Chapter 39 "Bloch's Fiction School"——The Art of Writing

When I wrote "The Story of Reading", I found one weird thing, that is, really good readers don't teach people how to read; and when I read Bullock's book, I found another thing, that is, good readers Writers don't even teach how to write. After so many years, there are only two books that teach people to write that I know, and the other one is Stephen King's, and strictly speaking, Stephen King's book is actually closer to "how to become a successful career "Writer", including how to look at the market, how to grasp the subject matter, and how to find an agent, etc., while staring at the writing board, more thoughts actually drifted to the distant Honghu, that is to say, that book is more suitable for being included in the inspirational series. Or even for job hunting, start writing horror novels for the first time.

For our era of refinement madness, concept madness, method madness, and efficiency madness, these two "open spaces" have never been formally developed, and they can still retain the appearance of the wild forest, so it is very special, with a certain equality, a certain Unknown risks, and the most precious, still have a sense of profundity and vastness. A Tolstoy refuses to write a book that teaches us how to write, we may guess that he is too aristocratic and arrogant; another Joyce refuses to write a book that teaches us how to write, we may guess that he is too alienated and indifferent; If another Kipling refuses to write a book that teaches us how to write, we may still suspect that he was too selfish to reveal his secret techniques.But when this paper list gets longer and longer, until we are going to declare war on all the greatest writers of all time, then we don’t have to touch our noses, we will naturally have another completely different guess, not to write such a book The book is reasonable, and even more beautiful conjectures. It turns out that the preservation of this land, such a profound and vast existence, is the rare result of careful protection by those who are most familiar with this land. Profound, subtle, remote, and trivial things that cannot be exhausted or captured by methods are classified as "useless".Just like today's Greater Taipei City and even the entire island of Taiwan, what is often more progressive, wiser and more difficult is not how to drive in the bulldozers to build this and that and create a bunch of cement tile monsters, but how to stop the construction, stop the sky, the earth, Mountains, rivers, and oceans have been invaded.

Although at the same time we still really want to know how to write it properly. The profundity and vastness we are talking about here are not empty words or class sentiments, but the fundamental premise of whether novel writing can still retain its power of cognition and discovery—fiction writing ultimately does not have specific techniques, specific forms, and no special It doesn't matter which way you go, which is why it's so free, so magical, and so much so that we can hope despite all the realities at hand.A certain individual can always emerge from an unexpected corner, and sometimes even with the power of one person, a book or even a short story, it can instantly change the entire writing landscape in front of us, the entire present and future of the novel shape.Are such miraculous things rare?The strange thing is that we can look back and say that it happens quite often, at least far more frequently than Halley's Comet, which is fixed once in seventy-six years, but most of us will never wait for its return in this lifetime. , more than one short story by Borges, Kundera's "The Unbearable Lightness of Being", and even blooming like a strange flower, these are all things we have personally experienced and watched over the years. , After all, in the world of reasoning and detective novels that is as tired as dusk, isn't the sudden appearance (or should be said to be suddenly transformed in the middle) of the Matthew Scudder series also the same?

So, what does Bullock's book mean? Let's first figure out its time, not the date on the rigid calendar, but its stage position in Bullock's novel writing path-at that time, Bullock wrote more than a hundred novels under his real name and pseudonym. Duo, is a diligent, down-to-earth and "successful" first-line genre novelist. The Matthew Scudder series has also started for a while, and he feels that he is getting better and better in the fourth part. There is a feeling of palpitation and excitement in front of his eyes. It can be seen that he knows that this series will get better and better, and it will gradually become his main writing series in the future, and even the flagship series of writing life.But I guess, 100% correct guess, Bullock would never have thought at this time that the future Scudder will not be better step by step, but a complete transformation that has to fly over the big break.In fact, he is almost at the edge of this unprecedented grand canyon in writing life. He has to stop for several years because of this. The storytelling method that has been used all the way, including the continuous pace of Scudder’s case after case, has to make repeated vertical jumps and look back (see especially the book), including adjusting the position of the relationship between Scudder and the world, And force him to open up a layer of senses and emotions like taking off a windbreaker coat.The unloaded windbreaker we are talking about is not only the cold and hard shell protecting Scudder in the novel, but also a kind of insulating shell for the writer Bullock as a genre novelist; The limited relationship between Locke himself and the whole outside world (limited harm, limited care, limited dream, limited responsibility...) has been broken and gone forever. .The finite relationship is a sign of professional work, and the infinite relationship is the vocation. The bunch of novelists we counted in the whole list earlier have infinite relationships with the world.

