Li is known as "bottom literature" in China, and he is a pioneer in the research and criticism of "bottom literature". In 2005, since "There" aroused widespread concern and discussion in the literary world, Li consciously analyzed the real living conditions and thoughts and feelings of people living at the bottom of society, such as laid-off workers, landless peasants, migrant workers and street vendors, contacted a large number of writers engaged in writing at the bottom, and published a series of commentary articles. At the same time, his subject "The Present Situation and Analysis of Underclass Literature in the New Century" was supported by the Art Project of Social Science Fund. This shows that at the national academic level, his research on "bottom literature" is recognized and supported, and it is also a driving force, at least an incentive, for him to work diligently in this field. In the past ten years, Li's research on the bottom literature has achieved fruitful results. He has published such works as How to Tell the Story of China Well, Reiterating the Ideal of New Literature, Bottom Literature in the New Century, and China Story, which have become important introductory books and reference books for the study of the bottom literature.

Naturally, with the popularity of "bottom literature" research in academic circles and gradually becoming a giant discourse, the discussion and controversy about it in academic circles naturally increase. For example, someone asked, what is your position in studying "bottom literature"? Others pointedly pointed out that what is the "advanced literature" corresponding to your "low-level literature"? Is there really a special "low-level literature" in the realistic soil of China? Someone kindly reminded me that your emphasis on "bottom literature" is contrary to the current mainstream thought of building a harmonious society. It should be said that these problems are the proper meanings of academic development. Without questions and discussions, the topic will not go deep; Without serious dialogue, the life of theory will not last long.

Faced with some difficult problems in the research and criticism of "bottom literature", Li is not afraid of difficulties, and with his wisdom and tenacity, he constantly develops and deepens his research. In particular, Li explained, retrospected and even attacked the above questions through a large number of critical articles, dissected the essence of the problem, and used vivid literary cases and constantly developing literary phenomena as arguments to explain, enrich and develop the theoretical theme of "bottom literature". These articles are scattered in the above three books and will not be repeated here. But what I want to emphasize here is that Li used his own literary creation to practice his own theoretical discovery, and his latest novel collection Goodbye Cow is not only a reflection of his personal creation, but also an important achievement of China's literary practice at the bottom.

Goodbye, Cow contains nearly 20 short stories published by Li in important domestic literary journals in recent years. The theme of the novels is relatively concentrated, and each novel is a brush stroke of recollection and reminiscence, which describes and recalls in detail the people, events, feelings, scenery, customs, habits, nationalities, karma, disputes, past and reality in one's childhood and adolescence, especially in primary and secondary schools. On the surface, these novels are all based on the theme of "recalling hometown", focusing on rural life and the fate of characters in the 1970s and 1980s, which seems to have a heavy sense of nostalgia. But when you think about it carefully, these short stories are not simple: the themes expressed are more complicated, the horizons displayed are broader, and the questions considered are sharper. If Li's novels belong to the category of "bottom literature", then his writing practice presents a new possibility of "bottom narration", that is, it transcends the literary writing centered on writing suffering, sadness and trauma, and it also transcends the novel writing that tries to find social fracture and institutional malpractice by describing the bottom suffering, and then finds a political solution, even surpassing the elite posture of most bottom-level literary writers and the way of thinking that tries to enlighten the bottom public. Li's novels regard the bottom as a spiritual home, a cultural resource and a way of thinking, and have a close dialogue with the current ideological trend, which provides a direction for correcting the shortcomings of the times.

So, how does the novel present these complex and rich themes?

Second, the topic of "anti-enlightenment" and the bottom experience

Talking about the rich and complex themes in Li's novels means that each work has a specific theme, which is not exactly the same. For example, Boundary Monument tells that people have different fates because of the dislocation of time and space. The "boundary monument" between heart and heart is far greater than the boundary of spatial meaning. "Pear Blossom with Moon" contains a love theme: no matter what era, social status will always be the fence of love. The Country Doctor is a story about pain and treatment, and the doctor himself may need more treatment. "Crossing the Ocean" is about the rise and fall of a group of social strongmen and how the social law of survival of the fittest is presented in rural areas. Although the ideological content of each work is different, looking at the overall interest and theme of nearly 20 short stories, we will find that there is a common value orientation and basic theme, that is, facing the reverse enlightenment of rural society directly, or simply called "reverse enlightenment".

