People's Literature Publishing House, December 2021 edition
Synopsis
Thirty years ago, young men and women from two improper doors and households in the Second Radio Factory eloped, and in the desperate situation of layoff and poverty, they founded a company in Luyang that was half the sky by selling the first bucket of gold earned from the sale of cemeteries. However, the two can share hardships but can not share the same happiness, with the passage of time, this life and death and the suffering couple in the company operation, life path, the concept of rich and poor differences and conflicts intensified, until the marriage crisis broke out in full swing... Four emotions, twenty years of entanglement, seem to be true and false, plausible, seemingly nothing, seemingly nothing; the couple seems to love and hate, seems to hate and love, seems to be broken and connected, seems to be broken and broken. It's a labyrinthine story of marital emotions, and it's a dumb reading experience. Why can't two good people have a good life together? There is no simple verdict of right and wrong in the novel, only the hint of life in the vastness of life. While presenting the history of the material development of an era, the novel strives to explore and restore the spiritual history and spiritual history of an era!
Editorial pitches
Xu Chunqiao's novel "The Next Stop Can't Stop", which took five years to complete, if refined in one sentence, is to write: Why did a man and a woman who loved together not live a good life, why could not live a good life? This new work adheres to the purpose of the author's long story "Restaurant" and "Love Above the Roof" published in "Contemporary", writing about the dignity defense, personality adherence, bottom line struggle, emotional tearing of civilian good people, and at the same time there are new expansions, the ups and downs of personal destiny are more turbulent, and the background of the social era is more open. The novel has created a typical and standing character of "good man" Song Huailiang, writing the tortuous fate closely in the times and reality, and clearly reflecting reality in the trajectory of life, which makes people sigh and sigh, and also makes the novel full and easy to read.
Comment: The will of time is so strong
In May 1991, Xu Chunqiao completed "Scenes of The Seasons". The novel writes that the rural girl Lotus, unwilling to live in the quiet and monotonous countryside, bids farewell to her father's generation and runs away from the countryside, symbolically writing about the inevitable discrete trend of rural society and ethics in the process of changing the times. This novel has a prophetic function and symbolic significance, which shows that Xu Chunqiao established his personal literary personality in the initial stage of creation—describing the material and spiritual life of contemporary people, revealing how the times have shaped people's spirit and changed people's concepts. This is also the goal that Xu Chunqiao's new work "The Next Stop Can't Stop" wants to pursue and achieve. However, Xu Chunqiao obviously has higher literary expectations and greater literary ambitions this time, and he intends to write a "history of material life of the times" and restore a "spiritual history and spiritual history of the times" through a person's "history of entrepreneurship and struggle". In fact, 2018's "Locust Flowers Everywhere" seems to be a literary rehearsal. Xu Chunqiao's contemporary legend composed by Zhao Huaishu's love watch over Li Huaihua spanning 40 years reflects the changes in life from 1978 to 2018. The difference is that "Everywhere Acacia Flowers" is a short story that can only outline the outline of history, while "The Next Stop Can't Stop" has a volume of 400,000 words to reach flesh and blood.
The rise and fall of Huailin's company is the external plot line of "The Next Stop Can't Be Stopped", which is written about Song Huailiang's personal "entrepreneurial history and struggle history". Xu Chunqiao began writing novels in 1992. In this year, Song Huailiang's state-owned enterprise collapsed, and after multiple blows of unemployment, loss of love and loss of his father, he gained Wu Peilin's love and marriage; the private economic trend surged, and Song Huailiang established The Huailin Company, starting the fate of the next 20 years. The beginning of this surprising story sets the dramatic narrative tone of the novel. Although Wu Peilin scolded Huailin Company, it ran like a wild horse on the runway of the times - setting up a building materials mall, establishing an Internet café, and transforming the decoration and construction team into a group company, making profits like probing bags, and even Wu Peilin sighed, "How is this money like a leaf." This illogical phenomenon contains precisely the internal logic of the times. This is an era that Song Huailiang cannot understand, predict, and even more uncontrollably. Time passed, and Wyrin's company decayed at the rate of a building that fell to the ground. Why? Wu Peilin blamed the company's "paternalistic operation, Shuipo Liangshan team, and Caotai team style", while Song Huailiang blamed herself for "insufficient ability". If this is the case, how can we explain the "success and brilliance" that Huailin Company once had? The real answer may be a recurring keyword in fiction: time. Whether it is Huailin Company or Song Huailiang, in fact, they are the children of the times. "Time modifies the date", the industry competition ecology that changes with the times, and the industrial economic structure that changes at any time are the fundamental factors that change the fate of Huailin Company and Song Huailiang. In this way, Xu Chunqiao expresses the invincible will to time, the irreversible trend of the times, and the irresistible historical rationality in the form of a novel. "The Next Stop" is not only a record of the rise and fall of Huailin Company, but also a memorandum of China's economy in the past 30 years; it is both a history of Song Huailiang's personal struggle and a literary testimony of this era. It is also in this sense that Song Huailiang's personal fate has a typical significance, and the ups and downs, glory and decline of Huailin Company accurately record the historical logic of China's private economy in the early years of reform and opening up.