That is, if we go back to the point at which Bloch wrote the book, freezing time, we would say that this is a wonderful book on writing by a successful and well-meaning genre novelist who cares about walking behind him and thinking The people walking behind him seem to remember the old self. He speaks out what he has learned from his writing step by step. The way of question and answer and discussion means that the topic is always specific and targeted, and the specifications are always empirical and not real. Become an ambitious book that exhausts writing methods or reveals the principles and rules of novel writing.We have before us not a great (or pompous) theorist of the novel, but Mr. Bullock in a small school with limited seating so that latecomers have to stand—fictions are absurd, deceitful stories, The purpose is to regulate the blood and eliminate boredom, and to cheat some money to make a living.

Only as we know with hindsight, I believe that people who were smart and sensitive enough to understand the writing of novels at that time (for example, people like Luo Yijun) must have seen with their own eyes that there are many more things in this book. , Far beyond the specification requirements of genre novels.Saying this may be a bit rude to Bullock, but it does show from the book that the author's preparation for writing, the author's understanding of writing in depth, breadth and delicacy, and the author's unstoppable curiosity have far surpassed him. It is a pity that the finished novels themselves at that time, or only used to write these novels at that time (although the number is amazing and the quality is stable), it is not necessary to read so much and think so much to support a genre novelist of this level. So much and so much further questioning, The man who knows too much—too much, is a danger to the writer himself. This kind of danger does not only happen in the spy world and the world of political power plundering in deceitful novels. People become too big, become restless and dissatisfied, it is difficult to squeeze themselves back into the square and narrow position allowed by the division of labor in the system, there is a risk of being driven out, and there is also the temptation of the piper who chooses to leave first.

So we can say with a little drama that this writing book has fully predicted the appearance of the new Scudder novels in the future; I know that there are many people in Taiwan who were touched by Scudder's novels to a certain point in their hearts, and they also want to write novels like Scudder (not necessarily in the form of private detectives or murders); but Bullock told us from the beginning , He didn't have a specific novel to write at first, he just wanted to be a writer at first, he first prepared himself to be a writer, and then prepared for specific novels one after another.

Become a writer first, and then see what you can write. This seems to be contrary to our common sense and the order of the game in the capitalist world. In fact, it is very interesting. I even want to say that this is what writing is. A "correct" sequence of vocations.Of course there are exceptions and occasional undue bad luck that leads a man astray to become a lifelong writer, like Raymond Chandler, who just believed he could write better than the cheap novels he had at hand, and went on overnight. Mei wrote her first short story in a hotel room at the age of forty-five.But this is not as much as most people think, because luck is something that will recede quickly like a tide, and the throbbing is not sustainable. It is easy to be satisfied with completion or frustrated with inability to complete it. Both results will make it Returning to silence, relying on these unremitting work that cannot be turned into day after day, twenty years or thirty years, it is easier to recognize each other when the first difficulty and first setback come, when none of these have happened.

Speaking of it, the capitalist division of labor system has been unable to really tame the writer's profession so far and in the foreseeable future. It always has many extra things. On the rock wall, the lonely dream carved with his crude tools or more strangely painted with pigments that hindered his livelihood and did not know how to discover and refine, is still the essence of our life, as Virginia Woolf said. Part of it; and therefore, capitalism, which is only a few hundred years old, is nothing more than a new reality, a current situation, in the eyes of the ancient trade of writing.Writing always encounters such irrelevant difficulties, just like a cave dweller who does not have a stationery store or a department store. He has to suppress it while dreaming and try to find a way to find the lighting fire and stick to the cold hard rock New paints for the walls, and even prepare them and carry them with you, waiting for the next throbbing and next dream to come.Such additional difficulties cannot be avoided, you have to accept it (but not give in to it) and deal with it, in fact, this kind of dealing with it is part of the craft of every generation of writers.

