Chapter 259: Literary Snobbery

Whether in the literary circle or the detective fiction circle, there existed a clear chain of snobbery.

Looking from within the literary circle, pure literature or traditional literature often looked down on popular literature.

And detective fiction, which was classified as popular literature, looked down on light novels, which were also popular literature.

Even within detective fiction, according to different schools, a status quo was formed where the classical looked down on the modern, and the honkaku school looked down on the social school.

However, in the era where Akiwara Yuto was, light novels were still in the germination stage, and what occupied the social mainstream were still pure literature and detective fiction.

And between the two, a kind of opposition had also formed.

In terms of pretentiousness, pure literature authors and readers often looked down on detective fiction.

But in the market, pure literature works completely presented a situation of being crushed, and thus were looked down upon by detective fiction writers and readers as "trash reading".

This also made pure literature and detective fiction authors "not see eye to eye" to a certain extent.

Therefore, after the news spread that Akiwara Yuto, a well-known detective fiction writer, was crossing from the detective fiction field to the pure literature field, it caused quite a stir in both the pure literature circle and the detective fiction circle!

On this matter, pure literature writers were divided into two factions.

One faction believed that Akiwara Yuto was "dabbling" and was disrespectful to pure literature.

In their view, if Akiwara Yuto, as a detective fiction writer, could write good pure literature works, didn't it mean that pure literature was vulnerable?

But the other faction expressed a welcoming attitude, which was the exact opposite.

They believed that pure literature needed more fresh "blood", and Akiwara Yuto's shift from the detective fiction field to the pure literature field was undoubtedly a practice of turning over a new leaf!

This could make the public pay attention to pure literature works again! And drive the overall sales of pure literature works!

Under such differences of opinion, many pure literature book reviewers and authors published comments in academic journals or newspapers one after another, and discussed this topic from various angles!

Some people thought Akiwara Yuto was arrogant, some thought this was a victory for pure literature, but others also thought Akiwara Yuto was just dabbling.

Under such heat, Akiwara Yuto's piece *Luo Shengmen* attracted a large amount of external attention before it was even released.

However, unlike the two factions of opinion in the pure literature field, the detective fiction community was generally dissatisfied.

In the eyes of many detective fiction writers, Akiwara Yuto, no matter what school you write, you are still "one of us".

Even if there were any struggles over awards, at most it was just an "internal" matter.

And now every school was convinced by you; you winning the Uemura Award was just a matter of time!

But what are you doing now, actually going to write pure literature works!

Are you planning to give up detective fiction and go kiss the "stinky feet" of that group of traditional literature people?!

For a time, young and middle-aged detective fiction writers expressed "dissatisfaction" one after another, and even some senior writers expressed criticism in private.

Even Kawai Shinta and Seto Tamae called one after another to ask if Akiwara Yuto was planning to give up detective fiction.

Facing these questions, Akiwara Yuto had to explain one by one, which made the people around him believe that he was just "dabbling" and would not give up detective fiction.

However, after being busy for half a day, he himself was very puzzled in his heart.

In his impression, many Japanese writers in his past life were creating across two fields.

For example, Nisio Isin, the author of the *Monogatari* series, whose early works focused on light novels, and whose later works increasingly carried a detective fiction style.

Or for example, Yonezawa Honobu, the author of *Hyouka*, who started out walking the path of detective light novels, and later had fewer and fewer daily life factors in his works.

But now, didn't he just write one piece of pure literature? Why was the reaction so big!

He thought for a long time and found that he might have thought wrong.

In his past life, compared to detective fiction, although the sales of light novels exceeded quite a bit, because the audience was all otaku men and women, their social status was completely inferior.

This made many light novel writers afraid to let outsiders know their profession, let alone have any social opinion ability.

But compared to pure literature, detective fiction not only far exceeded the former in sales, but even generally won the respect of the Japanese public.

Even some literary awards in the literary circle in recent years were only awarded to detective fiction rather than pure literature works.

This made detective fiction writers have the confidence to "go head-to-head" with pure literature authors, and they were full of disdain for the latter's snobbery.

Akiwara Yuto frowned, suddenly feeling that he might have been a bit rash in writing this *Luo Shengmen*.

Now he hadn't seen any benefits yet, and had inexplicably offended his old friends.

However, he also thought of a remedy, which was to "copy" a few more good detective fiction works later.

After all, as a literary person, everything still had to be spoken through works.

If he could prove that he still loved detective fiction and write "masterpieces", he estimated that the detective fiction community wouldn't have too much opposition.

In short, let's just wait and see for now.

Time passed very quickly, and while the pure literature faction was "having a war of words" in the newspapers, Keihansha's *Yuno* soon welcomed the day of its official release.

But this release made everyone in the *Yuno* editorial department dumbfounded!

In less than half a day of release, the 10,000 copies of the first edition were all sold out, directly setting Keihansha's shortest record for a reprint!

So much so that for the whole day, the editorial department and the sales department kept receiving calls from various bookstores urging for goods!

To cope with the huge market demand, Keihansha reprinted 30,000 more copies, and as a result, they were sold out in less than 2 days!

Then they added another 60,000 copies, and by the end of this week, they were almost completely sold out!

So much so that Ichimura Kenta, as the editor-in-chief, also put down his literary pride at this time and specially called to express his "thanks" to Akiwara Yuto.

But when Akiwara Yuto learned about the multiple reprints, he didn't feel very surprised, and even felt that the sales were lower than he had expected.

The total sales of his multiple works had already exceeded millions of copies.

Even if only one-tenth of the readers were interested in pure literature, it could greatly drive the sales of *Yuno*.

And what he was concerned about now was not the sales of this work, but the view of the literary criticism circle on this work *Luo Shengmen*.

But perhaps because of the particularity of this work, many book reviewers didn't publish comments at the first time, but only published corresponding book reviews after a full week.

From a newspaper brought by Asano Aiko, Akiwara Yuto saw the corresponding book review.

"The story written by Akiwara Yuto makes it hard for me to imagine it was written by a detective novelist. In his work, I see the weighing of human nature between survival and morality."

"Under the Luo Shengmen, a servant faces the choice between starving to death and becoming a thief, but in either case, he lacks 'courage'."

"And what Akiwara Yuto demonstrates is the process of how he obtains this courage from the mouth of an old woman."

"While obtaining this courage, he simultaneously opens the Luo Shengmen that represents hell!"

"But the question arises: should this servant really be blamed by us? If we were to place ourselves in that situation, would we not make the same move?"

"Humans are, in essence, a type of animal, and animality is one of human nature's traits that cannot be shaken off."

"But for animals, good and evil are meaningless; the most fundamental problem is survival."

"Therefore, when the servant is placed in a 'life-and-death dilemma,' he abandons human conscience and turns toward the 'evil' of animals."

"What surprises me is that Akiwara Yuto would actually have such a pessimistic view of human nature."

After finishing the entire piece, Akiwara Yuto nodded with satisfaction. Then he read a few more similar book reviews and discovered that, without exception, they were basically all praising him.

Even those who had jumped out to oppose him earlier were no longer saying anything at this time.

This led him to believe that, under the efficacy of an excellent work, the dissatisfaction directed at him from the pure literature circle had already vanished.

But what surprised him was that, a week later, a change occurred in this matter...