我就奇了怪了，“骗人的中医”在美国发展的也挺好，“骗子韩寒”在美国出本书还引起了关注。 打假的呢，一个个都逃回国成了“斗士”，难道中国和美国的价值观真的是颠倒的吗？ 反正中国和美国绝对有一个不正常，这事值得研究。 http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2012/oct/01/han-han-why-arent-you-grateful/ Roving thoughts and provocations from our writers E-MAIL SHARE PRINT COMMENTS Han Han: ‘Why Aren’t You Grateful?’ Ian Johnson Robert Cianflone/Getty Images Chinese blogger Han Han during a portrait session before round one of the China Touring Car Championship, Shanghai, China, April 28, 2012. When looking for Chinese reactions to the anti-Japanese riots that took place in late September, it was probably not much of a surprise that the Western press turned to Han Han, the widely read Shanghai-based blogger. In characteristic form, Han gave a riff on the protests that obliquely criticized the government, while at the same time insulated himself from making a direct accusation: “As far as looting and destroying things, this must be punished by law, or else I might suspect that there was some official backing behind all this.” For centuries, Chinese writers have been masters of the clever turn of phrase to avoid political trouble. In imperial times, points were often made through historical allegory: a reference to a ruined capital city might evoke a former dynasty thought to be more just than the current one. Even during the hardline Mao era, writers slipped in veiled barbs; a play about a sixteenth-century Ming Dynasty official who was punished for criticizing the emperor is often seen as the opening shot of the Cultural Revolution. It would be tempting to say, Not anymore—not only because most people aren’t culturally literate enough to get historical allegories, but also because things have opened up in China. The Internet is usually credited with this new directness; despite the best efforts of thousands of censors and government-sponsored bloggers, the swirl of information makes it easier for people to voice opinions nationally that once might have been heard by just a handful of neighbors or by readers of a local newspaper. Add to this rising levels of education and standards of living and you have a population much more willing to speak its mind than in the past. And yet as Han’s new book, This Generation: Dispatches from China’s Most Popular Literary Star (and Race Car Driver) shows, these changes haven’t replaced the old ways entirely. A collection of some of his most interesting and politically relevant essays, it is filled with commentary poking fun at officials and nationalists. But Han is careful not to go too far and risk becoming a dissident. He’s a player in the reality of Chinese society today, and wants to remain one (though it’s worth pointing out that, contrary to what his US publishers claim, Han is not quite the most popular blogger in China). He can be outrageous and funny, but also carefully elliptical and shrewdly vague. What makes Han different from critics of earlier eras is his use of ironic humor instead of historical allegory. Writers in the early twentieth century like Lu Xun explored this voice, but Han makes it his. Born in 1982, he dabbles in the modern forms of evasion: ennui, irony, boredom, and sarcasm. He’s witty and wry and when he’s on, he’s really on. A good example was a blog he wrote last year called “The Disconnected Nation” (also reprinted in The China Story, an illuminating collection of essays edited by the Australian sinologist Geremie Barmé about contemporary China, available in a free downloadable pdf ). It’s worth lingering a bit on this particular essay because it shows just how brilliant Han can be. In it, he discusses last year’s high-speed rail crash, in which forty people died after lightning is said to have disabled the signaling system and one train rear-ended another. In an ironic voice, Han explains how government officials think—Sure, mistakes were made, but look at all we’ve accomplished! We built this, they think, and we built that. You don’t need to concern yourselves with what happened in the process or whose palms were greased—you got to enjoy it, didn’t you? It used to take a day and a night to get from Shanghai to Beijing, and now—so long as the train’s not struck by lightning—you can make the trip in five hours. Why aren’t you grateful? Why do you raise so many questions? His other voice—that of the world-weary hipster telling everyone to chill out—works well with nationalists, whom he’s confronted on several occasions. In one post from 2008, he attacked people who called for a boycott of the French supermarket Carrefour after the Olympic torch relay was disrupted in Paris by supporters of Tibetan independence. “But I’m sure that if the French government were to loosen its restrictions on immigration from China to France, there would be plenty of takers,” he says in a characteristically snide but probably accurate aside. Too often, however, Han seems to lack other arrows in his quiver. Some of the essays are tedious—he goes on and on in one essay about how people should have been allowed to donate old clothes to victims of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake; the government had wanted only new clothes. It was a worthwhile criticism to make at the time, but hardly the most urgent part of the authorities’ mismanagement of the disaster; now, four years later, it seems