Not how to write a novel, but the general skill of being a writer.Therefore, Mr. Bullock spent a lot of time talking to us about the rejection of the manuscript. The unknown lives and the prophet dies.Rejection of course happens when the work is finished, but how to deal with it is still part of writing, a very, very important and fatal part. In the past, it was as natural as sunrise and sunset when something was written but returned ruthlessly. Like shooting a bunny, I feel extremely ruthless and helpless, and it even makes people feel a kind of unfair class consciousness, wanting to become a Communist Party.

Of course, the fact is more than that. The rejection of the manuscript actually happened when the writer was out of childhood or even became famous. Taiwan has just translated and published another book "Letter of Rejection" (sorry, the so-called "guide reading" before the book The text is also written by me personally, and many opinions about rejections have been mentioned there), what I have collected is more than a hundred great writers, and hundreds of classic works in the future. Oddly, the content of these incriminating rejection letters is no more polite or tactful than what Bullock quotes (usually for fledgling new writers). When we say "once" is as natural as sunrise and sunset, we refer to Taiwan; in the United States, Europe, Japan and other writing countries, "now" is still as natural as sunrise and sunset. I read the chapter "Indomitable and Unyielding" in which Bullock talks about rejection, the content of which is the same as the title of the chapter, which may make the new writers who are eager to be rescued feel boring and feel lost; but what I personally think of is, With his bare-handed writing life, his long writing experience of rushing left and right all the way, doing odd jobs and digging through any gaps, he is actually qualified to say some things more cruelly and bloody, but he is not. It is very similar to Matthew Scudder in my own writing, especially in the future, standing in the black street jungle, but still trying to describe a warmer world that is worth living. A few days ago, I heard a young man who looked like a college student give an impassioned statement in a rather serious literature seminar. Basically, he wrote a long poem without sleeping and eating. Of course, he sacrificed a lot. He sacrificed sleep, sacrificed In order to earn money, he sacrificed KTV, nightclubs and online video games. More importantly, he gave his sincerity to the world, but the world did not return him with equal kindness. I looked coldly at the hesitant speakers on the podium. There were heavyweight literary critics who wrote poetry fanatically when they were young, started poetry clubs, and couldn’t compile poetry magazines with their own money. Some Malaysians came to Taiwan alone and wrote literary theory and literature. Scholars of the Middle and Zhuang Dynasty, whose novels, strength, and social reputation are completely disproportionate in their efforts and unremitting efforts, would like to ask them to talk about how many unpublished poems, novels, and articles are still locked in their drawers until now. We may finally have to admit that there is nothing we can do to change the fact that rejections exist, even if the world wakes up one day without newspapers, magazines, publishers, and hateful editors who write rejection letters (literally, human beings) Most of the time in written history there were no such nuisances (think of Qu Yuan, Sima Qian, Homer, and Plato), the screening mechanism of society will still be implemented in some way; that is, this basic pyramid form The hierarchical construction of human beings is not only the external form, but also the internal fact of every industry. In Nabokov's words, this is not only the inevitable level of people's continuous understanding, but also the natural result of the development of people's skills. But Bullock says we can change the meaning, and size, of rejection to control the destructive power of its necessary evil.To this end, Bullock even employs some stoic, psychological tricks to make us feel better about ourselves, relieve symptoms, and buy the necessary time and space. Here, the most basic fact is that if your writing life is this poem, this novel, then of course its outcome is the end of the world; but if you are like Bullock, You come here to become a writer, a writer, and a poem or a novel is just a novel, and the time and mental energy it really takes up is pitifully short, and it will only be written as you go. With the continuation of writing and the extension of writing life, it becomes smaller and smaller, turning into a point, a speck of dust, a vague and chaotic memory.Believe me, not many writers remember their first poem and first novel, but more remember their first poem and first novel successfully published, and the better the writer, the more regretful, the more unbearable to look back on, and the more difficult it is. I am afraid that someone will find me and remember it, just like I am afraid that my current family members, neighbors and colleagues will know that I am a sex offender with a previous conviction. Taiwanese poet and nature writer Liu Kexiang once wrote two poems like this, saying that joining the Kuomintang at the age of seventeen is the most embarrassing thing in the life of our generation, and there are almost as many poems and novels written in black and white at the age of seventeen. Same power. Writing is such a strange thing, compared to other walks of life - if you aspire to be a carpenter or a chef, you are crazy to think