Miao Wei's novel "Smoke and Chocolate and Sad Stories" focuses on the new middle class

Recently, Miao Wei, a writer and senior media person, walked into the live broadcast room of the People's Literature Publishing House to bring readers the creation and sharing of the new book "Smoke and Chocolate and Sad Stories", and together with writer Shi Yifeng, launched a rich literary dialogue around the topic of "new middle-class people and urban zero surplus", interacted with readers, and the response was warm.

The novel "Smoke and Chocolate and Sad Stories" was published by the People's Literature Publishing House, focusing on the city, starting from the marriage and love relationship, writing a new class. The characters in the novel are group portraits of radio hosts, screenwriters, psychologists, university professors, company owners, law firm partners... These decent new urban middle classes are often stretched thin in the face of concrete life and specific relationships. The fragility and absurdity they expose touch everyone's most sensitive nerves.

How to understand the urban new middle class? This is a new question raised by the times, a new incision to truly enter the urban culture, and a new way of life. In the live broadcast, the guests started from the personality characteristics of the protagonist of the novel, analyzed the typical social group portraits such as middle-class and literary middle-aged people, and compared them with the "superfluous people" in Western literature, thus constituting the writer's unique understanding of the current city. In Miao Wei's view, many of the quirks of the novel characters actually come from some kind of determination, when they realize what they really want, they are very direct, and this directness may be their way of resisting emptiness, and sometimes it has become the source of emptiness, which is where modern values are somewhat cruel.

During the live broadcast, the guests suggested that "Smoke and Chocolate and Sad Story" is a novel with an "urban tone", and the noise of the crowd, the decent humor, and the absurd deformation of the subtleties are related to the writer's view of urban culture and his literary taste preferences. Miao Wei has a very typical 90s literary taste brand, he likes the simple and witty playfulness, and does not like the heavy reading that is cumbersome to read. Writer Shi Yifeng believes that Miao Wei's novels always have a unique atmosphere, and this kind of uniqueness comes from daily life. Being able to provide readers with another pair of eyes to see life is a valuable contribution of writers in this era.

Text/Beijing Youth Daily reporter Zhang Zhiyi

Edit/Man Yi