When Lin Chaoyang took the manuscript from Tao Yushu and saw the title of the novel on the first page of the manuscript, he already knew what the manuscript was about.
"You Have No Choice" is a novella written by writer Liu Sola.
The novel roughly tells the colorful lives of a group of students with various personalities in a music conservatory. The overall atmosphere is relaxed and lively, but the background is sad.
It should be said that this novel reflects to a great extent the psychological and emotional world of the artistic youth of the 1980s. The world in the novel is full of restlessness, fanaticism, and even grotesqueness, but it is also very real and full of emotions.
Wildness and vitality.
The work draws on and absorbs Western modernism in art, and is full of black humor. It makes extensive use of exaggeration, joking, farce, symbolism and other techniques to ridicule reality, and is full of a lawless and rebellious spirit.
After the publication of this novel, it aroused great repercussions in the literary world and among readers, and made Liu Sola, a young woman engaged in music, one of the most popular female writers in the Chinese literary world in the 1980s.
The reason why Tao Yushu showed Lin Chaoyang this novel and asked him for his opinion is because this novel completely imitates the novel in terms of writing techniques, creative style, ideological connotation and aesthetic standards.
Works of Western modernists.
Moreover, its "modern" attributes also have a strong avant-garde flavor, which can be said to be completely at the two extremes of the "root-seeking literature" advocated by Lin Chaoyang.
Lin Chaoyang thought for a while and then slowly opened his mouth.
"If many old comrades read this novel, they will inevitably make comments like 'moaning for nothing' and 'pretentious'. This novel does have such shortcomings.
However, we can't just look at the shortcomings, but also the advantages. I think the advantages of this novel obviously outweigh its shortcomings.
Its modern techniques, open structure, absurd characters, and unique narrative angle... these actually serve the novel itself.
This kind of mixture determines the outstanding style of the novel. I can't say that it is necessarily the best, but this kind of creation does have its own unique aesthetics.
The stream of consciousness and non-plot-based processing methods in the novel seem a bit jerky, but the flaws do not hide the flaws. On the contrary, they are consistent with the overall style, and there is a flowing beauty..."
After talking for a while, Lin Chaoyang stopped and said, "I couldn't stop it once I started talking about it. This novel is quite good overall and should be loved by quite a few readers."
When he spoke, Tao Yushu listened very carefully. At this time, she always felt that Lin Chaoyang was full of charm.
After Lin Chaoyang stopped, she asked: "If you were the editor, would you publish this kind of modernist novel?"
"Why not publish it?" Lin Chaoyang looked at Tao Yushu puzzled.
"It is two extremes from root-seeking literature. My biggest feeling when reading this novel is that it is anti-traditional.
No, it can’t be said to be against tradition, it should be to abandon tradition.”
Lin Chaoyang said with a relaxed expression: "If young people don't rebel against tradition, will they stick to the old ways? Besides, root-seeking literature is not about restoration. Don't just focus on inheriting the excellent traditional culture. Root-seeking literature has to discard more dross.
.”
"It's not that I'm watching, but that's the trend."
Since Lin Chaoyang proposed the concept of "root-seeking literature" in Zhuoxian County, Hebei Province in March, in the past six months, root-seeking literature has become the most fashionable literary trend in the Chinese literary world, and everyone wants to join in the fun.
For a while, root-seeking literature filled the pages of major literary magazines. Especially in the second half of the year, as the term root-seeking literature became more and more popular among the public, more creators and magazines took advantage of it.
As a result, it is inevitable that there will be mud and sand, fish and dragons mixed together.
At first, many people classified Jia Pingwa's "The First Record of Shangzhou" published in 1982 into the ranks of root-seeking literature, and then Acheng's "The King of Chess".
Then Li Hangyu began to publish "Gechuanjiang Novels". In the second half of this year, Zheng Wanlong ambitiously devoted himself to the creation of the "Strange Stories from a Foreign Land" series of novels...
These works are considered by the fans of root-seeking literature to be the first important achievements of root-seeking literature. It should be said that the beginning of root-seeking literature was very smooth, with a large number of outstanding literary works gathered and a considerable momentum.
But starting from the second half of the year, as the influence of this trend became more and more powerful, the quality of the works published under the banner of "root-seeking literature" began to vary.
The most critical thing is that the value orientation of some of these works is not actually in line with the core values ​​of root-seeking literature.
The root-seeking literature proposed by Lin Chaoyang is to discover the outstanding parts of our national culture for inheritance and development, rather than to use traditional culture indiscriminately.
Lin Chaoyang sighed helplessly, "Scar literature is popular about scars, reflective literature is popular about reflection, root-seeking literature is popular about root-seeking."
Tao Yushu has been an editor for several years and is no longer surprised by this situation.
"It's up to them if they want to write. How many of them can do it?
Those writers who are truly remembered are those who can lead trends and whose works can stand the test of time."
At this point, she added, "Just like you!"
As soon as these words came out, Lin Chaoyang felt as comfortable as taking a sip of ice-cold soda in the dog days of summer. He put his arms around her shoulders and whispered.
Before I knew it, New Year's Day of 1985 had arrived.
It snowed in Yanjing City, and it also snowed in Tokyo thousands of miles away.
"It's snowing!"
Naoko Kondo opened the curtains and sighed as she looked at the falling snow outside the window. Her eyes were filled with joy. This was the first snow of the new year.
With a "bang", Naoko Kondo turned her head and looked over, scolding: "Chocolate, don't be naughty!"
It turned out that the cat at home knocked over the vase. Naoko Kondo went to help the vase up, then fed Chocolate some cat food and rubbed the top of his head while he was eating.
