Literary Master 1978.

Chapter 325 What's So Great

The crazy sales volume is the best proof of the popularity of "The Boat" after its publication. The millions of readers are not all the same.

Most of them are ordinary readers or literature lovers, and a considerable number of them are people from the cultural and literary circles.

As magical realism is currently gaining popularity in China, "The Crossing of the Boat", a magical realist work written purely by a domestic writer, has naturally attracted the attention of many peers.

Over the past few months, book reviews about this novel have appeared in many domestic newspapers and magazines.

Among them, an article titled "The Interweaving of Divinity, Humanity and Animality - Thoughts after Reading "The Story of the Boat Crossing"" in the "Zhongshan" magazine published in March received a lot of praise from readers for its wonderful interpretation and comments on the work.

The article reads:
This thrilling adventure deeply explores the various possibilities hidden in the human heart, and makes us think about many grand propositions about human nature, life, death, faith, etc.

In such a rich and three-dimensional world that the author has built for us, what we can see depends entirely on our thoughts.

It is like an exquisite prism. Through the mirror we can see the divinity that perseveres, the humanity that fights desperately, and the tyrannical and cruel animal nature.

I really hope that readers will see hope, courage and love, universal truths that transcend species boundaries and can remind us to maintain a heart of exploration and perception in a complex and changing world.

Wonderful and professional review articles can often make readers who like a work feel a sense of identification and pride. The article in "Zhongshan" is just one of many articles praising "Duzhou Ji".

As time goes by, there are more and more such articles, and the responses they cause are getting bigger and bigger.

As the literary community's praise for the work grew louder and louder, many critics and scholars of literary research theory were no longer satisfied with their evaluation of the work and turned their attention to Lin Chaoyang.

In the latest issue of "Literary Review", Mr. Tan Mu, a master of contemporary prose known as "Tan in the South and Yang in the North", published an article entitled "The Boundaries of Contemporary Chinese Literature Require Young People to Have the Courage to Explore".

Tan Mu believes that the predicament faced by modern Chinese novelists since the 50s has directly affected the development of Chinese literature in the past three decades.

The literature and art of the liberated areas became the mainstream direction of the literary world. Revolutionary historical themes and rural themes occupied a large proportion of the output of literary works, influencing and restricting the overall style of contemporary novels. This trend of uniformity reached an extreme during the humanitarian flood period.

Since the reform and opening up, our literary system has been repaired and rebuilt, and a group of young writers with creativity and distinctive characteristics have emerged in the literary world.

At this point in the article, Tan Mu picked Lin Chaoyang out like a class teacher praising a primary school student.

"Comrade Xu Lingjun's early works such as The Horse Herder and Little Shoes have obvious realistic characteristics, simple yet romantic, bringing a fresh trend to the literary world.

After that, he launched works such as "The Garland under the Mountain" and "Parental Love". His works during this period were still based on realism, but the revolutionary romanticism displayed in them had already highlighted the author's creative ambitions.

The publication of "Lai Zi's Summer" and "The Death of Van Gogh" marked an important transformation in Xu Lingjun's creative career.

In the Chinese literary world dominated by realism, he boldly attempted postmodern stream-of-consciousness literature and achieved unprecedented success, demonstrating not only extraordinary courage but also firm confidence and outstanding creative talent.

Over this period of time, after the publication of "The Boat Crossing", it has received numerous praises from readers and has also attracted great attention in the literary world.

This magical realism work, which is extremely rare in the Chinese literary world, demonstrates Comrade Xu Lingjun's spirit of constantly seeking breakthroughs and daring to break the rules in literary creation.

I hope our young writers can learn more from colleagues like Xu Lingjun, bring a fresher atmosphere to the contemporary literary world, and bring better works to readers.”

Qin Mu's high recognition of Lin Chaoyang represents the views of a considerable number of people in the literary world. They value Lin Chaoyang not only because his works are good, but more importantly, he can constantly break through and bring vitality to the literary world.

Chinese people have a bad habit: once something becomes popular, they will rush to it in droves. But when it becomes too popular, they will immediately discard it and not forget to disparage it.

Scar literature was extremely popular in the past few years. As long as it was related to these four words, there was no need to worry about not having publications or readers supporting it.

Some writers force themselves to express their sorrows by writing new words in order to get published, and publications also encourage writers to write scar literature in order to increase sales.

Over time, the good and the bad have mixed together, and there are countless unskilled people who are just filling in the gaps. Scar literature has long lost its former glory and has even aroused the disgust of many readers.

Writers no longer consider writing scar literature as a fashionable thing. Instead, they think it is "rustic" and "exploiting readers' emotions", which gradually leads to criticism of scar literature.

Then reflective literature emerged, and everyone turned their attention to reflective literature.

The cycle goes on and on, with parrots repeating what others say and people following the crowd. This group of people are like vultures smelling something rotten, and they are leading the literary world further and further astray.

Therefore, Lin Chaoyang's appearance is like a cone in a bag, the tip of which is immediately visible, which naturally attracted the admiration of many knowledgeable people.

The widespread attention and discussion that "The Boat Crossing" has aroused in the industry has also caused some subtle changes in his status in the contemporary literary world.

