Mr. Dahl’s ingenious solution

Speak­ing of Dahl, I can’t help but get excit­ed. I’ve read quite a few books for adults and chil­dren, but books that are tru­ly cap­ti­vat­ing, excit­ing, and leave a last­ing impres­sion, even mov­ing me deeply, are rare indeed. I’ve heard many friends com­ment on Dahl, and one remark par­tic­u­lar­ly res­onates with me. This friend said, “Alas, it’s a pity I’m an adult now!” It’s so true. If I had read Dahl more than 20 years ago, I think I would­n’t be wear­ing this shrewd smile; I’d prob­a­bly be jump­ing for joy. Ah, grow­ing up brings a cer­tain…

There are quite a few reviews of Dahl’s work in Chi­na, most­ly prais­ing him. It seems they’ve used up almost all the words they could think of for praise. Gen­er­al­ly, these reviews cat­e­go­rize him by aspects like humor, imag­i­na­tion, skill, and relata­bil­i­ty to chil­dren, sug­gest­ing that domes­tic works fall short in com­par­i­son. It’s like how, when you men­tion the Chi­nese nation­al foot­ball team, the first thing that comes to mind is: “Infe­ri­or skills!” But say­ing this too often becomes tire­some, sound­ing like a per­func­to­ry, irre­spon­si­ble state­ment. Sim­i­lar­ly, when com­par­ing Chi­nese chil­dren’s lit­er­a­ture with excel­lent chil­dren’s lit­er­a­ture from around the world, the phrase “some gap” is grad­u­al­ly becom­ing a sim­i­lar expres­sion.

The eccen­tric old man who works on chil­dren’s lit­er­a­ture (Mr. Sun You­jun) was quite indig­nant. He said, “You (I guess you’re refer­ring to researchers) always say that Chi­nese chil­dren’s lit­er­a­ture is no good, that it’s far behind for­eign ones. Then tell me where the gap is, how it’s bad, and how it should be writ­ten.” I admire the old man’s straight­for­ward­ness and com­plete­ly agree. If some­one is doing research or lit­er­ary crit­i­cism, they should at least draw up some con­clu­sions. It does­n’t mat­ter if they’re wrong; at least we can dis­cuss it. How­ev­er, I’m par­tic­u­lar­ly glad that I’m not a researcher; at most, I’m just an enthu­si­ast. Hehe, I’m just here to have fun.

He gets espe­cial­ly hap­py when Dahl is men­tioned.

Mr. Wei Wei said, “God poured all kinds of tal­ents and abil­i­ties onto Dahl like a tor­ren­tial rain. The 20th cen­tu­ry pro­duced Astrid Lind­gren, who was already the pride of 20th-cen­tu­ry chil­dren’s lit­er­a­ture. Then, the 20th cen­tu­ry pro­duced Robert Dahl, so 20th-cen­tu­ry chil­dren’s lit­er­a­ture had dou­ble the pride.” — Wow, that sounds pret­ty scary, does­n’t it?

But what exact­ly is this “storm of tal­ent”? I’ve thought about this ques­tion for a long time. I’m a pret­ty metic­u­lous per­son. A friend once told me that a cer­tain book became a clas­sic pic­ture book because it “con­tains all the ele­ments that a pic­ture book should have.” I kept pes­ter­ing this friend, ask­ing what exact­ly the ele­ments of a pic­ture book should be, and why this book said it con­tained those ele­ments. In the end, I made my friend quite embar­rassed. Actu­al­ly, I know she def­i­nite­ly knew, but some things are just hard to express in words right away.

But Dahl’s ques­tions can­not be ignored. What exact­ly were his tal­ents? What are the dif­fer­ences between our local prod­ucts and his import­ed works? These ques­tions should not be avoid­ed. Because there are count­less works in Chi­na that are sim­i­lar in form to his, and pic­ture books are, after all, a dif­fer­ent con­cept.

I’ve thought about this issue a lot, so I’ll just throw out my ini­tial thoughts.

