Chapter 225 The person who led "Contemporary" to a higher level
If someone looks back at the contents of the first issue of Contemporary magazine in 1983 several years later, they would most likely use words like "a fight between gods" to describe it.
He Yunlu's "Rising Star" and Ma Yuan's "The Temptation of Gangdise" are indeed amazing, but their subsequent development seems to lack stamina.
The remaining authors in this issue also performed well and became more stable in their future development, becoming legendary figures in China's contemporary literary world.
Yu Hua is an author discovered by Lin Weimin. At the beginning, he couldn't even get his works published. Now, more than a year later, he has managed to publish two novellas simultaneously in "Contemporary", a top literary magazine.
The two works "Going on a Long Journey at the Age of Eighteen" and "At Noon When the Northwest Wind Howls" are very characteristic of his early works.
His two works are similar to those of Ma Yuan. Both belong to the avant-garde of this era. His works focus on showing the experimental and playful nature of text, as well as various reversals of the narrative logic of the novel. His techniques are more inclined towards the montage techniques used in film creation.
But unlike Ma Yuan, Yu Hua maintained a certain restraint in narrative structure and did not go to extremes, which made his novels superior in content.
At the same time, when writing, he focuses more on the description of consciousness, thinking and psychology. He has an absolutely objective and calm narrative, and does not shy away from describing blood and violence.
This writing technique has formed his unique style, which is unforgettable.
If He Yunlu's "New Star" benefited from the reform literature to some extent, Ma Yuan's "LS River Goddess" and "The Temptation of Gangdise" won in terms of narrative novelty.
Yu Hua's victory lies more in his unique and steady style. A reader used the word "mature" to describe Yu Hua's writing style in a letter, and Lin Weimin deeply agreed with this.
Xie Mingqing from the front building teased Lin Weimin after reading these two works by Yu Hua, saying that the kind of editor you have will determine the kind of author you are.
Lin Weimin has almost no specific style in his creations. If we have to categorize it, it would probably be stability.
He rarely takes an unconventional approach, but he always writes something that makes people's eyes light up.
Yu Hua, whom he brought up, is now gradually moving in this direction.
For an author, this is a sign of creative maturity.
Yu Hua is therefore highly expected by many readers and critics, who believe that he is a writer who may surpass Lin Weimin in a few years.
Among all the authors in the first issue, Mo Yan's works received the worst reviews. It was not because his works were not good enough, but the objects of comparison left too amazing an impression on the readers, which directly led to Mo Yan's two works "Folk Music" and "Transparent Carrot" becoming "mediocre works" in the eyes of some picky readers to some extent.
"Mediocre work" also comes from the evaluation of readers' letters.
Mo Yan is now working in the army, and the style of his works is basically leaning towards the direction of greatness and justice.
Lin Weimin also talked with Mo Yan when he was in the army guesthouse. Different from the "darkness" in his later works, Mo Yan now believes in truth, goodness, and beauty.
He believed that "goodness" could transform human beings and that "goodness" was the soul of beauty, so it could create the spark of "beauty".
Any literary creation, once it falls into the rut of praising truth, goodness, kindness and beauty, will inevitably suffer from the drawbacks of being stereotyped.
A murderer has a hundred ways to kill people, but only one way to save people.
But despite being criticized for "realistic techniques, Europeanized language, and simple plots", the beautiful vision of society and life revealed in Mo Yan's novels still makes most readers feel like a breeze when reading them.
Lin Weimin doesn’t think that Mo Yan’s works are much worse than those of others. If he has to find a problem, he can only blame it on the fact that this “main melody” creative style is not pleasing.
Among all the authors and works in the first issue, Cheng Zhongshi's "Kang Family Courtyard" and "Early Summer" are somewhat out of place.
Perhaps because of his many years of immersion in rural life, Cheng Zhongshi's works always show the collision between personal value choices, thoughts, feelings, and moral concepts during the period of rural transformation.
This style is very similar to that of Lu Yao, who is also from Shaanxi and has already become famous.
The advantage of Cheng Zhongshi is that he does not hesitate to use words to construct the structure of the novel, the characters, and the changes in their thoughts and feelings, sometimes even to the point of being tedious.
These meticulous descriptions show great skill and are very popular among mature middle-aged readers.
