Shimada Sō ji

A personal letter of appreciation to Soji Shimada.

-As an anti-"new style" reader-

Taking reading a poem as an example, we may feel or read the author's life background or life times, hobbies, desires, worries, fears … and even thoughts. It is not only a poem, but also an "entertainment" novel that concentrates the author's thoughts and goes all out to write. But the "interpretation" in this case, in the final analysis, may mostly be the reader's unilateral approval, or a far-fetched and self-righteous conclusion.

Even so, a novel that tries to please readers while condensing its own thoughts, in another sense, is far more complicated than poetry, and it is difficult to read it so deeply. In this respect, my essay may also have self-righteous elements. What's more, I was once criticized by U, the editor-in-chief of the Speech Club, which is responsible for digging up new Gur writers, as "I saw Miss Lingling's explanation last time. What is that? What a terrible article. " I am an openly depraved evil writer (that is, what a casual critic I am. No, it seems that he didn't mean "article" at that time, but used the word "composition".

However, fear of misunderstanding and criticism will only lead to nothing, so I want to start with my experience of reading Soji Shimada.

The first time I came into contact with Teru Shimada's works was "Three-point Killing of the Northern Night Crane". Then I quickly read the first two books of Gifford series, Sleeper Express Hayabusa 1/60-second Wall and Izumo Legend 7/8 Murder. As for the Kiyoshi Mitarai series headed by the famous book Astrology in Trouble, I came into contact with it very late.

However, it's nothing special, it's completely personal. When Astrology in Trouble was published, I was busy with the operation and establishment of the Japanese Adventure Fiction Association and the Japanese Adventure Writers Club, and I hardly had time to read other novels. (hmm ... the result is still like making excuses. ) I don't know if it is lucky or unfortunate. In retrospect, to be honest, I still think that writers living in the same era should try to read them in the order of publication. At least for me, because I read the Gifu series first, I almost seriously think that the writer Soji Shimada (of course, I have heard many comments about him everywhere) is a person who writes tourist mystery novels and likes to design large-scale and dramatic tricks.

However, after I came into contact with the Kiyoshi Mitarai series, this idea changed a lot. This feeling is even stronger when reading the book "The Crime of Inclined Rooms".

As for the reason, from the conclusion, when I got the book and saw "Melancholy" quoted by Baudelaire at the beginning, I first "understood" what the writer wanted to express, or the ideal form of mystery novel in his mind. Of course, there are quotations from Potter's mask at the beginning of the second act, and quotations from Poe in the third act.

After obtaining so many road signs (judging materials), we can at least get a general idea of what the author's goal is and how to capture the author's ideal.

This is because Baudelaire is the only one who introduced the charm of Edgar Allan Poe to Europe and integrated the spirit of Edgar Allan Poe and achieved something.

Paul Yerelli is a great poet. He studied under Stephane Mallarme and fell in love with Poe at the same time. He once said: "If Baudelaire is not lucky enough to discover a new world of knowledge from Poe's works, he may just be a good opponent of Theophil Gott, or a great general and a great dancer." (Quoted from "Baudelaire's Position" in The Evil China).

Valery once described Poe as a clear magic, a genius of analysis, an inventor who combined logic with imagination, mystery and accurate estimation in a new and attractive way, an extraordinary psychologist, and a literary technician who was good at using various artistic resources ... He described the relationship between Poe and Baudelaire as "a magical contact between two spirits" and regarded it as the most influential event in the history of literature.

Note: Baudelaire: charles baudelaire, a French poet, a pioneer of symbolism and a representative of artistic supremacy and decadence.

Note: Edgar Allan Poe, an American poet and novelist, is good at writing short detective stories and music poems under the influence of English romanticism.

Note:/kloc-A school of French poetry in the second half of the 9th century.

Also describing the relationship between Baudelaire and Poe is the German philosopher Walter Ban Ming Jie, who is known as the God of artistic criticism. He once evaluated Baudelaire's The Evil China as "three decisive elements in a scattered detective novel." .

"Victims and the crime scene (martyred daughter), murder (murdered wine), and the public (last night's dusk). What he lacks is the fourth element: being able to break away from the passionate atmosphere with intellectuality. Baudelaire doesn't write detective stories because according to his character, he can't be integrated with detectives. " (Quoted from Paris of the Second Reich where Baudelaire lived).

