Jingji Natsuhiko "Book Building Hanging Hall" X Jin Li Jing "Living Library" X Terayama Shuji "My Mystery": From reading to fiction, "book" has never been just a book

If we think that superstition refers to believing in something that is nothing, that is weird, and does not actually exist, then is it a kind of superstition to be addicted to reading and loving novels?

In civilized modern times, the connection between novels, or books, superstitions, etc., to supernatural imaginations is largely unnoticed. Because in modern times, books are often considered to be the carrier of knowledge and the medium of education. Reading has become a kind of learning, cultivation, and speculation, which is completely irrelevant to the so-called superstition without objective and scientific evidence. If it is accidentally involved, it is probably usually because the book is related to the promotion of a certain religion. As for novels, most people should think that it is just entertainment and entertainment. After all, few people really study the things in the novel as real events, so unless it is literary research, it is usually just a product to relax and pass the time. Because of this, many people think that people who love to read novels probably have nothing to do, and think that the value of novels is very low, because they are not reference books, and most of them will not be knowledge books such as popular science, sociology, etc. practical.

Perhaps this is the most valuable place to read Jin Li Jing's novel collection - "Library of the Living" - today. Because this work is not only excellent in writing, but also deeply leads readers to understand the history related to the book. Personally, I think the most important thing is that he further explores the issue of what is human desire for books through the combination of novels and historical documents. And further describes how this desire for books affects the history of book collection, production, and dissemination.

"Library Living" is not just a collection of works that tells the history and production of books, but also a work that analyzes how books seduce different types of desires through different stories. From these fascinating stories, we will find that the book is not only a medium to carry knowledge and imagination, but also a device to seduce and generate desire. In this sense, books fill some kind of vacancy in the human heart, and from these vacancies evoke or inspire strong things. These things may be all kinds of powerful desires and beliefs, or they may be simply uncontrollable feelings, emotions, or imaginations that are rushing out for a while. So it is not surprising to us that in ancient times (or even today), some rulers were so afraid of the dissemination of certain books, and tried to prevent their publication on the grounds of "corrupting customs", "obscene gods", etc., Even burn it to avoid future troubles. Or we can understand why for some frustrated people, the books beside them are as important as close relatives, because books can fill the irreparable vacancy in the heart, and even seduce the goals and desires to continue living.

"Library of the Living" can be talked about more than that. In fact, several works in it can be individually selected to write a special introduction or book review. However, before going deeper into the "Library of Living", the author actually wants to talk about a work published earlier, that is, "The Hanging Hall of the Book Building - Breaking Dawn" by Natsuhiko Jingji. Or simply talk about his series of novels.

"Writing and language are false, there is no world, there is no truth to speak of. The so-called books are the false world, the corpse of the world created by the person who wrote it... But if someone reads it, the corpse will come back to life. By deciphering the spell of words and reciting the incantation of language, it will only belong to that person in this world, and it will appear in the heart of the person who reads it in the form of a ghost, and it will definitely appear in front of the eyes. That... is a book." — — Jingji Natsuhiko, "The Hanging Hall of the Book Building - Breaking Dawn"

I want to talk about Jingji's works because compared to Jin Lijing's works - "Living Library", Jingji Natsuhiko's series of works make people more understandable - the experience of reading - is actually a What an unusual thing.

Most of Jingji Natsuhiko's novels are classified as mystery novels, the most important of which is his Jingjitang series. However, his novels sometimes really don't read like mystery novels. Rather, reasoning seems to be just the form of the novel. What really needs to be clarified is what kind of psychology "reasoning" means to people.

Those who are familiar with Jingji Xiayan's novels know that in the Jingjitang series of novels, the main events in the book are often related to a legend of ghosts and gods. But what is interesting is that, through this method, Jinggoku Natsuhiko makes us understand that the generation of every kind of ghost, ghost, and ghost happens to reflect the generation of a certain psychological state of people, rather than a random fabricated fantasy. In the book, what Kyogoku is most interested in is often not the reasoning of the truth of the crime, but often the evolution of the type, concept, and described face of a certain monster in historical documents in the past, and explain the changes that caused it. possible reasons. In his earliest book, "The Summer of Gushou Bird", he mapped the properties of a monster named "Gusuo Bird" to the pathology of false pregnancy, thus solving the mysterious and bizarre case in the book.

