Gao Xiaosheng: Why is family collection important?

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Gao Xiaosheng (1928-1999) A native of Wujin, Jiangsu Province. He is a director of the China Writers Association and a vice chairman of the Jiangsu Writers Association. His major works include the novels "Qingtian on the Top", "Chen Yisheng's Journey Abroad in the City", "Selected Novels of Gao Xiaosheng", etc., the essay collection "The Exchange of Life", etc., and the literary and art treatise "Creation Talk" and "Life, Thinking, Creation". This article was originally published in the "Reading Music" column of the Xinmin Evening News edited by Mr. Cao Zhengwen, and later included in the book "100 Famous Artists Talk about Reading" edited by Cao Zhengwen. This article tells the story of the author's reading in his youth, indicating that the reason why he was able to embark on the path of literature to a large extent "depends on the dozens of books in the family", which shows that the family's collection of books is very important. The original title of the article was "Remembering the Childhood Home Book".

When I was a teenager, I spent it in the countryside of southern Jiangsu. The content of rural teenagers' lives is also very rich. Fishing and crabs, cutting grass and herding cattle; raising rabbits and fighting crickets; lying on their backs on the fields to watch the blue sky and white clouds and the sun, keeping their mouths open to listen to the adults tell stories or fight with their mouths, without books to read, they don't feel that anything is missing.

Our village is big, we have books at home, and we have less than five fingers. There are dozens of literature and history books, only my family, which my father bought when he was studying. He didn't want me to see me, and always disciplined me with a straight face: "Or learn the textbook well!" This lesson seemed to have been counterproductive, and led me to think of textbooks as medicine (good medicine is always bitter) and other books as sugar. When I was in junior high school, I finished reading my family's favorite books, such as a "Liaozhai Zhiyi", and I basically learned ancient Chinese by relying on it. Another example is a "Gangjian Yizhi record", I did not read history, but when I read a storybook, the concept was not much, but the story was remembered a lot. Later, I realized that the truth is actually in the story.

In the period when I was exposed to more literary books in my life, there were three times in total, the first time was at home when I was a teenager; the second time was when I worked in the Jiangsu Federation of Literature and Literature from 1950 to 1956; and the third time was after the "Gang of Four" was crushed. In comparison, the second time I read it best, with purposefulness and good memory. The third time was the worst, I couldn't remember it, and I had a high degree of forgetting about recent events. As for the first time, it was reading as a play, with no purpose at all. My father bought these books for me at all. Neither the subjective nor the objective sides have any intention of gaining from Chinese enterprises. But I thought over and over why I loved literature, why I longed to write so much that I was able to embark on the path of writing, depended to a large extent on the dozens of books I had at home.

In recent years, because I can't stop reading secretaries and am busy, it is too late to read some urgent things, so I don't want to buy books. Buy without reading, waste. Later, I thought that if I don't read, there are children; my sons don't read, and my grandchildren; they don't read now, and there will be a future! It is better to have books at home than to have no books, and it is better for children to live in a family with books. So I still buy books. The eldest kid didn't get into college after graduating from high school and asked me what I was doing. I said that if you are comfortable in life, you can go to a hotel; on learning knowledge, you can go to xinhua bookstore to work, and then you are admitted to the bookstore.

In the past, the social structure remained unchanged for a long time, and the life and production of peasants were a model from generation to generation. No need to teach, children can watch it from an early age. Therefore, I can't think of the use of knowledge, I think that knowledge and myself have nothing to do with each other, and now it is different, without knowledge, not only the ability to produce, but also the ability to live. Even a peasant family should read books to keep up with the times.