Chapter 585: Disgusting People

Lin Weimin smiled and said, "Of course. I took the initiative to contact you, how can I joke with you? Why would you ask that?"

"To be honest, a while ago my friend actually recommended my essays to a publishing house, hoping that they could publish them. However, after reading my work, the publishing house rejected it, saying that essays were not written in the way I wanted to.

Later, another publishing house contacted me and said they would publish it. But I had to revise the manuscript according to their requirements, and the changes were very large. They basically treated my essay as a brochure similar to a travel guide. "

Yu Qiuyu couldn't help but smile bitterly when he said this.

I see.

Lin Weimin said: "Your essays were published in Harvest. There is no doubt that they are of high quality. If we want to publish them in a collection, they will also need to be reviewed by an editor, but there will definitely be extensive changes."

Hearing him say this, Yu Qiuyu felt relieved and said happily: "That's great."

After the two discussed for a while, Lin Weimin invited Yu Qiuyu to come to Beijing to discuss the specific matters of publishing, and Yu Qiuyu readily agreed.

After finishing the call with Yu Qiuyu, Lin Weimin went to Cheng Zaochun’s office again and discussed with him what he had just discussed with He Qizhi.

After listening to Lin Weimin, Cheng Zaochun nodded and said, "Shi Tiesheng's I and the Altar of Earth has indeed sparked a prose craze. Let Contemporary investigate first. If readers are receptive, it would be good to publish one. When the results come out, we can discuss it at the meeting."

He then asked, "When are you going to publish the martial arts novel publication you mentioned earlier?"

"I recently asked them to contact some authors. The styles of most martial arts novelists have not deviated from the scope of Jin Yong and Liang Yusheng's works. Their level is limited. I want to accumulate more manuscripts. This publication must not only be a hit, but also have staying power."

"Okay, you can handle it yourself."

A few days after the two men had their conversation, Yu Qiuyu came to Yanjing from Shanghai, and Lin Weimin met him in person.

For domestic writers, Guowenshe is a glorious palace. If their works can be noticed and published here, it means that their works have reached the level of being accepted by the mainstream.

When these writers come to Guowen Press to discuss things, they usually meet the editor-in-charge, and at most they meet the chief editor.

If your work is exceptionally outstanding and receives attention, you may even meet the deputy editor-in-chief.

But people like Yu Qiuyu, who were contacted personally by the editor-in-chief over the phone and met in person after they arrived, are rare.

Although Yu Qiuyu is now a famous scholar and holds an official position, he is still a newcomer in the literary world and is flattered to receive such treatment.

When talking about the royalty sharing, Lin Weimin, on behalf of Guowen Publishing House, offered a royalty of 8%, and explained: "You don't have any representative works in the literary world, so the royalty can only be this standard for the time being. If the collection of essays sells well, we can adjust the royalty sharing after a while."

This was Yu Qiuyu’s first time publishing a book, and he had only received royalties before. Now he could get royalties, which was something he had never thought about before, so he didn’t even think about arguing about the issue of royalties. Everything was arranged by Lin Weimin.

After the two discussed it, Lin Weimin asked again: "In the future, our company may publish a prose magazine. How about providing us with a few works?"

Yu Qiuyu was stunned at first, then said happily: "This is what I want most."

Guowen Publishing House has published three publications so far, namely "People's Literature", "Contemporary" and "New Literature Materials".

That magazine is not only very famous in the domestic literary world, but the works published in People's Literature and Contemporary Magazine, like Harvest, represent the highest level of domestic literature.

The New Literature Historical Materials focuses on recording the history of modern literature. It is the only historical materials publication that records the modern and contemporary literary world.

These three publications represent the height of domestic literary publications. If Guowen Publishing House wants to publish a new publication, the quality should at least not be much lower than these three publications, right?

For Yu Qiuyu, an amateur writer who has only written some essays and never published any of them, how precious is this opportunity to contribute to the new publication of Guowen Publishing House?

Naturally, he agreed without hesitation.

Lin Weimin looked at Yu Qiuyu with a smile. He had no opinion on this buddy's character and his works had some shortcomings, but their literary quality and popularity were undeniable. It was most appropriate to invite him to escort the new prose magazine.

Publishing a collection of essays and commissioning some manuscripts at the same time is killing two birds with one stone.

Yu Qiuyu's prose is getting thinner and thinner. If you don't squeeze it out now, you will never have the chance to squeeze it out in the future.

After seeing Yu Qiuyu off, Lin Weimin had a few days of leisure time in his busy work.

His new work "Promotion Record" was published in the fifth issue of "Contemporary" in May. As Lin Weimin's new work published after more than a year, "Promotion Record" has attracted countless attention since its publication.

Domestic readers have become accustomed to reading Lin Weimin’s new novel in "Contemporary" every year. Regardless of whether the novel suits their reading taste or not, they will buy it first.

The first issue in January published Yu Hua’s “To Live,” which sold over 2 million copies.

This issue includes Lin Weimin's "Promotion Story", and sales once again reached a peak.

With more and more readers reading it, "The Promotion Record" caused a huge response among the broad readership within less than half a month after its publication.

Many readers wrote letters to the editorial department of Contemporary Magazine. In addition to praising Lin Weimin's novel, some people also recounted similar incidents that had happened to them, which made people feel so angry that their teeth itched.

Compared with readers' simple welcome and love for this novel, the literary world's perception of this novel is a bit complicated.

