Literary Master 1978.

Chapter 362: Wandering Lu Yao

Ever since the party at Chen Rong's house that day, Li Tuo has become a frequent visitor to Lin Chaoyang's house.

There are still two months before the publication of "Crossing the Guandong". In order to get a sneak peek, he comes to Xiaoliubukou Hutong early in the morning every day to report for work and goes home after dark. He has never worked so hard even when he was at work.

Then there were Liang Zuo and his sister. Liang Zuo had to work during the day, so he would bring his sister to Lin Chaoyang's house in the evening to watch for two or three hours, which just happened to be the right time to avoid Li Tuo's absence, so no one bothered anyone.

After seven or eight days of hard work, Li Tuo finally finished watching "Crossing the Guandong". He felt an unprecedented sense of satisfaction, and he pulled Lin Chaoyang to chat until late at night before leaving with a feeling of unfulfilled desire.

Lin Chaoyang thought the matter was over, but he didn't expect that Chen Jiangong would come to his house again the next day.

"How did you come?"

Chen Jiangong said: "Li Tuo said you still have the manuscript of "Crossing Guandong", let me take a look!"

If Li Tuo was here, Lin Chaoyang would have cursed him: You bastard, you really have no shame at all.

"See, see!" Lin Chaoyang waved his hands helplessly and let Chen Jiangong do it.

He had a premonition that their home would not be peaceful for some time to come.

Two days later, Li Tuo ran to Lin Chaoyang's house excitedly again. As soon as Lin Chaoyang saw him, he wanted to question him.

"You still have the nerve to come here!"

Li Tuo interrupted him, "Don't talk yet, read this article of mine!"

As he spoke, he raised his hand and handed over a few sheets of manuscript paper. The first line of the first page was the title of the article, "Crossing the Guandong: A Shocking Artistic Peak."

This title...isn't it a bit too flattering?

Although he hadn't read the content yet, Lin Chaoyang still said to Li Tuo, "Isn't this a bit exaggerated?"

Li Tuo read the article, then looked at Lin Chaoyang. "Is it exaggerated? I think it's quite realistic!"

God damn realistic!
"Let me tell you, Chaoyang..."

Li Tuo has always been a person who admires Western modern literature. When he writes passionately and gives advice on the country's future, he does not like many of the famous works of modern and contemporary Chinese literature. He believes that many widely praised masterpieces are just the result of coincidence.

But Li Tuo loves "Crossing the Guandong" from the bottom of his heart.

In Li Tuo's opinion, there are only a handful of novels in modern and contemporary Chinese literature that are able to integrate the story, literary and ideological aspects of the novel into a highly unified whole, and "Crossing the Guandong" is definitely one of them.

He talked to Lin Chaoyang non-stop for a long time, and finally said with a sense of unfulfilled desire: "I really hope that your "Crossing Guandong" will be published sooner, so that my review can be shown to others sooner!"

His good attitude made Lin Chaoyang reluctant to argue with him about Chen Jiangong. Lin Chaoyang said, "Stay home for dinner later."

"Then make two more dishes tonight!" He made the request without any politeness.

Lin Chaoyang suddenly felt the urge to kick him out of the hospital.

The first month of the year passed by little by little, and just as Lin Chaoyang had expected, the number of friends who came to their house to borrow manuscripts not only did not decrease over time, but increased instead.

What’s even more outrageous is that these people wanted to eat for free after reading the manuscript.

As these people read the manuscript, the story of "Crossing the Guandong" began to spread in the Yanjing literary circles.

This phenomenon not only occurs in Yenching, but also in the Guangdong literary world where Huacheng is located.

During the Spring Festival, Li Shifei talked about "Crossing the Guandong" with everyone he met and praised the novel highly. More than a month has passed since then, and the reputation of "Crossing the Guandong" has almost spread throughout the literary circles of South China and is still spreading outward.

As for intellectuals, their gossipy nature is stronger than that of ordinary people.

The novel "Crossing the Guandong" has been passed down as a miraculous novel, which has invisibly attracted everyone's curiosity about it.

