the scientist

Everyone has their own way of measuring the world. The scale of measurement may be emotion or rationality. Chen Baiyu's way of measuring the world through words has always been very accurate, from the emotional sadness in "The Bubble Man" to the emotional sadness in "mini me" Exquisite and interesting, this time he has transformed into a little scientist in the literary world, and released two volumes of essays at the same time. Like the cover glass and slide under a microscope, everything is concretely and micro-magnified, showing different postures that seem real and illusory.

The first volume, "Cover Glass," writes about childhood and growth in purely lyrical prose, and also examines the author's writing origins. The narrative is similar to "In Search of Lost Time". The detailed description makes readers almost have the illusion that they are reading about their own childhood. Just as Proust believed that people can only form "real life" in their memories. Irrefutable. In the article, while examining talent, family relationships, and memory, he also experimented with writing forms. Among them, "Another Language" was recognized by the "Jiu Ge 108 Prose Selection".

The second volume, "Slides," not only answers the author's examination of his childhood aspirations, confirms his "talent for writing," but also shows another side of creative nonfiction writing: that is, reviews, interviews, and other in-between style. In these chapters, the author's voice and personal experience are not hidden under the material, but are discussed and mixed with it, forming a kind of open field between the critic (interviewer) and the work (interviewee) between. The selection and arrangement of the comments in the second volume can also be seen as echoes and supplements to the content in the previous volume.

The "Scientist" book series presents a collection of essays, reviews, and interviews at the same time, posing another question to readers - how do creation and criticism compete with each other or sew together? Chen Baiyu uses "Frankenstein" as a metaphor: Due to the misappropriation (and misdirection) of translation and film adaptation, people often refer to Mary. The title of Shelley's Frankenstein is taken as the name of the monster, but in fact it belongs to the scientist who created it, Victor. All owned by Frankenstein. Victor used the dead body parts collected from everywhere to sew them up and gave them electric shocks to create an artificial life. Meanwhile, outside the story, the scientist and the monster compete for a name (and the monster seems to be victorious?). This well-designed experiment not only produced a "chemical reaction" but also showed an "independent spirit" when the slides of prose and the slides of comments were carried by each other in "The Scientist".