It has been less than two months since the Yanbing Literature Award was awarded, and the case is still fresh in everyone's mind. How can we not see who the content of the novel is satirizing?

But the problem is, it’s fine if you satirize Liu Feiyu and the Yanbing Literature Award, but did we provoke you?

The novel "Promotion" was inspired by a domestic movie that Lin Weimin had watched in his previous life.

When talking about this movie, we have to mention a director - Huang Jianxin.

In later generations, many moviegoers should be familiar with this name.

Scandal, Shan Ye's little follower, and a professional in mainstream music, these are probably the three labels that are attached to Huang Jianxin.

But older moviegoers, or to be more precise, those who watched movies in the 1990s, should still remember Huang Jianxin clearly.

The movie "Black Cannon Incident" amazed the Chinese film industry. It can be said that before Zhang Yimou emerged, among the young domestic directors, the only one who could compete with Cheng Kaige was probably Huang Jianxin.

When reviewing China’s fifth generation directors, Huang Jianxin should be the one that makes people sigh the most.

Huang Jianxin is an outlier among the fifth generation of directors. Every work in the early stage of his directorial career can be regarded as a mark of the era in the early days of China's reform and opening up.

His films always display realism and a sense of humor that sees the big picture from the small. He often makes sharp satires in real and ordinary stories, analyzes the inner world of small people against the backdrop of the grand times, and reflects his strong humanistic concern.

"Movie World" once compared Zhang Yimou, Cheng Kaige and Huang Jianxin together -

To some extent, Zhang Yimou and Cheng Kaige are both fabulists, and they both pursue the kind of high-level and penetrating sense of insight. In contrast, Huang Jianxin is more like a sociologist, who focuses on the details of the operation within a system, and his films are like a kind of sociological field research.

Huang Jianxin does not have the talent of Zhang Yimou and Cheng Kaige in film images and camera scheduling, but his films are unique. If he persists, he may become a famous director.

pity……

The "Promotion" written by Lin Weimin was derived from the movie "Back to Back, Face to Face" shot by Huang Jianxin in 1994.

The story of "Back to Back, Face to Face" is not complicated. It is about Wang Shuangli, the deputy director of a cultural center in a certain city who has never been able to get a permanent position and is determined to get a permanent position.

During this period, there were arm wrestling matches with the real director, intrigues with colleagues, and trivial family matters.

Lin Weimin's "Promotion" focuses on workplace struggles. In his novel, the protagonist, as a deputy director, works hard, conscientiously and responsibly, and is determined to become a regular employee. However, because there is no one above him, he has been unable to become a regular employee even after one director has left. He has no choice but to give up the idea of ​​becoming a director, believing that only by fighting off the new director will he have a chance to become a regular employee.

For the position of curator, the protagonist and the new curator engaged in all kinds of intrigues, and also involved all colleagues and family members.

The climax of the novel is that the new director is going to hold a literary award event, and the final winner can get a job in the cultural center and receive a cash reward of 500 yuan.

The protagonist found out that the new director wanted to take this opportunity to arrange his nephew into the cultural center, so he set up a plan to destroy the new director's plan and made the new director's plan public. The new director lost face and was transferred away soon after.

The protagonist went to the leader to give gifts in advance, thinking that this transfer was a sure thing. However, a few days later, a new director took office, who turned out to be the secretary of the director of the Cultural Bureau.

After fighting for a long time, the protagonist was left with nothing but a mess.

"The Story of Promotion" continues the character names and place names in "The Story of Stealing an Official", allowing people to know at a glance who Lin Weimin is trying to imply.

In particular, the literary awards activity set up by Gaochao reminds one of the Yanbing Literary Award that ended some time ago and is still being discussed by many literary figures and readers.

The 1990s was the era when realistic themes exploded in Chinese literary works, film and television works, and a series of excellent works satirizing intellectuals, bureaucracy, formalism and corruption were born. The birth of these works naturally had its own development laws and internal logic.

Over the past decade or so of reform and opening up, the pace has become increasingly grand, the atmosphere has become increasingly lax, corruption and bureaucracy have been rampant, and this batch of literary and artistic works has been created.

In his novel, Lin Weimin vividly displays the hypocrisy, cunning, scheming and petty-mindedness of intellectuals. At the time of 1991, morals had already deteriorated in many places, and readers could relate to the bureaucracy, formalism and petty corruption that Lin Weimin satirized and criticized in his novel.

In the movie "Promotion", Lin Weimin not only scolded Liu Feiyu and Wen Xie who were at odds with him.

What's more, those sanctimonious intellectuals, writers and bureaucrats were severely criticized, and the scope of the attack was simply outrageous.

After reading the novel, many colleagues in the literary world and university scholars wanted to praise it, but when they thought that the novel was criticizing people like them, they felt worse than eating a fly.

This Lin Weimin is really good at disgusting people!

The illness has not been cured in the past few days, but has worsened, and my condition is very bad.

I went to the hospital for a follow-up check today and I was a little speechless.

The last check-up cost me nearly a thousand dollars, and they told me I had subacute thyroiditis, and said they would change the treatment if it didn’t get better in a week.

I went there today and was asked to have a check-up to confirm whether it was subacute thyroiditis.

I'm so fucking...

The examination requires an appointment, which will take half a day tomorrow. I’m really afraid that it will take another two days for my illness to heal.

What a fucking magical realism!

(End of this chapter)