Back to 80: My Literary Life

As soon as he went to work the next morning, Fang Minghua received a call from Zhao Hongjun:

"Didn't you have three novellas running for election? I told my buddies last night that to canvass you for votes, everyone must write a letter to you to vote! And each person must write three letters, three novellas and A short story, as many as you like!”

"Thank you, have they all read the novels I wrote?" Fang Minghua asked curiously.

"Have you seen it? How is that possible? What they like to read most is Storytelling and Ancient and Modern Legends, and the most they can read is Reader's Digest."

I # ￥￥%……

"Brother, I'm here to help you. If you win the prize, I'll treat you to a treat." Zhao Hongjun said on the phone.

"Okay, please."

Fang Minghua shook his head and put down the phone.

Song Tangtang also called and said that he had carefully read the list of shortlisted novels, thought about it for a long time, and finally decided to vote for "Youth" and the short story "The Popular Red Dress on the Street."

"Minghua, if you look at the writing quality alone, "The Sun Also Rises" is higher than "Youth". But after thinking about it again and again, I still vote for "Youth". I think you understand what I think."

I understand, of course I understand.

The question is, can you vote for both?

Not missing the eight-cent stamp, right?

Serious girl.

Not to mention others.

Some girls from the cultural troupe as far away as southern Xinjiang also participated in the voting after seeing the awards in the newspapers.

Meng Hongxia was one of them. She sat at the desk in the dormitory and neatly wrote the words "Youth" on the letter paper.

As a result, Liu Fang next to her saw her, and the girl couldn't help but curl her lips: "I'm talking about Meng Hongxia, Song Tangtang has been transferred back to Xijing. Your attentiveness is useless, they can't see it."

"It's not because of Tangtang." Meng Hongxia raised her head and looked at her with a serious look on her face: "It's because I like this novel very much and you don't like it? Didn't you say that you cried after reading this novel?"

Liu Fang was silent.

Xijing, Chang'an

Zhou Shunlai, who had changed his job for more than a year and was assigned to the security department of the county agricultural machinery factory, was sitting in the guard room at the factory gate drinking tea.

Since he was missing an arm, he couldn't do anything else. His job was to guard the factory gate, so his days were quite leisurely.

He accidentally saw the selection event published in the "Worker Daily" a few days ago. He read it for a long time. He had read relatively few novels, and the one he was most familiar with was "Youth".

He hadn't written a letter for a long time, so he went to the post office and bought an eight-cent stamp and envelope. He also took out the letter paper from the factory and wrote the words "Youth" on it.

While soldiers in the army prefer military-themed novels, college students prefer avant-garde novels.

That Saturday night, my sister Fang Mingli came back from school and told Fang Minghua very excitedly: "Brother, our literary club is having a meeting this afternoon. Li Li mobilized everyone to vote for their favorite novels! Li Li and I both voted for your novel. Yes."

"Which article did you submit?" Fang Minghua asked curiously.

"I prefer the piece "Into the Dust" written by you, but Li Li highly praised "The Sun Also Rises", so we each voted for it. The short story "Female College Student Dormitory" was so well written, it felt like I was in Write about us! But I still voted for your book "The Popular Red Dress on the Street."

"Why?"

"You are my brother, why don't I vote for you? But Li Li's short story is "Female College Student Dormitory"."

"Where are the other classmates?"

"I asked, and most of the novellas were written by you."

Not surprising, Western University is considered his home court.

"Which article did you submit specifically?" Fang Minghua asked again.

"Yes, both, but "The Sun Also Rises" is more important!" my sister replied.

Why.

If you can't bear to spend three stamps, then you can focus on investing in one article?

Wouldn’t this increase the probability of winning?

But Fang Minghua was embarrassed to say this.

Also at Lanzhou University, many people voted for the article "The Sun Also Rises", including the foreign language student named Shui Junyi.

This year's short story award is another major event in the literary world after last year's Mao Dun Literary Award. Readers voted enthusiastically, and letters flew to Yanjing like snowflakes.

The jury members were delighted, of course, but as the deadline approached, a thorny issue emerged in the readers' poll.

"Red Flag" magazine office, No. 2, Shasha North Street, Yanjing.

Beside the courtyard, there are several rows of temporarily built wooden houses, commonly known as 'earthquake-resistant sheds', which are used as temporary office buildings for the China Federation of Literary and Art Circles and the Chinese Writers Association. The office of the jury is also here.

In early 1978, the Chinese Writers Association resumed its organizational structure, but the original office building was used by the Commercial Press, so it had no choice but to stay here temporarily.

The wooden house is cold in winter and hot in summer. Water and electricity are often cut off, and it is very inconvenient to work and live when it is windy or rainy. To use the bathroom, you have to go to a nearby public toilet or borrow the facilities of a nearby unit. On several occasions, the toilet of the nearby unit was locked, and the cadres of the Writers Association had to Holding back to work is simply miserable.

Although the working conditions were difficult at that time, the reform and opening up brought out the high energy of the cadres of the Writers' Association.

The Writers Association has been extremely busy these days.

In a simple office, a sixty-year-old man with gray hair was looking at the voting results.

His name is Feng Mu. He is the vice chairman of the Chinese Writers Association and the deputy director of the jury this time. The director Palladium is older and in poor health, so he actually presides over the work of the jury this time.

"I didn't expect it, I didn't expect it." Feng Mu muttered while looking at the readers' voting results.

"Chairman Feng, what didn't you expect?" The speaker was a young girl named Yang Li, who was assigned to work in the Writers' Association from Yanda last year.

"Xiao Yang, look, these are the results of readers' letter voting." Feng Mu handed her a piece of information.

Yang Li took it and looked at it carefully, and immediately discovered a piece of information that shocked her.

Among the top twenty novels voted by the public, three of them by the author named Fang Minghua were listed!

Among them, "The Sun Also Rises" ranked second with 254,587 votes, which was only over 10,000 votes lower than the first-ranked "Life"!

"This book "The Sun Also Rises" was very controversial last year. I also read it. I just couldn't understand it, but I thought it was very powerful." Yang Li said with a smile.

"It's a stream of consciousness. Wang Meng's "Breeze" and "Butterfly" written two years ago are considered to be the first of domestic stream of consciousness writing, and this Fang Minghua has taken up this banner, and is still holding it high." Feng Mu smiled.

"No wonder everyone in the Yanjing Writers Association said that Wang Meng admired this writer named Fang Minghua very much." Yang Li said.

Feng Mu nodded: "This is normal. When the older generation supports the younger generation, they always choose those with the same philosophy, right? The problem now is that "The Sun Also Rises" ranked second, "Into the Dust" ranked twelfth, and the worst one The article "Youth" is also ranked twenty! What do you think I should choose?!"