But most people can only get a glimpse of it from their friends in the literary world, which makes them even more itchy and they wish the novel could be published tomorrow.

Three days before International Women's Day, Lin Chaoyang received a letter from Lu Wenfu from Jiangsu.

The two have known each other for several years. Although they don't meet often, they write to each other quite frequently and send each other gifts from time to time.

Lu Wenfu's personality and style are relatively old-fashioned. He loves drinking tea, drinking wine, and even more so, he and Lin Chaoyang have similar interests.

When writing to Lin Chaoyang this time, Lu Wenfu mentioned two things. One was that spring was coming again, and he planned to send some Longjing tea to Lin Chaoyang this year.

Second, there were recent rumors in the Jiangnan literary world that Lin Chaoyang had written a masterpiece, which had attracted the attention of many enthusiastic people in the southern literary world. Everyone was spreading rumors about this work as if it were something miraculous. Lu Wenfu was also very curious and asked a few questions.

After reading Lu Wenfu's letter, Lin Chaoyang was surprised. He didn't expect that "Crossing the Guandong" had caused such a stir in the literary world before it was published.

While he had time, he wrote a letter back to Lu Wenfu.

"Brother Wenfu:

I received your letter. I haven't seen you for a long time, and I miss you so much..."

After writing the letter, Lin Chaoyang was about to go out to deliver it, when Liang Zuo happened to walk into his house with his younger brother and sister.

Usually Liang Zuo brings his sister Liang Huan, but today for some reason Liang Tian came too.

As soon as he saw Lin Chaoyang, he took the initiative to call him "Uncle Lin". Lin Chaoyang smiled and asked, "Why are you free today?"

"I came to see you about something."

"Oh?" Lin Chaoyang was a little surprised. He didn't expect what Liang Tian wanted to talk to him about.

"Our Writers Association is going to hold a national rural-themed novel creation symposium in Hebei, and we would like to invite you to attend." Liang Tianxing said excitedly. He is currently working as a handyman in the External Relations Department of the Writers Association, and inviting writers to participate in activities is within his job responsibilities.

Today their department issued a list and asked them to invite writers from all over the country to participate in the event. When Liang Tian saw Lin Chaoyang's name on the list, he took the initiative to take over the matter.

"A symposium..." Liang Tian was not clear about Lin Chaoyang's hesitant tone. He was never interested in this kind of meeting.

He was just thinking about how to refuse when another acquaintance walked in through the courtyard gate. When he saw Lin Chaoyang, he smiled and said, "Chaoyang, I just happened to have something to talk to you about."

Lin Chaoyang looked at Zhang Guangnian and asked, "You are going to Hebei to attend the symposium, right?"

Zhang Guangnian looked slightly surprised, "Who told you that?"

As he spoke, his eyes noticed the three Liang siblings next to him. When he saw Liang Tian, ​​he suddenly realized, "The child from the Chen Rong family is in the External Relations Department, right?"

"Hello, Secretary!" Liang Tian greeted.

Zhang Guangnian nodded, understanding that it must be Liang Tianlai who told Lin Chaoyang about this.

Seeing that Zhang Guangnian had something to say to Lin Chaoyang, Liang Zuo pulled his brother to the side room.

"This is a big event organized by the National Federation of Literary and Art Circles. They attach great importance to it. You are now a representative figure in our literary world, so you can't be absent!"

Zhang Guangnian praised Lin Chaoyang right from the start, and said, "The meeting will be held in Zhuo County, which is close to Beijing, and it will only take two or three days to go back and forth.

And there are a lot of friends you know, so it’s more like a gathering of friends than a meeting.

You heard from Wang Meng that you haven’t been working recently.”

He said several sentences in a row, blocking all the reasons for Lin Chaoyang to refuse. Lin Chaoyang said helplessly: "You came prepared!"

"It's not easy to invite you, so of course I have to do some homework. Recently, your work 'Crossing the Guandong' has become popular before it is released. It's a good opportunity for you to share your creative experience with everyone at the meeting this time." Zhang Guangnian encouraged.