obscure. His phlegmatism also dominates a 2010 post on an earlier round of protests about the disputed Senkaku or Diaoyu islands—which were also the cause of the recent anti-Japanese riots. He said protesters should concern themselves first with whether they have a decent job or family “rather than worrying about something so remote.” It’s a fair point, one supposes, but sounds like the advice from an overly sensible, mortgaged-to-the-hilt middle-aged father rather than an edgy young blogger. Go home and play with your kids is actually more than that—it’s wrong. In a country where too few people concern themselves with big affairs, the answer should rather be to stay engaged while learning to think more critically and skeptically. Perhaps it’s no wonder that some critics claim in excruciating detail that his father—a frustrated author himself who once used the pen name Han Han—contributed to his son’s essays, or even wrote some of them outright. Han’s exhausted, burned-out attitude is even less convincing when he discusses political reform. At the end of last year, he published three essays that caused a small uproar in China. Han advocated a go-slow attitude toward democracy, essentially saying Chinese people were not ready for it yet because they weren’t well-enough educated and behaved. The arguments were fair enough, but applicable to almost any country on the planet, especially, in this election season, the United States. The three essays have been interpreted (for example by the editor Chang Ping, whom I interviewed in January)as showing how many Chinese have given up hope for change and so resort to explaining why it shouldn’t happen. They certainly show how careful Han is not to overstep the golden rule of dissent in China: measured criticism is okay, but not advocacy of systemic change. This also came out in his recent blog on the anti-Japan protests. Han’s denouncing of boycotts of Japanese goods and his phrasing about possibly suspecting official backing for the riots attracted some attention but seemed to lack his earlier fire. Protesters can take to the streets if they feel really strongly about it, he said, but be careful and don’t vandalize. That’s all very sensible but was pretty much the government line. Even his condemnation of the boycott was half-hearted and easily surpassed in wit and vigor by bloggers like Li Chengpeng, who pronounced himself a traitor for buying Japanese products—an insightful essay that went viral . Why the heavy pen? The simplest explanation might be that Han has a good life —he races in car rallies and is part of a national advertising campaign to sell clothes for the online fashion retailer, Vancl. (“I am Vancl,” Han exclaims in the ad.) Overall, he doesn’t seem cut out for the lives of struggle and martyrdom chosen by the essayist Yu Jie or the Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo. It should be pointed out in Han’s favor that these two have largely been sidelined while Han is allowed to carry on. Yu went into exile earlier this year while Liu is serving an eleven-year prison sentence . Han chose not to go down this path. He wants to survive and even get ahead—to have a comfortable life, to marry, to have children, to race cars, and to sell clothes, but still be able to say something. This problem isn’t limited to Han Han. In a recent essay in The New York Review , I talked about the celebrated Chinese novelist, Yu Hua. Yu also has to be cautious. In one book published domestically he carefully criticizes the government, while in a book published abroad he lets loose. Survival in China means knowing the boundaries and pushing but not breaking them. Han’s problem is commitment. To remain vital, he has three choices: to refine his prose into something more lasting, to remain in the ring and be a more virile commentator, or to sit back a bit and enjoy the good life. Right now, it seems he’s trying the latter. While that might be disappointing to some, and perhaps makes for a less-than-spectacular book, can he be blamed? Han Han’s This Generation: Dispatches from China’s Most Popular Literary Star (and Race Car Driver) is edited and translated by Allan Barr and published by Simon Schuster. October 1, 2012, 1:30 p.m.
出书的哪些事 张学文 2009.7.4 潜科学论坛上最近就出版书的事，引起了一些议论。我这里提供一些认识供参考。 l 出书主要涉及两个方面：作者，出版社。作者的目的，能力，出版社的利益，认同，能力是有关环节。 l 一些学人没有出版过自己的书，难免有一些天真的认识：认为我写的书，一经问世就会轰动，书要再版，我要成名、发财 ，可真的进行了一番苦旅，出版了一册书。其苦味只有自己吞。原先的浪漫认识大多都云飞雨散。 l 确实，科技类的书，如果不是教科书、成功的科普书，急需的参考书，其印量多在 1000 册以下。这个印量对出版社肯定是赔钱的事和难销的书。于是不能赔钱的出版社自然找你要出版费、什么书号费等等，而且全部的书都由你自己拿去，他们没有兴趣把书推向书店、读者。所以，尽管你自己掏腰包出书，如果你最初对这样结局没有精神准备，就很伤心，成绩感被失败感代替。 l 现在的出版社，原则上只要你肯出钱，基本都可以出版你的著作。但是，你显然需要十分审慎行事。写书时就要考虑读者群，要让出版社的认识到这本书的社会需要量超过 3000 册，出版社发生兴趣，不仅可以免收出版费，还可以給你稿费！核心是市场！ l 一篇论文的发表，往往要由专业的审稿人裁定，于是有人感到发表难。相比之下，一个书稿是否可以出版，其审核过程，专家的意见退居次要地位。核心是出版社的编辑，而出版社编辑往往不是该领域的权威，他们仅是编辑、出版和经销的行家。从这个意义上讲，出书比发表文章容易通过。自然你写一本系统而没有自相矛盾的书也相当不容易。 l 要考虑出版社的威望，不合适的出版社，可能反而让你的著作降格！ l 据说外国的出版社一般不能在国内印刷厂印刷其图书。 l 花 2-3 万，有 20 万字的书稿，找个出版社，出版一本印 1000 册自己全部拿回的书，我估计现在是可以做的到的（包括论文集）。 l 我们这里的电子书出版费是这样的：交 1.2 万元，电子出版社把你給他的电子稿变成电子书（光盘），有正式书号，出版社給你 1000 张光盘（每张标价 38 元）。而光盘的容量是百兆以上，几乎可以把你终生的文字稿都包了进去。 l 如果你有课题费，有确定的销量，购买团体，问题就是另外的情况了。策划人找你来写书，情况又是另外的样子。 l 2008 年本人就个人出书的经历写过 7 篇短稿登在科学网博客 http://www.sciencenet.cn/u/zhangxw/ 上，其第 1 篇的地址是 http://www.sciencenet.cn/m/user_content.aspx?id=19269 ，欢迎参考它们。
标签: 出书
