Source of this article: Flower City
From: Big gentlemen
Editor's note: What about boring life ha?! ---------------------
I have met Wang Xiaobo three times.
What I couldn't imagine was that the place where we met for the third time was actually hall one of the Babaoshan Funeral Home, the scene of the memorial service, where he was lying, separated from my yin and yang. That day was April 26, 1997.
I am the responsible editor of Wang Xiaobo's "Era Trilogy" - "Golden Age", "Silver Age" and "Bronze Age".
In the early morning of April 11, 1997, Wang Xiaobo suddenly died of a heart attack at the age of 44.
On April 26, outside the No. 1 Hall of Babaoshan, about 300 people came. Except for a small number of Wang Xiaobo's relatives and friends, most of them are spontaneous mourners. They are young people in the capital's media circles, scholars in the fields of philosophy, history, sociology and economics, and a considerable number of readers who have never met Wang Xiaobo, and some even come from thousands of miles away. Curiously, there were no writers' association members, not a single novelist.
You know, Wang Xiaobo first regarded himself as a novelist. But by the time of his death, his work had not yet entered the mainstream literary landscape and still does not exist today.
At 10 a.m., the memorial service began. Everyone lined up in two rows and entered the hall in an orderly manner to bid farewell to Wang Xiaobo's body. In the hall, there was not mourning music, but Beethoven's sonata, according to Wang Xiaobo's former friend of the funeral group, Xiaobo loved to listen to this song.
Wang Xiaobo's face was serene, but there was a brown scar on his forehead. It is said that he died alone in a writing room on the outskirts of the city, unable to imagine the misery and loneliness of his sudden death. When he was found, his head was against the wall, there were marks of teeth scraping on the wall, there was wall ash on the ground, he struggled for a while, and then left alone. The scene before his death was later processed by many fans with great emotion, as if it were an indictment of his own situation.
Two
Wang Xiaobo did not have a unit, nor did he join the Writers Association, and before he died, he said: "I heard that there is a literary circle, and I don't know where it is." "He was an outsider, but a real writer, a freelance writer in the service of his own view of truth.
At the memorial service, I only recognized Hube and the lines. Hu Bei is Wang Xiaobo's friend who grew up playing big, the general manager of a software company, and he made cameo appearances in movies in his spare time, and later, I found him appearing in the movie "Bath" directed by Zhang Yang. Line is a handsome and tall woman, she is Wang Xiaobo's novel "Like Water Flow Year" in the beautiful and radical female number one, the style is not reduced that year, everyone calls her "line" according to the name in the novel, the real name is unknown.
The memorial hall is a synagogue, and on the stage in the middle of the front is a curtain of lake water, and the horizontal plaque is black, on which hangs several large words: Rest in Peace, Xiaobo. A bow was formed with a black cloth scarf underneath, surrounding Wang Xiaobo's posthumous photograph. The photo shows Wang Xiaobo in his youth, with small eyes and thick lips, and a childish and thick face.
Before flying from Guangzhou to Beijing, I asked a friend to write a pair of elegies for Wang Xiaobo, the upper link is: write the trilogy of the times with independent will and laughter; the lower link is: holding free feelings and crying and crying about Qiankun ten thousand years of worry; the banner is: Xiao Bo is not dead!
At that time, we were excited for the strength of this couplet for a while, and even burst into tears, feeling that it accurately captured Wang Xiaobo's life. Who knew that at the memorial service, I looked at it, but I didn't hang it up.
I asked Hube, why didn't you use the tie I sent? Hube whispered, "We... I want xiaobo to go safely. ”
"Peace and security"? I pondered these four words, is Wang Xiaobo's situation really so serious?
Before wang Xiaobo's death, he opened columns in newspapers and periodicals such as Southern Weekend, and during that time, he participated in almost all cultural debates, which attracted the attention of many parties. His witty and humorous essays, the vision of both liberal arts and sciences, and his unhurried demeanor have attracted a large number of young readers. Hube said: "What he said is all summary things, very brilliant, a hammer hit you, the bone marrow came out." ”
Around April 16, news of Wang Xiaobo's death spread, and several cities reported the incident. Since that day, numerous phone calls have been made to funeral groups and newspaper offices. At this time, Wang Xiaobo's brother was in the United States, his wife Li Yinhe was far away in Britain, and there was only an elderly mother in Beijing. His good friend Hu Bei said: "XiaoBo has no unit, nor has he joined the Writers Association, and his affairs must be handled by us." So they borrowed a second-floor house from someone in the compound of the dormitory of the Ministry of Higher Education (Wang Xiaobo's mother's home), pulled two telephone lines, and connected a fax machine as "Wang Xiaobo's funeral office." Since then, the phone calls have been continuously called 24 hours a day, and the Hubers have been busy, launching a hotline service to receive condolence calls and faxes from all over the country.
