「文革」經歷與感情生活是孫犁「芸齋小說」的主要敘事。孫犁一改過去對於人性之美的執著，捨美求真，刻畫「文革」風暴下一個個扭曲的、沉淪的、痛苦的靈魂；另方面，則剖白一生的情愛糾纏，呈現真實的生命歷程。為避免無謂的糾紛，以具有虛構特質的小說文類書寫，但一方面又屢屢揭示這些作品為真人真事，具有濃厚的紀實性。游移於隱藏與揭示之間的態度，投射出孫犁深陷於政治憂懼與情傷的矛盾心理，既隱又顯，欲言又止，形塑出小說文本之外另一值得探索的精神世界。

Experiences and emotional life in the Cultural Revolution are the main content in Sun Li's ＂Novels from Yunzhai＂. Sun Li abandoned his quest for the beauty of human nature and depicted twisted, degraded and painful souls in the storms of the Cultural Revolution, giving up the pursuit of beauty and pursuing for truth; on the other hand, he wrote about life-long love entanglements, showing the real course of life. These novels are fictional in order to avoid unnecessary disputes, but on the one hand they are frequently revealed as being true, therefore strongly realistic. The attitude of wavering between hiding and revealing reflects Sun Li's contradictory psychology mired in political fears and hurt feelings. His novels are both implicit and explicit, shaping a spiritual world worth exploring in addition to the text of novels.