Chapter 494 "Subversive Reading"
Breaking up is the last chapter.
In the last chapter of the story, "I", who pursues literature, and Lao Q go to visit a friend of "Lao Q".
It is said that this person has great connections and the ability to turn stone into gold. After her "polishing" the poems of third-grade primary school students can be published and paid for.
So, under the persuasion of "Old Q", I sent the novel I wrote to this person.
But "I" and "Old Q" are different.
"I" think this person is a good liar, and his tone is probably dozens of times greater than his talent.
She tried to play everyone as a card, but unfortunately playing the "me" card might be a little difficult for her.
"I" clearly understood that this single woman in her thirties was lying just for vanity.
However, she calls herself "a person deformed by society."
When Lao Q and I found her house, she was smoking a cigarette and scribbling something on a piece of paper.
"I'm here to pick up the novel I wrote."
Old Q was still chatting with her, so I got straight to the point.
"Oh! Did you write the story about water, rain and thunder?" She said as she rummaged through a basket that looked like a basket filled with large cabbages. The basket was cluttered with books, newspapers, fruits and unfinished sweaters.
"I wrote the story of Caesar and Pan Jinlian."
"Really?" She looked up at me, "Let me look for it again."
He was flipping the page and mumbling something, but I didn't know what he was mumbling about, and he had a very cute expression on his face.
"Your novel is well written. I've shown it to ××." Another celebrity.
When she talked about famous people, she would call them by their first names instead of their surnames. Another type of people she would call "Mr. ×" or "Mr. ×" according to their fame, as if they were all members of her extended family.
"——Oh, by the way, how about you buy me two packs of cigarettes?"
"Bah! Buy you two fucking ropes."
I kicked the door open and walked out. It was dark, I looked at the stars, took a deep breath, and then exhaled deeply, letting out the smell of cabbage.
Fuck!Old Q chased out. We went to have dinner together. She said nothing, and I thought something must have happened between us today.
We sat silently at a table by the window on the second floor of the ×× restaurant. The curtains were half-closed and half-open. Large raindrops hit the glass and slowly flowed down. The street lights were half-lit and half-dark. Old Q put his face close to the window and stared outside.
Her expression was mysterious and profound, and she gently turned the goblet filled with the rich and fragrant "Vermouth" in her hand. I looked at her, not knowing what to say.
Old Q continued to stare out. I shook the bottle at her, and she waved her hand and continued to look out the window. I took her glass and tried to fill it up, but she turned around and snatched the bottle, holding the neck of the bottle with both hands and slammed it down on the table. Then she dropped her head on her hands, and her black hair cascaded down like a waterfall. I touched her with my foot, and she looked around as if she had just woken up from a dream, and smiled at me peacefully.
"Old Q, one day I'm going to make you proud of me."
"Now I'm proud enough."
I told her about The Counterfeiter and old Fennel, though she probably didn't hear me.It was already past ten when we came out of the restaurant. We stumbled through the mud towards the station. Old Q was silent, looking at the sparse streets indifferently. The bus came, and she jumped on it, taller than me. I saw her leaning out of the window, tears streaming down her face.We broke up.
This breakup is written so coolly!While Wang Xiaobo was amazed, he also sincerely praised that an ordinary author might have stopped the novel here, but Jiang Xian did not stop at the place where "I" and "Lao Q" broke up.
This treatment is absolutely brilliant!
Yes, Jiang Xian did not stop writing.
Then he wrote another paragraph:"I'm tired and I want to go home. I remember that my mother must have put all the books that were messing around on my bed back on the bookshelf in order to change my bed sheets. Today I have to take down "The Counterfeiter" from the bookshelf and continue reading.
Old Q, I will write another story for you.
Years later, when you are assigned to play the violin in a certain troupe, accompanying unknown singers from Hong Kong, and buy 50 cents of minced meat and a few carrots to take home after get off work, I will still be the same as now, always feeling inexplicably happy and dazed, and not checking whether I am walking on the crosswalk when crossing the road."