Three
Remember, the first time I met Wang Xiaobo was at a bus stop in Xidan, Beijing. It was August 1996.
The bus stop was the meeting place we had made on the phone. In the Lingnan Culture Times in Guangzhou, I have seen his photo and firmly remember a Wang Xiaobo-style confession attached to the photo: "I am not a good person at first glance. "When the taxi arrived in Xidan, I firmly believed that I did not see Wang Xiaobo in the photo. The car drove for a while, and by the time I turned back, I was already late, and I still didn't find Wang Xiaobo, and I thought it was him who was late.
Just then, in a group of people standing idly on the side of the road, a tall man of 1 meter 90 stepped out, with wild grass-like hair, a jacket and jeans crisscrossed, and a light dust, as if he had come out of a nearby construction site. He approached me hesitantly, stunned for two seconds, and we confirmed each other. Then I crossed the road with him, turned into a gray brick alley, walked and walked, and when I didn't see him, I looked back to find him crouching in the distance, tying his shoelaces, fastening them, and dragging a pair of boat-like sneakers to hurry. There were a lot of bicycles interspersed before and after, and we staggered and it was difficult to hear each other's words. It was gray and the whole thing felt like walking in a Cantonese fragment.
Enter the compound of his residence, dilapidated and old, supposedly from the former King Cheng Mansion. He turned to the door shop to buy soda, and he said, "I don't have any water in my house." ”
There is no water! I walked into a pure writing room in the tube building: a computer, a reclining chair, a bed; there was a bottle of drink on the computer desk, and there was no printer in sight, and he said that he had always handed floppy disks to editors. What is this like a nest of "returnees"?!
He told me that the first novel was extremely difficult to publish, and in order to find a way to sell, he broke a few pairs of shoes, went alone to the second channel, and sold his novel to the bookseller, "the white and the black have been seen, and the practice is like a spring."
"When the book is finished, I am about to become a bookseller." Fortunately, the book sold well. He laughed helplessly.
Another time, in order to do book promotion on CCTV, he and his wife Li Yinhe were pulled to make a cameo, and the two were dispatched for dozens of minutes under the hot sun, repeatedly tossing and turning, almost no heat stroke, and the result was that the program was just cut off when it was broadcast.
He spoke lightly, and I almost laughed as I listened. Infinite bitterness, all in laughter.
Born in Beijing in 1952, freelance writer Wang Xiaobo joined the team in Yunnan at the age of 16, then worked as a private teacher in rural Shandong, returned to Beijing and entered a street factory, resumed the college entrance examination and was admitted to the Department of Trade and Economics of Chinese University, majoring in commodity science. Later, he went to the University of Pittsburgh in the United States to obtain a master's degree in liberal arts, and also studied computer science and programmed programs. In 1988, Wang Xiaobo returned to China. He is a true "returnee".
After returning to China, he taught at Peking University and renmin university, and in September 1992, he resigned from his teaching position in order to concentrate on writing.
Four
As early as the mid-1970s, Wang Xiaobo began to write novels, the first title of which was "Green Hairy Water Monster", written in a large exercise book. Originally thought to be a graffiti work, I did not expect that everyone rushed to read it, this novel actually became a "manuscript", spread farther and farther, and a marriage was passed out. Wang Xiaobo's writing stems from an essential desire to create, with no interests, no clear prospects, no outside attention, and he continues to write. He said self-deprecatingly: "I have been writing novels for many years, and I often receive abusive rejection letters... Mention Wang Xiaobo, everyone will think of the Song Dynasty in Sichuan to pull the pole uprising, can not think of me. Even so, he said, "I believe I have literary talent, and I should do it." ”
Pure literature is the poorest in all countries of the world. At this point, Wang Xiaobo had already made mental preparations. At one point, he told a friend, "A writer means that you can starve to death at any time." Why did you choose to write seriously—a process of anti-entropy that is both risky and impoverished? He believes that the development of civilization is also a process of anti-entropy. If everyone enters the process of entropy increase in favor of profit and avoid harm, and goes down with the current, it will finally converge in a low-lying area, "crowded together like maggots in a manure tank.". Therefore, Wang Xiaobo believes that the anti-entropy process is his fate.
