last shot of the movie The Purple Rose.

Basically, the genre is simplified and framed; the reality of life is complex and continuous, and the two contradict and subvert each other. Therefore, we have come across an interesting question: Is there a genre of novels whose target is "realism"?The answer is actually yes, and this is precisely where the "sectarianism" of Scudder's novels lies—the hard-nosed private detectives of the American Revolution, started by two writers who were as troublesome as Bullock today, and their The names, of course, were Dash Hammett and Raymond Chandler. How is this seemingly impossible possible?My personal guess is this: Back then, what Hammett and Chandler did was just write novels, a novel that was consistent with their life experience and did not deviate from real crimes. On the contrary, they tried their best to break the myth of the past crime novel genre (that is, the British classical reasoning).When these two people talked about their creations, they both seriously mentioned the influence of Henry James. As we all know, Henry James never wrote any type of novels in his life. Master, and this person's eldest brother, William James, is not inferior to his younger brother. His historical status is the master of American pragmatism and the founder of Dewey's philosophy.

The reason why the hard-boiled private detectives have returned to become a new type is actually a matter of followers after the success of Hammett and Chandler.We call it cold and hard private detectives today, instead of respecting the strong realistic ideas of Han and Qian Ershi back then, and directly calling them "detective realistic novels". What is used is the identity and appearance of the private detective and the relationship between the private detective and the world around him, not the "realism" itself. After all, the real world is too complicated and too fluid, like quicksand, and it is not easy to construct such lines on it. Simple genre fiction mansion.

Thus, we have seen how a novel that originally came with the meaning of provocation, confrontation and even subversion of the original genre slowly turned over time and was reincorporated into the genre. Here, we see genre novels , and even the powerful devouring power or renewal power of capitalism behind it (how can genre novels come without capitalism?), those who like "heavy and salty" critical tastes can read Roland Barthes' mythology and listen to him carefully. Speaking of the so-called "mythification process", Barthes said, what are the characteristics of mythology (Bartes' so-called mythology of course includes genre novels)?It is the transformation of meaning into form, a kind of "predation of language".Barthes specifically cited the famous formula E=MC2 of Einstein’s theory of relativity as an example. This was originally a mathematical, pure, and most powerful symbol (Significant) against myths, but it could all be “kidnapped” (Bart’s use of term) is the chief representative of a certain scientific myth.

People who are more calm can also find that the type of agreement is not really an unchanging contract in black and white. On the contrary, it is closer to a certain word or symbol, which is always changing, constantly losing part of its meaning, and constantly gaining new meaning.Just like the development of human society, and also like the evolution of creatures, the source of its changes is not from those who have been tamed, but from those who resist. A fringe land full of dangers and harsh experiments.Usually, the established genre first punishes the disobedient transgressors. However, once the transgressors have achieved a striking, stretchable and beautiful success, reconciliation and incorporation actions take over, so that the original genre gets new material, new The territories and new horizons of the novel also gained part of the new meaning.

Hardcore is the new colony of America that was codified as detective fiction, but this new colony has also been a persistently unstable (and most dynamic) place in the old kingdom of detective fiction.Part of it is related to the immaturity of the contractual control of the new territory, but the more important part, I personally think, comes from the "realistic" memory of the original confrontation type of the hard-liners. . According to Roland Barthes, this original meaning cannot survive in the process of myth (typing), and it will definitely be sucked out, leaving only the shell of form. However, I think this statement is a bit exaggerated (exaggeration is not true has always been Barth's strength and problem), mythology, as a kind of phagocytic fungus, also has its original meaning that it cannot completely digest, it has to keep this tenacious meaning in its body, and bear its own confusion and indiscernibility. Trouble, even at the risk of being subverted and replaced-this is very similar to the superman captain who claims to be "I am a powerful yeast" in Jack London's famous novel "Sea Wolf". After all, there are things that he can't swallow completely and completely destroy.

Detective novels have adopted the "detective form" in the novels of Hammett and Chandler to become a genre, and they have to accept this realistic memory together. Therefore, in the non-realistic closed dream world, a novel is always open. A quirky window into the real world, one that makes it hard for the hardliners to fully accomplish their job of taming.Because of the diversity and complexity of the real world, it will repeatedly "mock" the simple formal framework, and the rich progress and continuous changes in other areas of the real world can provide new materials and inspiration for resistance-we know that flattening the real world into just a set , The mainstream classical reasoning that resorts to logical reasoning is not easy to get new tricks and new methods of death from the development of reality. Some alibi forgery obtained by improving computers, fax machines or other communication equipment, and the use of new alloys, The new secret room that can be established with new industrial materials, etc., has always been reduced to an institutional trick, which has never had good results and good persuasiveness; in contrast, changes in human lifestyles and equipment, updates of social problems, and even small psychological ones New propositions and new developments can easily be included in the crime novels of hardliners and their ethnic groups, and new sparks of rebellion are repeatedly collided at the junction of genre and reality. This makes the hard-boiled novel the most ambiguous and unsafe genre of fiction, and every good work seems to break free at any time.From Hammett, Chandler, Kane to today's Bullock, they seem to always have a foot out of the genre kingdom, and they are always willing to refer to the real world to look back and laugh at this simple genre motherland, always appearing powerful and difficult. The self-renewing power of control, and seeming to perpetuate and yearn for their own memories of their own criminal homeland—that's Dostoevsky, Conrad, Faulkner, and Greene, not Poe , Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie. OK, I didn't forget, I know we asked the big question at the beginning: what on earth do A-list writers, middle-aged and non-genre readers see in Scudder's novels that excite them so much? ——I haven’t forgotten, I just don’t think I’m qualified to answer this question for everyone. Novel reading has always been an “independent school” rather than a “communist school”. Everyone has his own eyes, experiences and thoughts. Let them read to the different things they desire. Here, the only thing I dare to assert boldly is that it will not be the traditional taste of the detective type; and what I humbly try to point out is that a certain person's "situation".A certain situation described in Scudder’s novels, even though we are not in New York, we still live in the city, have passed through the years, have seen, thought, worried, and died. We have accumulated unspeakable layers of thoughts, which is very accidental Yes, was called out by this unlicensed private detective walking alone. We read novels and feel like we have found a friend who can finally talk, which is exciting for those of us who are past the age of making friends. Someone once asked Bullock, are you not afraid that other readers outside of New York may feel alienated when you describe the unique city of New York in this way?Bullock definitely said no, he believed that people in any city in any country would understand Scudder, understand what he saw and said. You know, he's right!