Live in the second half of the night. Wei Hui wrote in an autobiographical novel: “An unnamed sense of anxiety always writes desperately.” In the new generation, life is beyond writing. Writing is a way of “life” for them rather than beyond life, so what is their central understanding of life? Lu Yang said in The Second Half of the Night in 1993: “I am inevitable in the last decade of this century. Idiot...Let\\u0027s redefine the vocabulary that has gone through the millennia, such as ‘idiot’, and the ‘doomsday’ in which he passively appears...The big wood pile is so high, and the base of the unexpected allegory is so high, I can\\u0027t figure out how to get to the top. In one memory, I may have climbed up by myself...In another memory, I was sent up without resistance.”--Yes, a new generation of writers was passively revealed in the situation at the end of this century. This is the end of the century, like the latter half of the night, the carnival climaxes and begins to get tired, but people are homeless. The transcendental or ultimate meaning in daily life is more difficult to find in this era. At the end of the century, does this give the new generation luck or misfortune? At the end of the century, when the new century is approaching, this time period places higher demands on people who write, and he must have enough power to withstand the scrutiny of the apocalypse and listen to the encouraging predictions of the Master of Time. Does the new generation already possess such power? They are destined to be the messengers who send us the letter of the end times, but do they already know the matter?
2. Poetics in the Afternoon —The creative style of the new generation
Ambiguous afternoon. In his article The Rebel (Between Suffering and Sunshine-Camus\\u0027s Prose Collection, Shanghai Sanlian Bookstore, 1989), Camus talked about “the thought of noon”: a Mediterranean spirit derived from ancient Greek tradition, which is sunny, natural, and a symbol of courage, maturity, humanity, moderation, and balance. And Li Er said in his The Commandments of Writing (The Writer, Issue 5, 1997): “I really want to call the writing of this era the writing in the afternoon.” It is written in the novel: “The sun in the sky is skewed westward and has exceeded 35 degrees, and the sun is always slanted like this.” This is the afternoon, and the “writing in the afternoon” is “ambiguous and reflective, opening and appearing in convergence, with tragedy and nihilism, ugliness and mediocrity, power and violence, light and shadow intertwined.” Li Er wrote in Afternoon Poetics (Everyone, No. 2, 1998): “Our epitaph It\\u0027s been written by a mysterious writer.” In the novel, Du Li appeared in front of Fabian as Li Hui\\u0027s widow to marry Fabian. Her appearance brought the sacredness of love and death connected. But the truth is, Li Hui is not dead, and they have been secretly maintaining a lover relationship. In the novel, Du Li is transformed into a pop star Carla from a drama actor. Her hoarse and ugly singing voice seems to reveal the seclusion of our time. This is already “afternoon”, and people are used to the shadows and ugliness enshrined as a god. Are there any sincerity, piety, and faith in art in the minds of people in this era? Are there still prayers for beauty, goodness, and divinity? The protagonist Feibian wrote in one of his poems : “God \/ We are respecting God by ‘turning away from God’.”
Aesthetics in the afternoon. Pompeo also loves “afternoon”. In The Whispers (Writers Publishing House, 1998 edition), he described almost all the time periods that a person may encounter in a day. “Morning”, “forenoon”, “twilight”, “midnight”...they are either too “bright”, or too “indifferent”, or too “carved”, or too “pale”, and they are not suitable for writing. However, “afternoon” was another sentiment in his consciousness. In the afternoon, “My hearing is like thin cicada wings in the heat, silently swaying in the comfort and shade of the bed, unknown—I become the quiet or noisy secret center of this world, sipping things through a nap deep water.” Afternoon: “In the lower reaches of the Yangtze River, the word “afternoon” is full of many motions, sounds, and screams prolonged among the dormitory buildings by the rusty outsiders. These sounds are like sunlight. The next suddenly passed through the shadows in my body; it deepened those desires to sleep in broad daylight: death. A person walked away. The lonely and speechless desire.... In a certain silence, full of a clear premonition of loneliness.” Afternoon: “I can\\u0027t explain why I am so fascinated by it and this word... They are secreting secret nutrition in my imagination....I sit in front of the window, as if I can see in the text all the invisible buttons at the end of my pen, everything can be turned on, my hearing is so good, and I can hear so clearly.” Pompeo liked the afternoon lies in that the afternoon and “the shadows passing through my body under the sun”, “the desire to sleep”, “desire for death”, “clear premonition of loneliness”, “secret nutrition”, “one person walks away”... are connected together, like Li Er, he regards “afternoon” as a specific aesthetic method to be recognized. And this is also the connotation of the overall “afternoon poetics” in the writing of the new generation.
Different from “Dawn\\u0027s Writing”. Poetics in the afternoon: a kind of shadowy, personal, secret, emotional, and dim writing, a kind of light that contains barriers, darkness, distortion, death, and gloom. Lu Yang\\u0027s Golden Night, Zhu Wen\\u0027s One Hundred and Eight Characters in the Evening Light, Han Dong\\u0027s The Moon Between Tree Branches, etc. The new generation of writers like the kind of shadowy, weak, dim, something ambiguous and vague. “Sunshine” is synonymous with justice, truth, eternity, and light in the writings of writers of Beidao\\u0027s generation. Bai Hua has a poem called Sunshine, Nobody Can Monopolize, and Gu Cheng has a poem saying “night endows me black eyes, but I use them to search for light (A Generation)”, which can represent their understanding of light. It can be said to be a kind of “dawn writing”: having gone through the Cultural Revolution, the people are full of idealistic beliefs in the sun, they sing in praise of the light and long for it to illuminate their lives like angels. The writing of the new generation is different. In Chen Ran\\u0027s Sunshine in the Lips, the sunlight is connected with the lips, with a sexual connotation. The sunlight here is a shadow (open hollow mouth), and the sunlight has wounds (Ms. Dai\\u0027s toothache, the tooth that was pulled out with blood), is the “pain of the old age” (Miss Dai\\u0027s life with pain).