"Is it okay now?"
After eating the chocolate for a while, Kondo Naoko went to the kitchen to prepare breakfast for herself.
She is a professor in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Nihon University. She is still unmarried and lives alone in this apartment arranged for her by the school.
After eating, Naoko Kondo went into the study.
Some time ago, she went to Yenching University for a two-month short-term exchange as a visiting scholar. Her research direction is Chinese literature, with a focus on contemporary literature, so this visit and exchange has benefited her a lot.
In the last few days of the visit, she also met Lin Sang, the most famous writer in China today, and had a friendly and cordial exchange, which made her feel that the trip was worthwhile.
Sitting in front of the desk, Kondo Naoko couldn't help but touch the manuscript of "Crossing the Guandong" given to her by Lin Chaoyang, with a happy smile on her face.
She never thought that she would receive such a valuable gift when she came to visit Lin Chaoyang.
These days, Naoko Kondo has been obsessed with reading manuscripts. Although she has read the novel "Into the Guandong" more than once, the feeling of reading the manuscript is completely different from reading the printed matter.
When she read the manuscript, she seemed to be able to feel Lin Chaoyang's brushstrokes when writing, and then feel what he was thinking, which made her feel a huge sense of happiness.
"Amazing Lin Sang!"
Kondo Naoko read a sentence softly, and then opened the manuscript. When she visited Lin Chaoyang's home, she came up with the idea of ​​recommending "Enter Guandong" for publication in Japan.
However, Japanese publishing houses did not understand Lin Chaoyang and "Enter Guandong", so in order to let Japanese publishing houses understand this novel, she decided to translate it herself.
She believes that as long as she can translate the Japanese version of "Enter Guandong", those publishing houses will definitely see the excellence of this novel.
"The 'Boxer Rebellion' is mentioned here, so I need to add an annotation."
"How should we translate 'kaixiangtang'?"
…
The task of translation may seem simple, but in fact it tests not only the translator’s language proficiency, but also the translator’s talent.
Many so-called foreign masterpieces with wide influence in later generations would not be able to retain even one part of their brilliance without the translators' wonderful translations.
It is true that Kondo Naoko has studied many Chinese literary works, but asking her to translate them is another matter.
The translation work took two days, and she only completed less than three pages.
Looking at the results of her two days' work, Kondo Naoko couldn't help but sigh, she still needs Fujii-san's help!
Just as she was sighing, there was a sudden knock on the door.
Kondo Naoko suddenly became energetic, walked quickly to the door, opened the door, and saw a uniformed deliveryman. What he delivered was a beautifully crafted safe. This was the second day after Kondo Naoko returned to China.
Get someone to make it custom-made.
She cherished the manuscript of "Enter Guandong" very much. After returning to China, she first photocopied the manuscript, then put every page of the manuscript in a transparent loose-leaf folder, and finally bought this safe.
However, the original appearance of the safe was too crude. Naoko Kondo couldn't bear to put such a precious manuscript in such a cold and lifeless metal vessel, so she had someone make an exquisite coat for the safe.
Naoko Kondo put the manuscript in the safe and tried it. The size was just right, with a satisfied smile on her face.
With a safe, you no longer have to worry about fire problems.
Suddenly, there was another knock on the door, and the smile on Kondo Naoko's face became even brighter.
You can’t go wrong with this answer!
She went to open the door, and sure enough, there was a middle-aged man with a decent appearance standing at the door.
"Fujii-kun!" Naoko Kondo greeted the middle-aged man enthusiastically.
"Kondo-san, long time no see!"
"Please come in quickly!"
Shozo Fujii holds a PhD in Literature from the University of Tokyo and is currently an associate professor at the Graduate School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Faculty of Letters, University of Tokyo.
Kondo Naoko met him at an academic conference. Both of them were researching Chinese literature, and both had a focus on Lu Xun, so they became good friends.
After returning to China with the manuscript of "Into the Guandong", Naoko Kondo originally wanted to implement what she said to Lin Chaoyang and translate "Into the Guandong". However, after a few days of progress, she found that this matter was far from easy as she imagined.
He alone might not be able to complete such a huge work, so she asked Shozo Fujii for help.
After greeting each other, Kondo Naoko and Fujii Shozo shared her experience of visiting Yanjing, focusing on Lin Chaoyang and the novel "Enter Guandong".
Shozo Fujii said, "After you finished talking to me that day, I went to Oriental Bookstore, but unfortunately there was no such book there."
Oriental Bookstore is a bookstore in Japan that specializes in Chinese books.
Naoko Kondo said: "Oriental Bookstore only got a few books, maybe they were sold out."
As she spoke, she stood up and picked up the copy of "Enter Guandong" she bought from the bookshelf, "You should read this first."
"Thanks."
Fujii Shozo took the book and asked: "There is no book there Kondo-san, what should I do?"
Kondo Naoko smiled, and there was a bit of pride hidden in that smile, "I haven't told you yet, but Lin Sang gave me the manuscript of "Crossing the Guandong"."
Hearing this, the expression on Fujii Shozo's face was full of surprise, "Manuscript? That's so precious!"
Kondo Naoko nodded heavily, "That's right! So I must not let down Lin Sang's expectations."
Having said this, she looked at Shozo Fujii solemnly, then bowed and said, "Please, Fujii-kun!"
Fujii Shozo was surprised that Lin Chaoyang actually donated the manuscript of the work to Kondo Naoko. In this way, Kondo Naoko's translation of "Enter Guandong" also has absolute legitimacy.
He also said seriously: "I understand. Kondo-san, let us complete this great work together!"
Chapter completed!