Illustrations from the web
The inner plot line of "The Next Stop" is Song Huailiang's "Emotional History and Spiritual History", which is written about the emotional relationship between Song Huailiang and the four women. This thread and the external plot line are intertwined, and Xu Chunqiao describes The history of Song Huailiang's spiritual changes in the way of Tolstoy's spiritual dialectics. This process can be divided into three stages: in the first stage, Song Huailiang, who is in trouble, is satisfied with the unexpected marriage and is grateful to Wu Peilin; in the second stage, Song Huailiang, who is in a good career, begins to "win the villain" and is indifferent to Wu Peilin; in the third stage, Song Huailiang regards marriage as a "cage" and is tired of Wu Peilin. However, Xu Chunqiao obviously does not want to write a history of a man's change of heart and a history of depravity, let alone portray Song Huailiang as an "emotional liar" or a "prodigal son of the love field". What caused Song Huailiang's psychological transformation and marital dilemma? Obviously not the fate that Ai Ye and Wu Zhenhai thought. In fact, the narrator once again gives the answer to "time" in a descriptive manner: "Time is a sinner who stirs up dissension, and no one is sure enough about the next minute." Time has exposed the misplaced and divergent love concepts and values between Song Huailiang, Wu Peilin and Ai Ye. In essence, Wu Peilin's uneasiness, doubt and anxiety in her married life stem from the memory of her parents' failed marriage, and her concept of love continues the mother's dogma: men become bad when they have money. What she fantasizes about and expects is an ideal, "body-mind" view of marriage. Song Huailiang pursues the love concept of "physical and mental division" and "sexual duality". The younger generation of Ai Ye, her concept of love and Song Huailiang is exactly the opposite, in her concept, spiritual loyalty is the first, physical betrayal is secondary. Therefore, the real picture that Xu Chunqiao wants to reveal and restore the "history of emotion and soul" is the conflict between values and the concept of love. It is the contradiction between Song Huailiang, Wu Peilin and Ai Ye that makes the "marriage warm nest" into an "emotional siege", resulting in a marriage tragedy.
Realistic enthusiasm, folk justice and moral idealism are Xu Chunqiao's literary complexes. "The Next Stop" not only inherits these iconic qualities of Xu Chunqiao's previous literary creations, but also shows some new changes. If from the "Season Series" to the "Men's Quadrilogy", Xu Chunqiao provides us with a historical picture and the imprint of the times from the late 1970s to the beginning of the 21st century, then "The Next Stop" makes the time chain go forward for another 10 years, but what remains unchanged is Xu Chunqiao's depiction of the long-term obsession with the material and spiritual life of the present era. At the same time, Xu Chunqiao somewhat exaggerated to write that Song Huailiang's sitting in the arms is not chaotic, so that he still sees righteousness and courage at the end of the road, it can be said that Song Huailiang's death not only solves the narrative dilemma of marriage disintegration in the way of "killing two birds with one stone", but also maintains Song Huailiang's shaky ethical golden body image, which is Xu Chunliang's moral idealism. There is no "simple ruling on right and wrong" in "The Next Stop"—Xu Chunqiao only presents the contradictions and conflicts of values and love concepts, unveils the ambiguous and ambiguous state of human nature, and does not morally praise and deprecate Song Huailiang's choices, and judges right and wrong. (Text/Peng Zhengsheng)
About the Author
Xu Chunqiao is the author of the novels "Lay Down The Weapon", "The Man Stands Upright", "The Restaurant", "Love Above the Roof", the short story collection "Riddle", "The Moonlight in the City", "No Fish in the Net", "Life Is Unspeakable", the essay collection "Return to the Bookstore" and so on. He is currently the vice chairman of the Anhui Provincial Federation of Literary and Art Circles, the chairman of the Anhui Writers Association, and a member of the Plenary Committee of the China Writers Association, enjoying special allowances from the State Council.
(Source: Literature and Art Daily)