Literary Master 1978

July has come to an end in a flash. The hottest news in society this month is that Zhang Hua, a student at the Fourth Military Medical University of the People's Liberation Army in Xi'an, sacrificed his precious life by jumping into a septic tank to rescue an old farmer who accidentally fell into the tank.

On one side are the pillars of talent cultivated by the country with great effort, and on the other side are the lives of working people.

When a moral proposition that can only appear in a debate competition is placed in front of the Chinese, it quickly arouses the attention and discussion of the whole society.

Among these discussion voices are authoritative media such as Guangming Daily and China Youth Daily, scholars and government officials in the cultural field, and the general public.

A nationwide discussion on "how to measure the value of life" swept across China in just half a month. The attention, discussion and public opinion caused by this incident are no less than the "Pan Xiao Discussion" two years ago.

That evening, Tao Yushu sat under a tree in the second courtyard of her home in a light and loose dress. At this time, the sunset fell, the shade of the French plane trees covered half of the sky, and the breeze blew gently, finally relieving her suffering for the day.

She was flipping through the newspaper, and there was another article on the discussion of "Zhang Hua saving the old farmer".

When the incident was first reported, Tao Yushu read it with great interest all day long, but so many days have passed, and she has seen all kinds of discussions, so it is inevitable that she is a little aesthetically fatigued.

She folded the newspaper and fanned herself.

She is now almost five months pregnant, her belly is getting bigger and bigger, and the weight gain has made her very afraid of heat. The recent hot summer has made her suffer.

At this time, there was a sound of motorcycles at the gate of the courtyard, and after a while, Tao Yumo walked into the yard with a motorcycle helmet in his hand.

The two sisters just said a few words, and Lin Chaoyang walked out of the kitchen with small steps, saying in a dramatic voice: "Here I come~"

He was holding a bowl of rich and fragrant fried noodles, and he saw Tao Yumo unexpectedly, "Ouch", and almost dropped the bowl of noodles in his hand.

"Scare me! I thought it was a bear in the forest!"

"Brother-in-law~"

Faced with Lin Chaoyang's sarcasm, Tao Yumo was angry.

After Tao Yushu became pregnant, Tao Yumo coveted her motorcycle. After tinkering with it for more than half a month, she was finally able to ride it.

At the beginning of the month, Yan University was on holiday. Tao Yumo put her weapons into storage and her horse was released to the mountains. Every day, she would meet with a few classmates to travel around and have a happy life.

In the past half month, the temperature in Yanjing has been around 35 degrees. She has been running around outside all day, and her skin is not white to begin with, and now it is as black as a coal ball.

Sometimes, vicious curses are far less hurtful than the truth.

Lin Chaoyang's words directly broke Tao Yumo's defense, and she ate an extra bowl of noodles with soybean sauce.

Dumplings in the first dog days and noodles in the second dog days. These two days have just entered the second dog days, and noodles with soybean sauce have become the most popular food in Yanjing City.

After dinner, Tao Yumo talked enthusiastically about the discussion about "life value" in the newspapers these two days. Seeing that she had no intention of leaving, Tao Yushu knew that she must have been scolded at home again and ran here to hide.

Tao Yushu took a walk after dinner, and then sat under the tree to read the manuscript brought back from the unit.

The weather was hot, and the heat in the house had not dissipated. The yard was the coolest. Seeing that the sky was getting dark, Lin Chaoyang took the manuscript from Tao Yushu's hand.

"Don't read it, be careful not to hurt your eyes."

Tao Yushu was bored and had an idea about him, asking: "Have you been too idle recently?"

Lin Chaoyang immediately alerted: "Didn't I just write a review for "Youth Literature" at the beginning of the month? Besides, I have to take care of you."

"I have hands and feet, and I have a mother. You can't stop writing for too long, it's easy to lose your standards."

Since Tao Yushu became pregnant, Lin Chaoyang has taken care of her meticulously, which of course makes her feel good.

But she also found that Lin Chaoyang was too comfortable and a little content with the status quo, which was unacceptable to her, a queen who had to work overtime to review manuscripts even when she was pregnant.

Seeing her sister urging her brother-in-law to make progress, Tao Yumo also interrupted and said, "Brother-in-law, I think the recent Zhang Hua incident is very suitable for writing a novel."

"How to write it?"

"Isn't the real example here? Just write about Zhang Hua!" Tao Yumo said.

Lin Chaoyang shook his head, "The reason why the Zhang Hua incident attracted attention is not because the act of saving people is so spectacular, but because of the value proposition behind it. Just writing about college students saving people is just the level of a news release."

Seeing that her ideas were belittled by her brother-in-law, Tao Yumo said unhappily, "You are great! You are great! Then write it out!"

Lin Chaoyang was too lazy to argue with the little girl, but Tao Yushu felt that the topic of "life value" and "life meaning" was a good core.

She said to Lin Chaoyang, "You can write something with 'life value' and 'life meaning' as the core."

"Well! This is a direction."

Lin Chaoyang pondered. It has been half a year since the manuscript of "Shutter Island" was completed. It's not that he doesn't want to write.

It's just that Tao Yushu's pregnancy did involve some of his mind, and secondly, it was hot in the summer these two months, and writing at the desk was a hard job. He thought he should at least get through this summer.

Seeing that Lin Chaoyang was finally a little moved, Tao Yushu was happy. For those who are used to involution, watching people around them leisurely is also a torture for them.