I believe Dahl’s most remark­able tal­ent lies in cre­at­ing and resolv­ing plot points. If you don’t know the ori­gin of these col­lo­qui­al terms, I’ll assume I invent­ed them. A more ele­gant way to describe a plot point is a “con­tra­dic­tion.” Every sto­ry has a core con­flict, and then par­al­lel or sup­port­ing con­flicts. A mas­ter sto­ry­teller always presents this con­flict as if it were real, keep­ing the audi­ence on the edge of their seats, their hearts pound­ing, draw­ing them into the sto­ry, won­der­ing, “What hap­pens next?” Final­ly, the plot is resolved, and the audi­ence is relieved. A true mas­ter is always far supe­ri­or to the audi­ence. Even if every­one knows the end­ing before­hand, they can’t guess how the plot is resolved. The mas­ter reveals the method, and the audi­ence sud­den­ly under­stands, exclaim­ing in admiration—“How come I did­n’t think of that!” This is the “cre­at­ing plot” and the “resolv­ing it.”

Take Christie, for exam­ple. Her detec­tive nov­els are incred­i­bly well-craft­ed in their plot twists, and few read­ers escape her grasp. How­ev­er, I have some reser­va­tions about her meth­ods of unrav­el­ing these twists. She often unrav­els them com­plete­ly out­side the orig­i­nal con­text. For instance, in a sto­ry like “Ten Indi­ans,” no one could pos­si­bly come up with a way to unrav­el the plot because the infor­ma­tion she pro­vid­ed was ini­tial­ly insuf­fi­cient.

In terms of unrav­el­ing plot devices, I think O. Hen­ry is a mas­ter. Take “The Gift of the Magi,” for exam­ple. Every­one is famil­iar with it. Del­la wants to give her hus­band Jim a Christ­mas present, but the fam­i­ly is poor. What to do? That’s the dilem­ma. This plot device is sim­ple and relat­able. In explain­ing this, O. Hen­ry nat­u­ral­ly men­tions that Del­la has beau­ti­ful hair and Jim has a fam­i­ly heir­loom gold watch, their most valu­able pos­ses­sions. And then? Del­la sells her hair to buy the watch chain, while Jim sells his watch to buy a comb. —This plot device is beau­ti­ful­ly unrav­eled! The sto­ry is so short, yet it’s intri­cate­ly woven and utter­ly mov­ing. “The Last Leaf” is anoth­er mas­ter­piece.

Speak­ing of “The Last Leaf,” I imme­di­ate­ly think of E.B. White’s “Char­lot­te’s Web.” Both sto­ries revolve around the themes of sal­va­tion and self-sac­ri­fice, with the lat­ter car­ry­ing an added lay­er of depth. White’s theme is also mas­ter­ful: a pig named Wilbur, born tiny, is slaugh­tered by a farmer, but a lit­tle girl named Finn brave­ly saves him. Wilbur sur­vives and grows increas­ing­ly nor­mal. When he becomes fat and strong like a nor­mal pig, the farmer again intends to kill him for ham. From the pig’s per­spec­tive, it’s a tru­ly ago­niz­ing sit­u­a­tion: if he does­n’t grow up, he’ll die; if he does grow up, he’ll still die. Do you think this pig has any rea­son to live?

Don’t laugh, White was very sin­cere in ask­ing this ques­tion. He raised pigs on his own farm; while he would­n’t say he “loved his pigs like his own chil­dren,” he cer­tain­ly treat­ed them like pets, much like dogs. One of his pigs fell ill, and he sought out vet­eri­nar­i­ans and cared for it for two days and two nights. He was quite sad­dened when the pig died. He held a small funer­al for it, and many friends sent con­do­lences. Lat­er, he even wrote a famous essay, “The Death of a Pig.” To be hon­est, White’s feel­ings about pigs dif­fered from those of us who only see them as pork and ham; he believed they were also lives worth cher­ish­ing, which is why he want­ed to res­cue Wilbur in his fairy tale. This was a very sin­cere idea, not a joke at all.

