Single Reading November Pick
For nearly half of November, the editorial department of Shandu started another round of home office, which caused a lot of inconvenience and confusion. The temperature has dropped sharply in the past few days, and the mood has become more and more heavy. During the online meeting, everyone mentioned that they had to open the book again, trying to find the source of questions and answers from the ideological resources accumulated from generation to generation.
Therefore, this single-reading pick not only introduces new books, but also shares some works that we have re-read recently, trying to enter the depths of the inescapable reality through these books, and clarify the complex and scattered clues. It’s hard not to feel frustrated that the book is full of cautionary tales and we’re stepping into the same river over and over again, and the questions are being asked generation after generation without getting an answer. But what inspires us at the same time is that every generation still has people who ask questions, and no matter when, there are always people who think and do things seriously, and their writing and actions have the power to pass through time.
November
Editors we admire
Editor of the Month
New Star Publishing House Ruoshui Library
In addition to the solid and hard work of interviewing and writing by the reporters, this book is also inseparable from the professionalism and sincerity of the editor and publisher. Combining the media articles of multiple authors into a book is the most difficult topic selection for book editors. The most difficult thing is to find the accurate theme, suitable arrangement, and “increment” in the book-writing process. Being able to give enough attention to the interviews with these characters, finely edited and assembled, in itself shows the planner’s understanding and confidence in this issue. The biographies before each interview manuscript, the title paragraphs inside the chapters, and the references and indexes attached to the main text of the manuscript provide readers with a path to understand the broader and richer knowledge of these scholars from these articles. . Such trivial, tedious, time-consuming and labor-intensive work really adds a lot to the value of these texts as books, making this book have the potential to be a bestseller. Everything is just an “opening”, we all need to deepen the conversation and re-enter life with these questions.
November
captivate our book design
Book Design of the Month
01
11th novel, 18th book
This is a small surprise, an interesting exploration in the graphic sense, and Mr. Lu’s style is still exciting, restrained and interesting.
02
cursed rabbit
Choosing interesting illustrations on the cover will make it easier for a book to jump in front of your eyes. With a simple and grotesque style, it’s hard not to want to read the story inside.
November
comfort us podcast
Podcast of the Month
screw tightening
Vol.32 Take a walk｜Dialogue with Shanghai: Striving for a legitimate life in an abnormal time and space
This was originally a program launched in May. The anchor Wu Qi greeted three friends who were trapped in Shanghai—Vincent Zoo, Shen Yi and Han Jian. But half a year later, everything they encountered in the spring continued and spread. , approaching the winter that more people are experiencing and are about to spend. Regarding the current abnormal life, the three guests have a similar sense of trance, but they also have their own different responses and choices-focus on doing things more, pay attention to the connection with work partners; observe and feel the pain of others, and ask the reason behind the absurdity, Believe in the meaning of speaking, and hold on to the right to think… Press the play button again, and the dialogue in the past time and space will become vivid again because of today’s closeness. Inevitably, we are living in history, and the appearance of this history is also calling for everyone’s answer.
November
books to help us think
Books of the Month
01
call soul
“Soul Calling”, published in 2014, tells the history of countless unjust, false and wrong cases caused by a “soul calling” black art during the Qianlong period in 1768. The author Kong Feili is an American Sinologist, but through the collection and analysis of countless historical materials (even the stories in the footnotes are wonderful), he presents a very authentic picture of the Chinese power system.
The translator of the Chinese version of “Soul Calling” once said, “This book has indeed written about some basic issues of Chinese culture and Chinese society.” The society of the Qing Dynasty became a mirror. Maybe that’s why this academic work has almost become a bestseller in China, and it has been constantly cited in the past few years when the whole society has been dealing with viruses.
The so-called “soul calling” is to steal a person’s soul by knocking on a note with a person’s name on it, or cutting off a person’s braid, and make him fall ill and die. Why did human beings at that time—from ordinary people to emperors—will to believe and pay attention to this sorcery that sounds full of loopholes? Kong Feili has a wonderful psychological description of ordinary people who lack power:
“Once the government seriously initiates a crackdown on sorcery, ordinary people have a great opportunity to settle old grievances or make personal gain. It’s a loaded weapon thrown in the street, and everyone – villainous or good – — can be taken and used. In this society where power has always been scarce for ordinary people, maliciously slandering others with the crime of “calling souls” has become a power suddenly available to ordinary people. This power offers some relief to those who are persecuted by their kinsmen or greedy creditors; a shield to those who fear persecution; a reward to those who wish to gain; , it is compensation; for the villain, it is a strength; for the sadist, it is a pleasure.”
As for Emperor Hongli (that is, Qianlong): “Hongli lacked a weapon in his arsenal—he was incapable of finding a target that could be shared with his subjects. The demon party has fear; they are all quick to find scapegoats among the vulnerable and on the verge of peace and prosperity.” The desire of the monarch and the villagers to gain power and consolidate power reached its peak in this year of the Qing Dynasty When will the embodiment of and the logic in it usher in a break?
02
girl, woman, other
Like this year’s Nobel Prize-winning Anne Ernor’s masterpiece “Long Days”, the novel “Women, Girls, Others” by British author Bernardine Evaristo, who won the Booker Prize in 2019, also branched randomly, Don’t care about the rules of punctuation. Compared with neat and elegant “classics”, it is more like a language extracted wildly from life. It is curious, is the period no longer popular in literature now?
“Women, Girls, Others” tells the life stories of twelve black women with different personalities and occupations in the form of self-narration. Each story, with its sharp way of speaking and bold and honest way of life, shocked East Asian readers: So it is possible to speak and live like this? Baudrillard once said: Everyday language is a fowl, and writing is to turn it back into a wild species. We should also know that there are many kinds of life that are different from poultry.
