What a wonderful world this is-reading Thomas? 9? 9 Pinchin's "Five" Dai Congrong in American history, the 1960 s was called the era of "moral decay" and was considered to be the most out of control, daring, arrogant and unruly era in the 20 th century. Birth control pills, miniskirts and sexual liberation appeared at that time. At the same time, the black civil rights movement, anti-war and freedom of speech on campus were also staged in that era. It should be said that no matter how bizarre and shocking that era was, no matter what kind of reflection and repentance this generation made to the past when it matured, this history has left a deep imprint on American culture. To understand contemporary American culture, we must be familiar with this turbulent era. Thomas? 9? Pynchon's V. is a work that shows American youth's counterculture. Although the story happened in the 1950s, the spirit of the characters in the works is actually closer to the 1960s because of the artist's sensitivity to the social development trend. In V, Pynchon founded a group called "The Whole Sick Gang". As can be seen from the name, the members of this group are losers and frustrated people who are divorced from the orthodox social track. They are regarded as morbid, mentally ill or living dead by a society that advocates success and power. Most of the characters in Pynchon's works are all kinds of "losers". Although he doesn't praise them, it shows that he at least doesn't think these losers are as inferior as society thinks. Therefore, some critics believe that Pynchon "is the greatest writer who describes those who are neglected and abandoned." By describing them, he questioned the ideas that we often accept without criticism. Those ideas are valuable, worthless, commendable and should be abandoned. "In addition to the strange record owner Rooney? 9? 9 Vinson Wood (Vinson Wood just mixed in the "All Sick Gang" as the husband of the female writer Mefia, and finally tried to jump out of the window in despair), the members of the "All Sick Gang" in "Five" are unsuccessful artists or women who are keen on sex. In other words, they all obey instinctive desires, rather than being supported by interests. The connivance of instinctive desire was regarded as self-loyalty and rebellion against utilitarian society at that time. Because they only act according to their own wishes, their behavior has a crazy color, and it is also doomed to their failure in this world. The painter Slaber is very talented, but he only paints Danish cheese cakes; Mephia is smart enough to create a world, but she can't extricate herself from her fictional world; Trumpeter Sofia has been playing and recording, but she has always stayed at the lower level of society; Playwright Raul writes plays for TV, but he is obsessed with westerns and detective novels. Esther had plastic surgery, but she became the lover of the man who hurt her body; Feargus? 9? Lydean, a mixer, can make exquisite circuits, but he buries them under his own skin. However, just when Prufein insisted that he was a "fool"? 9? 9 167? 9? Just like Wan Fang's data, which insists on being a "useless" fool, the loser of the "all-sick gang" who insists on personal instinct and desire is more human and warm than the "useful" alienated by power and interests, which is highlighted by Esther's going to Brazil for abortion and the members of the "all-sick gang" taking out cash to raise enough money for the trip. For such a group of people, Pynchon felt both sympathy and sorrow for them, because he thought they had not created anything of value. Through the eyes of Egan Valu, a dentist, the book profoundly reveals the essence of "all-sick gang", or the lack of creativity of young people in the United States in the 1950s and 1960s: "If they are all vagrants, but they are still providing valuable art and ideas for society, well, that would be great. ..... However, they achieved nothing but talk, and they didn't talk very well. Some people, such as Slaber, did what they claimed: produced tangible works. But what is this? Danish cheese cake. Or this skill is of great significance to the skill-catatonia. Or a poor imitation of someone else's work. About art, that's all. What about thoughts? The whole pathological gang has developed a simple expression in which they can state their useful fantasies. The dialogue in Rust Spoon Bar has become a proper noun, literary allusion, criticism or philosophical term related in some way. Whether you are smart or stupid depends on how you arrange and combine the "building blocks" you have. Their "in" or "out" depends on the reaction of others. However, the number of building blocks is limited. There is no doubt, brother, he said to himself, if there are no other primitive people, they will be defeated one day. What happens after that? What is this? This arrangement is decadent, and after exhausting all possible arrangements and combinations, it is death. "Death is the end of Pynchon's arrangement for these bohemian groups, which makes him and? 9? 9 168? 