After the end of the month, Liu Xinwu came to tell Lin Chaoyang a piece of news.

After more than a month of coordination by Yanjing Publishing House, the second channel of "The Chess Master" in Guangdong has been banned.

What he called the ban was that the state-owned printing factory that cooperated with the second channel was found, and the printing source of "The Chess Master" was cut off. As for the books that have been printed, there is definitely no way to control it.

Lin Chaoyang didn't really care about this matter. What really made him unbalanced was that the group of booksellers dared to sell pirated books at a higher price than his genuine ones, which was simply the opposite of the sky.

And according to the sales data collected by Yanjing Publishing House during this period, "The Chess Master" was not affected by this pirated book dealer, and the sales trend was very stable.

Nearly two months after its publication, the sales have exceeded 700,000 copies, which is so strong that it is astonishing.

In the eyes of Yanjing Publishing House, "The Chess Master" is not an outstanding existence among Lin Chaoyang's works. The reason why they have such a view has a lot to do with the controversy encountered after the publication of "The Chess Master".

Even though the overall evaluation of the novel was reversed later due to the extremely high evaluation of the novel by Nie Weiping, a leading figure in the domestic Go community, many people still have a preconceived view of the novel, believing that the novel lacks logic and literary quality.

Moreover, in the evaluation system of the literary community, the reputation of "The Chess Master" is indeed not as good as Lin Chaoyang's previous works such as "Lai Zi's Summer" and "The Death of Van Gogh".

Therefore, when Yanjing Publishing House sought the publishing rights of "The Chess Master", it actually lowered its sales expectations for the novel.

They just felt that with Lin Chaoyang's appeal among readers, the lower limit of sales must be high.

But Yanjing Publishing House never thought that "The Chess Master" could sell 700,000 copies in two months, which is not much less than the 500,000 copies of "The Death of Van Gogh" in one and a half months, and even more.

And "The Death of Van Gogh", which has been published for half a year, has sold more than 1.2 million copies and is moving towards the sales mark of 2 million copies.

It seems that "The Chess Master" is another super bestseller with sales of more than two to three million copies.

They have already obtained the publishing rights of Lin Chaoyang's "Shutter Island". According to the popularity and response after the publication of this novel, the sales are even less likely to be bad.

Whether it is last year's "Longing for Life - Biography of Van Gogh", the "Chess Master" published now, and the "Shutter Island" to be published in the future, the popularity or potential popularity of these works is extremely rare among the books published by Yanjing Publishing House over the years.

For a publishing house, dozens or hundreds of books are published a year, most of which may be loss-making, a small part of which can break even, and only one or two bestsellers can make money.

It is precisely these one or two books that are likely to allow the publishing house to recover the loss and make a lot of money.

But bestsellers are always something that can be encountered but not sought. Who dares to expect that the books they publish will definitely be bestsellers?

Although the sales of literary magazines nowadays are often hundreds of thousands of copies, the sales of most contemporary literary works are still below 10,000 copies, and 50,000 copies are above the standard.

More than 100,000 or 200,000 copies are basically works with a certain influence nationwide.

Therefore, when Yanjing Publishing House made three consecutive bets and had three best-selling books with sales of more than one million copies, how could they not be excited?

A few days later, the happy summer vacation life was halfway through. The review article that Lin Chaoyang gave to Ma Weidu in July had been published in "Youth Literature" for more than half a month, attracting much attention in the literary world.

Part of this attention is due to the popularity of "Life" after its publication, but more importantly, the unique perspective and viewpoints of the article itself have triggered many people's thinking.

The concepts mentioned by Lin Chaoyang in the article, such as "the collision of new and old discourse systems" and "reshaping the image of contemporary rural characters", have been widely recognized by the literary world and many literary theorists, providing a new perspective and theoretical basis for the literary world to study and understand a work like "Life".

After his article was published, the original one-sided criticism of Gao Jialin, the protagonist of "Life", in the literary world gradually became rational, forming a discussion of equal strength with the original voice.

As the debate continued to deepen, the calm critics began to give up their positions and rationally comment on such an excellent work as "Life" in terms of the height of the work's thoughts and the depth of its reality exploration.

With just one article "How to Shape the Image of Contemporary Rural Characters from Gao Jialin", Lin Chaoyang changed the direction of the discussion on "Life" in the literary world.

After learning about the situation, Lu Yao wrote a passionate letter to express his gratitude to Lin Chaoyang.

At the same time, the influence of this review was beyond the expectations of the editorial department of "Youth Literature", and even alarmed Wang Weiling, the deputy editor-in-chief and editor-in-chief.

That evening, he brought Ma Weidu to visit Lin Chaoyang in person. On the one hand, he wanted to get closer to Lin Chaoyang, and on the other hand, China Youth Publishing House planned to hold a symposium for "Life" in September.

The novel "Life" itself was commissioned by China Youth Publishing House to Lu Yao. The original purpose of looking for a publication to publish it was to expand the influence of the work.

Now the work has influence, not only has influence, but also has national influence, so the next step is naturally to publish it.

Before publishing, it is a common practice for publishers to hold a symposium to warm up and promote the work.

Lin Chaoyang has never liked to participate in such activities, but he has a good relationship with Lu Yao, and Wang Weiling invited him warmly, so he had to agree.