On The New Urban Literature

Since the urbanization of the 1990s, metropolitan culture has become the center axis of the present pluralistic cultures. The market economy has produced the current municipality. With the pace of the time, a new metropolitan literature, which has "the city "as its leading character and is different from traditional literature in form and expressing, appeared.The New Metropolitan Literature (NML) writers grow up with the expansion of the city. These young writers realize from the ever-changing city that the city belongs to themselves. Lacking the heavy burden of history enables them supercilious courage and resolution. Thus they can focus their writing on topics like desire, sex and violence about which their predecessors seldom wrote.NML writers express in their works productive reality as chasing after the desire and fulfillment of the desire. Depending on acute senses, mastering the metropolitan rules to live and play, they focus their writing and interest on those naked desires to live.The original motive of NML writers is to extinguish the existing. They strongly oppose sanctimonious preaching, and are used to regarding life with a playful attitude. Both the form and the short-term behavior of the roles in the novel are to achieve an effect of playing life.The heroes in NML are mostly educated businessmen, the white collared, the urban loafers and aliens. They distinguish themselves from traditional characters by axiology and behavior criterion. They now have a rich connotation of culture.The theme of NML is that guided by materialism, human beings get lost in horror and desperation, that is, the human alienation. With the increased prosperity, human nation undergoes another painful experience. Material is worshipped as the unique religion. Human beings are seduced and enslaved by materialism.NML writers perceive people's sophisticated mentality as "on the way", "homeless", or "evacuation", so as to express their obvious urban consciousness.In order to dominate the cultural market, NML appeals to both themore and the less cultured. The works have a touch of humanity, as well as the so called hot issues like sex or violence to attract reads and give vent to their desire.The achievements of NML are worth praising. Nevertheless, due to limited individual experiences, the writers lack writing material and artistic power to break through and surpass the predecessors. Thus embarrassed repetition often appears in this kind of creative writing. These writers extremely emphasize on the playful attitude, thus making the works lose deeper meaning.This article probes into the individualism and cause of NML in terms of daring desire (the urban scene), the existing human beings in the flashy city (the alienation), and the so caused symptoms (urban consciousness).