Tra­di­tion­al fairy tales often employ “myth­i­cal” unrav­el­ing meth­ods, such as: the prince kiss­es the princess, the princess kiss­es the frog, or some­one casts (or breaks) a spell, or a tremen­dous coin­ci­dence occurs (pure­ly by luck). The under­ly­ing prin­ci­ple is most­ly “love con­quers all” or “good deeds bring good rewards.” How­ev­er, chil­dren today, once they get a lit­tle old­er, can’t stand these old clichés. Some chil­dren say, “I don’t like read­ing fairy tales; they’re all lies.” Actu­al­ly, they don’t dis­like fairy tales; they just dis­like the old clichés. If you don’t believe me, ask any chil­dren how many don’t like the fairy tales of White and Dahl. They also wrote fairy tales, but they used entire­ly new unrav­el­ing meth­ods.

Let’s get back to White’s puz­zle. Hon­est­ly, it was a real prob­lem. You could­n’t let the pig escape, it was­n’t a wild ani­mal; and you could­n’t turn the pig into a lit­tle boy, that would be too much of a joke on a child. If you put your­self in White’s shoes, it’s incred­i­bly frus­trat­ing. From the age of four, White had devel­oped a habit of spend­ing a month each year vaca­tion­ing on the Great Lakes of Maine. At first, he went with his father, then with his son. When­ev­er he need­ed qui­et time to think about impor­tant issues, he would always think of going there. So, he went to a small boathouse there to pon­der: how to save the pig named Wilbur? He thought about this prob­lem for over two weeks, until one day he spot­ted a large spi­der­web and a spi­der in the cor­ner of the boathouse. And so, a spi­der named Char­lotte was born!

Using a spi­der web to save a pig is, in my opin­ion, far more dif­fi­cult than using the last leaf to save a dying artist. This is a remark­ably clever twist. Why is it dif­fi­cult? Because White is try­ing to con­vince chil­dren, and chil­dren are actu­al­ly hard­er to fool than adults. You not only have to make the lie flaw­less, but you also have to make it incred­i­bly enter­tain­ing. You can’t rely on the “last leaf” trick to coax chil­dren; few chil­dren have the patience to lis­ten to you fin­ish your sto­ry. Dahl under­stood this deeply; he said that writ­ing sto­ries for chil­dren is hard­er than writ­ing sto­ries for adults. The dif­fi­cul­ty lies here—you must imme­di­ate­ly cap­ture a child’s heart.

White also gave more thought to Char­lot­te’s “self-sac­ri­fice.” In O. Hen­ry’s sto­ry, the artist who saved the pig died of ill­ness, and Char­lotte, who saved the pig, also died. But Char­lotte left off­spring; her self-sac­ri­fice was also a nat­ur­al process of repro­duc­tion. This is a sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ence between unrav­el­ing a sto­ry in adults’ sto­ries and in chil­dren’s sto­ries. Chil­dren’s sto­ries need a sense of return, or some­thing akin to “secu­ri­ty.” White hoped that chil­dren would­n’t be over­ly sad­dened by Char­lot­te’s death. This reflects a sense of respon­si­bil­i­ty on the part of sto­ry­tellers for chil­dren.

You see, telling sto­ries to chil­dren is indeed a bit dif­fi­cult.

White’s genius in cre­at­ing and uncre­at­ing clasp is also evi­dent in *The Trum­pet of the Swan*, a near-flaw­less work, exquis­ite­ly detailed. How­ev­er, I still find it less vivid than *Char­lot­te’s Web*. Selden’s *The Crick­et in Times Square* is also a mas­ter­piece of clasp-uncre­at­ing. But let’s leave that aside for now, as it seems I’m drift­ing fur­ther and fur­ther away from Dahl’s style.

Unlike oth­ers who cre­ate and undo but­tons, Dahl’s work is first and fore­most remark­able in its sheer quan­ti­ty. If White and Selden were engaged in “retail,” then Dahl was in “whole­sale.” Dahl’s but­ton-mak­ing and undo­ing seemed to be an effort­less affair, as if it hap­pened with­out a sec­ond thought, and you can find incred­i­bly inge­nious but­tons in every piece he cre­ates.

“The Witch­es” is prob­a­bly the most well-known work. There are many minor plot twists in the sto­ry, but I will only talk about the most impor­tant one.

