Silent Majority

Silent Majority is one of Wang Xiaobo's most representative collections of essays, and together with A Maverick Pig and My Spiritual Home it is regarded as one of the three essay collections that introduce readers to his work. The book gathers forty essays whose subjects range across intellectual culture and everyday life: there are analyses of the situation of intellectuals, of morality and ethics, and of traditional Chinese learning and New Confucianism; questions about the scientific spirit and pseudoscience, nationalist sentiment, and gender issues; and also his reflections on why he writes, on the art of fiction, and on film and television, along with a few book reviews and impressions of places abroad. The title essay, "Silent Majority," is the best known: taking his own experience as a starting point, Wang Xiaobo asks why, beneath the noise of a vocal discourse, there is always a large group of people who say nothing. Silence can be a weak person's self-protection, but it may also be a clear-eyed choice; and from silence, he says, he learned all the more about human nature. The main thread of the book can be summed up as "reasoning things out": it advocates independent thinking and respect for common sense, opposes stupidity and pretension, and treats the pursuit of wisdom and interest as legitimate goals in life. The prose is known for its irony and black humor; its logic is incisive, yet it rarely preaches, and readers often find themselves laughing and being struck at the same time. The 2021 edition from Beijing October Arts and Literature Publishing House was authorized and approved by Li Yinhe and re-collated against Wang Xiaobo's manuscripts and the finalized texts from his lifetime; it restores the original texts of pieces such as "A Positive Conclusion," "Debate and Morality," "Personal Dignity," and "Miscellaneous Talk from Abroad: The Farm," and rearranges the reading order. It is currently one of the more widely circulated and standard selections of his essays.