正文
Hidden Within Technology’s Empire, a Republic of Letters
By Saul Bellow
When I was a boy “discovering literature”, I used to think how wonderful it would be if every other person on the street were familiar with Proust and Joyce or T. E. Lawrence or Pasternak and Kafka. Later I learned how refractory to high culture the democratic masses were. Lincoln as a young frontiersman read Plutarch, Shakespeare and the Bible. But then he was Lincoln.
Later when I was traveling in the Midwest by car, bus and train, I regularly visited small-town libraries and found that readers in Keokuk, Iowa, or Benton Harbor, Mich., were checking out Proust and Joyce and even Svevo and Andrei Biely. D. H. Lawrence was also a favorite. And sometimes I remembered that God was willing to spare Sodom for the sake of 10 of the righteous. Not that Keokuk was anything like wicked Sodom, or that Proust’s Charlus would have been tempted to settle in Benton Harbor, Mich. I seem to have had a persistent democratic desire to find evidences of high culture in the most unlikely places.
For many decades now I have been a fiction writer, and from the first I was aware that mine was a questionable occupation. In the 1930’s an elderly neighbor in Chicago told me that he wrote fiction for the pulps. “The people on the block wonder why I don’t go to a job, and I’m seen puttering around, trimming the bushes or painting a fence instead of working in a factory. But I’m a writer. I to Argosy and Doc Savage,” he said with a certain gloom. “They wouldn’t call that a trade.” Probably he noticed that I was a bookish boy, likely to sympathize with him, and perhaps he was trying to warn me to avoid being unlike others. But it was too late for that.
From the first, too, I had been warned that the novel was at the point of death, that like the walled city or the crossbow, it was a thing of the past. And no one likes to be at odds with history. Oswald Spengler, one of the most widely read authors of the early 30’s, taught that our tired old civilization was very nearly finished. His advice to the young was to avoid literature and the arts and to embrace mechanization and become engineers.
In refusing to be obsolete, you challenged and defied the evolutionist historians. I had great respect for Spengler in my youth, but even then I couldn’t accept his conclusions, and (with respect and admiration) I mentally told him to get lost.
Sixty years later, in a recent issue of The Wall Street Journal, I come upon the old Spenglerian argument in a contemporary form. Terry Teachout, unlike Spengler, does not dump paralyzing mountains of historical theory upon us, but there are signs that he has weighed, sifted and pondered the evidence.
He speaks of our “atomized culture,” and his is a responsible, up-to-date and carefully considered opinion. He speaks of “art forms as technologies.” He tells us that movies will soon be “downloadable”—that is, transferable from one computer to the memory of another device—and predicts that films will soon be marketed like books. He predicts that the near-magical powers of technology are bringing us to the threshold of a new age and concludes, “Once this happens, my guess is that the independent movie will replace the novel as the principal vehicle for serious storytelling in the 21st century.”
In support of this argument, Mr. Teachout cites the ominous drop in the volume of book sales and the great increase in movie attendance: “For Americans under the age of 30, film has replaced the novel as the dominant mode of artistic expression.” To this Mr. Teachout adds that popular novelists like Tom Clancy and Stephen King “top out at around a million copies per book,” and notes, “The final episode of NBC’s ‘Cheers,’ by contrast, was seen by 42 million people.”
On majoritarian grounds, the movies win. “The power of novels to shape the national conversation has declined,” says Mr. Teachout. But I am not at all certain that in their day “Moby-Dick” or “The Scarlet Letter” had any considerable influence on “the national conversation.” In the mid-19th century it was “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” that impressed the great public. “Moby-Dick” was a small-public novel.
The literary masterpieces of the 20th century were for the most part the work of novelists who had no large public in mind. The novels of Proust and Joyce were written in a cultural twilight and were not intended to be read under the blaze and dazzle of popularity.