The thought of noon is sunny, natural, brave, mature, equipped with human nature, moderation and balance; while the thought of afternoon is ambiguous, decadent, reflection, open in convergence, with nothingness and mediocrity, light and shadow intertwined. The new generation of writing is full of a sense of \\\"afternoon\\\", which is an aesthetic of the afternoon.
3. The Ceremony of Running —The creative theme of the new generation
Unable to live. Lu Yang has a novel called Running in Beijing. This novel ranked the top ten novels of 1997 by Beijing Literature. In the novel, there is neither double narrative that Lu Yang has always had, nor the slow and long emotional combing that Lu Yang has always had in his novels. The whole novel is simply occupied by a kind of “running.” Lu Yang also has a novel Going Out. This novel starts with “how can we transform the house to be habitable”. In the new generation of writers, the consciousness of “house” is just “uninhabitable”, that\\u0027s why in Going Out, the protagonist Ma Yu has an almost obsessive-compulsive feeling and impulse of “going away”, “going out” and “leaving”, but where can he go after going out? In fact, Ma Yu has nowhere to go. He ended up with “getting out of oneself” by getting drunk. This novel has a meaningful connection with Chen Ran\\u0027s Nowhere to Say Goodbye. Miss Dai Er is always ready to “farewell”, but “she doesn\\u0027t know who to say goodbye or what to do.” The mental dilemma facing the new generation of writers is that they can\\u0027t even find their own world. They are like Miss Dai Er in Nowhere to Say Goodbye. “She knows that she is always in a trance of saying goodbye to the world, but there is nowhere for her to say goodbye. She knows that the world is really born when she says goodbye to the world.” “Nowhere” and “farewell” constitute the two states of the new generation. They have not yet been able to find their own spiritual settlement. Therefore, their “presence” in one place seems to be to “say goodbye” to this place. They “have not settled yet” in this world. They will be in the state of “running” forever.
Could not reach. Their writing attitude is not the same as the “watcher” attitude of the humanist great narrative writer. They couldn\\u0027t stop and watch while they were running. The ending of Li Feng\\u0027s Tang Dynasty ironically wrote: “The beauty of the world is by no means a free gift. The meaning of mortal life lies in the pursuit. Oh! Behold! Our rebirth captain is shining, and we are running with great interest on the endless way.” Li Jing\\u0027s “flying” will never arrive, but he will fly in this world that does not belong to him. For another example, Qiu Huadong\\u0027s novel has a “going out” motif (see Wang Shicheng\\u0027s article published in the third issue of Contemporary Literary Criticism in 1997). Qiu Huadong, as a emigrants from some other province, his observation of the capital city is related to “running”. A person from other provinces can “settled” only if he is on the “running” all the time in the capital. “Running” is the only way for an outsider to settle in the capital. But this “running” is not “busy” in the secular sense. “Busy” is purposeful, fulfilling, and sunny. Busy people are idealistic; while the new generation of “running” is an abstract way of living, an obsessive-compulsive behavior, and an unprovoked sense of exhaustion and estrangement. It is the distress that cannot stand, stop, stand, watch, calm down, and stabilize (the music critic Li Wan commented on the 1960s-borned pop singers Gao Xiaosong, Zhang Chu, and Dou Weishi used a word: “roaming”. He thinks this generation has a “roaming” temperament). They are not like the first generation of writers in China, such as Wang Meng, Zhang Xianliang, etc., nor are they like the second generation of writers of the Republic, such as Zhang Chengzhi, Han Shaogong, etc., they have something hard psychologically, which gives them a kind of stable, solid and reliable temperament. And the third generation of novelists such as Ma Yuan, Hong Feng, Liu Zhenyun, Su Tong, Sun Ganlu, Can Xue, etc., they rebelled against scale, blasphemed the truth, and escaped the sacred because they had another goal in their hearts. Their running is a run in the maze, a kind of back and forth, not because they know where they are going, they run, but because they have nowhere to stay and arrive. Perhaps this feeling is somewhat related to the fact that many of them have chosen the social identity of “freelance writers”, and have lost their security in life and the guardianship of the system in writing. Crossover running. This term comes from Han Dong\\u0027s little story Crossover Running. The novel writes that a couple of lovers always “crossover running”. They always miss each other while running and cannot really meet each other. Han Dong\\u0027s Threesome writes that three people are walking on the festival street, but they are not looking at the scenery or going to any place, instead, they wandered aimlessly on the street. the “threesome” is connected with Confucius’ serious concept of “there must be someone who can be my teacher”. However, Han Dong completely deconstructs this meaning, and the three purposeless people together are still purposeless people. The same is true for The New Huangshan Tour. This kind of travel in traditional narrative searching for romance, beauty, intoxication, and lyricism has become completely romantic in Han Dong\\u0027s writing. Travel has become a ritual and a form, a behavior of running obsessivecompulsive disorder. The same situation also happened in Zhu Wen\\u0027s A Journey of Fifty Cents and To Handan in Zhao Country. There was no desire for a destination and no imagination of arrival. The new generation of writers also wrote in according with the theme of “looking for”, let\\u0027s look at Li Er\\u0027s Night Journey to the Library, a group of people who love books and can\\u0027t sleep late at night because of books, go to the library to steal in the dark night--they dig through the library until dawn. They can only use a sinful way to love truth and knowledge, they are destined to only find it at night, and are regarded as sinners during the day. “Looking” is guilty, only “a purposeless roaming” is possible.