Wang Xiaobo once lamented: "It is much more difficult to publish a book than to write a book." So, he said, if he wrote an epitaph, he would add the sentence after "lived, loved, and written," "Books sold."
Wang Xiaobo was shy and introverted, and later many cute "lackeys under Wang Xiaobo" described him as a lone fighter, which was actually a kind of imagination and exaggeration. He lived a low-key life, abandoning many worldly pursuits and maintaining inner peace—faith in his own writing.
On this day, from Wang Xiaobo, I took away two floppy disks the size of CD boxes, which were the original manuscripts of the "Era Trilogy", which included electronic documents of the three manuscripts of "Golden Age", "Silver Age" and "Bronze Age", with a total of 990,000 words.
He died on April 11, 1997, and on January 21, Wang Xiaobo sent a postcard to Zhong Jieling, urging the publication of the Times Trilogy. The postcard read: "Zhong Jieling: Their World triptych has not yet passed. There should still be one at home, but it hasn't been found yet. My mother is sick again, and now she is in a mess, so she will send it. Book things please tighten. Wang Xiaobo saluted..."
Five
In November 1996, I submitted the "Times Trilogy" to the selection of topics. In early December, huacheng's topic selection meeting was held in Zhangjiajie, Hunan Province, and when discussing this set of books, some people believed that Wang Xiaobo had no popularity, and the 990,000-word trilogy had risks such as distribution. In the end, President Xiao Jianguo made a plan: Wang Xiaobo's works have a distinct artistic personality, try it.
In fact, it is not the first time for us to publish valuable works of pure literature at a loss.
In October 1990, I planned a book "Chinese Avant-Garde Novels", which included the works and reviews of Yu Hua, Ge Fei, Su Tong, and Ye Zhaoyan, and conducted the first scan of avant-garde literature, with a print run of only 1500 copies; in December 1991, we published Yu Hua's novel collection "Accidental Events", when Yu Hua was just a budding literary newcomer, who had no popularity at the reader level, and returned to the number of subscriptions, only 1400 copies. Even so, we printed the book. It is worth mentioning that the famous literary and art theorist and activist Li Tuo wrote a commentary entitled "Where is the Avalanche", which became the pronoun of this collection, in which Li Tuo predicted: "... Their novellas (Yu Hua et al.) are dramatically changing the face of contemporary Chinese fiction and forming a new literary picture. ”
It is precisely because of the "new literary picture" that since 1991, we have successively launched the "Pioneer Novel Series", which includes 8 novels such as Yu Hua, Su Tong, Ge Fei, Sun Ganlu, Lü Xin, Beicun, Lin Bai, and Liu Ke. Opening the first page of this set of books, there is "Editor's Words" written by me, and the last paragraph is quite tragic: "We hope that Chinese literature can be integrated into the rolling torrent of world literature as soon as possible, and we are willing to donate a small contribution to this." History will prove that both the hard work and the price we paid were worth it. ”
Reading it today, it is still a surge. However, the facts of the release proved that the above were all "tragic efforts", except for Su Tong's long "My Imperial Career" profit, most of the rest lost money. We have personally felt the cold of the high ground in the temple of art.
When Zhangjiajie discussed the "Times Trilogy", no one could predict how much it would sell. After the selection of the topic was passed, Wang Xiaobo and I discussed the plan for publicity and promotion. He proposed that when the book came out, he would try to be on the "Reading Time" of the Central Channel, and he knew Zhu Zhenglin.
Wang Xiaobo said: "The status of the novel, like the stage play, has become a high art, and gradually lost a group of readers, including readers who want to be educated morally, readers who want to read political metaphors, readers who feel sexually depressed and look for outlets, readers who have nothing to do and want to spend time; some people who really read novels... I thought it was a good thing. ”
He also jokingly told the book critic Huang Jiwei: "If my book has a circulation of more than 20,000 copies, I am not happy." Not so many people understand novels! ”
We accept the fate of serious literature.
After the topic selection meeting, in mid-December, I went to Beijing for business again.
The second time I met Wang Xiaobo was at the Guest House of the China Entrepreneurs Association near Zizhu Garden, where I lived.
