Wang Xiaobo's "Golden Age", how bold is the scale of description? Netizen: It is recommended not to let girls watch

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On April 11, 1997, the writer Wang Xiaobo died suddenly, and at that time, his wife Li Yinhe was working as a visiting scholar at Cambridge University. At this time, a novel he highly valued, "Golden Age", had been published in China for more than 3 years, but the response was mediocre. However, he could never have imagined that this novel, which took more than 20 years of painstaking efforts to write and endure many difficulties to publish, would sell well throughout the country in the time to come, and even be selected as the "Most Influential Novel in the Forty Years of Reform and Opening Up" in 2008.

In "My Brother Wang Xiaobo", his brother Wang Xiaoping once recorded:

According to speculation, Wang Xiaobo, who was seriously ill at the time, struggled alone in the room for several hours, and the next morning people saw that the white ash wall had left marks on his teeth, and there was still white ash between his teeth after death. It is conceivable that Wang Xiaobo was very likely to be tortured by heart disease and finally hit the wall and leave.

Since then, Wang Xiaobo has disappeared into the sea of people like every interesting soul in his pen, leaving people with infinite sorrow and regret!

A few days after his death, his film script "East Palace West Palace" won the Best Screenplay Award at the Argentine International Film Festival that year, and was also shortlisted for the Cannes Film Festival in the same year. However, he couldn't see it all anymore.

At the same time, the publishing house seized the time node of Wang Xiaobo's death, quickly published the "Golden Age" in the name of "Wang Xiaobo's Posthumous Works", and promoted the release ceremony of the book. To this day, there is still a "Wang Xiaobo boom" in China.

Born in 1952 to an intellectual family in Beijing, Wang Xiaobo was admitted to Chinese University in 1978; after graduation, he went to the United States to study and returned to China in 1988 to teach. The 4-year study tour provided inspiration for his later creations.

After returning to China, Wang Xiaobo successively published novels such as "The Secret Story of the Tang Dynasty", "The History of Wang Er's Wind and Currents", and "The Golden Age". In his nearly 30 years of creative experience, the most influential novel is "The Golden Age".

But the publication of The Golden Age can be regarded as a thorn in the road:

At that time, the Hong Kong Prosperity Publishing House originally wanted to publish the contents of "Golden Age" together with two other novels as a collection, but considering the large number of sex-related content described in the books, the publisher was worried about the limited sales market, so it incorporated the content of "Golden Age" into the Wind and Moon series, with the title "The History of Wang Er's Wind and Currents". As a result, The Golden Age did not appear on the market as an independent novel.

By 1993, The Golden Age was given its own name because the editors found the novel to express independent and free thoughts from the text. But reality is always harsh, excitement turns to excitement, and the book ultimately fails to pass the review. Later, Wang Xiaobo's wife accompanied her husband to the editor of "People's Literature", hoping that the other party could help recommend "Golden Age", but the editor categorically refused. Later, they went to the Beiyue Literature Publishing House, and the Beiyue Literature Editor sighed after reading the contents of the book, saying that the content could not be reviewed.

Since then, "The Golden Age" has been like a little red in the evergreen bush, and in the limited literary works of the time, it has gradually attracted attention in the circle of publishing houses. Despite this, "The Golden Age" is still just a pearl of literary works that has been obliterated, and although the leaders of the publishing house know that the book does shine compared to traditional literary works, they do not nod their heads in agreement.

The person who really made this book officially appear on the historical stage was Zhao Jieping, editor of Huaxia Publishing House. It is very coincidental that at that time, Zhao Jieping's husband and Li Yinhe were working in the same unit, and Zhao Jieping learned from her husband that "The History of Wang Er's Wind and Currents" had been published in China for four or five publishing houses, but it still had not been reviewed. With this one hand, the fate of "Golden Age" has also taken a turn. After Zhao Jieping finished reading the novel in her spare time, her thinking was greatly impacted, and she believed that Wang Xiaobo's writing tried to break the rigid circle of thought in a more practical way. Later, Zhao Jieping and other editors secretly led the publication of "Golden Age".

Although the novel was able to "appear" in the domestic market after experiencing difficulties and obstacles, the sales volume of "Golden Age" was not satisfactory. On the one hand, the content nature of "Yellow-related" in the Golden Age itself made it impossible to appear on the exhibition stage; on the other hand, after huaxia publishing the book, the entire market was unpopular, and no other bookstore was willing to order the novel in the later period. Wang Xiaobo, who has devoted more than ten years of hard work to this book, is naturally not satisfied, so he can only shout with Li Yinhe on the bicycle, hoping to find more readers and empathizers.

But everything backfired, the "Golden Age" was priced at only 12.8 yuan at that time, and Wang Xiaobo did not sell out for a lifetime.

Speaking of "Golden Age", here we have to mention Wang Xiaobo's wife Li Yinhe, their love story has long become a topic after everyone's tea and dinner, but most of them are about how Wang Xiaobo pursues Li Yinhe, and Li Yinhe feels how talented Wang Xiaobo is.

However, in the real situation, Wang Xiaobo and Li Yinhe are not only spiritual partners, but also a couple in distress.