First, there’s the tech­nique of build­ing sus­pense. The first half of the sto­ry repeat­ed­ly empha­sizes and sets the stage for the witch’s wicked­ness and ter­ror. Grand­ma is prac­ti­cal­ly Dahl’s spokesper­son, grad­u­al­ly peel­ing back the lay­ers of the “witch mys­tery” with a hazy, enig­mat­ic approach. Frankly, at first I thought it was just some­thing pure­ly meant to scare chil­dren, but then the witch actu­al­ly appears in the lit­tle boy’s life. The scene where the witch teas­es him under the tree is cru­cial. A mas­ter sto­ry­teller does­n’t rush to the cli­max; like a bird tuck­ing its wings before tak­ing flight, it cre­ates a sense of antic­i­pa­tion and sus­pense. Then, in a com­plete­ly unex­pect­ed sit­u­a­tion, the lit­tle boy is sud­den­ly caught up in the cen­ter of a witch­es’ gath­er­ing. To demon­strate their pow­er, the witch­es give a live demon­stra­tion, turn­ing anoth­er lit­tle boy into a mouse on the spot.

At this point, I thought the knot was taut enough; it was time to see how the lit­tle boy would break free and untie it. But it was­n’t over yet. Just when we thought the boy was about to escape the clutch­es of evil, a witch smelled the boy and turned him into a lit­tle mouse!

And there you have it, the but­ton is final­ly fin­ished. But this but­ton is tru­ly dread­ful. What can you do? What can a lit­tle boy turned into a mouse pos­si­bly do?

Here, I’m par­tic­u­lar­ly remind­ed of Dahl’s per­son­al­i­ty; he was a guy who loved adven­ture. In his auto­bi­og­ra­phy, *Boy*, the rest­less young man was orig­i­nal­ly assigned by Shell to Egypt in North Africa—a cov­et­ed posi­tion. But he thought Egypt was too civ­i­lized and not excit­ing enough, so he refused to go. As a result, his super­vi­sor had to send him to the less devel­oped Cen­tral Africa, where he was over­joyed. He said, “I want to go to that land with palm trees, coconut trees, coral reefs, lions, ele­phants, and dead­ly snakes. A white hunter who lived in Mom­basa for ten years told me that if a black cobra bites me, I’ll die with­in an hour, writhing in agony and foam­ing at the mouth. I can’t wait!” See? That’s the kind of guy he was!

What else can we expect from this guy? He’s going to give us the most excit­ing twist yet: a lit­tle boy, turned into a mouse, faces an incred­i­bly pow­er­ful group of world witch­es, and he must save the world!

The sub­se­quent unrav­el­ing is tru­ly unbe­liev­able: the lit­tle boy, trans­formed into a rat, uses a poi­son con­coct­ed by the witch­es them­selves to turn them into rats, lead­ing to their anni­hi­la­tion. This tac­tic, in the par­lance of *Demi-Gods and Semi-Dev­ils*, is called “using their own meth­ods against them.” Tru­ly, “East­ern Murong, West­ern Darl,” per­haps even “Eng­lish Murong”?

How­ev­er, while *The Witch­es* is high­ly praised by many crit­ics, I don’t think its plot is the most inge­nious. In terms of imag­i­na­tive won­der, *The BFG* sur­pass­es it. Let me briefly describe the plot: The BFG kid­naps a lit­tle girl named Sophie to Giant Island, and the two become fast friends. Sophie hears that the evil giants on the island enjoy eat­ing chil­dren, and the brave girl decides to risk her life to save all the chil­dren in the world. But the BFG on Giant Island is just a small giant with lim­it­ed abil­i­ties; his lan­guage skills are rudi­men­ta­ry, and besides cap­tur­ing and manip­u­lat­ing dreams, he has no oth­er remark­able abil­i­ties. Their only chance is to noti­fy the British gov­ern­ment and ask for help. But who would believe them? More­over, even a large army might not be able to sub­due those giants. What to do?

When I read these kinds of books, I have a habit of always think­ing about how to solve the mys­tery first. That’s part of the fun of read­ing mys­tery nov­els. If you’re read­ing a detec­tive nov­el and don’t first think about “who the mur­der­er is,” or if some­one walks up behind you and says, “I’ll tell you, so-and-so is the mur­der­er,” I believe it will be quite bor­ing. So I won’t reveal the mys­tery yet, lest you throw a brick at me.