that the first chair you make, the first dish you make can be sold in a boutique Why do we always believe that our first novel will be able to be displayed in the store or become the main course of this year's Christmas dinner at a Michelin three-star restaurant? Virginia Woolf said these three words: "Once you are caught by love, you don't need to be trained, you are a poet." We use these words to respond to the whimsy and madness of the aforementioned writer-even if you are loved If you catch it, you won't become a good carpenter or cook without training and years of learning to hammer. But on the other hand, love will not hold you forever, the magical power of love is still a rare and fleeting thing like lightning, spring flowers, morning dew, it will go, even if it does not seem to go, it will be dull like Mette Link's blue bird of happiness turned into an ordinary black bird, and more often it was a dead black bird corpse.You can't keep writing a lifetime's worth of poetry on this short-lived fever and its twilight visions, let alone novels (Woolf is smart enough not to give us the same promise of fiction), though some people burn their brains out of it Mistakenly thinking that he can fall in love one after another like taking drugs to keep his poet status intact, but this can only make him a professional lover, not a lifelong poet. So the poet Eliot said that poetry is not just about beauty and ugliness. The most important thing for a poet is to be able to see things that are farther than ugliness and beauty. A little, a little hard, a little bland, and so on. The most miraculous thing about writing, we may say, is that it breaks the chain of cause and effect. As Calvino pointed out, in the mechanical world of writing, "the atoms have to move unexpectedly out of a straight line to be able to To secure the freedom of the atom and of man".Such possible break-away and deviation make writing not completely predictable, so that it cannot be completely controlled and managed.But the trouble is precisely here, its freedom, its incomplete control and management, will always offend the great god of capitalism, so in the kingdom ruled by capitalism, the identity of the writer is always unclear, and the position is never clear. He is stable, and he hesitates from time to time whether to pay his salary on time. Indeed, not so many writers like to call themselves professional writers, as if they would lose some rare part of themselves and something they insisted on.Moreover, even if capitalism recognizes their industry identities, they don’t know how to arrange their promotion according to their own hierarchical order logic (in contrast, in socialist mainland China, writers were once divided into first-level, second-level and third-level stratification. Taiwanese writers were terrified when they got such a business card for the first time).We say that it may not matter whether it is a profession or not, but the writer still needs an "identity" in the end, a place where his feet can be sure to step on, a basic position in the vast and boundless world of human beings, so that his mind can be stable and let His work can be developed and sustained, so that what he does can be recognized, understood and talked about, and more importantly, it can be preserved as a memory—this memory is not only a successful and completed product, but also includes more of those The failed ones and the unfinished ones (in a sense, of course, every successful work is also unfinished).Especially for those failed and unfinished ones, the society cannot recognize them and display them, because their forms are incomplete, fragmented, and even look like raw materials. Therefore, the writer must have a common place to store them. It is the big warehouse of the writers, who share the sea of ​​memories they can use. The writer faces the entire vast world as an individual, but he is not alone, let alone starting from scratch, that will not go far, and the death of the individual will soon prevent it from interrupting it, so seemingly free and unrestrained, But writing will be just repetition, just spinning in circles, and the result will be not much different from a rat in a cage on a wheel.In fact, every character he used has been written again and again and endowed with meaning, dimension and luster, and the writing form he used is also a feasible path stepped on by predecessors writing time and time again (the Navajo said , the milky, undisturbed Milky Way is the bright footprints of hundreds of millions of souls), even if we forge new words and create new forms of writing, this year blooms last year, the average reader may be amazed at its Flying from outside the sky, but the writer himself, as well as his colleagues who are experts in the field, know where his clues come from, where the materials he uses come from, and where the vertical jump of his imagination comes from.Therefore, Borges said that every great work creates its predecessors. The creation mentioned here is just an exaggerated word for the perception of ordinary readers. It exists in the world of the writer. The correct but dull term is actually "discovering", or "surfacing", taking them out of professional storage.When we see and are amazed by a perfect work, we feel inconceivable curiosity, so we track it back, find out its evolutionary links hidden in the long river of time, and find out its unsuccessful and unfinished roughness. Embryo appearance.Every great work is thus a magnificent journey, filled with the names of predecessors, just like every beautiful dream of an individual writer is a part of people's infinite