Volume 1: A sound on Wall Street, Xinxiang City is busy copying books Chapter 108: The Banquet of Boasting
Subtitle of this chapter: You can improve your reputation, but you can’t ruin your character!
Master Yuan was seen sitting with his legs crossed. He looked at his watch and said nonchalantly, "Only 40,000? It's not even 1:00 in the afternoon yet. It's still very early!"
At this time, Miss Helen Brown also said with difficulty: "Oh, forty thousand is really not a small amount."
Our Master Yuan's heart warmed up. These two white men and women... well, white friends are really good to him. He could see that if these two guys hadn't deliberately dragged their feet and slowed down, how could there be only 40,000 US dollars now.
Are there any good people among white people? I can't be a racist who only looks at skin color. What a great man said is right. We should unite all the forces that can be united!
Thinking of this, Yuan Yan suddenly looked at Mr. John McCall who had been watching the fun nearby.
"Humph!" John McCall, who had never left, looked at him and snorted, "It's useless to persuade him. This guy did it on purpose. I want to see if the final amount will be 400,000."
Wow, this guy really should unite himself, he actually figured out that I did it on purpose.
Yuan Yan suddenly raised her thumb and said, "We Seris have a proverb: the person who knows you best is your enemy. You see, our lawyer still understands me best."
Mr. McCall said with a sarcastic smile: "Yes, Mr. Yuan is right. I can see why you did this."
"Oh." Master Yuan, who was very interested, asked, "Then tell me, what is the purpose of my doing this?"
"POTLATCH!"
When Miss Brown, a layman in economics, heard the word John said, she naturally didn't understand what it meant, but the expressions of the Stern College students present were slightly moved.
Potlatch literally means Winter Gift Giving Festival in Chinese, which is actually the original origin of the custom of Westerners exchanging gifts at Christmas and Orientals giving out red envelopes. It is also an academic term, that is, "boasting feast".
Strictly speaking, the feast of wealth should be studied in the field of anthropology, but it is also a very peculiar economic behavior in some human societies. This custom is most popular among the Vikings of Northern Europe, the Eskimos, the North American Indians and the snowy plateau of China.
Showing off wealth is not uncommon in human history, but if this behavior becomes a custom and is done regularly, it would be very bizarre. However, some ethnic groups have this bizarre custom.
At such banquets, the host invited guests from all over the world, deliberately destroyed a lot of personal property in front of the guests and generously gave gifts. For example, there is such a description in the ancient British epic "Beowulf", where the tribal leader smashed gold and silver utensils, piled up textiles and fish oil, which were very precious food and fuel for the Nordic people, and then burned them.
This system seems to be a pure squandering, a childish waste, the result of a "megalomaniac personality". Just like our Master Yuan, who inexplicably proposed a very harsh bet on himself and accepted a huge bet.
In fact, the feast of boasting of wealth has its own profound meaning.
"POTLATCH...hahahaha...trading wealth for fame." Yuan Yan laughed suddenly, "Mr. McCall, I really have to look at you with new eyes!"
John shrugged and said, "Isn't it? Although I don't know how you will pay the compensation after you lose, after today, everyone in NYU, no, in the whole of New York, knows that there is a crazy Chinese like you. Even if you file for bankruptcy, you have earned a reputation at least."
Our Master Yuan thought to himself, this guy is really smart, no wonder he was able to obtain a New York State lawyer's license. Once he was no longer blinded by jealousy, he would immediately see that he was seeking fame.
I want this little brother!
He had made up his mind from the beginning that he must first gain a certain degree of reputation in the academic world, preferably by building up his reputation in this way, and then begin to publish literary works on a large scale, especially popular novels.
In fact, after his revision, "Chocolat" is no longer a romance novel in the pure sense, it contains anti-war and anti-religious humanitarian concerns; "Detective Dee" can be said to be an orthodox historical novel disguised as a detective novel; and "Fifty Shades of Grey"... he never thought of publishing it under his real name.
Mr. John McCall's bet was like someone sending him a pillow when he was sleepy. The timing was perfect. So he did not resent his "rival" at all, but was grateful from the bottom of his heart.
This is because, whether in the East or the West today, being a popular fiction writer is a very low-level job, probably only slightly better than being an actor or a movie star.
For example, Gong Baiyu, a great martial arts novelist in the Republic of China, once said, "I won't write unless I'm extremely poor." He also said, "It is a shame for the North China literary world today that these boring texts can be published and sold. I am not responsible for it."
A shame for the literary world... This is how martial arts novelists view their own works!
Although he made a good living by writing martial arts novels, he was not only ashamed of his martial arts creations, but also extremely contemptuous of them, thinking that he was a flower that had fallen from grace and died on the Blue Bridge. He felt that he had failed Mr. Lu Xun's ardent expectations of him, felt ashamed to see Lu Xun again, and automatically cut off contact with him.
After talking about the East, let's talk about the West. The mainstream literary world simply disdains horror novel masters like Mr. Ai Shouyi. Not to mention the "Father of Cthulhu", even Edgar Allan Poe, who has a much higher literary status than him, lived in poverty all his life.
Edgar Allan Poe is the originator of detective novels and science fiction, a pioneer of short stories, and a representative of romanticism. However, just because he started out as a popular novelist, he was never accepted by mainstream American society.
In simple terms, Yuan Yanshu's thinking was this: A master of political economics... well, a very famous master, wrote popular novels out of interest, which was because he was versatile and not particular about details; but an ordinary intellectual who did such a lousy thing to make a living was self-degrading, and in the eyes of intellectuals at that time, it was probably the same as a lady from a noble family taking the initiative to go into the adult entertainment industry.
In the relatively open capitalist society of the United States where money is everything, the problem is not that big. But when he returned to China, the Chinese people's evaluation of a PhD who studied in the United States and became world-renowned for his political economics book "Socialism" and a fake foreign devil who came back to write vulgar novels that "teach lewdness and theft" must be worlds apart.
His principle is: reputation can be improved, but character cannot be ruined.
Yuan Yan came back to her senses and said with a smile: "John, then I'll borrow your good words!"
"Okay, let's continue!"
