Backtracking to the Age of Literature and Art

Chapter 845 Expressionism and the Ninth District

Four people, one melon, finished eating in a while.

Wang Xiaobo collected melon rinds in the trash can, and said with a smile: "Outsiders, you can't say we don't work hard, at least you can't say that Feiyu doesn't work hard. Although he doesn't have many novels, the output of short and medium stories is not low. Really. If you compare the production of short and medium stories, you can't compare to him."

Yu Hua also nodded, "That's right, Feiyu's output is not low. Bi Feiyu just published an article in an anthology of novels. I just saw it yesterday. It's called "Kafka was born in Prague". Unfortunately, , although Kafka is written in the title, the content is all related to Kundera."

Hearing what Yu Hua said, Yu Dong and the others all laughed.

Everyone knows that Yu Hua has a prejudice against Kundera. In fact, not only Yu Hua has a prejudice against Kundera, but Yu Dong also admires Kundera. The other three all have prejudice against Kundera. , at least against Kundera's novels.

Bi Feiyu said that she doesn't like Kundera that much, the reason is very simple, because Kundera, as a novelist, is not so emotional.He even said that he thought Kundera lacked talent for fiction.

Yu Hua was straightforward. He said that Kundera was a second-rate novelist.

Wang Xiaobo said more. He said that Kundera was not completely loyal to the art of novels. He was a first-class intellectual with excellent qualities of an intellectual, such as independent thinking, social criticism, and advanced thinking, but he was not a first-class novelist. Home, because Kundera does not have the skilled professional skills and skills of a novelist.

He also mentioned Kundera's "Testament of Betrayal", "The person who writes a novel must make people happy, he must have a fictional talent, and he must have the motivation to display this talent. I think this is the main point. Kundera said that readers of novels should be happy, appreciate fiction, and be tolerant of fiction. He said this is the main point. I don’t have such extravagant expectations. The art of fiction is first formed in the novelist’s Whether you will be betrayed in the future is a matter for the future. It is the most important thing to have this kind of thing first."

In fact, all three of their evaluations have one thing in common, that is, none of them think that Kundera has the talent to write novels, and that Kundera's novels deviate from the art of novels.

In fact, Kundera’s novels are indeed very special, they are not very novels. He always likes to discuss with readers in the texts, which are obviously more like some kind of critical literature or essays or diaries.

In the eyes of Yu Hua, who is good at "zero-degree writing", it is obviously unreasonable to talk to readers in the text when nothing happens.

Even Wang Xiaobo, who has been compared with Kundera by many people, does not agree with this form of expression.

Yu Hua admired Kafka very much, so when he saw that Kafka was written in the title of Bi Feiyu's article, but the content was all about Kundera, he was naturally not in a good mood, feeling that he was overwhelmed by Bi Feiyu's title. The party cheated.

Yu Dong has also read Bi Feiyu's "Kafka was born in Prague", as Yu Hua said, the content of the article has nothing to do with Kafka, it mainly talks about Kundera's novel "Ignorance" "of.

This novel was just published this year, and Yu Hua's article was a hit.

Yu Dong had no intention of talking about Kundera in front of the three "Kundera's novel opponents", but instead talked about Kafka, "I heard the news that the Czech Franz Kafka Association is planning to create a Kafka literature Awards, I guess it will start next year."

Bi Feiyu raised his eyebrows and smiled, "I didn't expect you to pay attention to this kind of news. You are always pragmatic and don't pay much attention to awards."

Yu Dong rolled his eyes and said, "Practical people should pay more attention to awards, because awards can bring a lot of real things. I didn't say I don't care about awards, but I don't want to spend too much time on them. As for The Kafka Literary Award is the news Yu Yu told me. There are many works in our deep space that do not have a Czech version. The Czech side took the initiative to contact our company, and it is estimated that they also hope to borrow the Kafka Literary Award. It attracts us to translate more works into Czech. You also know that our company has a lot of works in our hands, both at home and abroad."

"Since it was created to commemorate Franz Kafka, will this award focus more on expressionist works?" Bi Feiyu asked, and when she asked, Bi Feiyu glanced at Yu Hua.