9? For example, Benjamin affirmed Bohemian artists in the lyrics of the developed capitalist era. An important reason for the difference between the two is Pynchon's own pessimistic view of the world. Pynchon tells a story in the book, which is actually a fable for the world: on a ship that has been seriously tilted and sunk, both the captain and the sailor died, leaving only the next sailor to slowly sink with the ship, and he has been painting the ship in the process. In Pynchon's view, the world, like this sinking ship, will eventually go to destruction. People think they are working hard, but in fact, the whole society, including the "all-sick gang", is just like that sailor, but it is useless to whitewash the hopeless reality. Using such a group of people as the background of the story to express the social club fully embodies Pynchon's view of the world he lives in, and thus can understand why Pynchon took a firm non-intervention stance towards this society at this stage. In this context, Pynchon shaped two attitudes towards life through two clues: one is the passive lifestyle represented by Pu Lu Fen; One is the man who actively seeks the ultimate meaning of life, represented by Stancil, who keeps tracking V. These two attitudes towards life are related to two different world views, the latter believes that there is an ultimate clue, reason or purpose in the world; The former thinks that everything is irrelevant and accidental, while man is a yo-yo thrown into this absurd world. Prufein has always called himself a yo-yo. The so-called "yo-yo" is a person who swings mechanically without purpose and meaning. For example, Pruffen sat in the subway, swinging back and forth between two terminals, and actually didn't go any further. His life is not towards a certain peak or goal, or even pursuing vagrancy itself like the beat generation on the road. He just repeated it mechanically, without any meaning or will. Although Proufen can't say that he enjoys this situation, he doesn't resist it, but takes a resigned attitude and accepts the inescapable reality. At the end of the book, Brenda, one of Pruffen's girlfriends, tries to explain this life in a positive way, saying that after all, the swing between various points has made Pruffen gain experience, but Pruffen's answer is, "I learned nothing in fucking East Wan Fang data and West". In other words, this is a completely meaningless absurd existence with no experience at all. Pruffen's "yo-yo" lifestyle is a conscious choice to some extent, but it is fundamentally passive, because Pruffen has come to this step because he knows that "inanimate objects cannot live in peace with him", and he will always accidentally hurt himself or be attacked by an inanimate world. In Pynchon's view, the whole world is moving towards materialization and lifelessness step by step. Living in such a materialized world, even if Proufen is willing to live in harmony with it, he is doomed to failure, which can be seen from his separation from society and his being thrown back to the original track again and again. By the end of the novel, he still has no job and is alone in a strange world, just like at the beginning. Interestingly, however, he is a "useless" chubby man with small eyes, but he is the object of admiration of women in the book. Pynchon didn't explain this point, but from the plot in the book, we can generally infer that the reason why Proffen can't be in harmony with this world is because he has more people's things, and women love his humanity. Love is Pinchin's tenderness for this materialized world, but this kind of love is alienated into Rachel's masturbation on her sports car, or five or six times a night as Mephia explained. In the novel, a girl named Fina tried to lead a group of young people who claimed to be playboys to purity with love, but they gang raped her in the end. Love is distorted in this materialized world, so Proffen rejects love like a useful life. Compared with Prufein, Stancil, the protagonist of another clue, chose to actively pursue the fundamental secret of life. He believes that the secret lies in the mysterious woman named V.V. in the book, first of all, a woman who keeps changing her identity and name: 1899, Victoria? 9? 9 Ryan's name appeared in Italy. 19 13 years, she was gay in France. 19 19, she was named Veronica? 9? Mangani's name appeared in Malta. 1922 He called himself Vera? 9? May Tam appeared in southwest Africa. 1942, as a bad priest disguised as a man, she died in an air raid in Malta. V has also left its own shadow in many other places. It seems to exist in many different states, such as Veronica, the mother mouse that Father Weifulin fell in love with in the sewer, or a mysterious country called Visu, or the V-shaped brown spots on the plate being scrubbed by the German waitress, or two colliding vector lines, which represent the infinite extension into the distance in space ... All these make V "an extraordinary concept of dispersion". This dispersion makes her not so much a figure with a specific history and position in the book as a symbol, just like her abstract abbreviation, which is a universal generalization. Stancil finally found that V actually symbolizes that the world "gradually becomes lifeless" and represents the law that the world tends to materialization and death. In the book, the more politicized she is, the more intrigued she is, which corresponds to the unbalanced state that an era is "often more insidious and weak" at the end stage; Her wig, false