Indeed, the protagonist in Poe's novels is not a criminal, but a detective. However, Baudelaire devoted his whole life to describing worthless people who can't get rid of the corners of society and the dark areas of metropolis, so as to express his feelings.

However, it was later discovered that it was also influenced by the storyteller wandering in the streets of London described by Edgar Allan Poe in The Crowd (this is also a kind of detective), which has become a conclusion in modern times. That is, the metropolis loner in Poe's book, one of the "special" forms of human beings-wanderer. Poe turned him into a detective, but Baudelaire thought he was an idle man. In the era of terror when everyone can be a schemer (Paris in the Second Empire was like this), anyone can play the role of a detective. However, Baudelaire called himself an "observer" and a "stealth emperor". Benjamin pointed out keenly that "the fundamental social connotation hidden in detective novels is the disappearance of personal traces from the groups in metropolis." But even if they are all "people in groups", Poe regards them as detectives, while Baudelaire regards vagrants as criminals, which makes a decisive difference.

So, what's the situation in Soji Shimada? For example, in "City of Fire", the person who was burned to death, a worker in the crowd, was only described as "the loneliness of the hut gradually became morbid", while as for the criminal policeman Nakamura who followed the prisoner, he emphasized that "Nakamura stood alone outside these people". When he writes about prisoners, most of them are ordinary members of society. Although they will feel lonely among the masses, the motive for committing crimes is a stronger obsession. In other words, we can see at least three patterns and character types.

"The masses are not vagrants." Benjamin said. "Among the masses, paranoid actions will be more dominant than cold-blooded measures. On the contrary, we can infer from the masses how the homeless will react if they are deprived of their environment. " In other words, since most people must concentrate on their own careers, only those who are out of social norms can wander around the city. At the same time, giving the masses a soul is what these vagrants really care about.

Give the masses a soul. When thinking about the meaning of this sentence, readers should be able to get a glimpse of what kind of person mitarai himself belongs to in this metropolis, what kind of person the criminals he is pursuing belong to, and what are their motives for committing crimes in the Kiyoshi Mitarai series, including this book. The missing prisoner in astrology in trouble; I forgot my man in "The Knight of the Foreign Countries" and mitarai who found him ... Of course, the same is true in this book. Porter quoted in the preface and the second act is simply a message from homeless prisoners. On the other hand, Poe quoted in the third act can also be regarded as the response of homeless detectives.

Yes, Soji Shimada has created a brand-new world of characters and works, both of which are vagrants.

Poe is the root of his creation. Francois Fosca, in his book History and Skills of Mystery Novels, listed the rules he invented in Poe's mystery novels as follows:

First, at first glance, the theme event is an unsolved mystery.

Two, a character or most characters-at the same time or continuously-because the evidence points to him at the first glance, and is mistaken for a prisoner.

Third, the witness's testimony, material and psychological observation and inference made by strict methods defeated the impatience theory. Analysts don't tell fortune, they use inference and observation.

Four, fully in line with the facts of the case, have been expected in advance.

The more unusual the incident, the easier it is to solve the case.

6. What remains after excluding all the insoluble elements, though hard to believe at first glance, is the correct answer.

This concept of Edgar Allan Poe was also mentioned by Soji Shimada in Bengel's declaration of mystery novels.

First, the beginning should show "mystery with fantasy and strong charm", "mystery with poetic aesthetic feeling" and "mystery with attractive aesthetic feeling".

Second, it must be "logic" and "thinking".

At first glance, the two are completely contradictory, but it is enough to prove Poe's greatness. Poe personally opened up a new field of literature-an unsolvable field. In other words, he let the story develop in two directions. Of course, some parts of literature describe the most primitive savage impulse-"fear" hidden in indescribable uneasiness. The other direction is the "reasoning" part based on logical methodology.

It suddenly occurred to me here that until today, whether mystery novels are literature or not is still in dispute. However, in my humble opinion, this point has long been self-evident in Poe's novels.

Poe's novels cover traditional literary methods and new means of logical methods-these two vectors are completely opposite. Just take one side and judge whether it is "Wen" or "Li". Frankly speaking, it is not mature at all.

For example, andre gide thinks that "literature" should be something that makes readers change from the heart after meeting them. From this definition, Baudelaire changed because he read Poe's poems and novels, so how to describe many writers under Baudelaire? In a sense, this may be a very naive and short-sighted idea, but I still can't erase this doubt.