Yu Dong shook his head, "I haven't heard of that, I don't think they will focus on a certain literary expression technique or genre."

Among the people present, the one most closely related to expressionism was Yu Hua.

Early Yu Hua's novels are full of madness, violence, despair and death, and what they show is often a gloomy, cruel, terrifying, bloody and irrational absurd world.

The expressionist blood in Yu Hua's works naturally also comes from the expressionist master Kafka they are talking about. He once read Kafka's experience and described it as a gift of fate, and thought that in his upcoming When he became a martyr of literary superstition, Kafka saved him from the butcher knife of Yasunari Kawabata.

It is conceivable how deeply Kafka influenced him.

Not only Yu Hua, but also Yu Dong and Bi Feiyu's works are influenced by Kafka.

Yu Dong's novel "Lu Xiulan" has the shadow of expressionism.

Back then, when Yu Dong saw "The Metamorphosis" for the first time, it is no exaggeration to say that his whole body seemed to be electrified, and his whole body felt numb. After reading the whole novel, for a long time, He was caught in a huge shock.

If a person turns into a worm, if it is written by an ordinary writer, it may give people a sense of fantasy, but in Kafka's writing, the absurdity seems very reasonable.

But when Yu Dong read this novel, there was a subconscious in his mind, that is, people can become worms, and the protagonist is just unlucky enough to meet him.

You know, when Yu Dong read this novel, he had already passed the age of believing in fairy tales, but he still had such strange thoughts, one can imagine how outrageous it is. The great thing is that it can perfectly blend unreality and reality without knowing it, so that it doesn't make people feel inconsistent.

"Actually, expressionist literature is still..."

Because of the Kafka Prize, Bi Feiyu and the others began to chat about Kafka and expressionism.

Yu Dong remembered a movie, a movie very similar to "Metamorphosis" - the ninth district.

"The Ninth District" is a well-received and popular sci-fi movie, and compared with other blockbusters, the cost of this movie is not high at all, there are no grand scenes, and there are no particularly complicated special effects.

Yu Dong was wondering if it was possible to write the movie "District [-]" into a novel.

However, "Wall-E" has just been released, and "Source Code" is being prepared for release. Now I am writing a science fiction novel, does it seem a little too intensive.

I haven’t published science fiction novels for several years, but I have published several articles this time, which belongs to retaliatory “creation”.

Seeing that he was silent, Yu Hua asked curiously, "Why are you in a daze?"

Yu Dong smiled and shook his head, "It's nothing, I just think "Metamorphosis" is very good."

Yu Hua let out a chuckle, "You still need to say this?"

Yu Dong glanced at Yu Hua, and stood up while leaning on his knees, "You should prepare for the next two days, don't wait until you leave to realize what you didn't bring."

……

Yu Dong and his team arrived in New York on July [-]th, and they will stay in the United States for two weeks. During this period, apart from participating in a TV talk show, they will also be doing signings.

This is also a routine activity every summer, and they will come out to promote at this time of year.

After several years of hard work, the popularity of Chinese literature in Europe and the United States has increased a lot, not only for Yu Dong himself, but also for other Chinese writers.

The reason why they went to New York on July [-] was also because they also attended the premiere of the movie "Golden Dreamland".

The original author of "Golden Dreamland" is Yu Dong, and this movie is also Zhang Yimou's first break into Hollywood. As good friends, Yu Hua and the others will of course come to support him.

This time, they also brought their families with them. Except for Yu Yi from Yu Dong's family, everyone else came.

On the way from the airport to the hotel, when passing by a movie theater, everyone saw the huge poster of "Golden Dreamland". gun, he raised his hands in a gesture of surrender.

There are many kinds of posters for "Golden Dreamland", and this one has more appearances. In addition to this, there is another poster with more appearances. The hero played by Matthew McConaughey is pulling Cameron. The heroine played by Diaz is running.

When choosing a heroine, there are actually several options, including well-known female stars such as Jennifer Connelly and Winona, but in the end Zhang Yimou still chose Cameron Diaz.