In a hurry in the evening, I told him that the "Times Trilogy" had been included in the 1997 annual selection. I looked at him, and there was no sadness or joy on his face. Only then did I learn that the "Time Trilogy" had undergone a long and tortuous wandering journey. It was only moored at Huacheng Publishing House after a long period of wandering and bumpy places.
Wang Xiaobo was successful in 1994, when Future World won the Taiwan United Daily Literary Award, as had Previously Won the Golden Age. In the face of the award, Wang Xiaobo said: "I think that this award is not awarded to the words that have been formed, but to the understanding of the art of novels. In the same year, Huaxia Publishing House published "The Golden Age", which gave the literary world a small shock. Keen critics said: I didn't expect there to be such a master outside the literary world.
However, these successes failed to pave the way for him, and his remnants experienced a long and arduous journey in the folk.
Wang Xiaobo and his friends have carried manuscripts to many publishing houses. Some manuscripts were once circulated in the form of printed copies in society. The prints are made on the most old-fashioned 24-pin printer, on light blue paper as long as a piece of cloth, with eyelets, and many words have eyes and no nose, and strangely enough, this look does not affect its spread. In publishing houses, in research institutes, on university campuses, various groups of people circulate it. Booksellers with a keen sense of smell also followed the door, talking in a big way, opening tens of thousands of prints, and then hearing nothing; publishing houses tend to accept today and change tomorrow. Why so repeatedly? All caused by the disregard of taboos in art and thought, to explain in one sentence, is: "Wang Xiaobo's naughty heart of ignoring taboos, his humorous irony and imagination are far beyond the literary understanding of this era." ”
For the publication of the book, Wang Xiaobo was shocked at first, and after tossing it a few times, he was not shocked.
That night, I had forgotten the color of his coat, only that his lips were purple, which I thought were cold, and now I thought it might be a manifestation of the symptoms. I remember saying, "There are two kinds of writers, one is to explain themselves, like Hemingway, and the other is to create in the imagination, like Calvino, like Eusenaar." I think real writers should try to do the latter. ”
The next day I will return to Guangzhou.
This winter, I experienced an experience that I will never forget in my editing career. Outside the window is a winter blue sky, the clear high-altitude atmosphere makes people happy, and I am working on editing the "Times Trilogy".
Wang Xiaobo's "Times Trilogy", Huacheng Publishing House, published in 1997
Opening the Bronze Age, there is such a text: "The joy of thinking is the most important kind of joy in life." This book is a book about wisdom, or rather, about the encounters of wisdom. ”
What struck me as soon as I read it was the author's volleying imagination.
Look at Wang Xiaobo's muddy luoyang: Luoyang in the Tang Dynasty, the muddy water has no knees, and people want to cross the street, they have to use a thing called abduction. In the narrower section of the street, some people jumped over with the help of poles; some people staggered on the three-foot short crutch; and the great inventor Li Weigong rode through the air on a two-foot-high double crutch, and his body leaned forward to form the shape of a bird, which formed the most fashionable posture, and there were countless fans for a time. Not only that, when Li Weigong walked through the sky, he did not wear underwear, and the city's customs were all under his crotch, which attracted the woman's cry, and in the burst of noise, he met the red breeze and began a shocking romantic love story.
I looked at Wenxing and sighed, breathtaking. Wang Xiaobo wrote the story of intellectuals, but with the help of the background and characters of the Tang Dynasty legend. Perhaps, only such an atmosphere, such a character, can convey his interpretation of fun and wisdom.
Caught off guard, I was introduced into a distant and unfamiliar poetic world by Wang Xiaobo's feixue Chang'an, muddy Luoyang and laterite Xiangxi, and the kind of wang yang's unbridled handwriting and tenacious humor made my work a pleasant reading enjoyment. In bursts of laughter, winter is fleeting, and spring is coming.
Wang Xiaobo said: There are only two kinds of novels in the world, one is a good novel and the other is a bad novel.
How brilliant!
Eight
Countless twists and turns have made the publication of the "Times Trilogy" a crucial event in Wang Xiaobo's life. However, he died suddenly on April 11, 1997, when three of his manuscripts were still in circulation.
In those days, the entire young intellectual circle surged with sorrow and sincerely hurt for Wang Xiaobo's untimely death.
Over the next month, write messages, press releases, memories, reviews, proofreading, phone calls, conversations, faxes, copies... Be the content of my life. For more than a month, the telephone ringing in the newsroom has never stopped. When I was busy, three or four phone calls came to me, they were journalists, readers, critics, wholesalers... Wang Xiaobo's former friend.
