Literary Master 1978.

Chapter 157 Dog Skin Plaster
In a blink of an eye, half of September has passed, and the Mid-Autumn Festival is just three days away.

There is no Mid-Autumn Festival holiday now, but it does not hinder the strong festive atmosphere.

Tomorrow is Sunday, and the library has started to arrange benefits for employees early.

The welfare benefits provided by companies these days are very simple. They are things that can be used in daily life, rather than those flashy gift boxes.

What the employees are most looking forward to is the distribution of rice, flour, grain, oil and other things. These days, you need coupons to buy everything, and daily diet is related to the quality of life of every family. Things that do not require coupons are the best.

As the museum's main force, Lin Chaoyang was busy early in the morning, moving the welfare back to the museum with several young colleagues.

The benefit of this year's Mid-Autumn Festival is a ten-pound bag of Fuqiang flour. After the 1950s, domestic flour had no brand names. They were all uniformly changed to first, second and third grade flour, named Fuqiang, Jianshe and Shengchan respectively.

Fuqiang flour is a first-grade flour, which is fine, high in gluten content and few impurities, similar to the high-gluten flour of later generations.

At this time, people are reluctant to buy it, and they all wait for the company to distribute it. They rarely eat it at other times, and they use it to entertain guests.

In addition to a bag of flour, there was also a box of Daoxiangcun snacks, weighing about two pounds, and two bars of soap.

Colleagues were chatting and laughing while receiving the benefits, but there were also some individuals who were complaining.

"What snacks are you giving out? Can you give me a few more pounds of rice and flour? At worst, whole grains will do!"

Needless to say, this must be a family with many people.

Dim sum is scarce in this era, but this thing is a kind of icing on the cake, that is, it can whet the appetite and satisfy the cravings of the elderly and children, but it is not as economical as rice, flour, grain and oil.

Lin Chaoyang listened to his colleague's complaints and had an idea. He pulled the complaining person aside and talked to him for a few words. Then one of them took out money and the other handed over something. In this way, Lin Chaoyang had one more box of snacks in his hand.

Du Rong asked, "Chaoyang, did you buy some snacks?"

"Yes. There are many people in the family, and they all love sweets. But someone didn't want any. He took the money and exchanged it for some food coupons. It was the best of both worlds." Lin Chaoyang explained, and then asked Du Rong, "Do you sell snacks?"

Du Rong hid the snacks behind her back and said, "Don't try to take advantage of me. It's been over a year and this is the first time you've given me snacks. I haven't even tasted them yet."

The joys and sorrows of life are all different. Some people worry about the snacks they give out, while others worry about not giving out enough snacks.

"Chaoyang, would you like some snacks?" Zheng Tongjiang asked.

"Yes!"

There are only two boxes of snacks, and with so many people in the family, how can they be enough?

After get off work in the evening, Lin Chaoyang first came to Langrun Lake Apartment with his things. As soon as he arrived downstairs, he saw Wu Zuxiang standing downstairs.

The old man had a hard time these days since Lin Chaoyang moved away. The supply of tobacco was intermittent, which made him very anxious. Only old smokers could understand that feeling.

Lin Chaoyang silently took out two boxes of cigarettes and was about to put them into the old man's pocket, but the old man grabbed his hand.

"Why is it Hongmei?"

"You have sharp eyes. What's the matter? Don't you want to smoke?"

"Red plum has a light flavor and is not easy to smoke."

"Don't be picky. It's good enough that I didn't give you a cannon."

Cannon is a way of smoking loose cigarettes rolled up with calendar pages. It is a last resort for old smokers when they have no cigarettes to smoke.

Lin Chaoyang was too lazy to listen to the old man's pretentiousness and stuffed the cigarette into his pocket.

Wu Zuxiang said dissatisfiedly, "Did I give you my lessons for nothing? You are smoking more and more. I think you are deliberately fooling me."

"You're begging for food and you still complain about it being rotten. If you do this again, I won't care about you anymore."

Lin Chaoyang's threat had some effect, and the old man's arrogance was somewhat restrained. Lin Chaoyang then said, "Do you think it's so easy to deal with foreign cigarettes?"

Wu Zuxiang looked regretful. Judging from Lin Chaoyang's tone, he might not be able to smoke foreign cigarettes in the future.

He touched the red plum in his pocket, and found that it tasted pretty good.

After taking care of Wu Zuxiang, Lin Chaoyang carried his things upstairs.

In the past, Lin Chaoyang lived in the Tao family, and he took the benefits issued by the company back home directly.

Now that Lin Chaoyang and his wife have moved out, he has sent the welfare back to the Tao family, which surprised everyone in the family.

"Your elder brother and I have both distributed benefits. You can just take your benefits back home," said Tao's father.

