【题记】：Julio Cortázar的这篇“Continuity of the Parks”应属一篇后现代小说，其最大的特点是模糊了文本的想象世界和现实世界，而这里所谓的“现实世界”亦是作者在使用现实主义手法（包括背景介绍和人物刻画）构建的文本世界。所以这种双重的文本性和上述两个世界的混合，给我们留下了很多的想象空间。这让我们想起了什克洛夫斯基的“陌生化”手法和布莱希特的“间离效果”：前者认为，文学的基本手法就是“陌生化”，即将已然机械化、自动化的熟悉事物变得陌生，延长审美时间、增强审美难度，从而增加审美的愉悦感；后者的理论多用于戏剧之中，要求“打破第四堵墙”，取消舞台演员与台下观众之间的天然鸿沟，通过插入直接的评论、演员表演过程中下台同观众对话交流等诸多方式，颠覆西方戏剧台上台下两重天的传统。另外，在现代小说叙述学中，对视角变化的关注和分析，会有效地帮助读者理解。后附小文正是顺着这个思路写的一篇读后感，本无意于写就一篇用于发表的正式论文，所以观点、用词方面会存在相当问题，旨在与师友同享，止增笑耳。

【试笔】：

Continuity of the Two Worlds

    The modern short story "Continuity of the Parks" written by Julio Cortázar is a meta-fiction, which bears the striking similarities with Brecht’s theory of "the Alienation Effect". A meta-fiction is a fiction about fictions. In this story, the protagonist is reading a novel whose characters in the literary world are scheming to murder the protagonist in our story at hand. Therefore, the boundaries between the two stories are blurred and the alienation effect is reached, arousing not only its reader’s interest but curiosity: how the effect is realized. This paper insists that the changing of points of view and the frequent intervention of the authoritative comments mix the two circles of literary worlds.

    "Continuity of the Parks" tells of the reading experience of a successful businessman. He puts aside his business and enjoys the reading of the last chapters of a beloved novel in his comfortable armchair at home. During his reading, readers will recognize that the murder scheme planned by the man and woman in the “story within the story” is against the reading character himself. Consequently, the traditional existing boundary between the story and the real world is broken and readers are led into the abyss of the confusing worlds.

    The moral of this story might be drawn that the ecstasy of reading might cause self-destruction or that the lessons from literature could be borrowed as a caution or alert for the practical world in which we live. According to structualist idea, for a story like this, what it means is inferior to how it means what it means. Therefore, the technique analysis of the alienation effect within is at stake.

    Alienation effect is originated from the theory of Defamiliarization by Russian Formalist critics Shklovsky and Bakhtin, who advocate that the progression of literary progress is engined by the force of Defamiliarization, which makes the common objects strange and therefore prolongs the length of aestheticism and enhances the pleasure of reading. Brechtian Alienation Effect, a somewhat theatrical technique, breaking “the fourth wall” between the stage and audience, blurs the play and reality and arouses the audience’s political consciousness, usually by way of direct intervention of comments.

    First of all, this alienation effect is realized by the shift of points of view. The fundamental question for the narrative matter of point of view is “who is speaking”. Seemingly, from the very beginning to the end it is the third person point of view, or the omniscient narration. If it is taken for granted, understanding of this story will be undermined and the whole picture will be blurred to a mass. The first few lines of the setting are obviously objective descriptions. The following series of words like “remembered”, “feeling”, “sensing”, “tasted”, and especially the sentences like “the novel spread its glamour over him almost at once”, and “Word by word, licked up the sordid dilemma of the hero and heroine, letting himself be absorbed to the point where the images settled down and took on color and movement, he was witness to the final encounter in the mountain cabin”, draw us into the mind of the character of the protagonist. With this shift, he becomes the “witness” of the whole thing that follows and the dominant and authoritative position of ours are replaced and overthrown. Swiftly, the moment this shift is done, the point of view is turned to the “man with a dagger”, focusing of the reason of their meeting and especially, the motif of his murder: “underneath liberty pounded, hidden close”. With a sudden, the point of view is returned to the protagonist: “A lustful, panting dialogue raced down the pages like a rivulet of snakes, and one felt it had all been decided from eternity”, which reflects the response of his reading and the feeling of “a rivulet of snakes” foreshadow the possible danger that comes. Till the last sentence, “the high back of an armchair covered in green velvet, the head of the man in the chair reading a novel”, two horizons of expectation are merged and the suspense is settled down. With the final merge of different points of view, the audience’s horror is aroused and their space of imagination is consequently opened.

    The second striking feature following the Brechtian theory is the direct intervention of authoritative comments, which appear at the end of the first paragraph and in the middle of the second. For the first, “It was beginning to get dark.” This seemingly irrelevant intervention halts the process of the flow of minds and arouses the following suspense: the word “dark” might be advantageous for the murderer, for it is the time to carry out this scheme; on the other hand, it might refer to the ominous feeling of the reading businessman, foreshadowing the imminent danger; or it might serve as kind of “aside” of the theatrical convention to the audience like a warning. For the second, “The estate manager would not be there at this hour, and he was not there”, deepens our doubts that lead to the denouement of all.

    All in all, by using the above mentioned two techniques, the author of “Continuity of the Parks” blurs the two worlds within the text and creates the continuity of the literary “park” and another one in the real world.