The so-called "anti-enlightenment" is a reflection and revision of intellectuals' enlightenment discourse, a reversal and adjustment of the binary opposition thinking and linear evolution theory of progress and backwardness, science and ignorance, modern and pre-modern. In the age of enlightenment, intellectuals always stood at the front end of the arrow of time, stood on the position of saving all sentient beings, persuaded and educated the public with civilized and scientific words, and expected to establish a social system that met modern standards. "Anti-enlightenment" is a transcendence of enlightenment discourse. Intellectuals who stand on the position of "anti-enlightenment" not only have little sense of superiority to the general public, but also compare and reflect on their so-called high-level thoughts and interests that are divorced from the land and the public. Then they were surprised to find that the ideological resources and cultural genes contained in the civil society or the bottom society can just save intellectuals from weakness, nothingness, arrogance and prejudice. "Anti-enlightenment" is a conscious choice for intellectuals to seek salvation and outlet from the bottom and the public again after encountering the predicament of modernization. It is the self-adjustment and self-transformation of elite culture, and it is a kind of ideological emancipation, concept transformation and value re-selection made by China intellectuals in the new century in the face of various spiritual and practical problems. In a sense, the emergence, rise and prosperity of "bottom literature" is the concrete embodiment of the ideological course of China intellectuals in this value transformation. Li's collection of novels "Night Walk" is the product of this "anti-enlightenment" movement. By analyzing this fruit, we can see some changes and developments in literature and culture since the new century.

The short story Nocturnal Walking seems to be a hint or metaphor. The novel tells the story of two junior high school boys and girls who go home together at night after self-study in the evening. The girl Xiao Xia taught the boy to sing Soviet songs, and the boy told the girl stories of great men such as Yue Fei, Marx, Lenin, * * * and Lu Xun. Drive away the fear of walking at night. Many years later, they met in London. At this time, teenagers have become scholars studying the bottom literature, while girls are Marxists engaged in social movements. They talked about the experience of riding a bicycle on a country road and going home at night when they were young. They went to visit Max's tomb near Hyde Park together and sang "Looking up at the Big Dipper, I miss you in my heart, I miss you when I get lost, and I miss you in the dark ..." This novel is very boring. On the surface, it describes a romantic story of a boy and a girl falling in love at night and meeting again decades later, but in fact it is not unconventional, and the ideological theme of the novel is strange and moving. This short story of less than 10,000 words contains a huge historical capacity. From the 1980s to the new century, social changes and international events spanning decades involved China's reform and opening up, the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the ebb tide of the proletarian movement and other major events. This is a theme of "finding the way". Through the experience of a man and a woman traveling in the dark night and their adventures in London, this paper actually discusses how China and the world developed after the international * * * movement fell into a low tide, and with a huge leap in time and space, it laid a reasonable and natural narrative path for the effective presentation of this grand ideological theme in a short space.