"Yushu and I are the only two of us, and we don't usually eat much."

Lin Chaoyang put the things down. The boxes of snacks in the welfare box were the most eye-catching. The brothers Tao Xiwen and Tao Xiwu stared at him as soon as he entered the door, and even Tao's mother looked at him sideways.

"Chaoyang, why are there so many snacks?" Tao Yucheng asked curiously.

"Some people in our unit didn't want snacks, so I bought them for them. They didn't even need snack coupons. They used the money to buy some food coupons. It was a win-win for everyone," Lin Chaoyang explained.

Tao Yucheng thought that his brother-in-law must know that his mother loves sweets, so he specially changed the snacks to flatter her.

But he was also happy because the three children of the Tao family were influenced by their mother and all liked to eat sweets.

Lin Chaoyang brought back four boxes of snacks today, and the whole family had enough to eat for two meals.

Today is Saturday, and Lin Chaoyang and his wife are going home for dinner. Not long after Lin Chaoyang arrived, sisters Tao Yushu and Tao Yumo also came back one after another.

Seeing a few boxes of snacks, Tao Yumo also became excited, "Brother-in-law, your company is bleeding a lot this year!"

"No where? Your brother-in-law changed it specially." Tao Yucheng said on behalf of his brother-in-law.

Tao Yumo gave Lin Chaoyang a thumbs up, "Brother-in-law is so generous!"

After dinner, the family sat together, lined up and began to share the fruit.

Lin Chaoyang brought back a lot of snacks today, so the family ate as much as they wanted and only ate two boxes.

When Lin Chaoyang was about to leave, he was about to go downstairs empty-handed. Father Tao said, "Take your things away."

"We still have noodles at home, and we can't finish the snacks, so you guys eat them." Lin Chaoyang said.

After some shoving and pushing, Tao's father left a box of snacks, and Lin Chaoyang watched him hand the box of snacks to Tao's mother.

No need to ask, this must be the food left for my spouse.

Wow, what a man who dotes on his wife!
The National Day comes right after the Mid-Autumn Festival. Lin Chaoyang has been planning to write a new novel recently.

In the past six months, apart from work and classes, he spent most of his spare time reading books and newspapers. He had rested enough, and he felt a little itchy after not writing for a long time. Coincidentally, Zhu Changsheng came uninvited that evening to talk to Lin Chaoyang about his new work.

"After the publication of Lai Zi's Summer, the response was very good. Now everyone regards you as a leading figure in domestic stream-of-consciousness literature, and hopes that you will continue to create in this field."

Lin Chaoyang wrote "Lai Zi's Summer" because the story just needed a certain atmosphere, and stream-of-consciousness novels are full of nonsense, which is also easy to get royalties.

He thought for a moment and said, "Of course I am happy that Lai Zi's Summer is loved by everyone, but I haven't decided whether to write another work of this type."

Zhu Changsheng said: "As editors, we are looking forward to you writing another work like Lai Zi's Summer. Lai Zi's Summer created a new concept of 'Chinese stream of consciousness literature' and has the potential to create a trend. If you can delve deeper into it, you may be able to establish a new school of thought."

Lin Chaoyang didn't believe the nonsense of these editors at all. He laughed and said, "If it's so easy to establish a school of literature, wouldn't there be many masters in the literary world?"

Seeing that Lin Chaoyang was not moved by the big promise he made and was determined, Zhu Changsheng couldn't help feeling regretful.

He then asked, "What do you think recently?"

“It’s brewing.”

Seeing his relaxed look, Zhu Changsheng couldn't help but tease him, "You are confident now. Just the novel "The Wreath under the Mountain" is enough to make you a millionaire."

The term "ten thousand yuan household" has just become popular. In April this year, Xinhua News Agency published a report article entitled "Spring in Yantan".

The article mentioned that at the end of 1979, Li Dexiang from Lanzhou received yuan from the team, and the members of the team called his family the "ten thousand yuan household."

This term was widely spread as the article went viral, and in less than half a year it had become the most familiar new term to the people of China.

If we were to select the most popular words of 1980, "ten thousand yuan household" would definitely be on the list.

For most people of this era, this is still a very distant goal, but Zhu Changsheng knows that this is not a problem at all for Lin Chaoyang.

Not to mention other works, the income from the single volume of "The Garland under the Mountain" alone this year is likely to make Lin Chaoyang a fortune.

Lin Chaoyang smiled and said, "It's not that exaggerated. There is a special reason why "High Mountain" sells so well."

"We don't care what the reason is, but you got the royalties. You made more money from this novella than others would from writing two novels."

Zhu Changsheng's tone contained three parts of sighing and seven parts of envy.

For most writers, Lin Chaoyang's income is unimaginable.