Lin Chaoyang shook his head, "Forget about sharing experiences, I'll just go and have a quiet meeting."

Zhang Guangnian smiled widely, "Okay, okay, I'd like to go."

But what he was thinking was, is it up to you whether to share it or not?
A few days later, when it was time to gather for the meeting, Lin Chaoyang came to the train station with a bag in his hand to meet up with the main group of the Cultural Association.

It was only after this meeting that we realized that Zhang Guangnian was right.

Wang Meng, Li Tuo, Chen Jiangong, Zheng Wanlong, Zhang Chengzhi, Liu Xinwu...

Almost all the well-known young and middle-aged writers in the Yenching literary world came, and it really felt like a gathering of friends.

Zhuo County is only seventy or eighty kilometers away from Yanjing, and it takes less than two hours to get there by train.

After arriving at the county, the Yenching Literary Association was arranged to stay at the Taoyuan Hotel in the county, which was already full of writers from all over the country.

Among them were many friends that Lin Chaoyang knew, such as Lu Yao and Cheng Zhongshi from Shaanxi, Jin Ying from Hebei, Jiang Zilong and Zhang Manling from Tianjin...

As more acquaintances gathered, the atmosphere became lively.

It was only noon when Lin Chaoyang and his friends arrived. After a welcoming banquet arranged by the local government, everyone went out for a walk together in the afternoon.

The county seat of Zhuo County is not very big and is no different from most of the northern county seats these days. In the square county seat, there are scattered party and government agencies, post offices, restaurants, hotels and other buildings.

After strolling for half an afternoon, the group lost interest and a few of those who were heavy drinkers bought a few bottles of liquor and snacks outside and ran back to the guesthouse to drink.

While chatting, Lu Yao heard Li Tuo and others talking about Lin Chaoyang's new work "Crossing the Guandong". The implication was that the excellence of this work had surpassed the scope of ordinary literary works. Therefore, he couldn't help but curiously ask Lin Chaoyang about the details of "Crossing the Guandong".

In the past month, whenever Lin Chaoyang had friends in the literary world around him, he couldn't avoid encountering similar situations. However, he couldn't bluntly reject everyone's questions and could only patiently answer them again and again.

Listening to Lin Chaoyang's brief description, Lu Yao's heart was shaken. It was not that he could judge that this was a great work just by Lin Chaoyang's few words.

Instead, he discovered that Lin Chaoyang's construction of the work was extremely grand, far exceeding the content of an ordinary novel. Such a magnificent novel coincided with the temperament of the work he was planning to create.

But the difference is that Lin Chaoyang's novel has been completed, but his work has not yet been started.

"Chaoyang!" Lu Yao suddenly called Lin Chaoyang.

"what happened?"

Lu Yao looked at him solemnly, "You may not know this. I have decided to write a book of great scale. In my imagination, this future book, if not the most satisfying work of my life, should at least be the largest work of my life."

He said this with a look of uncertainty in his eyes, "It's a bit mysterious, I don't know if you can understand, this decisive decision was probably caused by a dream I had accidentally when I was a teenager."

Lin Chaoyang listened to him quietly. Seeing Lu Yao's hesitant expression, he nodded, "Of course I can understand. Grand narratives are like flowers on the edge of a cliff for writers, full of unknown and dangerous temptations.

Listening to Lin Chaoyang's words, Lu Yao became happy, "You are so right!"

He excitedly continued, "I just finished filming "Life" last year, and now I have been preparing for such a work. In my plan, its content is extremely rich, covering the social changes in China from the mid-1970s to the 1980s.

I heard from them that your work "Crossing the Guandong" has more than 600,000 words and covers a period of thirty years.

You also know me. My longest work so far is "Life", which is only 130,000 words. At best, it is a medium-sized work with a large length.

To be honest, I have been preparing for several months now, but the more I prepare, the more confused I find myself. I am now unsure whether I can be competent for this job that should be done by giants. "

Lu Yao said this with a somewhat depressed tone. He looked at Lin Chaoyang sincerely, "I really can't imagine how you managed to climb such a huge mountain!"

(End of this chapter)