The author is not sure whether this correspondence is completely reasonable and correct. At that time, I only felt that I could understand some current special psychological phenomena through a point of view, to explain and even let readers realize that the so-called monsters were actually born in a strange process of psychological development, which is very interesting. . To a certain extent, he made us understand that the so-called "ghost" was never a ghost, but a part of a human being. Many "ghosts" have strange properties at first glance, but they actually exist in human beings, but most of them are not easy to see, or they are described in language from another angle.

With this kind of interest, the author has read one after another of Jingji's novels, but it was not until "Book House Hanging Hall - Breaking Dawn" that the author finally realized that the so-called ghosts and gods, or those things that are often considered mysterious . Not just with the emergence of various strange psychology, in fact... they exist in the experience of reading.

"No, there are ghosts. They can be seen, touched, and heard, but they don't exist."

This sentence seems mysterious at first, but it turns out that it is actually very suitable for understanding what we "see" in reading.

Kyogoku Natsuhiko thinks completely differently about "books". He believes that books are actually like tombstones. Reading a book is like deciphering the runes above and listening to a ghost speak to us. This ghost does not necessarily represent the author (whether dead or alive), but sometimes something summoned by some memory in his own heart. The behavior of people going to the bookstore to read and watch books is like a worship. Interestingly, even if the two worshiped the same tomb, the "soul" they saw and remembered in their hearts were not the same. That's why Kyogoku said: "By interpreting the spell of words and reciting the incantation of language, it belongs only to that person's present world, and it will appear in the heart of the person who reads it in the form of a ghost, and it will indeed appear in front of the eyes. That... It's a book."

In another Peter. Manderson's What Do We See When We Read? "In this book, he found that although many people think that the book they like, the characters and scenes in it are "lifelike", and he thinks that the characters in it are very "specific" to him. But it is very difficult for them to describe, because people often can only give very fragmentary descriptions, making the characters in the book like broken glass in the description, and it is a little difficult to put them together. Some descriptions are sometimes found to be contradictory to the descriptions in the book.

Although the characters and scenes in the book are often broken, fragmented, and hazy, they can give people a very specific, full, and even "lifelike" feeling. This contrast is exactly why we say the experience of reading, but how different it is. common cause. The reason why this kind of unusualness is rarely recognized is because we rarely think about the relationship between the "people" we see in reading and ourselves. , but you will find that the "people" you see in reading may not be just fantasy, but more like "ghosts" and "ghosts" in your heart. The connection is sometimes even unimaginable.

Jingji's book makes people notice that reading is not just a very personal experience, it is also a very mysterious experience, but we have long disapproved of this kind of mystery. And the reason why this kind of mystery is mysterious is related to the unconscious and unconscious watching caused by him, just like the fascination of the Zoroastrians watching fire, it is a mysterious reading of fire. In this kind of attention and staring, it is easy for people to forget who they are, and inadvertently become the characters inside and enter the situation inside.

The idea that a book is a tomb is actually very similar to the concept written in "The Underworld is a Huge Library" in Jin Li Jing's "Library of the Living". Here, after death, a person writes his autobiography in the underworld. After he has written it, he ascends to heaven, and his autobiography is put on a shelf for those who have not written an autobiography and cannot ascend to heaven to watch and study. Here, books and writing have become a way to transcend the dead. At the same time, he also offers those who have not ascended to the sky to pay homage, and he tries to transcend himself in the emotion and reading of visiting and mourning the dead.

As Kyoji Natsuhiko said, perhaps the most incredible thing about people is that people can "see" and imagine even things that don't actually exist. And books are precisely because they can make people "see" and imagine a medium that does not exist or is not around, so in addition to the function of recording knowledge, books can also have a powerful charm to evoke people's emotions, thinking and desires .

This idea is also emphasized by "The Underworld is a Huge Library". In it, Jin Lijing quotes the Portuguese writer Pessoa (who doesn't like to use his own name to write in his entire life, but he made up more than 70 disguise his writing) from a synonym with a completely different life experience: "Things that exist for granted do not attract me, but things that are unbelievable, impossible, and inherently impossible, that deeply Attract me." To explain the reason why the world can be all-encompassing, it is because at any time, there is always a desire in people to imagine, create, or collect things that do not exist or seem not to exist in the world. , and take it for yourself. This is like even though we all know that there can be no so-called superman and hero in this world, but we are still eager to see the rise of "heroes" and "mythical characters" in movies, and collect and buy their dolls, posters, etc. Fantasy images are embodied in the same material and entity. What's more, these images are projected on politicians.

