“游于百工”的诸种可能及其他——评葛亮“匠传”系列小说集《瓦猫》

A Study of Ge Liang’s Series of Novels on“Craftsmen”—Wa Mao(The Tile Cat)

葛亮“匠传”系列小说《书匠》《飞发》《瓦猫》以《瓦猫》为题结集出版。“书”与“修复”是《书匠》的核心情节;《飞发》借香港理发师技艺、理念之争,继续上海香港南北之争的双城故事;《瓦猫》以西南联大的抗战大历史诠释民间技艺与近代科学精神的融合过程。传统“百工”面临“现代”困境,“百工”而“可游”,意味着传统工艺、民间艺术在现代化、全球化时代的文化适应,昭示出未完成的线性现代性的某种回环路径:在流动、越界中完成代际的精神传承与工艺创新,重建流动时代跨文化社会中,“物”与“人”之关系,思考后物质时代人类的未来。

Ge Liang’s series of novels on“craftsmen”—The Bookmaker,Fei Fa,and Wa Mao(The Tile Cat)—were published in a collection entitled Wa Mao(The Tile Cat).“The book”and“restoration”are the core plot of The Bookmaker;while Fa Fei continues the story of two cities in the contention between Shanghai and Hong Kong by virtue of hairdressers’skills and ideas in Hong Kong,and Wa Mao interprets the integration process of folk skills and the modern scientific spirit in the context of the history of the Anti-Japanese War in National Southwest Associated University.Traditional“craftsmen of various categories”are faced with“modern dilemma”,but they can strive to adjust and adapt professionally and culturally in times of need,which means the cultural adaptation of traditional craft and folk art in the era of modernization and globalization,and indicates some loop path of unfinished linear modernity,namely,the completion of the inter-generational spiritual inheritance and technological innovation in mobility and transcendence,the reconstruction of the relationship between“objects”and“people”in a cross-cultural society in the mobile era,as well as the consideration on the future of mankind in the post-material era.