It also received praise from Meng Wanfu, a well-known domestic literary critic, who specially wrote an article entitled "A Solemn and Profound Song of Hope in the Fields - A Review of the Novella "Early Summer"", fully affirming Cheng Zhongshi's creative ability in "Early Summer".
At the same time, Meng Wanfu also praised at the end of his review that "the first issue of Contemporary in 1983 brought a fresh force to the Chinese literary world, with a hundred flowers blooming and competing for splendor."
Not many people are familiar with Meng Wanfu, but many people should know his student, named Jia Pingwa.
As Meng Wanfu commented, in this issue of the journal, there are reform literature masterpieces such as "New Star", extreme avant-garde literature such as Ma Yuan, authors such as Yu Hua whose style is mature and highly expected, fresh styles such as Mo Yan who praises truth, goodness and beauty, and orthodox authors such as Cheng Zhongshi who come from the countryside...
This issue of the publication fully demonstrated the support and encouragement of "Contemporary" for various creative styles in the domestic literary world. It not only received rave reviews from readers, but also sparked great discussion among critics and authors.
Because the buzz of previous years created a certain degree of vacuum in the literary world, in recent years the literary world has not only seen a surge in the amount of creation, but also a flourishing of various creative styles.
There is a popular term nowadays, called "not a novel".
In what context is it used?
Some authors took their manuscripts to the editorial department to submit them. The editors read them through their reading glasses, frowned, and spoke with a hint of regret.
"This is not a novel!"
What do you mean it’s not a novel? It just doesn’t conform to the reading habits of the older generation of editors, so they even changed the classification of the work.
Among the works published in this issue of "Contemporary", if judged by the standard of "not novels", the works of Ma Yuan and Yu Hua are both on the list, and the style of their works happens to have a avant-garde flavor.
“Literary creation has just been liberated from a huge shadow, and we don’t want it to fall into another shadow.
Now the new generation of authors are no longer satisfied with the single narrative form of novels, and have begun to pursue narrative diversity and multiple possibilities.
Colleagues in the editorial department unanimously agree that we should face up to the new changes, new requirements and new directions in literary creation in the new era.
This issue of Contemporary was born under such a backdrop..."
Right now, Lin Weimin is bent over his desk, writing quickly. To sum it up in two words, it is - bragging.
The first issue of Contemporary magazine in 1983 was published a few months ago and has caused a huge response across the country, thus receiving a lot of comments and attention from the media.
The Literary Gazette was founded on September 25, 1949, on the eve of the founding of the People's Republic of China. It is a newspaper sponsored by the National Federation of Literary and Art Circles.
All the previous editors-in-chief were cultural giants, literary masters and accomplished literary theorists. It can be said that the literary and artistic trends in New China are closely related to the Literary Gazette.
Many great men gave important instructions on the work of Literary Gazette during their lifetime.
The response caused by the first issue of "Contemporary" in 1983 attracted the attention of "Wenyi Bao", which specially sent an invitation to the editorial department of "Contemporary" to talk about the behind-the-scenes story of the compilation of manuscripts for this first issue.
The two veteran comrades, Meng Weizai and Qin Chaoyang, handed the matter over to Lin Weimin, under the pretext that they should not take away the credit for Lin Weimin's contribution.
It was indeed Lin Weimin's idea to promote new artists and new works in the first issue of the spring of 1983, so what they both said was not wrong.
Lin Weimin spent the whole morning writing furiously and finally finished the manuscript.
Liu Yin came over with a teacup in his hand, blew away the tea foam floating on the water, and said, "Weimin is really a leader now. Look at the manuscript, it's almost as good as the speech for the conference."
Rong Shihui followed up with a joke, "Editor-in-Chief Lin has done a great job hosting this episode. We can't hide our achievements. Otherwise, how can the leaders see them?"
Lin Weimin put the cap on his pen and stood up to stretch his shoulders.
"Old comrade, if you complain too much, you might break your heart."
Rong Shihui smiled and said, "It's fine for me to be an old comrade. Xiao Liu is only in his thirties. Isn't the word 'old' inappropriate?"
Liu Yin cooperated and glared at Lin Weimin.
Lin Weimin gave Rong Shihui a thumbs up and said, "When it comes to speaking, you have to be good at it."
