[Reading Notes] Malicious rampant can be seen everywhere in the progress of human civilization - "Strawberries and Ashes"

I always return to this "progressive" world to perceive the great malice of mankind.

The first time I came into contact with Fang Huizhen's work was "A Reporter Like Me" published in 2017. In this work, which can almost be regarded as a textbook for character interviews, the author's delicate observational power and the immersive experience of the readers The descriptive skills are on full display. In the 2022 work "Strawberries and Ashes", although she has escaped her identity as a reporter, she still observes the world with a sharp eye, and uses this collection of essays to record the contradictions in a civilized society. A symbiosis of brilliance and ugliness.

The ashes on strawberries fell from the sky, spit out from the chimney of the incinerator, from the corpse in the gas chamber to the incinerator, from stripping to the gas chamber, from getting off the train to stripping naked, from being unable to move for eight days and seven nights without a drop of water, to extreme thirst Being caught on the train, from the Jewish quarantine area to getting on the train, from hiding in the secret door behind the bookcase of the kind neighbor to the quarantine area... According to the law of conservation of energy, from the soot to the flesh and blood skeleton, heartbeat and breathing, and finally back, a complete person.

The brilliance and ugliness of strawberries and ashes that contradict but coexist

The name "Strawberries and Ashes" is taken from the memories of Nazi descendant Rainer Hoss. In this collection of essays, it is divided into five parts, which contain not only the evil deeds of the Nazis during World War II, but also the modern urban society. Vulnerable groups, the author's feelings in his career as a journalist, and the author's own life experience. The title of the article "Strawberries and Ashes" may also imply that each of them, like the ashes on strawberries, coexist with those seemingly bright surfaces and the dark side hidden in them.

The working class struggling to survive in the prosperous city, the father who has a white-collar title but feels inferior after all, and even the reporters who burnt out to become "war waste" under the hot news, these are called "naked life", "" People who have been deprived of everything and are soft and brittle" have made the "progress" of society an unbearable malice. Among them, perhaps the most shocking to the readers is the series one "Floating World".

The reporter's onlooker perspective forced to see the daily malice

Compared with the distant history and the life experience of others, those placard workers who stick to their posts under the scorching sun, the shampoo girls whose fingers are dry and cracked because of constant exposure to water, and even wear uniforms and belts that are completely impractical and uncomfortable. , leather shoes, just for the high-speed rail cleaners who look clean and tidy, Fang Huizhen's words force readers to "see" these things that we are accustomed to and feel numb and malicious in our daily life.

So "Strawberries and Ashes" is a work of compassion? Not quite. Just as reporters only observe and record, in these chapters, the author is more like a bystander, and even in some passages and words, people will feel an obvious "middle-class perspective". However, it is this atmosphere that makes it easier for readers to see themselves and see the contradictory behaviors in our daily life, where compassion and cruelty coexist.

Progress = good? Highly instrumental social reality

Progress equals good? In "Strawberries and Ashes", it seems that such an established impression is constantly being challenged, and the fact that modern people are highly "instrumentalized" is also reminiscent of writer Lin Xinhui's work "Broken Human Shape". However, compared with science fiction, the realistic plot in "Strawberries and Ashes" brings readers a more realistic and profound feeling.

"Words are so powerless that when your eyes swipe over these words, they don't make an impression, but what pain these words contain!"

However, can words really change society and change the world? In the article "Elephant Legs", Fang Huizhen quoted the sentiments of George Orwell, the author of "1984", which is even more touching in comparison to history and even the war in Ukraine today. Nevertheless, just as Rainer Hawes finally understood where the ashes on strawberries came from, the authors of works such as "Strawberries and Ashes" may still look forward to reminding the world of the existence of "ash" through repeated persecution. , allows us to think a little more before washing the ashes, and change something in time before it's too late.

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