"In the beginning, when I was six years old, Huyan Doni, the Marquis of the Left Bone of the Xiongnu, came to visit with sable skin, refined goat milk puff pastry and river mill jade, and came to visit from Shanggu, and Wang Hui picked him up at the Hongshan port, escorted him to Chang'an, arranged for him to stay at the State Guest House, came to me, and said to me: Brother-in-law say hello. What brother-in-law do I say?" This is the first paragraph of the latest masterpiece "The Beginning of the Chronicle" that writer Wang Shuo has devoted himself to creating for fifteen years.
Wang Shuo is the kind of writer who has not appeared in the literary jianghu for a long time, but is still remembered and discussed from time to time. Fifteen years later, in the midst of everyone's anticipation, Wang Shuo, who returned with a long story, quickly stirred up ripples in the literary world. From publishers to distributors, from readers to major platforms, everyone is moving.
On the eve and on the day of the return of the new work, under the condition of "zero publicity", the publisher's editorial department experienced an unexpected hot pursuit.
The new classic article said that on the evening of August 11, the editor supplemented the online information material of "The Beginning Chronicle" that opened the pre-sale on the second day according to the custom, and leisurely left work. "He obviously didn't know it, and inattentively he threw a depth bomb into the calm pool of literature." After the new long-form sales news was released, the editors' phone calls were blown up by the media and rushed back to the company for overtime overnight.
On the day of the official pre-sale, the pre-sale link was quickly sold out, the books that were not distributed in the warehouse were all snatched up by distributors, the topic of "Wang Shuo's new book" quickly appeared on the hot search of major platforms, and publishers began to print with a frequency of 100,000 yuan, ranking first in the sales list for many days. At the same time, the discussion about the book began to rise. This kind of book publishing momentum once again proves the so-called "your uncle or your uncle".
What a magical novel is "The Beginning chronicle"? The "I" in "The Beginning chronicle" is Liu Che, the Emperor of the Han Dynasty, who is the protagonist. In the book, Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty went from being hesitant and full of ambition during the Northern Expedition against the Xiongnu to dying and aging alone in Ganquan Palace; From the arrogance of trying to mix the world, to the remorse after the disaster of the witch, everything that has been gained is like quicksand in the palm of the hand. In the novel, Li Guang, Li Ling, Sima Qian, Zhang Qian, Sima Xiangru, Chen Ajiao, Wei Zifu, Huo Fuyi, and other ups and downs and intertwined experiences converge into a web of brilliant stories. The novel takes Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty and history as the skeleton and writes the epic poems of people themselves.
Wang Shuo said that the story of "The Beginning of the Chronicle", based on the old events of Han Wu contained in the Zizhi Tongjian, the Book of Han, and the Chronicle of History, is a four-volume series of novels, which are divided into "Fish Sweet", "Bamboo Book", "Jedi Tiantong" and "Ji Nian". The last volume of the series, Chronicles, was first published. Wang Shuo said in the preface, "The final completion of this volume is this book, the text is the smoothest, the reading experience is the best, and the first few volumes are interesting, the use of dictionaries, and the use of words are debatable." Agree with the editors that the best, unambiguous portion should be given priority to the reader. ”
The editors of this book believe that although history is the skeleton of this novel, the book is not a historical novel: "Wang Shuo also referred to and ate many ancient books for this purpose, and the branches in the books were huge and complex, astronomy, geography, meteorology, medicine, physics, mathematics, and everything. Rather than saying that this is Wang Shuo's version of "The Great Han Dynasty: 135 BC", it is better to say that Wang Shuo wrote a Han Wu Dynasty's "One Hundred Years of Solitude". From the perspective of the evolution of traditional Chinese novels, it continues the "Three Kingdoms" and "Journey to the West" all the way, taking a little historical reason, telling a new story, and Lu Xun's "New Compilation of Stories" is also a link in this context. ”
From "Stubborn Lord" to "Animal Fierceness", the most amazing thing about Wang Shuo's novels is language. In the preface to "The Beginning of the Chronicle", Wang Shuo secretly gives the reader an analysis of the new changes in his language. Regarding the language of the new work, Wang Shuo mentioned: "As far as I am concerned, I don't like the story to be too dramatic, which will increase the narrative burden, technically speaking, narrative has always been my weakness, in order to avoid narrative, I often use dialogue to replace narrative, that is, the so-called 'chat body', which is also true in this book." "I am the author of the so-called new Beijing dialect in spoken language, and when I check the text, I must also take the spoken language to slip back and forth, and I don't have a bump to feel smooth... There are also some familiar words such as honest and rotten, and they are changed to 'honest plantain' and 'rotten paint scars' or whatever, which are changed to make them strange. ”
In Wang Shuo's language, there are many modern words such as "state guesthouse", "survival rate", "princess class", "fragrance type" and "ergonomics", which are used humorously and playfully. Screenwriter Shi Hang said that "The Beginning of the Chronicle" is like Wang Shuo saying a long talk show, and there is a kind of wrist-breaking fun between the author and the reader.
However, since the release of the novel for more than ten days, has Wang Shuo, who is very different from the past, reached a new height of the novel? Whether the more than 700 pages of the emperor's tome can be moved, how the work is in the end, how to evaluate, seems to make readers and critics feel embarrassed, but it also opens the door to discussion. Everyone's reaction to Wang Shuo's pressed work has become an interesting phenomenon.
"The Beginning of the Chronicle" received a wave of hot reviews from the cultural celebrities.
For example, the critic Han Haoyue believes that one of the problems that "The Beginning chronicle" is likely to encounter is that the proportion of readers who can read it in its entirety and resonate deeply with it will not be too high... This is not the reason why Wang Shuo himself and his writing materials are selected, but mainly because the current reading habits and atmosphere can no longer produce a beautiful connection with works such as "The Beginning and the Chronicle".
Writer Zhi An said that he read "The Beginning of the Chronicle" sincerely admired the author's huge imagination, perfect expressiveness, amazing ability to use language, superb structure and ability to shape characters, in the past we often said that Wang Shuo is difficult to be surpassed by the writers of the same generation and later generations, and now Wang Shuo surpassed himself, only he is willing to make such a big effort, only he can have such a harvest.
For some readers of self-media V, each has its own point of view, from a variety of very interesting perspectives to see Wang Shuo. For example, some people cut into the discussion from a historical point of view, believing that qin and Han history experts also do not know much about the details of the lives of the Han Dynasty, and writing this history can only be imagined, but imagination is easy to have no roots, it is floating. Some people evaluate from how to cut into reading, thinking that novels are very picky for readers, and whether they want to read this book or not depends on whether they usually like to watch war movies. Some people analyze the reasons for the polarization of Word of Mouth in Wang Shuo's novels, believing that it has been two generations who like Wang Shuo's new novels and reject his new novels, and the gap between generations of reading has become obvious. Some people advocate that a reading method should be written for this long article, because the reading method is improper and the evaluation level is meaningless.
On a platform where young people gather, a small proportion of readers shout "I don't understand it", or shout "I can't stand the tone of the four different languages and abandon it", and some people think that "many of the words used in the book are not really inaccurate for Beijingers, the content can only be said to be bad or not bad, just read history in another way." Young readers who like it believe that "with Wang Shuo's reading volume and comprehension, it should be possible to write works of the big pattern."
The praise and criticism and all kinds of strange interpretations are so obvious in Wang Shuo's new work. After all, Wang Shuo's readership is still huge, and as a unique existence in the literary world, his new works cannot be ignored. Just Wang Shuo's return to this matter can make literature lively for a while.