First of all, the status of the two of them is very different: when Li Yinhe published an article on the front page of the People's Daily, and the readers' letters had to be collected in boxes, Wang Xiaobo at that time was just an ordinary street worker. Secondly, the two of them also showed a situation of "yin and yang" in terms of economic income: Wang Xiaobo and Li Yinhe studied at the University of Pittsburgh in the United States, when Li Yinhe had a scholarship of $400 per month, in contrast, Wang Xiaobo's academic career was extremely embarrassing, he not only could not get a single scholarship, but also started the "déjà vu" occupation of that year - working as a street worker in China, and running to clean the dishes in the United States.

Despite this, Li Yinhe still loves Wang Xiaobo very much, not only did not dislike her husband's "nest bag", but even refused to let Wang Xiaobo go out to work. She said: "He is such a wise brain, I am reluctant to let him do rough work." And during their study abroad in the United States, the couple traveled around Europe and the United States.

In addition, Li Yinhe is not only Wang Xiaobo's wife who can get along with each other, but also the most important guide in his life, it can be said that without Li Yinhe, "Golden Age" is very likely to be annihilated in the torrent of history. When Wang Xiaobo stayed in the United States, he met Xu Zhuoyun through Li Yinhe's relationship, and Xu Zhuoyun was an important person who recommended "Golden Age" to Taiwan's "Lianhe Bao".

In addition, as mentioned above, the editor of Huaxia Publishing House promoted the publication of "Golden Age" at that time, also because her husband and Li Yinhe were colleagues. At that time, Li Yinhe's social status and economic income were more decent than Wang Xiaobo's, but she not only did not dislike Wang Xiaobo, but she was also willing to put down her body, ride a tattered bicycle, bundle a large box of books in the back seat of the car, and sell novels street by street. How can such love not be envied?

Many people think that Wang Xiaobo only created "The Golden Age" after 1980. However, according to Wang Xiaobo's self-description, what really provided him with creative inspiration was his experience of working in the Yunnan Corps, but at that time, the first draft he wrote, the chapters were not fully formed; it was not until his stay in the United States that Wang Xiaobo gradually improved the content of the novel.

And what exactly is "Golden Age" about?

At the beginning of the article, Wang Xiaobo's description of women is written like this: Married women should not steal, they should have a dark face and sagging breasts.

From the description in the text, we can see that Wang Xiaobo's words reveal love, color, and love, and such a bold and bold style also made the Hong Kong Prosperity Society at that time define it as a "history of the wind" novel. But does the book "The Golden Age" really contain only descriptions of sex?

In the social environment at that time, being able to describe sex in the form of words was actually a person's deep pursuit and expression of freedom and truth. Wang Xiaobo's "sex" is wild, but the "love" contained in it is repressed. Let's look at a detail between the heroine and the hero:

She didn't want to love anyone else, and no one loved; nevertheless, when I kissed the heart of her foot, a pungent feeling came into her heart.

This is a passage in which Wang Er describes Chen Qingyang in this way, and Wang Er uses "no one loves" to describe Chen Qingyang, which is actually a benchmark that he does not love anyone. But as a man, he understands and understands Chen Qingyang's delicate feelings, but he can't respond to this love, and can only suppress the pure feelings in his heart. Despite this, Wang Er still chose to kiss chen Qingyang's foot, hoping to leave a spicy feeling in her heart. Since pure love cannot be released, Wang Er can only leave wild sex.

Jumping out of the book itself, the author uses wang er's emotional repression to express his bitterness about the real environment, but behind the bitterness is the exploration and persistence of freedom and authenticity.

Wang Xiaobo once said that wisdom is the basis for a person to live in the world and fully enjoy people's self-esteem, sex is the source of all beauty, and fun is the premise of feeling the beauty of the world. It can be seen from this that this is also the reason why Wang Xiaobo can always live so uniquely, and insist on pursuing himself and not losing his heart for the outside world.

I was 21 years old that day, and in the golden age of my life, I had a lot of extravagant hopes. I want to love to eat, and I want to turn into a half-light and half-dark cloud in the sky in an instant. Later, I learned that life is a slow process of being hammered, people grow old day by day, and their extravagance disappears day by day, and finally they become like a cow that has been hammered. But I didn't foresee this on my twenty-first birthday. I felt like I was going to be fierce forever and couldn't hammer me with anything.

In the whole book of "Golden Age", this sentence has touched countless people, and when I first read it, I only felt a little powerless, but when I looked back, it revealed a kind of attachment to life, a struggle against fate, and a desire for the future.

Lian Luyu was impressed by Wang Xiaobo's flowing words: He is a kind of cordial awakening for me!

And Gao Xiaosong was extremely excited when he mentioned Wang Xiaobo in the "Xiaosong Say" program, and he once said frankly and boldly: I think Wang Xiaobo is the first in my mind among all the novel writers who write vernacular texts.

Here, if you have also had unsatisfactory, confused, and frustrated in life, but have never given up the endless pursuit of life, then you can enter the "Golden Age", come to see Wang Xiaobo's world, and read his soul.

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