teeth, artificial eyes, artificial feet and sapphire inlaid on her navel also reflect the materialization of her or the world. V's tendency of materialization and nothingness means the disillusionment of Stancil's attitude towards life. Just like his father's pursuit of Vesu, he finally found that everything was just a flashy and empty dream, and the world was just a painted shipwreck. From the angle of utilitarian society, Stanhill, like Lu Fen, is not a "useful" person and indulges in an ideal with no use value. Stancil represents the self-seeking side of youth's counterculture, but in Pynchon's view, it is also hopeless. Pynchon uses the jumping combination of time and space, multiple perspectives from the protagonist to the bystander, regardless of priority-and each perspective has its own name and psychological depth, forming a kaleidoscopic picture of the times. There is no unified plot and the ultimate meaning of consistency in traditional literature in "V", only messy fragments and unproductive constant agitation. This modern narrative form subverts the rules of traditional narrative and the connotation of meaning, value and order contained in history, and directly throws readers into a neon-like world. From a philosophical point of view, what is the situation of the characters in the works? 9? Wanfang data is not only the product of the relationship between politics and power in an era, but also rises to the universal living environment of human beings, which is what many researchers think is the "theory of heat death of the universe." The theory of "hot dead universe" is a controversial physical viewpoint based on the thermodynamic concept of "entropy", which holds that in an isolated and closed system, the entropy value will only increase rather than decrease, and when the entropy reaches the maximum, the energy that can be converted into work is equal to zero. In other words, in the isolated and closed system of the universe, with the increase of entropy, energy can't be converted into work eventually, so the universe will move towards eternal death and balance, which is the thermal silence of the universe. Choosing the laws of physics to summarize all social phenomena is not only related to Pynchon's experience in science and engineering at Cornell University, but also obviously influenced by the philosophical tendency of social phenomena in modernist literature, which makes all the characters in V follow the same laws of the universe and move towards chaos and nothingness, regardless of their attitudes. At the same time, among all kinds of physical theories built around entropy, Pynchon only chose the theory of "thermal silence" which was regarded as absurd, which undoubtedly reflected the pessimism in the later period of hippie culture development and filled the whole book with an inescapable sense of nothingness. However, it should be noted that in the 1990s, with the change of western philosophical perspective, Pynchon's world outlook also changed, which is reflected in his book Vineyard. First of all, he no longer thinks that society follows universal philosophical rules and regulations, but regards it as the result of implicit arrangement of rules and regulations by political power; Secondly, he no longer thinks that this result cannot be changed, but insists that there are different forces in society, which are not from groups that are in direct confrontation with the ruling power, but from another culture (oriental culture in vineyards), which can bring new hope to society. The change of Pynchon's world outlook from philosophy to political perspective can also be seen from the preface he recently wrote for Orville's political novel 1984. From this perspective, The Vineyard is closer to the postmodern political and social view, while V is more modernist. However, this difference is only the difference in perspective and position. In art, "V" jumps to a dazzling picture with real and frightening brushstrokes, showing the most out of control, boldest, wildest and most unruly life in the United States in the 1950s and 1960s. [Author: Chinese Department of Fudan University] (Editor: Cheng Shu) Zhao Biography} Zhao Biography} Zhao Biography} Zhao Biography} Zhao Biography} Zhao Biography} Zhao Biography} Zhao Biography} Zhao Biography} Zhao Poison. 9? 9 Atwood studies Jun Fu, Margaret? 9? Atwood is a Canadian writer who enjoys a certain reputation internationally in recent years. She has many excellent works and won numerous awards. Known as the "Queen of Canadian Literature", she is a hot figure in literary circles at home and abroad. The new work "Crake and Antelope" has aroused great repercussions with its bold imagination and forward-looking awareness of environmental protection. On the basis of consulting a large number of domestic and foreign research materials, this book comprehensively expounds and analyzes the international Atwood research from two aspects: life and works. It is an academic work representing the latest progress of Atwood research in China, with rich materials, rigorous textual research and novel perspectives. In addition, the book has vivid language and vivid details, which is a simple reading for literature lovers to understand writers and works. ? 9? 9 170? 9? 90,000 Fang data