Novel As A Kind Of Game —on Xiaobo Wang’s Art Of Creation

The sudden death of famous Beijing writer Xiaobo Wang on April 11 th 1997 aroused great attention from both the media and the academic circle. “The Death of Xiaobo Wang” becomes the symbolic culture event in 1990 s and its subsequent craze for Xiaobo Wang exerts forceful impact on the stagnant academic and creation circles. His death becomes, in fact, both the result and the cause of the focus centered by its influence on cultural life, literature debate as well as social comment, which renders it the legend at the end of the century in both positive and negative sense. The praise and debate about Xiaobo Wang who is little known before his death come to build him to be the prominent cultural symbol and the most influential writer at the end of the 20 th century. The overview of relevant research about him reveals the following points: i. It seems that people are more interested in the life of the writer than his novel; ii. People value his essays more than his novels; iii. There are more external than internal research about his novels. To understand the over-interpretation and underinterpretation of Xiaobo Wang’s novels, this dissertation attempts to examine, comprehend and interpret these novels from the perspective of game so as to reveal the artistic value of his novel. In this context, game is not used as the spirit or function of a novel, but as the mode of existence of a novel.Chapter I Novel as A Game: We try to interpret the relationship between game and novel through the explanation of the concept of game. There are a lot in common between game and novel in that art is a game of aesthetics and game is the art of creation. A brilliant novel is taken as the classics of the game of writing. We interpret his novel in the theoretical framework of Gadamer’s ontology of artistic works. This does not come in conflict with Kant and Schiller’s view on free game but in harmony with it. We argue that Xiaobo Wang’s novels achieve the freedom in artistic creation and expression of life via its unique genre and amazing imagination, which points out a new route in novel writing, neglected but still alive, that is, the tradition of game in novel. He turns the rule-governed novel into a rule-free field of game with watchful attitude and the spirit of doubt. The tradition that writing should stay away from the reality without forgetting history originates from Tang Dynasty and will extend to the future. The rule-free game of writing is redefined by Xiaobo Wang with his own rule, that is, human nature.Novel is the game played by the writer alone in the first place. Chapter II I am the Hero: the Game of the Talented: This part elaborates from four perspectives, namely, the free game of imagination, the mathematics game of imagination, inter-textual game of polyphonic world and the exploratory game in possible self. Xiaobo Wang conveys a firm belief of holding to the freedom in life and creation through the game of transformation in his early works, the game of invention in the dull world, the game of conversation between the writer and the story. With this belief he discovers the beauty of fabrication and takes it as the ultimate pursuit of his writing. In the meantime, he devotes his love of mathematics to novel writing. He makes use of mathematic way of thinking as the secret of his writing and as the demonstration of his special understanding of this world. In this sense, mathematics game is the personal symbol of his novel writing with its core of taking thinking as kind of pleasure. His novels are rich in logical reasoning and it is actually used as his own way of story-telling. He builds with facility special and bustling world for his hero making it the ideal sample for polyphonic novel and the perfect multiple interpretation of inter-text. The combination of fabrication game of imagination and mathematics game echoes the compound and complex nature of the multiple stories in the polyphonic world. His final goal is to search for his identity—the real hero and the imagined hero. In this sense, Xiaobo Wang’s writing process is the process of self-expression, self-encoding and even canonization. The writer makes deep reflection upon the state of existence of humans through the depiction of the characters. His novel reveals his will to protect an individual’s dignity, to fight against the dictatorship system and to pursue freedom in the process of identity search. Searching for the hero is the permanent theme for Xiaobo Wang, or a kind of game full of intelligence.The novel can never be called a game without the participation of the readers. Chapter III Let me Tell A Story: The Game between the Writer and the Readers: This part begins with the ancient story of telling stories in order to show that his novel not only inherits the modernism tradition, but also could be regarded as a sort of return to this ancient tradition under the disguise of post-modernism method. The readers get involved in the writer’s game and were given much higher requirements. Besides, comedy spirit is always the indispensible component of the ancient tradition. His inner freedom, craze for story fabrication and bold imagination help him to make Tang Legend as the outlet for his imagination, in which a polyphonic connection is developed between the past and present, real world and legendary world, the narrator and the legendary hero. We can tell the special interpretation of freedom from behind the legend, the appreciation of the isolation and uniqueness of an individual. What he gives is more than an interesting story but a confined space for the readers to liberate them from the regulation of the reality and to fulfill their pursuit of unleashed freedom to the full. On one hand, he writes new legendary novel to avoid the trifle and broken real life; on the other hand, he intends to attract the readers to a magical and romantic world with the desire to run after wisdom and pleasure by setting up a legendary world. In his work Wanshou Temple, we hear the inner voice of the writer: It is far from enough for a man to live this life. He or she ought to lead a poetic life. More importantly, people could make some changes to himself when writing.In this context, the field of game refers to the whole world of texts which is the reflection of the world upon the texts. Chapter IV This Life and Last Life of Mine: The Field of Game Built by Language. From the perspective of “love and death in revolutionary period”, drawing inspiration from his experience and different stories of the characters, this part elaborates on the living state of humans when their basic needs to feed themselves, to love and be loved and to lead a better life could not be met. We may see his understanding of the imperfectness in human nature and also feel his ironic and teasing attitude towards this imperfectness. Xiaobo Wang restores a forgotten ridiculous scene with a relaxing elegance and reproduces the suffering and burden of both the body and the spirit under the dictatorship. The idea that we don’t want to be fooled and be manipulated is the theme of his novel forming the literature in the utopia social framework and the spiritual essence of anti-utopia. The painful period of 1970 s in China is considered as precious resources for his writing. A colorful and thought-provoking world is established by connecting the past and the present, today and tomorrow. At the ridiculous moments in history, in the extreme experience of humans, human nature becomes the primary object for the game players to manipulate and turns to the game rules in the end. These could be seen in and out of the text world.I hold that Xiaobo Wang’s novels are both classical and avant-garde in the seventy years history of contemporary Chinese literature. Xiaobo Wang and his novels exert powerful and long-lasting impact of alienation in contemporary Chinese literature, which becomes a kind of challenge to mainstream literary criticism. Therefore, we can see the indifferent attitude and the marginalizing treatment. Varied understanding of avant-garde literature will lead to different evaluation of his novels. Whether Xiaobo Wang’s novels are classical or not is not the focus of this dissertation. The only purpose of our efforts is to provide some proofs for his qualification to be included in Chinese literature history. This is a way to express my sincere appreciation and heartfelt admiration for my beloved writer.