One of the oldest ways to experience the power of seeing, imagining, and representing something that is not there is writing and reading. "Library of the Living" makes people see the impact of this power on people and society very directly. However, in comparison, Jin Lijing devoted more attention to describing the reading and exclusive desire of people at home and abroad in ancient and modern times, rather than focusing on discussing and describing the experience of reading itself and the analysis of various psychological states like Jingji.

"The history of book burning shows how the desire to monopolize books damages and controls them. In order to rationalize their own desires, sometimes the person who burns the books will exaggerate the imaginary threat and distort the desires of others, in order to rationalize their own desires. It is to protect one's own books and suppress others' books. The history of books shows the process of books going back and forth between the two extremes of desire."

The history of the book is the history of desire and the history of desire being repressed. This is probably the most obvious in "Shangdong Night Talk" and "Burning Books", especially "Sangdong Night Talk" is particularly wonderful. His brilliance is not that the story of this novel is extremely bizarre, bizarre, and lifelike, but because it makes readers feel that the more bizarre, bizarre, and alien writing, the more often there is a huge struggle behind it. Social oppression and cruelty. And the confrontation in this is so thrilling that people have to have a sense of destiny.

But while emphasizing the subversive power of "books", the author also reminds us that this does not mean that "books" are symbols of wisdom, justice, and truth. s things". Since reading can bring "liberation", it can also bring unexpected "binding". Because people often forget that fiction, while incredibly true and even insightful critique of the times, is essentially fiction.

Books - the reason why they are insecure and dangerous is precisely because the so-called fiction is actually an insecure and rebellious behavior and state. As the question asked at the beginning of our article, is addiction to fiction an act of superstition? Jingji Xiayan did not say this, but he reminded us from time to time that fiction actually needs a little superstition, and even fiction itself is the most important driving force for the formation of religion and belief. It's just that in religion, we call fictional things "God", while in literature and philosophy, they may become "meaning" and "truth". And we must never forget that all literature, music, and even ideas, etc. appeared in the earliest days to serve religion, because through myths, dramas, and music, human beings can organize the masses more smoothly. Just like many religions today, they also need to sing hymns and read their Bibles when they meet together.

People hope to extract a kind of "meaning" from their own life and experience. Through this "meaning", one can establish an "order" that appears to exist in speech, writing or internal viewing (recall). Locate a "self" to provide a more specific guide for the future. There, the past, present, and future seem to echo each other, just like the plot of a novel. People pick up the fragmented time and connect the fragmented selves into a whole story. However, in the process of connection, people often forget that the desires and impulses behind the meaning are actually full of uneasiness, danger, and evil intentions.

Personally, I think Shuji Terayama's "My Mystery" is the most profound description of the uneasy, dangerous feeling and state of the fiction itself. This book is also a good place to summarize the issues of the above two books, or at least take us in a new direction. Because he goes straight to the heart of the subject of fiction.

The feeling of restlessness, in this book, comes from the emptiness and loneliness that Shuji Terayama feels at any time and everywhere in his life, and sometimes contains absurdity. In these empty loneliness and depression, he found that he was suppressing his dissatisfaction with the world and his surroundings. Among them, he also noticed that he had a deep hatred for his parents in particular. Because of some of their practices at that time, he spent a very frustrated and lonely childhood.

Due to the relationship of repression, these unexpressed hatred or dissatisfaction can not become hatred or dissatisfaction, but gradually decline and accumulate in another form that is undetermined by oneself, forming a hidden crack in the heart. At this time, he gradually understood that once any emotion lost his name because of repression, it would turn into a feeling of hollowing and deprivation. Then it infects the whole body, causing the whole person to be distracted and absent.

But at the same time, in the scattered emotions, people will have a blind impulse to break through this predicament, a feeling of lack. Terayama Shuji began to talk about the imagination and confusion of the thoughts, curiosity, and impulses of sex, violence, crime, etc., which were generated and seduced by the self at that time.

Such confusion is such a state: there is a force in my heart to break free, but I feel unfamiliar with that force, as if the force did not come from myself. It was at this time that Shuji Terayama began to feel like writing and creating. But paradoxically, he felt that he should have a lot to write, but he was surprised to find that the various indescribable feelings that emerged in his heart were actually filled with a deep emptiness.