03
Qu Qiubai and Cross-cultural Modernity
When we talk about a modern China, we always go back to the group of intellectuals in the late Qing Dynasty and the early Republic of China, their ideas and practices. In the book “Qu Qiubai and Cross-Cultural Modernity”, Professor Zhang Lijun re-studied Qu Qiubai’s literary writing and ideological trajectory. At the beginning of the book, he pointed out that he wanted to focus on the phenomenon of hybridization of his thoughts—not just in the early days, but throughout his life. In previous expositions, Qu Qiubai’s left-wing and modernism were emphasized, but his “crossing the boundary of binary opposition and creatively transforming ideological resources from various cultural contexts into brand-new thinking and writing tracks” was ignored. Literati thought, Bergson, Buddhism and revolutionary politics, as well as the “philosophy of life” of Japanese intellectuals, several seemingly different things flowed together in Qu Qiubai in China at the beginning of the 20th century. Formed his own unique “philosophy of life”.
This process of juxtaposing and outlining follows Schwartz’s research method: when discussing ideas, one must first start with the problem, and do not deal with it in a general way. In addition to showing the real political situation, the interactive relationship between different ideological resources and personal emotions, this book upholds this thinking method that refuses to limit the frame, which is quite inspiring in today’s reality that is accustomed to using a single narrative and simply opposing a set of concepts sex. In another conversation, Professor Li Jun said that he “dig out more things that are not of a single origin during the re-reading process. Its original state is extremely hybrid, and the thoughts of various regions and cultural systems are extremely hybrid. So What we see is not a single origin, but seeing many differences at the origin, or discovering that certain discourses are used to deal with certain contradictions and differences.” The confidence of incorporation is also a kind of self-examination or self-encouragement. Instead of being included in the violence called “the only”, it is necessary to create a cross-cultural field as much as possible to burst out the creative energy.
04
human condition
Admittedly, Arendt is a tough nut to crack, and in tortuous and obscure interpretations we often explain our misreadings, but reading Arendt still seems necessary today. As her student Jan Breuer said in “Why Arendt Matters” – she is looking for a kind of thinking, which should not rely on noble nature, but can lead people to morally resist evil; she is looking for a kind of will , it should be treated with love, so that it can guide people to make respectable choices and actions, but does not turn love into a political principle; she looks for a judgment that does not give up reflection in the face of mandatory orders. Arendt’s rejection of absolute truth is often criticized as falling into the trap of modernity, but this rejection does underpin her call for practice and action. Actions, the premise, consequences, significance, difficulties, and motivations of action prejudices are described one by one in her rigorous system. It is we who remain in the “human condition” that hovers over labor, work, and action.
Arendt predicts at the end of the chapter on action that “this miracle of saving the world and the realm of human affairs from the usual ‘natural’ destruction is ultimately the fact of birth (which is also the ontological source of the capacity to act). In other words , is the birth of the new man and the new beginning, an action made possible by birth. Only the full experience of this faculty can give confidence and hope to human affairs, and confidence and hope, the two fundamental characteristics of human existence, cannot Completely ignored by the ancient Greeks, who doubted that faith was a rare, unimportant virtue, and saw hope as an imaginary sin in Pandora’s box. Faith and hope for the world were perhaps proclaimed in the Gospels Its most glorious and succinct expression is to be found in the ‘Gospel’: ‘A child is born among us’.” We promise, we act, we punish, we forgive, in endless sad endings and despair, waiting perhaps It should no longer be a static word, but should have a more personal glory.
05
Gilead
The novel consists of a family letter written by an elderly pastor to his young son before his death, reviewing his family history and condensing the sad past in the United States. When I read it, I found that it also wrote “Great Influenza”, and it was at the time of the First World War.
This part of the writing is very wonderful, and you will see that history is prophecy, and there are no differences between the East and the West in some human diseases, such as “People say that this cold is caused by the Germans’ secret weapon. I think everyone is willing to believe this. This is because it saves you the trouble of digging to find out the cause.” “Everyone smells of onions, because it is said that onions can kill the ‘germs’ that cause colds. People also rub their bodies with tobacco leaves.” , even rumors and superstitions have similar features.
This plague and war go hand in hand, the doomsday-like scene has already written a warning to mankind, “God called these young men back to himself before they killed their brothers. I say their death is a signal, warning We survivors, the desire for war, will inevitably bring war”, “I believe that for us, the plague was a striking omen, but we turned a blind eye and refused to grasp its meaning. Since then, the war has continued “. But we almost never listen.
06
language and silence
“After Auschwitz, writing poetry is barbaric.” In this book, humanist critic George Steiner tries to clarify the paradox between “language” and “silence” from literary texts. Language is the carrier of thought, and it is also the cage of thought. The author points out the abuse and pollution of language, and believes that in a totalitarian society, no matter whether you are silent or not, you will become a collaborator, because silence means turning a blind eye to suffering, and non-silence means Inevitably involved in the language disaster under totalitarianism. “When the language in the city is full of barbarism and lies, there is nothing more powerful than giving up the written poetry.” With wonderful insight, the author expresses the reflection of a generation of intellectuals, and the incomprehensible silence is destined to be distorted The language is also an eternal choice for future generations.
07
when we no longer understand the world
This is a collection of short stories “Borders Lost”. Starting from his own interest in science and related realistic materials, the writer works step by step, pushing the boundary between fiction and reality, and advancing into a jungle of random chaos and great significance. When we follow his novel style of writing and the stories of these scientists between fiction and reality to try to understand the meaning behind it, we will suddenly realize that our understanding of the world will essentially surpass science and fiction, just like The blue of cyanide, the singularity of the universe, the heart of the heart.
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