For a long time, whether it is readers or colleagues, the impression of Lin Chaoyang has remained on labels such as "young writer", "popular", "widely popular", and "explosive sales of works".

Whether in terms of strength, fame or quality of his works, he is a leading figure of the younger generation.

But after all, he is too young. Even though Lin Chaoyang has created many important novels, he cannot be said to have much influence in the literary world.

The publication of "The Story of the Boat Crossing" made Lin Chaoyang highly praised by knowledgeable people in the literary world, and many people began to truly regard him as a leader to be expected in the future. The so-called leader certainly does not refer to his official status, but to the influence he may have on the contemporary literary world in the future.

The literary world has never lacked talented people, hardworking people, or ambitious people, but there are very few people who possess all three, and Lin Chaoyang is definitely one of them.

The high hopes that people of insight have placed on him are constantly gathering, and with the passage of time, these hopes will continue to strengthen.

In addition to the attention of readers and literary colleagues, the publication of "The Boat Crossing" also caused a stir in the journal industry.

Everyone knows that Lin Chaoyang's works have always been popular, so there is a saying in the industry that "for those who get Lin Chaoyang's works, selling millions of works is as easy as taking candy from a bag."

However, the popularity of the first issue of "Huacheng" in 83, which published "Duzhou Ji", after it was released still surprised many people.

155 million copies in a single month!

If the sales volume is 155 million copies per issue, then first-tier literary magazines such as People's Literature and Harvest have occasionally reached this number.

However, Huacheng achieved a monthly sales volume of 155 million copies. As we all know, Huacheng is a bimonthly literary magazine, which means that this number will continue to rise in the future.

No one knows where this episode of "Flower City" will end, but everyone can't help but want to know and care.

The editorial department of Huacheng is not a confidential unit. In the first week of the second month after Huacheng was launched, it still achieved sales of 22 copies. The news spread throughout the domestic literary journal industry in a very short time.

Not to mention the reactions of many local literary magazines, the editors of several first-tier literary magazines that used to be on par with Huacheng or even surpassed it were very upset.

Since its establishment, Huacheng has always been focusing on "Western style", which makes it particularly charming among a number of plain and unpretentious literary magazines. Although it has created its own unique style, it has also created a certain gap with its peers.

Originally, it sold about 600,000 or 700,000 copies per issue, which was at the bottom of several top literary magazines, and no one paid much attention to it.

But now it has sold 155 million copies in a single month, and even in the second month its sales did not show much sign of sluggishness. This not only shocked its peers, but also made everyone hard to accept.

"What's so great about that? It's just because I published Lin Chaoyang's novel!"

Such sour remarks highlight the mentality of his peers and, to some extent, illustrate the industry's current recognition of Lin Chaoyang's appeal.

The superstition that "for those who get Lin Chaoyang's works, selling millions of copies is as easy as taking something out of a bag" was once again widely spread in the literary magazine industry due to the huge sales of Huacheng, and people in the industry believed it without a doubt.

March is almost over, and "The Boat Crossing" is still influencing millions of readers in China. However, the author Lin Chaoyang has been buried in piles of old papers for more than half a month.

During this period of time, the outside noises did not disturb him at all.

A few days ago, Li Tuo specially called him. The annual National Excellent Short Story Award Ceremony and the biennial National Excellent Novella Award Ceremony were held in Beijing. According to the practice of previous years, the cultural salon after the award ceremony is indispensable.

Li Tuo begged Lin Chaoyang to return to Beijing to take charge of the situation, but he had only found half of Lin Chaoyang's information and was unwilling to go back.

However, the cultural salon has indeed gradually become a routine, and its reputation has long been established in the domestic writer circle. Many writers are looking forward to this event. Lin Chaoyang thought about it and asked Tao Yushu to handle this matter on his behalf.

Tao Yushu called again yesterday and said that the salon was generally very successful, and the only regret everyone had was that Lin Chaoyang was not there.

Part of the reason was that I didn’t get to taste his cooking, but another more important reason was that I didn’t meet Lin Chaoyang in person.

This is not to say that Lin Chaoyang is a very important person, but it is about the atmosphere.

Every year, the National Outstanding Short Story and Novella Awards Conference is held in early spring, when a group of newly-awarded writers gather together.

Everyone has similar interests and is equally successful. For them, this is a rare highlight and beautiful memory in their lives.

And Lin Chaoyang himself has become an indispensable figure in everyone's memory.

With Lin Chaoyang, this beautiful memory is complete and perfect.

Without him, no matter how lively the salon is, it always feels a little lacking.

Unconsciously, the writers have become accustomed to having a meal and meeting with Lin Chaoyang after winning an award, and this has become an unwritten rule in the Yenching literary world.

People jokingly call this rule "paying respects to the boss", which is of course a joke. It is more of a respect and admiration for Lin Chaoyang's hard work in the salon.

Tao Yushu said: "We took the final photo and felt it would be a shame without you, so we asked Yumo to hold your photo and take a photo."

Lin Chaoyang's face darkened when he heard this.

He really wanted to grab those people by the collars and ask them, is this how you respect and love me?
(End of this chapter)