I think this is why he began to think that creation and fiction are not to express themselves, but to hide their reasons.

"I don't think I wrote to 'show my inner truth', but to 'hide my inner truth'..."

Hiding doesn't mean hiding something, a bad thing you've done, but making what you want to happen—but that doesn't happen—in fiction as if it actually happened. On the other hand, fiction is not what we usually call fantasy. If you imagine yourself as an extreme that is completely different from yourself in reality, and everything in it looks beautiful, then this fiction and work will lose its authenticity. sense.

"Hide" may actually mean "change". If you look carefully, you will notice that Terayama is talking about hiding his "inner truth". The meaning of this sentence may be closer to changing the way I thought and felt about something in the past. The way of transformation may not be as simple as thinking from a different angle, but it may be necessary to add events and plots so that thoughts and emotions can be turned rationally and have the power that he really conveys. Most of these "events" and "plots" are not what actually happened in reality, but what they thought of in their hearts, so they became the so-called "fictions".

In this "My Mystery", if we only look at his subtitle - Autobiography of Shuji Terayama, we may easily think that this book is his autobiography. But what Terayama happens to be saying may be the opposite: there is no real autobiography. Because we are always fictionalizing ourselves. Even the "I" is actually constructed from a void behind it.

The so-called autobiography is not the author's real life, but the author's fictitious presentation of "self", as if presenting how he made his own mask. And "My Mystery" is a fiction that discusses fiction (autobiography). You could also say that this is a work of reflective fiction. And what I find most interesting is that instead of mentioning "fiction" over and over again, Shuji Terayama used a more sophisticated method: discussing memory.

Reflecting on fiction is actually reflecting on the way memory is recalled.

"Memory is not necessarily what actually happened in the past, but what people hoped to actually happen in the past."

According to the previous context, it is not difficult for readers to find that, in fact, for Shuji Terayama, the so-called self is not as defined by traditional philosophy, but is a subject born with a will. On the contrary, the so-called "self" is, to put it bluntly, a system composed of parts of people's memories. But in addition, Terayama also wants to tell us: the essence of memory is actually fiction. The two are one.

According to many psychological studies, our memories of past events often do not correspond to what actually happened at the time. The way humans store memories is not like a computer that directly records the content, but has to be re-created every time it is called, so the content of each memory will change to varying degrees due to emotions and thoughts. Even for some reason, people will fabricate false memories and make themselves believe because that's what they want to happen.

The so-called "I" is also a product of the synthesis of memory in the process of organization and creation. As long as time changes, the cognition of "I" will also change. You could even say that he is fluid, not a steady rock.

When Jin Lijing said: "People are books that can talk", he is not only saying that people's experiences are like a book, but also telling through the stories inside: people, no matter when, always yearn for Be a story (book). Or I think, as Terayama pointed out, man is also trying to make himself a mystery through fiction. Because the enigma seems confusing, but instead provides a kind of charm, generating the motivation of survival to make people pursue the so-called "self". This may be the reason why people hate monotony and reject boredom, because once they find that they have no mystery to explore, "self" and their life seem to lose their charm. In other words, you can say that people are not fascinated by their own meaning, but the mystery that their own meaning keeps exuding, a kind of enigmatic charm.

Let's go back and combine the ideas obtained by Natsuhiko Jinggoku. If people are fascinated by the mystery of constructing themselves, as Terayama speculated, then the mysterious experience accompanying reading becomes one of the great charms of the book. And it led to the crazy book-loving behaviors that Jin Li Jing wrote in "Living Library".

These three books: "Book Building Hanging Hall" by Jingji Xiayan, "Living Library" by Jin Lijing, and "My Mystery" by Shuji Terayama, although they are quite different in terms of plots, each has a completely different time and space The backgrounds and genres are also different. "The Book Tower" is a complete novel; "The Living Library" is a collection of stories; "This Mystery of Me" is more like a collection of essays. But their content is all around the discussion of fiction, which is filled with a lot of discussion on reading, creation, and narrative, and each has a prominent and special point of view. Watching together, you can see a very special scenery. It also makes people understand that the so-called "book" has never been such a simple thing for people. He is not only a medium of knowledge, but more often it is like a device of desire and meaning, which can be activated to "see" many things that do not seem to exist. The seemingly non-existent nature, through the book, can be terrifying or charming.

(Original post on Blog: The Laboratory of Literature )

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