I began my life cheerfully

I'm looking forward to a writer, had better be a female writer, she was different with others, she is writing a book to write a book, relaxation and wit, agile and enthusiasm, simple, said she had seen the world, see the world, seen the heart, but is not the scare, one day, she decided to use novel magic, with fictional muti alms, let the reader to joy and cheer, relieves stress, antidote, After reading the last page and closing the book, readers can "happily embark on my life." It's not easy to do that. It's really not easy.

I started reading Muriel Spark this spring. Her novel, "Anxiety," had been bought for some time, sitting on the coffee table alongside biographies of Margaret Yousenard and Beauvoir's "Love of Men," books or biographies of Hardy, Philip Roth and Kundera. If the characters visit each other at night, and the author and the author talk when they huddle together, then Fleur, the heroine of "Anxiety", who is dear to my heart, must have seen through Beauvoir's self-deception, Uthenal's abuse, Philip Roth's arrogance and Kundera's hypocrisy, She could go back to her cramped one-bedroom apartment in Kensington, London, in 1950, and lean on her bed and write and write, making ridiculous stories about people she had seen and seen. This is not to say that Muriel Spark is a mean writer, adept at practical jokes and capable of tearing down many masks. Mask drop is only the first step, some funny, some irony, but in the before and after the first step, Muriel, parker already think good beginning and ending, her from the past to the future, and from the future back at first, so just have that laughter, that know life take tears of comedy impression and the fortunately, let all people will betray oneself pen, "not only is to betray oneself, More, more." I think she is one of those writers who thinks everything over long before she writes, and when she does, she writes quickly, almost at once. In her books, every character, no matter how big or small or how long she appears, has a vivid picture of her life's vicissitudes, joys and sorrows. As a result, her narrative is very fluid, moving through time like lightning, waiting to strike the reader. She is unambiguous and often reveals the plot ahead of time, and the story often begins with moments of power that seem mundane but only become apparent to the full reader. In this light, lonely, even overly quiet scene, the hero has just taken the dragon by the throat, so to speak. In the beginning of "holding", for example, the hero she wrote poems in the cemetery, the scene to mediocrity, she's just doing her usual like one of a number of things, and came to the cemetery, the cemetery is nothing special in itself, even just one of many of the forgotten moment in her life, but the writer tells us that the matter at the moment, Fleur, sitting here, has accomplished something in her life, and she will never be the same again. Fleur herself, at the beginning of the story, knows and doesn't quite know all this. Muriel Sparks often chooses to tell the story after the dust settles, but often tells you directly what will happen decades from now, so what seemed ordinary decades ago is extraordinary. Isn't that life? Intuition is more sensitive than logic most of the time, and truth, and what it brings and what it loses, is often a matter of hindsight.

About life, no matter how simple people have something to say. And if it comes to life events, then ordinary life can also spin a few golden threads like silk. But the meaning and interest of the novel is not in these dry truths, which are hard to find or knock at the door. To knock or not to knock, to go away or to stay, the novel is in these wandering, choice, gain and loss, insight and renunciation, that is life itself. Muriel Spark wrote her book the same way. In many cases, she even obscures and obscures the harsh, even brutal moral imperative behind her ambiguous life stories. However, this practice further unleashing the reader's perception and imagination.

Like these sentences THAT I love:

"I don't know why I think of Dodi as a friend, but that's the way it is. I believe she considers me a friend, too, even though she doesn't like me. In those days, I was dealing with people who were destined to have friends. They're like your heavy coat and a little luggage. You don't throw them away just because you don't like them very much. Life on the fringes of the intellectual circle in 1949 was an isolated world, much like eastern Europe is now."

"For years, critics have asked if Wallender was in love with his nephew. How could I possibly know? Warren Chase doesn't exist. He's just hundreds of words, punctuation marks, sentences, paragraphs, and imprints on pages. If I were doing psychological research on what made Warren Chase tick, I'd say yes. But I don't study motivation. I never have."

I don't think I've ever liked so many characters in one novel. I don't like Vollensky, I don't like Anna, I don't like Juansheng, I don't like Zijun. Even my favorite, Huckleberry Finn, SOMETIMES I don't like him very much. Some scholars say that the characters in modern novels are impossible for readers to really like, let alone want to be, and this is the hidden disease of modern novels, because people are broken, broken, and turned into beetles. But the curious thing is that I can say I love both dodi and Warren Chase in the two quotes above. Love their inconsistencies, love their smarts, love their jealousy and madness and evil and death, love them as I have known people.

I wondered how Muriel Spark did it. How can she make me, a critical reader, have nothing to say about the things and people in the book, feel light when the curtain falls, and want to hum home and lie down in a soft bed and have a good dream. In fact, she also revealed a bit, for example, she said in the book, "I write poetry and prose not to make people think I am a good person, but to make my words express true and magical thoughts, and when I write, words are just like that for me. I love the sound I make when I'm working, and I don't know what not to say about that. I will tell all the relevant facts."