Yu Dong didn't say anything about it, as long as Zhang Yimou was satisfied with the casting, and the heroine in "Golden Dreamland" didn't have many roles, so it wasn't that important.

Of these two posters, the former looks like a shootout movie, and the latter looks like a romance movie.

This is a kind of promotional poster, which uses two elements of gun battle and love to attract the audience.

In fact, it's a bit of a trick to sell dog meat, let's not talk about love, different people have different opinions, but "Golden Dreamland" really doesn't have much to do with gunfights.

When everyone arrived at the hotel, Jimmy came to Yu Dong's room before they had a rest.

As soon as he saw Jimmy, Cheng Yanqiu raised his hand and said, "Okay, okay, I'll go to Sister Hong and the others to have a look, and leave this place for the two of you."

Jimmy put up two thumbs up, "Miss Boss, give you a thumbs up."

With the development of the Deep Space Tribe, Internet terms such as likes have been integrated into people's daily lives, and there are many similar words.

After Cheng Yanqiu left, Jimmy took out a stack of documents from the briefcase and handed them to Yu Dong.

Yu Dong looked at the materials handed over, and asked with a puzzled face, "What kind of materials are these?"

Jimmy smiled and explained, "This is the information of the Hearst Media Group's editorial building. I have taken a fancy to the location of this building and want to take it down and build a new building on the basis of this building." , for Deep Space America."

Yu Dong asked unexpectedly, "You mean to build a new building on top of the original building instead of tearing down the old building and building a new one?"

"Well, I have already consulted professionals, and there is no problem at all. In this document, there are planning plans given by professionals. If you have any questions, you can take a look."

Yu Dong didn't open the file, but just asked, "When do you want to build this building, how much will it cost, and how long will it take?"

"Roughly estimated, a total of [-] to [-] million U.S. dollars is needed. This is what I think. It will take about three years to start construction now and put it into use. The money does not need to be taken out at one time, and the pressure is still not great."

Hearing that it will cost [-]-[-] million dollars to build a building, Yu Dong still feels a bit pained. After all, in the next few years, they will spend a lot of cash to buy stocks of Internet companies. This [-]-[-] dollars can buy a lot of stock.

For example, for Apple's stock, the minimum price is $[-], and [-] million shares can be bought for $[-] million.

Amazon's stock price has fallen below 2000 US dollars recently. Even if you buy Amazon's stock now, you can buy more than [-] million shares for [-] million US dollars.

But at this point in time, Deep Space will definitely not repurchase them. They will wait until Amazon's stock price falls below [-] dollars before starting to buy back with money.

It is not urgent to buy stocks. After all, there is still a lot of time. The Internet bubble burst this time, and I am afraid that it will not recover in a short time.

At this time, a building worth [-] billion U.S. dollars is going to be built. Even if the money can be spent slowly within three years, it will have an impact on subsequent stock market operations.

But considering the office environment of Jimmy and the others, and comparing it with the office environment of Deep Space China, it seems that it is not very good not to build a building.In addition, building a building in Manhattan, as long as it can be built, it will not lose money.

After thinking for a while, Yu Dong nodded and said, "Since we want to build it, let's do it as soon as possible. Build it early and enjoy it early. The money in our account will be fine for now."

Jimmy smiled and said, "No problem, and it doesn't cost much in the early stage. Even if there is financial pressure, it won't be this year."

"Well, as long as you know it in your heart. If a few of our movies perform well at the box office, the economic pressure next year will be much less." Yu Dong said.

"Haha, I have some good news for you. Deep Space Chinese... No, it should be called the International Version of Deep Space Novels and it will be launched in the middle of next month."

Hearing the news, Yu Dong also smiled.

In order to launch the international version of Deep Space Novels, Deep Space Company has done a lot of testing, and translated many domestic "online novels" to Europe and the United States, gradually grasping the tastes of foreign netizens.

Now that everything is in place, it's time to launch the website.

After the website goes online, domestic online novels will be continuously imported to Europe and the United States.

(End of this chapter)