威廉·加迪斯《小大亨》的后现代电话叙事策略

A Study of Postmodern Telephonic Narrative in William Gaddis’s JR

美国文学史上最伟大的对话体小说家威廉·加迪斯在《小大亨》中,以单边电话构建叙事话语,实现快速转换空间、隐瞒真实身份、影射殖民扩张和刺激读者想象的系统性功能,讽刺了一个隐形的、充满阴谋的资本主义商业帝国的构建,展现美国后工业社会被信息技术侵蚀和挖空的怪态。加迪斯的电话叙事策略既体现出后现代主义文学去中心、反层级、反总体、多元性、异质性的叙事模式和创作策略,又通过个体叙事折射出小说作品内在的社会意义和时代特色,形成后现代语境下文学对终极价值追求的新模式。

William Gaddis, one of the greatest writers of dialogue in the history of American fiction adopts one-sided telephone conversation as narrative in JR. This new writing technique effectively fulfils the systematic functions of rapid spatial shifts, disguising the true identity, insinuating American colonial expansion and stimulating readers’ imagination. By employing this narrative strategy, Gaddis satirizes how an invisible capitalist business with conspiracy is constructed and how American society is eroded and hollowed by information technology. The telephonic narrative reflects the postmodern narrative mode and its writing strategy of de-centeredness, anti-hierarchy, anti-totality, pluralism and heterogeneity. Moreover, this individual narrative, which carries strong characteristics of the era, reflects the social significance of writing, forming a new pattern to demonstrate how literature tries to pursue the ultimate value of writing in the context of postmodernism.