So it's just, it's real. But the reality of the presentation has the wit of Woolf, the courage of Flannery O 'Connor, and Katherine Mansfield's highly precise probe that quivers constantly on the dial of lust, morality, and ethics.

Muriel Spark seems to be writing about important people and things without a heart, and sometimes it's so light, even careless, that it can be bitter -- only people who have been hurt and know the truth can joke about people and things that have hurt them. The truth, after all, is that there are no absolute victims. If a man persists in believing that he is a pure victim, it is either out of cowardice or stupidity. Muriel Spark certainly exposes the hearts of those who are evil, and exposes them more, and more, but she also exposes herself in fiction to the fullest extent possible. This exposure is not confessional, it is not self-fiction, it is not narcissistic hypocrisy, it is espresso against the bottom of the cup, stripped of emotional froth, bitter but full of Epiphany metaphor.

After I read "Anxious," I went on to read her other books, "Old Kensington," "Driving Seat," "Miss Brody." Miss Brody is perfect, The Driver is laissez-faire, and Once Upon a Time in Kensington is good. But I still like Deliberate best. Because it's full of sentences like:

"It was the last day of a period of my life, but I didn't know it then."

"I'm in good shape. I don't have a job. It could have been frustrating, but rationally, it was fine. Greedy landlords don't matter..."

"At that time, I had some great friends, good and bad. I was almost penniless, but full of spirit..."

And because it's a novel about the struggle for writing rights. The centerpiece of the story is a manuscript. Fleur, a little-known novelist struggling on the "fringes of fetid literary circles," had her manuscript stolen. Publishers claimed to have been threatened or insinuated by prominent and influential figures, tore up publishing contracts, and maliciously created the appearance of missing manuscripts. This is a kind of destruction. A despicable attempt to kill the truth. Not just a sheet of paper, but the words, words and ideas in it. "If you don't take action, you'll never get your novel back."

But it's not just that the manuscript was stolen or plagiarized. Fleur writes to break the curse and save herself. Her opponent could be seen as the devil incarnate. They have power, they manipulate people, they're shameless bastards. But more importantly, dear Fleur, what kind of life do you want to live?

"I began to think about the atrocities dodi, Sir Quentin, Levison Doe, all these people did to me and my novel."

"I immediately decided to stop thinking. That's it. Get over it."

"Then, as always, when I was meditating, a plan of action came into my head."

Fleur made her move, unlike when she was writing her novel from the start. When she realized what she was up against, she wrote with even more determination. She fought back by writing fiction, in which reality and fiction intertwine, and the characters in reality come to their end as they are written in fiction. I appreciate the wisdom of reality and the fiction of reality. It is not black and white, but a judgment, a determination, a will. "I am an artist, and it is a conviction that I have not wavered from then and from now on. So, on that September day in 1949, as I stood on the road in Hyde Park, three facts miraculously converged on me, and I moved on, happy."

Someone dies. The bad guy wins the first round. The situation seems to be getting out of hand. But in those corners beyond the main story line, something is changing. Freire had partners, several equally determined, almost passionate supporters. In the novel, these people are all living their own lives, soli, Edwina, and parts of Wally, as if they were duplicating their lives in the game, enjoying the minutes, the smaller, more real ones, out of the glare of the plot. They don't bluff, they don't see things as bad, they don't see things as rosy, they value facts. The occasional shout in front of Fleur was just a show to amuse himself. They're more action oriented, just like Fleur. They were the ones who helped Fleur change the ending. So the wicked died. Must die. Death is the beginning of the novel, is the end of the wicked. There was no emotional reaction to this outcome. They knew it. It was more like testing yourself -- what you are doing, what you are choosing, is your life itself.

I often listen to What Are You Doing The Rest Of Your Life, a song that Bill Evans recorded live in Berlin in 1972. There were moments this spring when I should have asked myself the sentence in the song's title, but I didn't. I just wake up at six in the morning, sit down at my desk, turn on my computer, and write my novel. The characters are waiting for me. When I get tired of writing, I stop. Food, trifles, meaningless but important things, family, waiting for me. The next day, the next, day by day, I lived my life. Then spring ends, Dragon Boat Festival hanging mugwort calamus. I walked to the pavement of the neighborhood, looked up at the long lost unobstructed sky and sun, and reached out for something unknown.

"I thought about what I'd have for dinner: canned herring roe on toast, instant coffee and milk. It was a good dinner for Lady Edwina's age, and for me, too. Canned herring roe and coffee were my little treasures in a time when food was strictly rationed."

The blockade is over.

I reread "Deliberate" with pleasure. As a reminder, I reread the last sentence several times: "Thus came MY prime years, and since then, Blessed by God, I have walked on life's path."