Mr. Teachout’s article in The Journal follows the path generally taken by observers whose aim is to discover a trend. “According to one recent study 55 percent of Americans spend less than 30 minutes reading anything at all…. It may even be that movies have superseded novels not because Americans have grown dumber but because the novel is an obsolete artistic technology.”
“We are not accustomed to thinking of art forms as technologies,” he says, “but that is what they are, which means they have been rendered moribund by new technical developments.”
Together with this emphasis on technics that attracts the scientific-minded young, there are other preferences discernible: It is better to do as a majority of your contemporaries are doing, better to be one of millions viewing a film than one of mere thousands reading a book. Moreover, the reader reads in solitude, whereas the viewer belongs to a great majority; he has powers of numerosity as well as the powers of mechanization. Add to this the importance of avoiding technological obsolescence and the attraction of feeling that technics will decide questions for us more dependably than the thinking of an individual, no matter how distinctive he may be.
John Cheever told me long ago that it was his readers who kept him going, people from every part of the country who had written to him. When he was at work, he was aware of these readers and correspondents in the woods beyond the lawn. “If I couldn’t picture them, I’d be sunk,” he said. And the novelist Wright Morris, urging me to get an electric typewriter, said that he seldom turned his machine off. “When I’m not writing, I listen to the electricity,” he said. “It keeps me company. We have conversations.”
I wonder how Mr. Teachout might square such idiosyncrasies with his “art forms as technologies.” Perhaps he would argue that these two writers had somehow isolated themselves from “broad-based cultural influence.” Mr. Teachout has at least one laudable purpose: He thinks that he sees a way to bring together the Great Public of the movies with the Small Public of the highbrows. He is, however, interested in millions: millions of dollars, millions of readers, millions of viewers.
The one thing “everybody” does is go to the movies, Mr. Teachout says. How right he is.
Back in the 20’s children between the ages of 8 and 12 lined up on Saturdays to buy their nickel tickets to see the crisis of last Saturday resolved. The heroine was untied in a matter of seconds just before the locomotive would have crushed her. Then came a new episode; and after that the newsreel and “Our Gang.” Finally there was a western with Tom Mix, or a Janet Gaynor picture about a young bride and her husband blissful in the attic, or Gloria Swanson and Theda Bara or Wallace Beery or Adolphe Menjou or Marie Dressler. And of course there was Charlie Chaplin in “The Gold Rush,” and from “The Gold Rush” it was only one step to the stories of Jack London.
There was no rivalry then between the viewer and the reader. Nobody supervised our reading. We were on our own. We civilized ourselves. We found or made a mental and imaginative life. Because we could read, we learned also to write. It did not confuse me to see “Treasure Island” in the movies and then read the book. There was no competition for our attention.
[ Last edited by kittylinda at 2010-12-10 10:47 AM ]
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Post time 2010-7-6 16:13:36 |View the author only
One of the more attractive oddities of the United States is that our minorities are so numerous, so huge. A minority of millions is not at all unusual. But there are in fact millions of literate Americans in a state of separation from others of their kind. They are, if you like, the readers of Cheever, a crowd of them too large to be hidden in the woods. Departments of literature across the country have not succeeded in alienating them from books, works old and new. My friend Keith Botsford and I felt strongly that if the woods were filled with readers gone astray, among those readers there were probably writers as well.
To learn in detail of their existence you have only to publish a magazine like The Republic of Letters. Given encouragement, unknown writers, formerly without hope, materialize. One early reader wrote that our paper, “with its contents so fresh, person-to-person,” was “real, non-synthetic, undistracting.” Noting that there were no ads, she asked, “Is it possible, can it last?” and called it “an antidote to the shrinking of the human being in every one of us.” And toward the end of her letter our correspondent added, “It behooves the elder generation to come up with reminders of who we used to be and need to be.”
This is what Keith Botsford and I had hoped that our “tabloid for literates” would be. And for two years it has been just that. We are a pair of utopian codgers who feel we have a duty to literature. I hope we are not like those humane do-gooders who, when the horse was vanishing, still donated troughs in City Hall Square for thirsty nags.