China has made great achievements in reform and opening-up, but the curse of "development" has caused many thorny problems, such as unfair distribution, ecological deterioration, spiritual decline, and lack of faith. And the modern discourse upheld by intellectuals also took the opportunity to collude with "developmentalism", which contributed to the occurrence and development of these problems. In this context, the rise of "anti-enlightenment" thought has questioned and reflected on the modern discourse of "development". The glade tells the story that a huge forest outside the village provides a good place for children to play. With the development of urbanization, the forest has been cut down, and the clearing in the forest has become a vegetable wholesale market, which is occupied by two-story buildings poured with reinforced concrete. The glade is beautifully written and poetic, which is a bit like the meaning of Zhang Wei's A Pond of Clear Water, but the problem of reflection is more complicated and urgent than that of A Pond of Clear Water. At the end of the novel, I wrote: "In the great changes of time, the time of picking mushrooms and auricularia in the glade, the old locust tree and the small pool may be just a fragile dream. Even if this dream is a dust in the universe and fleeting in the long river of time, it is what I cherish most in this world ... Above the dark clouds, I saw the little dragon leaping over the sea of clouds and flying towards me. This is the author's beautiful vision. The large-scale destruction of urbanization to beautiful countryside continues, and the invasion of nature and modernity to all mankind continues. The novel deeply reflects on this in this poetic land.

Corresponding to the literary works praising reform, the theme of "anti-enlightenment" is to keep a certain distance from the reform discourse. The second ceremony in Three Mu of Land is the grandson of the landlord. He is an active reformer and can do business. After he became rich, he never forgot to "resume his ancestral business", that is, to get back the land called "three acres of land" confiscated by his family during the land reform. Later, he finally got the land and built a villa on it. Li, the village party secretary who presided over the land reform, became the janitor of Erli villa. Farewell to the new world after the revolution is nothing more than a period of history that has been repeatedly reversed. After "the reversed history is reversed again", it is the real result of the reform, and it is also the logical starting point for the historical reflection and literary writing of the "anti-enlightenment" trend of thought. Therefore, novels like Three Mu of Land are full of historical sense, and at the same time face the contradictions in reality and go hand in hand.

The reason why Li's novels have a sense of historical crossing and realistic intervention is not only from the theoretical vision of scholars and critics and their perennial cultivation in this field, but also from his rich and delicate bottom experience. For a writer, the bottom experience is not naturally formed, nor is it purely sensory accumulation, but an aesthetic experience produced by the combination of emotion and reason. Li has grown into a well-known scholar in China and has a certain social status and influence, but he has never been condescending on this basis. On the contrary, from the story, the narrator "I" always thinks that he is a "wanderer" for his hometown, while the village as the bottom has the function of home and home. The rootless powerlessness of the wanderer is an accepted and redeemed role in front of his hometown, not an enlightener role. Here, the bottom experience becomes an important dimension to return to the truth, reflect on oneself and examine the disadvantages of modernity.

In Wealth Can't Be Prostituted, the novel reveals the confusion and feelings of a generation of intellectuals who entered the city from the countryside: "I think the reason why I am what I am now is because I am squeezed on a wooden bridge, crossing from the countryside to the city and entering a new civilization and new structure. Yes, this is a new structure. We country people flock to cities just as city people flock to foreign countries. We are all moving closer to the center. This seems to be a spiral multi-level central structure, and we are placed at different levels. Years later, when I strolled in new york Central Park and Fifth Avenue, I vaguely felt that I was in the center of the world. At that time, thinking of Beijing seemed to be a distant and backward feeling, just like I thought of my hometown in Beijing. And when I think of my hometown there, it is even farther and farther away. It seems to be a small place that can be ignored in the distance. " But in the end he came to his senses:

I woke up across the ocean. It was midnight. Through the heavy curtains, I can see a crescent moon hanging in the night sky, emitting cold light. At that moment, I felt sad and scared. I thought of my hometown, Beijing and my life footprint. I thought I was pursuing a better life, but it seems to be getting farther and farther away from my heart. I thought I was in the center of the world, but I was getting farther and farther away from home. Maybe the real me is not here, and the real world center is not here. I have come a long way, but I don't know where I really want to go. That night, I smoked a few cigarettes on the balcony of the dormitory of that famous university and looked at the vast galaxy and my hometown.

It can be seen that Li's bottom experience is formed in thinking and studying the huge gap between city/country, center/edge, civilization/ignorance. His value lies in that he didn't imagine China according to the logical clues set by modern intellectuals' habits, but respected his bottom experience, obeyed his aesthetic feelings, opened the window of his soul, wrote his own country affectionately, and constructed a new value system and logical relationship.