dream, a result, it has not yet happened already existed there. So many writers tell us that every good writer is a good reader. When we read Bullock's book, he also said the same thing and did it. All of this happened long before capitalism emerged and ruled the world, and before the profession of writers became a profession; There is no business card, no uniform, but it is enough for them to recognize each other and pass vertically in time. Experts will know if there is one as soon as they take a shot. From the broad perspective of anthropology, Levi-Strauss has quite accurately examined the specific core of this pre-professional identity, which is actually the prototype of all future professional identities: skill.Levi-Strauss's more complete statement is precisely that skill is the basic position of man in the world. This artifice is easy to understand but not easy to fully explain.We can roughly understand it as follows. Skills are the refined form and condensed form of the common memory of each profession. After all, the messy and too large common memory warehouse has to be sorted out and indexed, so that those who come later can pick it up Useful, inheritable, even learnable and teachable.But skill is not an empty concept or method, it maintains a clumsy and specific actual combat component, not only for the head, but also for the whole body, mastered with muscles, tendons, every sense of the eyes, ears, nose, tongue, and even the peripheral nerves of the skin , to absorb, to preserve the memories of predecessors, and to integrate others with oneself through repeated practice, just as a calligrapher transforms himself into the hands and body of Wang Xizhi or Yan Zhenqing through thousands of times of copying.Since craft is towards a whole trade identity rather than a single, specific work, it is open, progressive, and does not disappear with the absence or completion of a single specific work, just as an apprentice carpenter does not because of There is no need to make a chair and nothing to do, and no need to make a chair to let the existing skills go away from you.The use and understanding of each tool, and the processing skills of each detail can be developed independently and endlessly. It is even stable, progressing and never retreating, and no one can take it away. Temporary relaxation of the body can not cooperate, because a specific work may not be completed or fail, showing huge and uncomfortable shocks and ups and downs (such as rejection), but the skill does not have this kind of success or failure, basically it is a smooth upward predictable curve.In the end, the relationship between skills and overall industry identity will give people a broad vision and care, so that he is not limited to the constituent elements of a single specific work, and he will also prepare for future works, and his vision and mind will expand. And, for example, the problem of materials, tools, etc., and even more, as we have seen repeatedly in the history of painting, a painter who has reached a certain level of skill not only worries about completing a painting, but also cares about and even finds and develops new techniques by himself. New paints, new canvases, new painting tools and so on, the prosperity and decline of this industry is directly related to his individual success or failure.Therefore, the world recognizes his identity and existence through his skills, and he also uses his own skills to understand the world, as Levi-Strauss said to construct order for a world ruled by disorder, skills, and human beings. The basic position is established in such a two-way understanding. All this happened before the modern capitalist-style division of labor. Capitalism supported it (such as economic income) and gave it some explosive energy (such as the effect of communication), but the purpose of capitalism was not consistent with it. Capitalism Nor would the order of doctrine and the order of natural generation of craft be identical.Here conflicts arise, alienation and usurpation are formed, and human thinking is confused. While we are escaping from the shackles of the strict order of capitalism, we can easily discard the natural order of this skill and let ourselves return to zero. , let's go back to being alone and start all over again, or more viciously, get the freedom to be a mouse on a wheel. We are indeed in an era of chaotic writing that only wants to find clever methods but highly ignores skills.In fact, how could we not know intellectually?A poem, a novel, we write it to explore some kind of mysteries of life, to understand, discover and even fight against the world, and to convince readers that such a difficult thing, how can it be compared to making a chair or A serving of Basil Tomato Seafood Noodles doesn’t need more skill?But perhaps what we have said about the magical possibility of writing, the non-exact causality of writing outcomes and writing skills, encourages us inappropriately. It is the casino and the banker who win, but he will be an exception. He is the one who just hits the bet. This beautiful self-confidence supports him from having to do the boring work of nine to five, and he does not have to be so tired every day. We know that the easiest way to eliminate chance and tame chance (including good luck and bad luck) is to enlarge the number of samples, expand the space and extend the time. This is statistics and its constant bell curve.If what we think of is not a certain work that has a flash of inspiration, but that you can continue to do it throughout your life, as García Márquez said, there is always one thing that he mainly does