The first issue of Contemporary Magazine in 1983 stood the test of readers more than 20 days after its release, and received widespread praise from many critics and media. The discussions and influence it sparked also lived up to the high hopes that the editorial department had for this issue.
In addition, as the Spring Festival is approaching, the atmosphere in the editorial department is joyful and peaceful.
As they talked, they started talking about the sales of the first period.
Since its founding in 1979, the sales of Contemporary Magazine have been steadily increasing.
After Lin Weimin joined the magazine in the past two years, sales have increased even more strongly. Now the overall sales volume has stabilized at more than 800,000 to 900,000 copies. Whenever a work with good reputation is published in a certain issue, sales can easily exceed one million.
And the issue that published the popular works such as "Life" and "My Distant Qingping Bay" achieved sales of several hundred thousand per issue.
Therefore, out of confidence in the quality of the works published in the first issue, the editorial department set a very bold number for the print run of this issue - one million copies.
It has not even been a month since the first issue was released, but bookstores and post offices across the country have already started to request more copies. According to estimates, the first print run of one million copies should be sold out within the next few days, and the subsequent print run numbers will become a problem that the editorial department needs to consider.
Liu Yin sighed and said, "If this trend continues, why does it feel like even 1.5 million copies won't be able to stop it?"
Yao Shuzhi was sorting out the manuscripts. She put a thick pile of manuscripts on a corner of her desk. "Did the issue of Dengluoyao's Life almost break 1.5 million copies in the end?"
"No, we just reached 1.4 million copies. We dare not print more. If tens of thousands of copies are unsold, it will not be enough to compensate for the loss."
Zhu Changsheng said: "I think it will be no problem for this issue to reach 1.5 million copies. Haven't you noticed? Now that we are all sitting together, if we don't talk about our first issue, we will feel out of touch with the trend. This seems to have formed a trend."
Yao Shuzhi nodded and said, "That's true. There are many literature lovers among the college students in my sister's school. She came back and told me that this first issue was particularly well received by many students. This is not only due to the content, but also for more important reasons."
Zhu Changsheng asked: "What's the reason?"
"Perhaps those college students feel that our Contemporary is broad-minded and tolerant, which fits their image of a literary magazine with a wide influence. By the way, here is a letter from a reader. Let me read it to you..."
Yao Shuzhi took out a letter from a pile of readers' letters in the corner of her desk, and everyone couldn't help but show a bit of curiosity in their eyes.
"…Your move to innovate this time requires great courage, and I would like to praise you generously.
"Contemporary" holds a very important position in the Chinese literary world. As long as a novel can be published in "Contemporary", it will attract widespread attention.
Just as American authors are proud to be able to publish novels in The New Yorker, more and more of my classmates and friends are beginning to feel that authors who can publish novels in Contemporary Magazine are the darlings of literature.
..."
The New Yorker is a symbol of American cultural circles.
In 1975, John Leonard commented on The New Yorker: "Well-educated Americans have grown up with this weekly."
To put it simply, reading The New Yorker is a symbol of American elite culture.
China has just opened its arms to the world. The fact that it mentioned The New Yorker in its letter means that it is more knowledgeable than most Chinese people, at least.
The letter that Yao Shuzhi read was sent by a student from Yenching University. The entire letter was full of praise for Contemporary magazine's bold move.
"It is really pleasing to hear young people praising us." Yao Shuzhi finished reading the letter with a smile on her face.
Rong Shihui suddenly looked at Lin Weimin, "Weimin, this is what you call influence, right?"
Lin Weimin was standing by the window with his back to everyone.
"good."
Everyone looked at Lin Weimin standing by the window, and scenes flashed through their minds involuntarily.
In the meeting room, he persuaded the leaders to return the manuscripts to the writers despite the opposition;
I travelled thousands of kilometres to collect manuscripts without any complaints;
It took more than a month to complete the proofreading, typesetting, and binding design work of the Contemporary Series...
At this moment, many colleagues in the editorial department understood why the publishing house and the editorial department chose Lin Weimin to be the deputy editor-in-chief.
Because he is the one who can lead Contemporary to a higher level!
The first update. The second update will be around 11 o'clock, and the third update will be around 5 o'clock in the afternoon.
(End of this chapter)
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