Absolutely!After "I" and "Old Q" broke up, Jiang Xian went on to imagine that Old Q would also be divided into a machine tool by commercial culture.
Look at how big Jiang Xian’s vision is!An article that on the surface seems to be about the pretentious love between men and women.
What is the truth? It contains his anxiety and reflection on the polluting germs held hostage by Western civilization, as well as his own thoughts and inclinations in the collision between Eastern and Western cultures!
Since the 80s, the collision between Eastern and Western cultures has become a global phenomenon.
In China, this collision has also penetrated from the level of social structure, production mode, and economic system to the level of social subculture and implicit culture.
Everyone is being affected.
Daily life habits, personal behavior patterns, personal values and psychological accumulation.
So this is actually what Jiang Xian wanted to write in his "Variations without a Theme".
That kind of subculture is renewed, transformed, and reborn.
The awakening, depression, anxiety, loss, and absurd emotions and feelings brought about by the change of cultural consciousness and the transformation of values in people's self-construction.
So what is "Variations without a Theme".
When the mainstream ideology changes its way of existence and expression strategy, the traditional moral and ethical value system collapses into "variations without a theme."
After thinking about all this, Wang Xiaobo gently rubbed his brows, concentrated his mind a little, and then picked up the pen and wrote:The Impact of Contemporary Cultural Consciousness on Ancient Cultural Thoughts: Thoughts on Reading "Variations Without a Theme"
When Wang Xiaobo was deeply shocked by the novel "Variations without a Theme", the domestic literary world was also swept by a huge bloody storm because of this novel.
no way.
Jiang Xian is too famous.
Any article published with this name will surely attract widespread attention from the literary community and readers.
The same is true of "Variations without a Theme".
As soon as the novel was published in Huacheng, it quickly sparked a huge reading craze.
As one of the important battlefields for the collision of literary consciousness in this era, Peking University was certainly not absent from the reading craze of "Variations without a Theme". This controversial article quickly became popular on the Peking University campus immediately after its publication.
Another reason why this article excited Peking University students was that Comrade Jiang Xian, who wrote this novel, was also their classmate and alumnus.
The creative graduate class jointly organized by Peking University and Lu Xun Academy of Literature is still in operation.
It is precisely because of the existence of this creative graduate class that Peking University students are a head start over those from Qinghua.
At least he is superior in literature.
We have xxx, xxx in Peking UniversityWe still have Jiang Xian!
Do you have it in Qinghua?
If you can't even mention the name of a writer, how can you talk about literature with us at Peking University? Perhaps it is because of this sentiment that the controversial "Variations without a Theme" has been extremely popular on the Peking University campus, and Peking University students have spontaneously and quickly become the backbone of the work to restore the reputation of this novel.
Peng Wei is a sophomore student at Peking University. After class that day, he slammed open the door of his dormitory.
"Look at this!"
Everyone in the dormitory immediately leaned forward.
"what?"
Peng Wei was holding a copy of "Literary Review" and pointing at an article on it.
This article is of course related to the novel "Variations without a Theme", and the author has made a ruthless criticism of this novel. The main point is:
The literature of the past was a torch of light that people yearned for, the "backbone of the nation", and a monument of victory that marked great historical achievements.What now?This novel contains only the mundane, the banal, and the absurd.
"The fact that such articles can be published just shows that the thinking of the younger generation has collapsed!" the author left this sentence at the end of the article.
"Fuck him!" One of Peng Wei's roommates immediately uttered the beautiful Chinese quintessence, "He is ruined! His whole family is ruined!"
"What era is this? Is it still bright and great? Are you old pedants clinging to those old things and can't get out of this?"
"In my opinion, he will have to read Red Flag for the rest of his life."
"."
The whole dormitory is full of loyal readers of "Variations without a Theme". When they saw such comments, they were immediately excited.
The thinking of the young generation has collapsed!
How infuriating is this?
This is just like what some “experienced people” say: the post-80s generation is a decadent generation, the post-90s generation is a lost generation, and the post-00s generation is a ruined generation.Each of them is a "spiritual mentor".