in his life, and we even think about writing beyond the individual Naturally, you will know that it is meaningless to resort to this kind of accident, and it cannot be built on the basis of such a foamy writing. All writers who have written as a calling, of a certain degree, will tell us the same thing, whether they say it or not.Eliot, the rebellious poet, exhorted young poets to write more metrical poems, and Calvino, who was gentle and uncompromising, copied such a harsh sentence and placed it at the end of the book as a final exhortation : "Another very misconception that is currently in vogue is to equate inspiration, subconscious exploration, and liberation, to equate opportunity, automatism, and freedom. This type of inspiration is based on blindly following every An impulse, indeed a slavery. The classical writer writes tragedy according to some known rules, than the poet who writes everything that enters his mind, bound by other rules of which he knows nothing. more freedom." Again, not a method, but a craft; not teaching you how to become a professional writer, but thinking and discussing how to become a writer. I believe this is the original intention of Bullock’s book, and it can also be meaningful to us who live in different writing countries and different current writing situations—we don’t have stable and continuous writing of genre novels in Taiwan, and the novelists we call cannot be successful. A profession, even if a brief burst of popularity can win the lottery for one or two writers to earn a small sum of money, we will not even have such annoying things as rejections, will we? ? This is indeed a very, very difficult writing environment. I half-jokingly said that writers may not find the devil even if they want to degenerate and sell their souls. I like their works, and I personally maintain a sincere and difficult respect for those in Taiwan who still regard writing as their lifelong career.The following quotes from Borges, as Borges intended, are well-intentioned and introspective (even though I am personally incapable of writing novels, I still consider myself one of the writers), I hate that This kind of sarcasm, especially the kind that is kitsch, anti-intellectual, persuasive, and uses capitalism to mock the tireless writers. I have a list of these people in my hand. Borges offers us the key to Bloch's book by saying this: "It is clear and worth noting that our literature is tending towards chaos, towards writing free prose. Because prose is more important than meter Strict verse is easy to write; but the truth is that prose is very difficult. Our literature tends to eliminate characters, eliminate plots, and everything becomes vague. In our chaotic age, there is something that still silently Keeping the virtues of the classics, that is the detective novel; because you can’t find a detective novel that is brainless, lacks the main content, and has no ending. Some of these detective novels are written by second- and third-rate writers, and some are written by first-rate writers. such as Dickens, Stevenson, and especially Collins. I would say that detective fiction should be defended when it does not need to be defended, for this literary genre is saving order in an age of disorder." To be less precise, writers have two kinds of freedom. The former one is universal and no different from anyone’s freedom. They can believe in any religion, move around, express their opinions, and pursue their personal happiness. The latter is born in his profession, the openness of writing, the nature of infinite dreams, after reaching a certain height, he will have a vast field of vision, but it is not chaotic, without coordinates, Rather, it is a certain path form, a certain directional possibility. On the one hand, the order of craftsmanship holds it, and on the other hand, it also reveals it. It is difficult to write a book on the art of writing, and the ultimate difficulty is most likely whether the writer should persuade people to become a writer too; when a person is tempted to read, do you want the good news or the bad news first?What is even more strange about the ancient profession of writing is its constant self-doubt and self-refutation nature. The same is not true for more creative music paintings. An innovative work can be perceived as confrontation, provocation, mockery, and betrayal of another existing work, but the notes themselves and the paint itself cannot conduct introspection, and the self-questioning of music or painting must ultimately be done. Through writing through writing, isn't it?This makes the real core soul of the writing business not the passionate, desperate Don Quixote who regards windmills as giants, but the melancholy, penetrating Meditative, meditative, there is always some kind of "profound nothingness" as Calvino called it. Therefore, the reason why Bullock's book is so rare is not that he discovered and narrated how many mysteries of writing skills that were unknown before, but that he articulated it so clearly and fully. In the end, I would like to talk about my first impression after reading this book - everything Bullock said in this book is "right", you can listen to it with confidence, believe it with confidence, and remember it with confidence ( Refers to some parts of your writing path that have not yet been reached and are difficult to accept).The method may be wrong or misleading, but there is no success or failure in the craft, only the degree of progress.That is to say, when you understand it completely, that is when you can throw it away. If you are like Bullock, you really want to be a writer.