Unlike elite magazines such as Literary Magazine, Literature, Review and Europe, Reading defines itself as a popular book review. Facing the public, based on a new word, introduce the recently published new book to ordinary readers as soon as possible, and open up a shortcut for those who go to Shushan to enjoy victory. Every famous elite magazine in France also has a considerable space for literary criticism, but these comments are very academic and most of them are written by professors. If ordinary readers have not studied semiotics and hermeneutics and don't know Heidegger and Derrida, they can't understand them at all. Reading magazine tries to avoid this unattainable academic spirit, strives to be fresh, lively and approachable, and finds a middle way between elite culture and consumer culture. This difference in guiding ideology between reading and elite magazines can be seen from the cover alone: the cover design of elite magazines is mostly simple and unpretentious, and only one journal name is printed on a pure and elegant background. If it is mixed with other publications, it is very inconspicuous, so there is a narcissistic attitude, and you can look at it as you like. On the other hand, Reading magazine impressively publishes close-up color photos of famous writers on the cover of each issue, and marks the main items of this issue with striking red letters, which are placed on the bookshelves of bookstores as if waving "Come on, come on" there, even careless readers will not miss it. Most elite magazines can only be found in university libraries or bookstores in the Latin quarter, while reading is displayed on every street newsstand in Paris, posters of important issues in the year, and even billboards in subway stations. Because of its wide readership and smooth distribution channels, reading, as a cultural publication, is sometimes more famous than elite magazines in France and abroad. For example, in China's intellectual circles, many people know that this magazine, a famous humanities magazine, is directly based on the articles in Reading in its column on French cultural trends, which gives this magazine a certain cultural authority, which is probably unprecedented for the editors of Reading.
Reading was founded in 1975 and published ten times a year. By the end of 200 1, 300 issues had just been published. Each issue of the magazine is about 120 pages, and the fixed columns rarely change, which has been continued since its publication. The proportion of each column is similar between each issue, and each column has its own certain laws. The long columns mainly include interviews, investigations, cases, historical materials, writers' world, French novels, foreign novels, classic works and biographies. , mainly comments on literary books, attaches importance to art, history, philosophy, sociology, political science and other humanities. The columns of "Interview", "Investigation", "Writer's World" and "French Novels" mainly introduce the writers who caused a sensation in France and comment on their latest works, which are the highlights of attracting readers in various magazines. Take the interview column in 2000 and 200 1 as an example. The magazine interviewed philosophers Paul Corey, literary geek Michelle Volbek, literary veteran Allen Rob-Geyer and political theorist Ré gis Debray. Introducing these cultural celebrities to help out is itself a guarantee of magazine quality. Moreover, every interview is not general, but targeted and oriented, trying to touch the core and hot spots of the current cultural circle. For example, an interview with paul ricoeur from June 5th to1October 29th, 2000 was based on his newly published book "Remembering History and Forgetting", discussing some basic ethical and philosophical issues such as evil, crime, justice and history. The interview with Allen Rob-grina in the 200th1,10,299th issue is precisely because this new novel coach, after nearly 20 years of retirement, returned to the literary world with a novel "Restoration" and once again became a focus of French cultural vision. Philosophers and writers' works are often profound and complicated, and it is difficult to extract the essence from a few lines of book reviews. Long speeches are contrary to the style and theme of magazines. The "Interview" column opens up a dialogue space, talks about this oldest and most basic way of human communication, and invites authors to express their views and feelings in simple terms, so that readers can hear their voices without seeing them, and listen to the concerns of philosophers and scholars directly and flexibly.
The book market publishes thousands of books every year, and book review magazines can't get all the books. There is naturally a valuable judgment between this and that. In order to guide readers to buy books and read books, magazines often judge the books they choose. Reading magazines is no exception. It classifies all the new works in its catalogue into six grades: excellent, excellent, good, medium, poor and poor, and marks them with four feathers, three feathers, two feathers, one feather, one feather, two feathers and three feathers respectively. In recent years, the tendency of reading criticism is superior quality rather than inferior quality, and the attitude towards new books is to foster strengths and avoid weaknesses, calling for more scolding and less criticism, and most of the books reviewed are between three feathers and two feathers, which is extremely rare. In this favorable comment atmosphere. The magazine regularly publishes quarterly bestseller lists to introduce the best-selling 12 books to readers, such as 289 best memoir lists, 29 1 best foreign novels, 292 best comics, 293 best art books, 297 best daily practical books and so on. The climax of this new book ranking activity is the "Top 20 Books of the Year" published in the monthly magazine of 65438+February-65438+1October every year. A jury composed of magazine editors and well-known critics met in the Double Ugly Cafe next to Paris Saint-Germain Square to select and rank all the best new books in the last year, regardless of genre. From 1996 to 2000, five works topped the list, namely Kate Atkinson's Behind the Museum, Mrs. Savaril's Ghost Companion, Michelle Houlle Barker's Elementary Particles, Jean Echenoz's I'm Looking for Iraq and Liuschild Kabinsky's Ebony. In the "Top 20 Books of the Year" of reading category, literary works are favored. Among the five works mentioned above, the first four are novels, while the 20 laurels in 2000 were also taken away by novels, and the remaining half were equally divided by documentary reports, political and artistic books, philosophical works, memoirs and dictionary reference books. The annual and quarterly selection of reading is naturally influenced by the book market, news media propaganda, the promulgation of literary awards and cultural fashion trends, and often inevitably contains some kitsch. To what extent it reflects the true value of the new book of that year, we lack historical distance, and it is still difficult to make a judgment. However, this tradition has continued since the publication of 1975 magazine, but it is really a barometer of the rise and fall of French cultural circles for a quarter of a century.
In a large number of French literary magazines and book review magazines, reading does not pursue profound people, nor does it become superficial. It attracts a considerable number of readers with a large number of colorful book reviews, and it always occupies a place in the cultural front desk. There are many successes worthy of our study and reference. The most valuable thing about this magazine is its openness. It focuses on commenting on new literary books, but it also opens the door to humanities and cultural products from all walks of life. It is based on today's Paris culture, but it can be an eye-opener, looking at the thousand-year history and seeing the eastern and western cultures. Therefore, it has a wide range of comments, creating an unusually rich and mixed multi-voice space, which is very valuable in the French cultural circle where Eurocentrism is deeply rooted. In the first issue of "Reading" magazine, what came to readers' ears were Robert Gerye's eloquent speech at his country house in Normandy last week, the singing and whispering of Japanese ladies-in-waiting in heian period by the Pipa Lake a thousand years ago, a symbolic memory of a European TV culture festival, his interview with Nabokov 20 years ago, and an unknown computer engineer explaining his newly developed automatic poetry writing software. This open spirit of Reading magazine has enabled it to complete the communication function of media in spreading cultural comments and culture. It not only sets a reference coordinate and guide for many readers who are eager to acquire new knowledge and understand new ideas, but also replaces publishing houses and cultural institutions that try to introduce new writers and works, providing a way for the public. According to Pierre Azurina, editor-in-chief of Reading, every publishing house sends 20 new books to the magazine's editorial department for evaluation every day, which is the same as its circulation of 6.5438+0.2 million copies per issue, which can probably be regarded as a sign of the success of this book review magazine. (China Reading News)