These days, the usual payment for a novella is three to five hundred yuan. After it’s published, it depends on luck, and you can’t count on the number of copies printed or the royalties.

Even if 10 copies are sold, the royalties are only 20% of the number of copies printed. Although there is a strong reading atmosphere in China now, it is not easy for ordinary books to sell at this sales volume.

"The Garland under the Mountain" sold over two million copies in half a year. It was a combination of the right time, the right place, and the right people. This is an extremely rare situation even for a national publishing house like Renwen Press.

“Someone in our company recently said that we should not have let the golden goose ‘High Mountain’ run away.

But we also have "Lai Zi's Summer", and the publishing house is planning to hold a symposium on "Lai Zi's Summer" recently.

I should be able to talk to you about the publication of Lai Zi's Summer in a while, which will be another large sum of money."

Zhu Changsheng was the editor of Contemporary Magazine and was not responsible for the book publishing business of the Humanities Publishing House, so he just leaked the information to Lin Chaoyang.

Lin Chaoyang shook his head and said, "That's not a huge amount of money. Do you think the sales of Lai Zi's Summer can be on the same level as The Wreath under the Mountain? You know how much your magazine has sold."

"Lai Zi's Summer" was published in the second issue of "Contemporary" this year. It was published on the headlines and published in the first issue. The treatment is unique.

After the novel was published, it was widely welcomed by readers and the literary community, especially from the critics, who received almost unanimous praise.

The main reason is that the mature techniques demonstrated by Lin Chaoyang in the novel made critics see that a masterpiece of stream-of-consciousness literature was born in the Chinese literary world.

You should know that before this, there had not been a single stream-of-consciousness literary work with such a wide influence in China.

Moreover, Lin Chaoyang has very well integrated Chinese cultural elements into the novel, creating a unique work with rich Chinese cultural characteristics, which has surprised the critics even more.

When critic Yan Gang put forward the concept of "Chinese stream-of-consciousness literature", he quickly received responses from his peers.

Various review articles have sprung up like mushrooms after a rain in the pages of major domestic literary magazines and literary review magazines.

In the past few months, the term "Chinese stream-of-consciousness literature" has become popular in the Chinese literary world, and people are keen to evaluate and discuss such a topical and excellent work.

The literary world's enthusiasm for "Lai Zi's Summer" continued to spread outward and also had a great impact on the readership. Many readers who were not originally interested in stream-of-consciousness literature chose to read this novel because of those colorful review articles.

The support of these readers also helped boost the sales of the second issue of "Contemporary" which published "Lai Zi's Summer" to 53 copies.

This number has extraordinary significance for Contemporary Magazine, because before this issue, the sales volume of Contemporary Magazine was only 13 copies.

In just one issue, sales soared by more than 300%, which is a terrifying record for any publication, and "Lai Zi's Summer" played a vital role in this process.

With such great success, Contemporary Magazine and Renwen Press naturally wanted to continue their cooperative relationship with Lin Chaoyang.

This is also the reason why Zhu Changsheng has visited Lin Chaoyang every now and then during this period of time.

Of course, 40 copies and a 300% increase are certainly scary, but this is only relative. With "People's Literature" and "Harvest" in the way, the sales of "Contemporary" still have a lot of room for improvement.

Moreover, compared with the strong sensation caused by "Lai Zi's Summer" in the literary and critical circles, the response this novel caused among ordinary readers and the general public was much smaller.

In this regard, "Lai Zi's Summer" forms a sharp contrast with "The Garland under the Mountain".

Lin Chaoyang is very clear that if "Lai Zi's Summer" is published in the future, it will definitely receive high praise and reputation in the literary world and among some literature lovers, but in terms of sales, it will probably be difficult to compare with "The Wreath under the Mountain".

The incredible sales of "The Garland under the Mountain" are due to the unique conditions, and in this respect, "Lai Zi's Summer" can hardly compare to it.

"Let's not talk about royalties and sales. After talking for so long, just tell me about your ideas." Zhu Changsheng begged.

"I told you I'm still planning it. I haven't made up my mind yet."

"Then when can you think it through?"

"How would I know?" Lin Chaoyang was a little impatient with his questioning, "I didn't tell you in my novel."

Zhu Changsheng is different from Zhang Dening. He is cunning and shrewd, and he doesn't get angry when he hears Lin Chaoyang say that.

"I know, I know. If you have any ideas, you can tell me and I'll give you some advice. After all, I've been in this industry for more than 20 years."

"Wait for someone with an idea."

"Okay, I'll come back after you've thought it over in a couple of days."

If Zhang Dening's manuscript collection style is straightforward and Liu Xinwu's manuscript collection style is bloodless, then Zhu Changsheng's manuscript collection style is like a dog-skin plaster, which makes people unable to get angry with him even if they want to.

(End of this chapter)