A friend suggested to us that May 13 is Wang Xiaobo's 45th birthday, and we should strive to hold a seminar on Wang Xiaobo's works in Beijing. On April 16, Zhang Xiaozhou, a reporter from the Southern Metropolis Daily, took the lead in sending a message titled "The Death of Writer Wang Xiaobo", which was the first report in the country. The next day, Beijing Youth Daily published a detailed report entitled "The Death of Wang Xiaobo, a Well-Known Scholar and Writer, due to Illness in Beijing." The thunder was faint, and we had a hunch that Wang Xiaobo's death might trigger a media earthquake.
The publishing house has set up a special group for the "Times Trilogy" to connect all links. Finally, the "Times Trilogy" came out in a roar of the media at home and abroad, and in one month, more than 100 media published relevant news and tracking reports, and the mountains and rivers of the country were "king". Someone made a special page for Wang Xiaobo, and the full text was entered into the "Golden Age". "It is not enough for a person to have only this life and this life, he should also have a poetic world." Wang Xiaobo's famous saying circulated in all directions.
On May 13, on the day of Wang Xiaobo's 45th birthday, we held a seminar on the "Times Trilogy" at the Museum of Modern Literature in Beijing, and each participant was holding three new books that had just been airlifted from Guangzhou.
On May 13, 1997, Huacheng Publishing House held the "Seminar on Wang Xiaobo's "Times Trilogy" at the China Museum of Modern Culture. On the right is Zhong Jieling, the author of this article, in the middle is Wang Xiaobo's wife Li Yinhe, and on the right is Wen Neng, former editorial director of Flower City magazine.
What causes the "era trilogy" Luoyang paper to be expensive is not so much market-oriented as it is people's hearts-oriented. On May 9, Southern Weekend made a commemorative edition of Wang Xiaobo with two eye-catching headlines: "The Man Who Died For It" and "Like a Beautiful Song." This version was copied down, and it was set with a large log photo frame and given to Wang Xiaobo's mother. When I held the newspaper, I burst into tears in front of my eyes and felt the deep respect of the new generation of media people for Wang Xiaobo, a maverick.
"Wang Xiaobo fever" continues to heat up, online and offline, enthusiastic fans even call themselves "Wang Xiaobo's lackeys". Every day, the publishing house receives inquiries from all over the world, and the purchase of books flies like snowflakes. The "Times Trilogy" has gone through the stage of Luoyang paper and expensive, and has climbed the charts everywhere. A veteran journalist said: "No serious novel has received such widespread attention in many years, it is almost a household name." ”
History has shown that the toil and price we paid was worth it:
Avant-garde fiction erects an obelisk for literary explorers; Wang Xiaobo has become a spiritual symbol; and the "Times Trilogy"—The Golden Age, The Silver Age, and The Bronze Age—allows us to abandon the standards we were accustomed to in the 80s and interpret the novel in a new language, attitude, and position.
It is rare for a set of books to encounter such vicissitudes of life.
Nine
The world is full of things, and the red dust is rolling. In the blink of an eye, Wang Xiaobo's "Times Trilogy" has been published for 13 years.
In 2008, I went to the College of Letters of China Normal University to give a lecture and asked the students: "Classmates who know Wang Xiaobo, please raise your hand?" "One hundred percent of the people raised their hands and laughed, which means my questioning is too pediatric. Wang Xiaobo has become a fashion symbol today, and people who don't understand it are equivalent to being thrown out of the field.
By chance, Professor Chen Xiaoming, a doctoral supervisor in the Department of Chinese at Peking University, said that he wanted to rewrite the history of contemporary literature and That Wang Xiaobo would become an independent chapter. In other words, Wang Xiaobo may gradually become the mainstream.
On the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China, the Institute of Literature of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences wanted to compile a book entitled "60 Literary Works in 60 Years", including Wang Xiaobo in it, and selected two novels in one selection, which is an honor that most writers have not won.
Years later, I still remember the future scenario that my friend described to me: 100 years later, a new student of the Chinese Department, walking in the long corridor lined with bookshelves in the library, said: I am looking for a book, the author is Wang Xiaobo.
Over the years, my "fun-like" tendencies have become clear. I think that the ideal state of living in the world should be: no interesting people, no friends; no interesting things, do not talk; no interesting books, do not come out. This is what Wang Xiaobo taught me. (End of full text)