I might as well tell you some more things that I par­tic­u­lar­ly admire, let’s treat it as an intel­lec­tu­al game first.

Actu­al­ly, what I admire and am most moved by is Dahl’s *Matil­da*. Pub­lished in 1988, Dahl passed away in 1990 at the age of 73. A 70-year-old man, already incred­i­bly insight­ful back then. Dahl lived those 70-plus years to the fullest. If you divide it into three parts, the first was adven­ture, the sec­ond was writ­ing detec­tive nov­els for adults, and the third was telling sto­ries to children—each part was incred­i­bly bril­liant. Look­ing back at myself, even liv­ing just one of those bril­liant peri­ods would be enough to make me con­tent.

This 70-year-old man poured his life’s work into *Matil­da*. His untamed spir­it, sharp insight, mag­nan­i­mous atti­tude towards life, rich emo­tions, and espe­cial­ly his aging yet mas­ter­ful tech­nique, all unfold freely in this work. The knot in this sto­ry is arguably the most com­plex in Dahl’s works:

Matil­da is a child prodi­gy, com­plete­ly at odds with her fam­i­ly atmos­phere. She has a ter­ri­ble home; her par­ents and broth­er are incred­i­bly vul­gar, and her par­ents take plea­sure in sup­press­ing and belit­tling her. Things don’t improve much after she enters school. The head­mas­ter is a sadis­tic psy­chopath, and the oth­er teach­ers either don’t under­stand her or are ter­ri­fied by his oppres­sive behav­ior. The only light is her teacher, Miss Hen­ny, who is as warm as spring.

Speak­ing of which, we must men­tion Dahl’s child­hood school life; this sto­ry seems to be Dahl’s deep­est impres­sion of school. A few years before writ­ing *Matil­da*, Dahl had just fin­ished two auto­bi­ogra­phies. I sus­pect that this old man prob­a­bly want­ed to find a kind of lib­er­a­tion from his child­hood through Matil­da’s sto­ry.

See, this but­ton was made with great dif­fi­cul­ty. About four-fifths of the sto­ry describes Matil­da’s predica­ment. She can­not grow up nor­mal­ly in her own fam­i­ly; she faces sim­i­lar dif­fi­cul­ties at school, where she, her class­mates, and her teach­ers are all oppressed by the prin­ci­pal; her only beloved teacher is actu­al­ly the prin­ci­pal’s niece, and one of the most oppressed by the prin­ci­pal, strug­gling with only mea­ger strength. But she learns a very strange anec­dote: Miss Trun­dle, the prin­ci­pal, is very like­ly the mur­der­er of Miss Hen­ny’s father, and thus seized Miss Hen­ny’s inher­i­tance. This is the key to unrav­el­ing all the con­tra­dic­tions in the sto­ry!

But no one could help her and Miss Hen­ny. She was indeed a child prodi­gy, but with only a tiny spe­cial abil­i­ty: the abil­i­ty to manip­u­late small objects over short dis­tances with her mind, and even that was unre­li­able. How could she pos­si­bly accom­plish such a mas­sive unrav­el­ing task with such a lim­it­ed super­pow­er? This was giv­ing the old man quite a headache.

He actu­al­ly solved it, and it was absolute­ly bril­liant!

Dahl wrote a chil­dren’s sto­ry when he was 27, and after­wards focused on writ­ing sto­ries for adults, espe­cial­ly mys­tery sto­ries. He even wrote a screen­play for the James Bond film series, “You Can Only Live Twice.” Around the age of 45, after hav­ing his own chil­dren and being pres­sured to tell sto­ries dai­ly, he start­ed writ­ing chil­dren’s sto­ries again, becom­ing addict­ed and nev­er return­ing to writ­ing for adults. It was­n’t that he found writ­ing for chil­dren easy; rather, he found it more excit­ing. Have you ever heard of a Chi­nese writer with a sim­i­lar expe­ri­ence, who did­n’t turn back because writ­ing for chil­dren was more chal­leng­ing? I think that’s the dif­fer­ence. Our writ­ers often take the oppo­site route, writ­ing for chil­dren first, then find­ing it unin­ter­est­ing, and then turn­ing to the adult world. Of course, there are cer­tain­ly many dif­fi­cul­ties and envi­ron­men­tal fac­tors involved, but I won’t go into those now.