Third, the narrative style of writing is good.

As far as "Goodbye, Cow" series is concerned, rich themes are contained in the "simple" style. None of Li's novels is won by complicated structure, gorgeous language and peculiar narrative. Its success lies in the simplicity of words, the sincere expression of thoughts and feelings, and the charm of words. The "simple" narrative corresponds to the simple countryside; "Whispering" is actually a kind of deep affection and an expression of love.

Roland barthes's Love Story has created a new style between prose and thesis, which has both rational expression and strong artistic sense. Li's novels have also created a style similar to Whispering in Love Stories, which is characterized by narrative words, arguments in the narrative, evoking rural experience as the main line, and repeatedly erasing some related images to form a narrative effect surrounded by audio and video. The novel basically begins with "at that time", which constitutes the narrative tone of memory and tracing, and leads to those leisurely old things in my hometown.

Give a few examples. "Weaver Girl" begins like this: "At that time, every household in our village was weaving, and I had a loom at home, all made of wood, which was usually put in the east room and cleaned when weaving." In this style, "Around the World" begins: "At that time, I also joined the underworld. Maybe it can't be called the underworld. It's just a group of people hanging around and fooling around. It's also a small river's lake. Me and Er Meng, Xiao Dong ... "Thief Hua cut to the chase like this:" At that time, thieves were also very polite. They never stole in their own village and wanted to steal. Xiaojie in our village is a thief ... "The village doctor also started with" at that time ":"At that time, there were two doctors in our village, one was Grandpa Shunde and the other was his iron-legged father. Grandpa Shunde is in the back street, and Dad Tietui is in the front street. Grandpa Shunde is very old, with a gray beard, hunched back and crutches. It is said that ... "

It should be said that Li's loquacious narration is not intentional, but a writing habit or his unique style formed in his writing practice for many years. According to Chen, the sign of a writer's maturity is "finding his own sentence". From this collection of novels, Li found his own sentences and his own handy writing rules, which is the so-called "garrulous" narrative. Any writing form serves the writing content. On the other hand, once a writing form or habit is found, it will form a specific writing advantage and become the entrance for writers to solve their writing difficulties and enter the best writing situation.

Generally speaking, Li's "rambling" narrative style has at least two advantages in writing. First of all, it is convenient for the novel to quickly enter a specific time node, focus on displaying some narrative elements, constantly strengthen and render some emotions or knowledge, and quickly introduce readers into the artistic situation set by the novel, which is infected and triggered. For example, in the first paragraph of "Hanging the Red Lantern High", starting from "Uncle Junjiang was the most attractive person at that time, because he could tie red lanterns", he directly described the craft and skills of uncle Junjiang, and even spared no effort to describe the details, procedures and effects of tying red lanterns, showing the life of a craft in a naturalistic way, which was amazing. This intensive and meticulous narrative has its own charm, which makes the whole novel have a heavy sense of culture and vicissitudes of the times, provides a sound cultural cornerstone for the theme, and also makes the novel have a mellow and lasting stamina.

Secondly, save the narrative cost, don't entangle the story too much, increase the novel capacity and enrich the theme. The rambling novel mainly relies on narrative language to present the text relationship, omitting too much description and dialogue; Because the narrative is dense, the details are not dry and concise, and it can accommodate a large social capacity in a short space. Most of Li's short stories are controlled in the range of 89,000 to 10,000 words, and most of them cover more than ten years or even decades, which requires the author to have strong artistic generalization and theme control. Otherwise, the novel either falls apart in structure or has no flesh and blood, leaving only bones and muscles. For example, hyperbola only takes more than 9000 words to tell an ambiguous emotional story between men and women that spans 20 years and is separated by two continents. It also includes a groundbreaking ending, which is really based on the author's seemingly wordy but actually quite "minimalist" narrative skills.

Huilongguan, North Beijing, 2065438+September 2007.