text | Linghu Boguang
It has been some time since Wong Kar-wai's "Flowers" has been completed, but it is still highly discussed. Today we are mainly talking about the original work. Many people may not know that before the TV series was broadcast, the single book version of the novel "Flowers" had sold more than one million copies in the ten years since its release.
This is already a very successful serious novel, and "Flowers" is also known as the representative of new Shanghai novels.
But the problem is that one million copies seems to be a lot, but it doesn’t seem to be too many given the size of the Chinese population. In terms of the simplest movie theory in popular culture, "Wolf Warrior 2", which currently has the highest number of viewers, is 160 million, which means that almost one in ten Chinese people have watched it.
Of course, movies are different from novels. The original work of "Flowers" has been successful enough, and the most successful one is Liu Cixin's "The Three-Body Problem" with data sales of 21 million in 2020. This is the current situation of top literature. Let alone serious literature, there has always been great controversy between popular literature and serious literature.
For example, the performance of online novels is often much better than that of "Flowers". How do we treat this phenomenon?
Internet articles have no depth, is serious literature dying? What do you think of
Indeed, online writing has created countless new styles, but it only serves the entertainment of the public. The upper limit of online writing may be higher than that of traditional literature, but it has nothing to do with the universal world. It is traditional literature that teaches us how to be a human being, it is traditional literature that teaches us how to grow, and it is also traditional literature that teaches us how to face difficulties. It permeates every aspect of our lives. In comparison, tradition is actually more universal than online literature. It has weathered the storm.
Without the breadth of the ocean, it would be impossible to have the depth of the Mariana Trench. Without a huge readership, it would not be able to support so many authors. From a probability perspective, there would not be so many talented authors devoted to this cause. Outstanding authors are not castles in the air. There must be old readers who have grown up from a large base of readers and lose interest in routines. Only then will a higher level of demand arise, and only then will there be room for authors to study beyond routines.
Why did traditional literature lose its creativity before the rise of online literature? It’s because it has lost a large number of readers and lost its bounden duty of first satisfying the “interesting” nature of the work and pursuing the things you mentioned. If a work cannot make readers interested in reading it, no matter how reasonable it is, it is nothing.
If you don’t want others to read it, why not write a diary behind closed doors? If you want people to read it, it must first be interesting. These online articles will all be there, or they already exist. The best thing about online literature is that it is the most down-to-earth, and the author knows that readers will appreciate his work.
is like cross talk under the bridge, not cross talk on the Spring Festival Gala stage. In the end, you will find that what changes the world will only be those things that are written for ordinary people to read, not the so-called traditional literature that no one cares about. Traditional literature has fulfilled its mission and left a bright legacy.
But that is inheritance, it will not develop anymore, it will only be absorbed, digested and inherited, and grow into something new.
But this is only one aspect. Literature does not only serve readers. I think an important connotation of literary works is the expression of the author’s feelings. Many works with high reading threshold (maybe boring at first) are like Prussian The special "In Search of Lost Time" and many other works that pursue literary concepts are not friendly to most readers, but this does not affect their value.
I think online writing for the public and based on reader acceptance does represent a development trend, but "traditional literature" is also continuing to develop and showing vigorous vitality. I don’t think “interesting” is the bounden duty of a work. Literature is a very diverse thing, and you cannot use interestingness to evaluate whether it is creative.
Moreover, isn’t the truth interesting? In the eyes of those who pursue the truth, if it makes sense then it is interesting and worth reading. Different people have different views on what is interesting.The principles pursued by traditional literature are exactly what the people need, because these give the people soul, dignity, and aesthetics, allowing them to pursue what they want. It can be said that traditional literature has completed its mission, but like an old man, he will also impart his experience to the culture of the new century.
Moreover, traditional culture is not only reasonable, not only preaching, and not only serious.
Internet articles are just Internet articles. The plots and plots of the articles written by traditional literati in the past are not much different from those of current Internet articles. Have you seen them spread? Internet articles are just a fast food culture. You treat it as a meal, ah? To say that down-to-earth local literature is not as down-to-earth as it is, now the Internet articles are either from both sides of the well-off, or from both sides of the rich. How many of you have seen that write about rural areas that are so popular?
Compared with "Flowers", why is there no depth in online literature?
I think that with the rise of online literature, traditional Chinese literature has lost its creativity. But I don’t admit that today’s online articles can produce works of art.
