Chapter 17 Addendum, live in trembling

book review At the moment when I write these words, the cultural comedy in mainland China is still being staged amidst the noise, without a break, as if everything is full of primitive vitality.The once solid values ​​of anger, loyalty, and love were shattered in the noise of laughter, and people were as happy as elves in fairy tales.The meditators became inappropriate Don Quixote in the crowd, they consciously withdrew from the ranks of the carnival, and defended the reality of the world with each other's beliefs.These solitary knights form a dimly lit landscape, impregnable. It is the latest work of Li Ximin, a writer of horror novels. Like his other novels, the story is full of weirdness and absurdity.The hero and heroine, Li Li and Zhang Lan, have agreed to divorce. They went to Thailand to spend their last vacation together, and it was this road that eventually led them to death.In fact, from the moment the couple set out on their journey, death was already in their destiny.In the novel, the first appearance of the two protagonists is two rotting corpses. The living and the dead are in the same cabin, experiencing the turbulence of the air flow together. The living feel the breath of the dead, and they experience fear. , but do not know the origin of this fear.The living people live in such an uneasy way.I read this novel in the hot late night in Shanghai, as if examining the souls of the world.

Horror is the real attribute of the world. People continue to create joy to resist the fear of the world, but gradually forget the root of terror in the resistance.Feelings are constantly alienated by the world, so that the affectations of middle-class love are everywhere.The inner truth of the world is also shown through the love narrative, but the author abandons the romantic aesthetics of vulgar emotion, and love becomes a symbol to interpret life and death here.In the story, the two women, Zhang Lan and Wan Wei, are two sides of the same soul, and they demonstrate the weak spirituality that still exists in the hearts of modern people.Wan Wei was a weak and involuntary woman like Zhang Lan before her death. Her desire for fate did not turn into a beautiful round dance until after her death.The two men corresponding to them are the embodiment of spiritual annihilation.The character Li Li was born in the struggle between love and desire. On the one hand, he sincerely retains the supreme love for his wife, but at the same time, he falls into the frenzy of carnal desire for other women and cannot extricate himself.If the American theorist Jameson's criticism method is applied, then the women here represent "human beings", while the men are "anti-human beings".The different narrative discourses of men and women constitute the two main clues of the whole novel, and their incompatibility turns into a shuddering tragic fate.

However, this kind of game between male and female, or between soul and flesh, appears to be powerless before the irresistibility of fate and nature, which is a greater tragedy than tragedy.The deeper meaning of the novel is actually here. The unhappy couple finally died together, and the ghost of the female ghost Wan Wei is still wandering around. All this implies that the fate of the protagonist in the novel does not follow their death. end.The tsunami in the Indian Ocean claimed the lives of most people in the novel, but the horror in the world did not stop as abruptly as the novel's ending.The emotions of modern people are thinner than paper, people are extremely alienated from each other, the fear of death has evolved into the despair of survival, hypocrisy is flooding the world, and people have whitewashed a wonderful paradise, just like the beautiful P Island in the novel, where The real meaning is a destroyed ruins, perhaps it is the sinful city of Gomorrah and Sodom in the Bible.Only God can bring them out.

Dare to face the truth is certainly respectable, especially in today's hot world.In reading the whole book, I did not find a common all-powerful and fearless narrator.The sense of fear shown by the author Li Ximin in his words clearly emerges on the paper.The author narrates this terrifying story with the same or even deeper fear as the characters in his pen. This kind of narrative sincerity is rare in current literary creation.In my impression, the last time I had a similar feeling, I read a text written by the Frenchman Camus.The face of the world is shown very clearly in these sincere narratives.

If it is said that the spirit of the world has a continuous blood, then of course this blood does not exist in the market art of sensationalism.The male protagonist Li Li finally threw himself into the sea and went away with his beloved wife. When the horror king Li Ximin wrote this pen, he thought that he also had a glimmer of hope for this world in his heart. Perhaps this glimmer of hope is the blood of the spirit of the world.