Chapter 48 Ultra Fiction ①

Nobody wants to be dumb, hunchbacked, and no woman wants to be fat, but we don't have a choice, it's unbearable.In the movie, he'll meet a young, pretty girl in a fairground; they'll narrowly escape real danger; he'll do decent things and say decent things; she'll do the same; and eventually they'll be lovers ; they talk in harmony; he has a calm air; she not only likes him very much, but also thinks he is great; And what he had said exactly—however, it was just a small episode in his wonderful life, not a turning point at all.What happened in the tool room is not worth mentioning at all.He hated, hated his parents!One of the reasons writers don't write stories like Lost in a Funfair is that either everyone has felt what Ambrose has felt, so it's self-evident, or no normal person has felt like him. Feel, then Ambrose is a weirdo. "Is there anything more obnoxious than a novel about sensitive teenage issues?" It's too long and loose, as if it were the author's style.Although writing for the first time, it often feels like the end is coming. On the other hand, sometimes I have just begun and there is still a lot to be done.It was unbearable.

Lost in the Playground, John Barth (1968) ① Also translated as "meta-fiction". Metafiction is fiction about fiction: fiction that focuses on the fictional identity of fiction and the process of making it.The earliest metafiction is Shandy, which takes the form of a dialogue between a narrator and an imagined reader.This form is one of the many ways Sterne uses to emphasize the gap between art and life that traditional realism seeks to conceal.So the metafiction is not a modern invention; but it is a form that many contemporary writers find quite infectious.The literary achievements of our forefathers frustrate modern writers.Because they feel oppressed by fear that what they want to say has already been said by their predecessors, they are finally forced by the modern cultural atmosphere to develop a kind of self-consciousness.

In the works of British novelists, the discourse of hyperfiction often appears in the form of narration in novels that focus on describing characters and plots like traditional novels.These discourses acknowledge the falsity of realist idioms, but writers use them nonetheless.Writers avoid criticism by anticipating possible criticism; they ingratiate themselves with the reader by treating him or her as an intellectual on their own level, sophisticated enough not to be deluded by the work, because they also know the novel Just a structure of speech, not a part of life.For example, Margaret Drabble's novel "Golden Fields" first provides a detailed and realistic description of a repressed heroine's party in the suburbs, which is very detailed and detailed, and then she goes like this To write the opening part of the third chapter:

That's all for now about Janet Byrd.You may have reason to think that enough has been said, for the pace of her life is slow, even slower than it is described in the book;Francis Wingate's life is much faster. (Though the pace of her life begins to slow down in these pages—perhaps it was just a tactical error, and the idea often occurs to me of putting her in a manic situation in the first place, but In the end there seems to be a stronger reason not to start this way.) There are many imitations of Shandy here, although Margaret Drabble's novel is different in tone, subject matter, humorous apology to the reader, and emphasis on narrative structure, especially in time span ( see section 41) the difficulties encountered were quite different.However, such words of the author do not appear very often, lest they fundamentally disrupt the plan of the novel.The fundamental purpose of this novel is to discuss the fate of intellectual women in modern society in the form of traditional novels, and strive to make the content detailed and convincing, so that readers can be satisfied.

For some other modern writers, rather than saying that the discourse of superfiction is an excuse for writers to escape the constraints of traditional realism, it is better to say that it is a preconceived view and a source of inspiration.Most of these writers are from outside the UK - I think first of Borges in Argentina, Calvino in Italy, and John Barth in the US, although John Firth falls into this group too.John Bath wrote an influential treatise entitled "The Exhausted Literature".Although he does not use the word "ultrafiction" in his article, he proposes that it is a seemingly contradictory and possibly correct way, "with which the artist can turn some principles that can be felt in our time into the material and means of his creation. .” Of course, there are those who hold a different view, like Tom Wolfe (see previous section).He sees such writing as symptomatic of a decadent, self-absorbed literary community. "This is writing a novelist's novel!" Another regressus ad infinitum (regression toward infinity)!Who wouldn't want art to imitate, at least visibly, something other than its own process? "But this complaint is what Barth expresses in his "Life Stories." This is an entry in his collection "Lost in a Playground." Parafiction writers like to sneak in the Criticism is incorporated into their texts, making them “fictional.” They also like to use parody to undermine the credibility of more traditional fiction.

In the novel "Lost in the Playground", the writer describes the story of a family trip to Atlantic City in the 1940s.The main character is the young Ambrose, along with his parents, brother Peter, uncle Carl, and Magda.She is his childhood buddy who is now a teenager like him, and thus has the allure of the opposite sex for him. (Ambrose fondly recalls a childhood game called "Master and Servant," in which Magda took him to the tool shed and "bought Mercy back at an astonishing price of her own." ’.) Essentially, it’s a story about teens longing for freedom and success, an “exhaustive” footnote to the tradition of autobiographical fiction about boys-would-be-writers.Such autobiographical novels include "Portrait of a Young Artist" and "Son and Lover".The author's intention is for the novel to climax in the playground, where Ambrose gets lost.As for the circumstances under which he got lost and the ending, the author does not make a judgment.

In the passage we have quoted, the author questions the representation of the traditional novel through clever imitation.First of all, Ambrose's romantic desire is artistically processed by imitating the fantasy of dream come true and wish fulfilled in Hollywood movies: "In the movie, he will meet a young and beautiful girl in the playground, and they will learn from reality. Escaping from real danger...they can sing along with each other..." Obviously, this is poor art.On the contrary, the description of Ambrose's discouragement, clumsy tongue, and withdrawn temperament in the actual situation is authentic and credible.But the authenticity of this description is quickly weakened by the author's use of a typical superfiction method, as Erwin Goffman said: breaking the frame ["breaking frame"]. "Margaret Drabble's novels also have this kind of 'out of frame' writing. The author cuts in to comment that perhaps Ambrose's situation is too familiar to us, or maybe it's too outrageous to be worth describing, It's like a movie actor suddenly turns to the camera and says, "This script sucks. ’ As in Shandy, we hear a fastidious critic lashing out at the entire work: ‘Is there anything more obnoxious than a novel about sensitive juvenile issues? ’ The author seems to have suddenly lost faith in his story, and he can’t even get the energy to finish the line that admits the novel is too long and loose.

Writers can often lose faith in what they're doing, but they generally don't admit it in their work, because to do so is to admit failure - but sometimes admitting failure is a tactic that seems more fun to do than traditional "success" , more realistic and believable.Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut is an excellent "out of the box" novel, with an imaginative use of time-shifting (see section 16).The author said frankly at the beginning: "I am very reluctant to tell you how much money, how much time, and how much anxiety this terrible little book has cost me." In the first chapter, he described the Dayton's difficulty in destroying such events.He said to his client: "Sam, the event was too short, too chaotic, and too noisy to find sensible words to describe the Holocaust."Therefore, Vonnegut compared his situation with the fate of Lot's wife in the Old Testament of the Bible.She persisted in her human nature and insisted on visiting Sodom and Gomorrah, which were about to be destroyed, but she was punished and turned into a pillar of salt.

Now I have finished writing this book about war.Next time I plan to write something interesting.This book is a failure, and it can only be, because it was written on a pillar of salt. In fact, Slaughterhouse-Five is far from a failure.It is Vonnegut's masterpiece and one of the most memorable postwar novels in English.