I am also an old Internet reader. If online literature refers to literary works based on the Internet. Well, current online writing cannot produce works of art. To be precise, no online writing can have artistic qualifications due to the power of capital. Under the aesthetics of the capitalist society, everyone will lead to the path of no return through sensory stimulation.
Of course, maybe someone can use love to generate electricity and publish it on the Internet to become a work of art, but "Flowers" cannot be produced.
Don’t look down on the great waves of history. Literature has never stopped at satisfying people’s interest psychology. You can’t say that there are many readers of modern “interesting” works, but there are very few readers of “classic” works that can be seen in the modern era. The works are chosen by the world because they are "interesting".
Throughout the history of ancient literature, there are really too many "down-to-earth" and "interesting" works that the common people love to read. In the Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties, there were countless storytellers' talking books in the neighborhood. How many copies are there?
Why did "Four Great Masterpieces" become "Four Great Masterpieces"? Wen Wu is number one, so how come the four of them are the first to represent it? Because the Four Great Classics alone are the strongest in terms of literary quality, and their quality is high enough. However, the reason why they are called the Four is inseparable from their literary quality. The same principle applies to current film and television works.
The misunderstanding of many people’s thinking is that they believe that good works are of the present time, without considering time. To give another contemporary example, Jin Yong and Gu Long’s martial arts novels were definitely popular all over the country at that time, and are now popular among the post-00s, post-10s, and even the post-20s generations. After that, how many people have read the original work?
Compared with the Internet articles more than ten years ago, although most of the current Internet articles have the same plot and only a few are original, they have made great progress in writing and artistic expression, and can express themselves in just a few paragraphs. Expressing a large amount of information is something that most online articles could not do before.
Take the Internet classic "Flower Thousand Bones" as an example. When we look at it now, compared with the famous Xianxia novels, we will feel that the language is not very beautiful and there are a lot of vernacular. But in the past, it was really because of the human nature. The design and plot moved many people, which is also a valuable point in the early stage of online writing.
Nowadays, there is a word called Rongge. We can also find that in shaping the storyline, the creativity of authors is not as good as before, so the pursuit of writing is a trend in the online literature industry now and in the future. This can be regarded as a trend. That's a good thing. For the same plot, it all depends on how your words can touch people's hearts more, and how you can make people feel that even old jokes are still exciting.
Before the TV series, the original book "Flowers" only sold one million copies? Serious literature has its own position
I am a person who has written online novels. In fact, so-called "literature" is also going through this process. Literature is not dying, but on the way to the most glorious. Changes in creation and communication methods are completely changing our cultural genes. It is not only a change in the communication mode but also a change in the creation mode.
I started reading novels online in 1997. What struck me most was that online literature is taking decades to complete the path that literary creation took in the past thousands of years. Internet literature is constantly reinventing what has already existed. If you are a traditional literature lover, it seems that "literature is dead" because you will find that the level of the creators is so low. As long as the writing is smooth, it will be fine. As long as the connotation is pleasant, it is enough.
But what you don’t see is that it is in this process that the foundations of literature are being reconstructed. After reading a large number of cool articles, readers will have higher artistic requirements. The works of niche authors gradually come to the fore. Authors begin to absorb traditional creative techniques, and the connotations of their works become richer and more in-depth.
actually does not have a large number of low-level works, and a social environment without the explosive shaping of literature and art cannot have classics. Is there any poetry of this level after the Tang and Song Dynasties? Could Li Bai and Li Yu write Tang poetry and Song lyrics if they left this social environment? Are Peking Opera operas still classics in modern times?
Readers who like classics do not fall from the sky. Without interesting works to bring people in, excellent niche works will never be able to support themselves. In the end, this is the end of traditional literature, reduced to vases and playthings.
But it is true that traditional literature is dying now, because most of these absorptions and reinventions are based on online literature. The entire logic, perspective, approach, and even the use of "code" in the works it creates meet the communication and audience requirements of the Internet age.
Its readers are no longer "readers", or even just "literature lovers". Reconstructed literature will take time and constant iteration to reach the heights of traditional literature again, and its upper limit may be higher than that of traditional literature. , because it is born to serve a wider group of people and is more "universal".
The problem is that there are not a large number of such works yet, and when serious literature will be better, we can only tell when there are more "Flowers".
