「彈子王」與「大頭春」：臺灣少年小說的「野孩子」論述與少年主體形構

The Billiard King' and 'Big Head Spring': The Discourse of 'Wild Kids' and the Construction of the Juvenile Subject in Taiwanese Young Adult Fiction

自八、九○年代以降，「野孩子」已明顯成為臺灣少年小說文本少年主角／主體的主要構型，以郭箏的〈彈子王〉以及張大春的《野孩子》為例，兩者所聚焦描繪的皆是被主流文化排除在外的邊緣少年，其少年主體形構，皆不免指向兒少生命的酷異化，以揭露家庭學校的功能不彰，或控訴社會體制的扭曲變形，或是批判（後）現代資本主義社會所產製的機械文明與功利導向對人際關係所造成的衝擊與疏離。然而，「彈子王」和「大頭春」兩者的另類少年構型雖有所交疊，兩者的身分構成與演化卻略有差異，各有所指。（彈子王〉以相貌平庸個性拘謹的阿木為主角，別樹一幟的角色構型，實則雜揉了「邊緣小子」與「英雄人物」的交互指涉與曖昧相關；大頭春所處的社會邊緣位置則更形糾結晦澀，少年主體的形構也呈顯多元異質的連結與開放基進的想像。 Since the late 1980s and early 1990s, the narrative concerning childhood and children's culture, fashioned and formulated in Taiwanese young adult novels, have pointed to a (re)negotiation of alternative child images. The normative image of a good child which abounds in the early literary production for the young and which often works to normalize and regulate the cultural idea of children and young adults has been tremendously transformed and (re)configured. A new type of child image which emphasizes the 'wildness,' 'unruliness,' or 'waywardness' of the juvenile subjects has made its dominant appearance in the fictional texts for young readers (and adults alike). Those 'wild' juvenile subjects in the fictional texts often function as critical agents to challenge, subvert, parody, or revolt against the rigid social order represented by a set of social systems and institutions, such as family and school. The protagonists (and other major child characters) are, more often than not, positioned as juvenile delinquents marginalized by mainstream social values and regulations. Portraying the juvenile subjects as deviants in the textual construction is symbolic in that, it not only works to unveil the malfunctioning of parenthood and the futility of school life in the (post)modern world, but also aims to critique the distortion of social systems and the sense of alienation in human relationships caused by and caught up in the capitalist society. This paper will examine the textual discourse of 'wild kids' and the formation of juvenile subjects in 'The Billiard King' (dan-zi wang) by Guo Cheng and Wild Children (ye hai-zi) by Chang Da-chun. In 'The Billiard King,' the young protagonist is constructed in the ambivalent images of a deformed nerdy boy and that of a heroic figure, whereas, the construction of the juvenile subjects in Wild Children may point to a more radical (re)signification and (re)imagination of marginalization, in particular, in the heterogeneous connection and (re)negotiations of youth culture in a presumably darkening world.