The Narrative Features of China's Non-traditional Novels

As a literary creation phenomenon, "new realistic novel" came into being after the ideological trend of "cultural root-seeking" in the mid-1980s, which can be regarded as a phenomenon of "post-root-seeking", that is, it abandoned some too narrow and illusory "cultural roots" pursued by "cultural root-seeking", denied the question of whether meaning was hidden behind life, and continued the real spiritual core of "root-seeking literature". It has different theme orientation, narrative style and emotional expression. He rejected illusory ideals and created a series of novels, which showed a new style and brought a fresh breath to the literary world. The new realistic novel defines "meaning" in the process of describing real life itself, that is, survival, which has been further rendered in the new realistic novel, and people's daily life is formally filled in the main picture of the novel. It had a very important influence on the trend of China literature in 1990s, especially on the deconstruction of the dominant realistic literary concept in the history of literature. They all pay attention to calmly showing the ordinary ecology of the lower classes, paying attention to the narration of secular life, and implicitly expressing their thinking on the living conditions and the meaning of life. They show extreme concern about trivial matters of life and emphasize the authenticity of life, which makes these new realistic novels read truly, cordially, vividly and touching.

First, return to nature and truly reproduce the ordinary life of small people.

The creative characteristics of new realistic novels are to restore the truth of life, reject illusory ideals, abandon the strong political color in traditional realism, disintegrate the typical significance of literature, stop asking about the meaning of life, and strongly reflect people's sense of existence.

When describing the ordinary life of ordinary people, writers of new realistic novels try to write their own unique feelings and experiences about life. Some emphasize the instinctive desire of life and pay attention to describing "eating color", such as Fuxi Fuxi by Liu Heng and Worrying about Life by Chi Li. We can find "problems" and "poetry" from this "ordinary and trivial family life, team life and social life".

Expressing sympathy and understanding for the fate of the lower classes is the same value orientation of new realistic novel writers. For example, in Fang Fang's Black Hole and Liu Zhenyun's Dapu, when describing the daily life of these lower classes, the writers try to truly show the living state, living state and mental state of ordinary people, thus implicitly revealing their feelings and thoughts about life.

Second, zero emotion, life-oriented narrative way

The narrative characteristics of new realistic novels are: not paying attention to the dramatization of plot structure, but paying attention to the complete life of narrative methods; We don't pay attention to the causal logic between plots, but to the original beauty of "pure facts" in life: we don't pay attention to the twists and turns of stories, but to the truth and vividness of life details. We call this feature the story structure of life flow. The narrative style is especially indifferent in subjectivity, which cancels the writer's previous emotional intervention, that is, the so-called "zero emotion", rarely expresses opinions and no longer criticizes anything. This kind of bystander angle enables the writer to complete the record of the original life.

Chi Li's Cold or Hot or Alive adopts typical life-oriented story structure, such as Chi Li's Worrying Life and Fang Fang's Black Hole. They all use this life-like narrative way, which is true, vivid and meticulous, and it is very touching to read.

The narrative mode of new realistic novels is called plane narrative, which does not adopt the structural mode of traditional novels from the beginning, development to the climax and ending, but constructs the works according to the sequence of life time, showing readers the often chaotic daily chores and natural and ordinary life events. Because the new realistic novel emphasizes pure facts and rejects the typical meaning of literature, it dispels the plot composition and characterization in the traditional sense, aiming at weakening the ideological behind the characters and providing us with another way to think about life.

Third, folk context, popular and plain language.

New realistic novels describe secular life and customs in popular language, revealing a strong folk color. For example, Fang Fang's Scenery and Chi Li's Cold or Hot or Alive.

While describing life truly, new realistic novels often depict some very ugly life scenes, without purification or disguise, and often describe secular scenes, secular affairs and human feelings in vulgar language. Therefore, some people think that the new realistic novel "does not evade the description of secular scenes in real life, showing a lot of filthy and unsightly details, but flashing the real flame of blood and decay." This statement is very pertinent, such as Liu Zhenyun's "Official Man" and Chi Li's "You are a River".

It can be seen that the creation of new realistic novels pays attention to telling life stories in secular and plain language. Writers are interested in writing real and vivid life, paying attention to the vivid description of life, paying attention to the realistic sense of description, not beautifying and whitewashing life, avoiding vulgarity, ugliness and vulgarity, and even pursuing the cruelty and nakedness of real life, and striving to write the true colors of life.

Fourth, look on coldly, the aesthetic color of natural sadness.

It can be said that most of the new realistic novels are very emotional and natural articles, which are not carved or whitewashed, but actually write about the things around them. This kind of narration of familiar stories around us, this kind of aesthetic interest that makes life behave like life itself, makes the new realistic novel have a natural aesthetic color.

The creation of new realistic novels pays attention to the writer's true feelings, rather than "writing from emotional zero" as some people say. Readers can still see the writer's likes and dislikes, comments and glances from his works. For example, the troubled life, scenery, chicken feathers, black holes, etc ... all these show that the new realistic novels generally present a sad mood and a natural sad aesthetic style.

In a word, the creation of new realistic novels is different from traditional realistic novels because of its plain daily life narration, vivid narrative structure, popular language and aesthetic style of natural tragedy. The new realistic novel grew up in the literary tradition of realism, and also absorbed some nutrients from modernist art, pushing the creation of realism to a new height. Although the creation of new realistic novels has its shortcomings, there is no doubt that it has made new contributions to the development of contemporary literature in China.