Let’s take anoth­er look at Dahl. Although his tal­ent was “pour­ing out like a storm,” it was­n’t as unre­strained as we might imag­ine. Writ­ing a sto­ry was a labor of love for him; he would typ­i­cal­ly spend sev­er­al years craft­ing a book, and some­times an idea would take years to devel­op into a sto­ry. There’s a dif­fer­ence between writ­ing five sto­ries a year and writ­ing one sto­ry in five years. Besides, how many peo­ple in this world can have their tal­ent “pour­ing out like a storm”?

It is said that Dahl con­sid­ered the first page the hard­est to write, and he would typ­i­cal­ly spend a month writ­ing it. He knew his audi­ence was chil­dren, who were very dis­cern­ing and would turn away if the sto­ry became even slight­ly unin­ter­est­ing. He said, “Con­ceiv­ing a vivid, fan­tas­ti­cal, and fresh plot is a dif­fi­cult task; I might have to spend a lot of time, even a year, to come up with one. I wan­der around the house, the gar­den, the vil­lage, and the vil­lage streets, search­ing again and again for that vivid, pecu­liar new idea.”“

I can’t think of any of Dahl’s works that, in terms of con­cept alone, does­n’t qual­i­fy as “a vivid, won­der­ful­ly strange, and very fresh plot.” This gives you an idea of how exhaust­ed he must have been.

Even the most dis­cern­ing crit­ics have not offered any neg­a­tive crit­i­cism of the sto­ry­telling tech­niques in “World Cham­pi­on Dan­ny”.

A young boy named Dan­ny lives with his father in the coun­try­side. Although they are poor and his moth­er has passed away, the father and son live hap­pi­ly togeth­er. How­ev­er, by chance, Dan­ny dis­cov­ers that his father has a dark secret: he is a poach­er by trade! After his father’s poach­ing attempt fails, Dan­ny risks his life to res­cue him. From then on, father and son are unit­ed in their hatred of the evil for­est own­er and vow to fight him to the end.

Poach­ing is gen­er­al­ly con­sid­ered immoral and shame­ful, but in this sto­ry, it’s por­trayed as excep­tion­al­ly bright, excit­ing, and cre­ative. This premise was already quite chal­leng­ing. But Dahl push­es it to the extreme, mak­ing this 9‑year-old boy the world cham­pi­on poach­er, capa­ble of poach­ing 200 pheas­ants in a sin­gle night, risk­ing dis­grace and even injury!

Dahl was tru­ly a man of extra­or­di­nary courage. It is said that Dahl racked his brains to write this sto­ry, find­ing the most dif­fi­cult part to be choos­ing a suit­able geo­graph­i­cal set­ting. After much delib­er­a­tion, he chose a rur­al dwelling to live in, where he com­plet­ed his con­cep­tion and writ­ing. Thus, in this sto­ry, we not only read about inge­nious knot-break­ing tech­niques but also expe­ri­ence a rich, rus­tic atmos­phere. Par­tic­u­lar­ly note­wor­thy is that this work does not rely on any super­nat­ur­al forces; it is essen­tial­ly a real­is­tic work. This is a rare excep­tion in Dahl’s oeu­vre.

I’ll dis­cuss the solu­tion to the plot hole in this sto­ry next time. First, I’ll quote a pas­sage Dahl wrote at the end of the book for chil­dren:

“When you grow up

When you have your own child,

Please remem­ber this:

Life­less par­ents are dull and unin­ter­est­ing.

What a child needs

What is worth want­i­ng

They were bril­liant and intel­li­gent par­ents.”

I think chil­dren need not only intel­li­gent par­ents, but also intel­li­gent uncles, aunts, grand­fa­thers, and grand­moth­ers, espe­cial­ly those uncles, aunts, grand­fa­thers, and grand­moth­ers who tell them sto­ries. Oth­er­wise, how bor­ing child­hood would be!

Let’s take a break. To find out what hap­pens next, stay tuned for the next episode.