從《長恨歌》立碑以來,王安憶繼承了張愛玲弄堂式、張腔張調地讓人嘆為觀止的上海弄堂特寫運鏡,描寫女性細微幽秘的心思、情慾初萌的擾動、被關係網絡中困住的自我意識。我們依稀仍迴旋於《天香》背景的「露香園」,再次前來的小說《考工記》又帶給我們另一座真實建築「半水樓」,作家難道是突然迷戀起園林造景以及工匠技藝嗎?就在王安憶以榫卯細節一磚一瓦建築《考工記》時,這緻密地關於建築的細節,也許正是引我們判斷她已然戀物的歧路。如果《天香》是一部繁華過眼錄,那麼,《考工記》便是繁華的警世錄了,作家看來是想扣問:那惘惘的威脅來自何處?透過小說,我們或可於王安憶的《考工記》,看見蘇珊.桑塔格式,觀看他人之痛苦。本文即試圖以《考工記》,探析王安憶「微物」造化,其實藉老宅、借物,她走了一趟對於「文革」,乃至歷史的一段溫暖而百感交集的旅程,她小說的抵達之謎。
Wang Anyi has inherited Eileen Chang's close-up lens style of Shanghai alleyways writing since The Song of Everlasting Sorrow, portraying women's delicate and covert thoughts, the disturbance of the first signs of lust, and the self-consciousness entangled in the web of relationships. We are still circling the 'Heavenly Scent Garden' in Heavenly Scent, but the novel Artificer's Record brings us to the Ban Shui building, and is the writer suddenly obsessed with horticulture and craftsmanship? Wang built Artificer's Record with mortise and tenon parts, and the occasionally thickening architectural texts may take us down the twisting path of her material fetishism. If Heavenly Scent is a collection of beholding the teeming splendor of life, Artificer's Record is a collection of such warnings. Wang seems to be wondering where the ghostly menace came from. Through Artificer's Record, we may witness a Susan Sontag styled way of perceiving the suffering of others, the mental trauma, and the anguish of many Chinese individuals produced by the Cultural Revolution. This essay will examine Wang's micro-material writing through Artificer's Record. She took us on an enjoyable and emotional journey through the Cultural Revolution and history, culminating in her novel's "enigma of arrival."