1980 My Literary Era.

Chapter 794 The person closest to the master

The exclusive interview with "Newsweek" took a whole morning. After the interview, Michael Isikov specially gave Lin Weimin several envelopes.

"These are letters written to you by enthusiastic readers in the United States." Michael Isikoff said, "It is not easy for you to be an enthusiastic reader of foreign writers. I can't even contact you if I want to. These letters are all mine. My colleagues asked me to pass it on to you, they are all your loyal readers and viewers."

Lin Weimin accepted it with a smile. He had received letters like this many times in the past few years, each time in several suitcases. They were not only letters from readers in the United States, but also letters from readers all over the world. Including letters from home, he found a house to store them all.

Over the years, the credit alone has taken over five of his houses.

Alas, it costs so much money!
After sending away Michael Isikov, Lin Weimin's work returned to normal.

It has been more than three months since "God Bless America" ​​was released, and there is still a lot of criticism, but compared to the previous two months, the noise is much smaller.

The criticism of him and his works has subsided, and the voices of praise have naturally become more prominent.

It wasn't that no one praised him originally, it was just that the overwhelming number of curses came and drowned out the compliments.

On the last day of mid-November, the latest issue of "Literary News" published a review article "Literature shines into reality, I read "God Bless the United States"" on the front page, signed by the author Chen Yong.

Chen Yong is an old acquaintance of Lin Weimin. He is an old literary critic born in Yan A. He has profound qualifications and is a Beidou-level figure in the field of domestic literary criticism.

In the article "Literature shines into reality, I read "God Bless the United States"", Chen Yong praised the novel and its author Lin Weimin.

"...Some people are discussing whether it is a satire or a science fiction novel. In my opinion, it is no longer important. A big reason for the success of "God Bless the United States" is that Lin Weimin provided us with a From the perspective of a prophet, he used his writing to outline a relatively real world in the near future, providing us with a close observation of the possible results when an important political form of mankind develops to its extreme.

Irony and absurdity are the background of this novel, but the infinite proximity to reality is the most chilling part of this novel. This is also the biggest difference between this novel and previous political satirical novels.

The week before I wrote this article, I read two recent reviews in the newspaper, both of which quoted dialogue from the novel with admiration. To a certain extent, it is consistent with the political ecology of the United States that we are familiar with.Throughout the book, there are many places worthy of our rereading, memorizing and quoting. From this point alone, "God Bless the United States" is successful enough...

Novel is an important literary genre. There are many masters of this genre in various countries around the world. France has Hugo, Britain has Defoe, Russia has Tolstoy, and the United States has Mark Twain.In the past China, we also had Lu Xun and Lao She. It is difficult for me to be sure whether Lin Weimin can be among the above-mentioned figures, but I think he should be the person closest to these masters in the Chinese literary world. "

As soon as Chen Yong's review article was published, it caused a violent response in the domestic literary circle.

In the first two months after "God Bless the United States" was released, it was scolded by many pro-rice factions in the country. If they had not been unable to use administrative power to ban Lin Weimin, these people would have eliminated Lin Weimin long ago.

Now, just a few days after the overwhelming curses subsided, Chen Yong, a "top figure" in domestic literary criticism, suddenly expressed his stance, singing praises to Lin Weimin, and even said such naked praise as "the person closest to the master" This immediately angered the pro-rice faction who had just come out of the fighting state.

In the past two months, they have slandered Lin Weimin completely. Now that you say that Lin Weimin is the person closest to the master, doesn't it mean that we are short-sighted?

In just a few days, the war broke out again. This time the pro-rice faction not only criticized Lin Weimin, but also the critic Chen Yong.

Three months after its publication, it still caused such a bloody storm in the domestic literary world. Even Lin Weimin didn't know whether he should be happy or sad about the new novel "God Bless the United States."

At a time when the domestic literary world was involved in a tense legal battle over Lin Weimin's novel and Chen Yong's critical article, the latest issue of "Yanjing Youth Daily" suddenly reprinted the full text of an exclusive interview in the American "Newsweek".

Since the reform and opening up, many domestic media and publications have the habit of reprinting various foreign news. However, Yanjing Youth Daily rarely reprints foreign news. This time it reprinted an article from News Weekly, which is a bit out of the ordinary.

But only readers who have read this issue will know that Yanjing Youth Daily’s reprint this time has completely captured the recent news hot spots in the literary world, because the exclusive interview article they reprinted was the interview with Lin Weimin published by News Weekly interview.

The influence of "Yanjing Youth Daily" is not the same as that of national media such as "People's Daily" and "Reference News", but it is still very influential around Yanjing.

Within two days after the article was reprinted, it quickly aroused heated discussion in several provinces around Yanjing.

After that, other provinces successively reprinted it. In just over a week, Newsweek's exclusive interview with Lin Weimin spread throughout the country, attracting the attention of countless people in the cultural and literary circles and readers.