Living in the previous version, expressing your prejudice towards the next version.
What the author of this article wants to say is the same as what these "experienced people" say:Your generation can’t continue like this!He also thinks that he can solve various ideological problems of contemporary youth according to the old ideas in his head.
But is it really true?No matter whether it is right or not, these students from Peking University will not listen to his nonsense.
"Pen, pen, come and hit her back!"
"We are the lost generation, and they are the half-buried generation."
"This article is so nonsense. Did he understand it? He understands nothing and still wrote a comment?"
This scene is just a small part of the controversy sparked by Variations without a Theme.
As for Jiang Xian, the author of this novel, he seems to be indifferent at the moment and is indifferent to all discussions in the literary world.
The novel "Variations without a Theme" was a synthesis of his two inspirations: "Superfluous Man" and "Inner World".
The novel tells the daily mentality of an ordinary young protagonist "I", and also describes the living conditions of "I", my girlfriend "Lao Q" and my roommates.
This novel is not as well-known as "Red Sorghum" and "To Live" in later generations, and its author Xu Xing also seems to be not well-known in later generations, but there is no doubt that the influence of this novel on modern Chinese literature is in no way inferior to "Red Sorghum" and "To Live", and it can even be said to be greater.
In later generations, the literary world regarded this novel as one of the landmark works that marked the transition of contemporary Chinese literature from tradition to modernity.
Before the novel was published, Jiang Xian predicted that it would definitely cause controversy.
The reason is simple.
Looking back at history, our contemporary literature initially described heroic characters and heroic images, and it all started with heroic literature.
Like Robinson Crusoe enduring the loneliness of an isolated island.
An old sailor who fought the ocean all his life and was finally swallowed by it.
Captain Ahab chased an enemy like he was chasing a lover, and finally went to the abyss with it.
Jean Valjean endured decades of physical and spiritual torture.
Karamazov and Christopher are constantly pursuing a dream that is never reachable, the immortality of their souls.
This kind of heroic literature rarely appears in modern works.
What replaced it was a kind of vulgarity, a petty and playful attitude, or even boredom.
Or they treat defecation and urination and the inability to get a toilet stall as a "comedy", and put things like "weight loss" on the movie and TV screen with great glee.
Or it could be a perverted release of long-term repression, and they would try to reveal the secrets in bed whenever they get the chance.
But this is the shift in literary themes, as literary images generally pursue non-heroicism.
The word "great" is outdated, perhaps because it has been used so much in the past that it has become unpalatable.
It is inevitable that the sacred returns to mediocrity and heroism returns to nothingness.
This piece, "Variations without a Theme", clearly describes these mundane trivialities.
So it is inevitable to attract criticism.
People who hate this work will regard it as a poisonous weed and ask the literary world to be wary of the emergence of such literature.
Those who like it will regard this work as a comfort to their wandering souls.
It's a bit like The Catcher in the Rye.
"Variations without a Theme" is really a bit like "The Catcher in the Rye", not in terms of sentences or structure, but in terms of emotions.
The controversy caused by "The Catcher in the Rye" is even more exaggerated than that of "Variations without a Theme".
"The Catcher in the Rye" was banned after its first publication in the 1950s. It was regarded as "subversive reading" and listed as a banned book. It was banned five times and censored 5 times.
After being banned and lifted many times, by the 1980s, this novel was actually included in the textbooks of most schools!What’s even more magical is that in later generations, countless young people who felt lost in the world and didn’t know where to place themselves have been healed and redeemed by this novel, which can be called a “life-saving book.”
The greatness of the novel is recognized by the world and it has become the "youth bible" that has influenced generations of people.
Therefore, Jiang Xian did not get too involved in the controversy caused by "Variations without a Theme".
He knew very well that he didn't have to do anything and the novel would be recognized by the times.
And the greater the controversy, the more famous the novel becomes.
How did the saying go:
Black and red are also considered red!(End of this chapter)