“思考者的嗜好”:论威廉·戈尔丁的小说创作思想

“A Thinker’s Hobby”:Perspectives on William Golding’s Ideas of Novel Writing/DU Fei

自威廉·戈尔丁半个多世纪前成名至今,国内外学界一直对其保持较高的研究热情。学界研究视野大多聚焦该作家作品本身,侧重主题阐释、写作技法和平行比较等维度,而对戈尔丁的小说创作思想一直缺乏细致剖析,鲜见专论。其实,对于小说艺术本质和小说家的使命、如何突破传统影响进行创新写作、读者之于作家作品的意义等问题,戈尔丁均提出过一些可圈可点的见解,散见于相关文集、访谈录及传记等文献。戈尔丁认为,小说是“讲故事”的技艺,小说家作为“讲故事的人”应以故事叙写宏大人类经验,即人之为何以及人类在宇宙中的地位,这是小说创作的终极意义。戈尔丁从古希腊剧作和英国小说传统中寻找素材来源,获得创作灵感,更以“反拨性实验”力行差异写作,主张小说家打破常规创作个性化作品;他提醒小说家重视开篇写作技巧和动态人物塑造,以此吸引和掌控读者,实现读者在阅读中的“本能合谋”。上述小说创作思想是戈尔丁进行文学创作的根本内驱力,在其写作实践中得到明确体现,最终生成了英国文学史上独树一帜的小说作品。深入研究戈尔丁小说创作理念有助于完善现有研究成果,激发后续研究兴趣,从而达成对这位经典作家作品的创新解读。

William Golding has long been favored by the academia at home and abroad since he got fame in the literary circle over half a century ago. However, it is Golding’s works themselves that have mainly been targeted and studied by the critics from the perspectives of theme interpretation, writing techniques and parallel studies, whereas his notions of novel writing have always been underestimated and rarely discussed in a special article. Actually, Golding did propose some commendable opinions on the nature of novels, the mission of novelists, the innovative writing free of the influence of literary tradition, and the relations between readers and writers as well as their works, as can be summarized on the basis of a systematic and meticulous study of Golding’s essays, interviews and biography. William Golding stresses that a novel is about the technique of “story-telling”, and a novelist, as a “story-teller”, should convey through story abstract human experience beyond rational explanation, i.e., what man is under the eyes of heaven and man’s position in the universe. Golding obtains literary sources and inspiration from ancient Greek dramas and English novel tradition;furthermore, he practices original writing with series of “reactive experiments”, and suggests that a novelist overcome literary conventions and make his own voice heard. He warns that a novelist should improve the first page quality and create characters in change to catch and control the readers and achieve “instinctive complicity” in their reading. Golding’s ideas of novel writing provide strong momentum for his literary composition as clearly exemplified by his novels, a group of original works in the English literature history. A study of Golding’s ideas of novel writing in depth and detail will not only update the current Golding scholarship, but stimulate new ideas for future research and facilitate more creative study of this classical writer and his works.