"Newsweek" is not well-known in China, not as good as "Times", but the media these days have the habit of providing popular science to readers. Readers, take a look.

Hey, it turns out to be one of the three major weekly magazines that is not inferior to Time Magazine. The gold content of this exclusive interview is definitely not low.

Although Lin Weimin has appeared on the cover of Time Magazine before, there was not much publicity in the country that time, and readers will never get too much about bringing glory to the country.In addition to being featured in Newsweek, what attracted even more attention was the content of the interview.

The first thing in the article that caught the attention of the literary world and readers was the sales volume of "God Bless the United States." An American political satire written by a Chinese writer like Lin Weimin actually sold 70 copies in the United States in one month. This figure is shocking. It broke the chins of countless Chinese people.

In the past, everyone knew that Lin Weimin's novels were well-sold, popular and won many awards abroad, but they did not have an accurate concept.

This time, "Newsweek" used accurate figures to let everyone see the influence of the name "Lin Weimin" in the American literary world.

According to the article, "God Bless the United States" sold 70 copies in a single month. Even in the United States, this is an extremely rare number. Moreover, after the end of the first month, the sales volume of the novel in the second month remained high. See It doesn't look like a gust of wind.

If it sells at this rate, it will easily exceed [-] million copies in two or three years, right?
Everyone feels a sense of oppression when they think of this number. In the literary world, novels that can exceed tens of millions of copies are all regarded as classics.

"God Bless the United States" is Lin Weimin's latest novel. Chinese people revere the past and suppress the present, and we are all Chinese. When reading this novel, it is inevitable that there will be some contempt because it is one of our own.

Especially for those who are pro-rice, many contents of this novel are even more outrageous.

However, in this exclusive interview article reprinted from Newsweek in various newspapers, Lin Weimin wrote a novel that scolded the American government, and it was still very popular among Americans?

Chinese people who hold the middle ground do not have any negative impression of this novel. They are very happy because of the reception of the novel in the United States.

However, the pro-rice faction in the country are puzzled. They have tried their best to figure out how such a novel, which has almost lifted the pants of the United States, is so popular among Americans.There is actually a heavyweight political magazine in the United States that travels thousands of miles to interview Lin Weimin?
70 copies in a single month, this is by no means just a sales volume that can be generated by the preferences of a certain class. It must be achieved by winning the favor of the general public.

This group of people thought about it and racked their brains, and in the end they could only attribute this phenomenon to this: the public opinion environment in the United States is loose and the American people are open-minded.

Yes, it must be so.

The reprinting of the "News Weekly" article by various media outlets quickly attracted the attention of the domestic literary circle and reader groups. The "Yanjing Youth Daily" that originally reprinted the article benefited the most, and its sales jumped directly. The sales volume of recent issues of newspapers An increase of 50% was easily achieved, and the newspaper office was overjoyed.

Li Xiangyang has now been promoted to deputy editor-in-chief of "Yanjing Youth Daily". He advocated publishing the interview in "News Weekly". Seeing such gratifying results in this operation, he boasted that he had captured the traffic code. I firmly believe that in the future, we must reprint more foreign reports and evaluations of domestic writers and works.

Not only that, he also made a special call to Lin Weimin.

"For the people, you have to thank me this time..."

When a familiar routine was used on him, Lin Weimin was in a daze for a moment.

Fortunately, he reacted quickly and retorted Li Xiangyang with one sentence, "Did you pay for reprinting?"

"Don't talk about this, don't talk about this."

Li Xiangyang awkwardly changed the topic and asked about the sales and evaluation of Lin Weimin's novels abroad. Lin Weimin said warily: "Why are you asking about this?"

"Let's just chat. You, a great writer, bring glory to the country from time to time. If we learn more about these foreign situations, we can better introduce them to the Chinese people!"

"I don't usually pay attention to these things. I only know some of the interviews I have accepted. For the rest, if you ask me, it is no different from collecting it yourself."

Li Xiangyang felt a little regretful when he heard this. It seemed that the first-hand information was unavailable. After chatting with Lin Weimin for a while, he hung up the phone.

After sitting there and thinking for a while, he had an idea. Lin Weimin was in China, and the evaluation and feedback on his works from abroad were of course not as fast as those from abroad. He could definitely find people abroad to provide information.

Li Xiangyang's eyes were subconsciously focused on a group of people - international students.

Hiring foreigners is too expensive.In recent years, the trend of studying abroad in China has become more and more intense. Chinese students are all over Western developed countries. Find a few Chinese students who care about literature. The editorial department will provide them with an information consulting fee or manuscript fee, and they will provide foreign evaluations and evaluation of Chinese writers and works. According to reports, both parties are mutually beneficial.

Li Xiangyang was very excited when he thought of this idea.

(End of this chapter)