Speaking of which, some young writers have recently talked about their works with the inexplicable argument that "mystery novels are novels written for killing people". For this writer, it doesn't matter whether there are only killed characters, you can argue irrationally. There is no need to describe such a character. Describe it when necessary, but don't describe it because it is not necessary. In my opinion, it can only be said that he has neither writing ability nor writing skills, and it is correct not to write. In addition, the poorer young writers write such articles, the more they will forget their own shortcomings and have the cheek to say something like "at the age of thirty, I began to think about death". The article can reflect people's inner essence and is worth pondering.

When and where did mystery novels start to be so distorted? A contemporary woman writer in her twenties, who specializes in children's mystery novels, told the editor that she wanted to write Andre Vaxx's Buck series novels, and the editor would agree: "As long as you have imagination, of course you can write that kind of thing."

It seems that my topic is beside the point. Cut the gossip. In a word, many writers were called successors of Poe in the past, and I'm afraid there will be many more in the future. However, at least at present-if this condition is added, only Soji Shimada is qualified to be called so.

"On the one hand, it uses logical explanation to explain all mysteries, and at the same time it allows super-logical, empty and unacceptable explanations." French reasoning writer Paul &; Nars Jack said so.

"Real mystery novels must allow double interpretation. On the one hand, it is a logical explanation, on the other hand, it is a poetic and vague explanation. Both of them are effective at the same time and complement each other. They are full of humanity and dehumanization, that is, they take care of the magical but double-meaning essence. "

I am not the only one. I think this conclusion is also influenced by Poe's duality. And Soji Shimada perfectly displayed the ideas of these sages and their "tomorrow's novels" that they failed to complete. Just looking at the crystal pyramid is enough to have a comprehensive understanding of this. On the one hand, he completely maintains the attitude of logical explanation, and at the same time, people feel the romance of persistent exploration of mysteries between the lines.

It is not only a logic that can be explained by mathematics, science and machinery, but also gives readers a sense of wonder. Just like when I was a child, I suddenly looked up at the starry sky and saw the stars shining all over the sky, and then I realized that it took a long time for the stars to reach the earth.

One more thing. Soji Shimada never forgot the unity of imagination in Poe's novels. Gaston Bacheller also fairly pointed out in Water and Dreams that the images that dominate Poe's poetics are the dying mother, the heavy water and the blood of the earth.

I wonder if you have noticed that in Soji Shimada's works, there are images of water everywhere. It even weaves his personal theory of civilization into the text that civilization will eventually be submerged. In this regard, on the one hand, he used pure fear-fear of murder, accompanied by consternation around him-on the other hand, he used the so-called adult fear, that is, fear of setbacks. In other words, I am afraid that civilization will be denied and the world will eventually perish. Soji Shimada, like Poe and Baudelaire, used "water" to describe this double fear.

Indeed-if you want to be far-fetched, you can almost say that-for example, in the Leaning Tower of the Ice Float Pavilion in this book, the grass reflects the golden light of the sunset, perhaps because He Deling (note: Friedrich H?lderlin, 1770- 1843, a famous German lyric poet) transplanted the form of Greek classical poetry into German. The last thirty-six years of life were spent in insanity. ) I was shut up in Huangta after I got sick. This is the most suitable place for people who are tired of civilization to live. ..... I even thought of this.

Although there is still a lot to write, let's stop here.

I just want to say again that this is purely my business, but please don't "recommend" it again, ok?

If you want to write the reason, it involves a lot, so this time I just ask you purely. However, I still hope that one day there will be a "real" writer worthy of Soji Shimada's recommendation. Even if I write a weird or deformed architectural reasoning novel, regardless of the content of the work and the author's own attitude, the only thing I can't stand is the writer who insists on this nonsense theory that doesn't matter as long as it doesn't violate the law.

You can describe any illegal building, as long as it is true on paper. The problem is that I hope the writer can think about his attitude towards mystery novels. At this point, I really hope that Master Soji Shimada can teach them.

Anyway, Soji Shimada is special to me-I think he is a writer who really inherited Poe. I believe this view is correct, and my understanding of this book as a "modern murder case in Mog Street" will not change.

Commentary/Meikou Sheng Yuan

1June, 992