We have no way of guessing how many independent, self-initiated connoisseurs and lovers of literature have survived in remote corners of the country. The little evidence we have suggests that they are glad to find us, they are grateful. They want more than they are getting. Ingenious technology has failed to give them what they so badly need.
隱於技術帝國背後的文學世界 BY csuer
還是一個剛剛踏上文學探究之路的小孩子時，我時常會想：如果每一個人都熟諳普魯斯特、喬伊斯、托馬斯•愛德華•勞倫斯、帕斯捷爾納克或者卡夫卡 ，該是一件多麽美好的事情啊！後來我才明白，普羅大眾對於陽春白雪的高雅文化是多麽地抗拒與排斥。林肯年少時居住在美國西部邊陲之地，但那時他就讀過了聖經、以及普魯塔克與莎士比亞的著作 。然而他畢竟是林肯。
後來，我到美國的中西部地區旅遊，不論是自己開車，還是坐汽車或火車，我都經常去小鎮子上的圖書館看一看。在愛荷華州的基奧卡克，或者密歇根州的本頓港這樣的地方，我翻閱了圖書館的借閱記錄，發現普魯斯特、喬伊斯甚至斯韋沃與安德烈•別雷 的作品都很受歡迎。戴維•赫伯特•勞倫斯 的作品也頗受青睞。這讓我有時會想起上帝願為十個義人而饒恕所多瑪城裏眾人的故事 。我倒不是說基奧卡克與傳說中的罪惡之城所多瑪有任何的相似之處，或者說夏呂斯 男爵會覺得本頓港是他的安居之地。隻是我有一份難以割舍的平民情結，執著地在最不可能之處尋覓高雅文化的蛛絲馬跡。
現如今，我寫小說也已經有幾十年了。其實，從一開始，我就知道以此為業不怎麽靠譜。三十年代我住在芝加哥的時候，一位年長的鄰居告訴我說，他為一些不入流的廉價雜誌寫小說。“鄰居們見我每天總是東遊西蕩、無所事事，不是修剪草坪就是粉刷籬笆，就是不去上班，都感到很納悶：這個人怎麽也不找個工作呢？但其實我是一個作家。我以賣文為生，一般向《商船隊》和《薩維齊博士》這些雜誌投稿 ”，他鬱鬱地說。“他們覺得這可算不得什麽正當營生。”他對我說這番話可能是因為看出我這個人頗有些書生氣，因而也許會產生共鳴，抑或他是想提醒我不要特立獨行、標新立異。可惜他的勸告已然來得遲了。
同樣，也是從一開始就有人警告過我小說已經到了彌留之際，如同城牆與弓弩，早已是明日黃花。沒有人願與曆史潮流相悖而行。奧斯瓦爾德•斯賓格勒是二十世紀三十年代初期最受歡迎的作家之一，他就曾教誨我們說，腐朽陳舊的古老文明已經死氣沉沉、行將就木。他建議年輕人應該丟掉文學和藝術，擁抱機械化時代，去做工程師。
倘若拒不承認文學已經過時的話，你就是在挑戰和藐視社會進化論曆史學家的權威。年輕時我對斯賓格勒一度極為推崇，即便如此，我也不能苟同他的觀點。因此我隻有滿懷尊重與欽佩之情暗暗腹誹：請您還是一邊待著去吧。
時隔六十年，我在最近的一期《華爾街日報》上又看到了斯賓格勒式論點的老調重彈。不過是新瓶裝舊酒，換湯未換藥。這次是泰瑞•蒂僑特。他倒未像斯賓格勒般旁征博引，拋出鋪天蓋地、堆砌如山的曆史理論，而是對例證權衡輕重、精挑細選、再三斟酌。
他談到了我們的“散沙文化 ”， 其觀點倒也有理有據、新穎應時、細密周詳。他提出 “藝術即技術”。他說，電影很快就可以“自由下載”，即在電腦之間通過內存自由傳輸——而且，他還預言，電影很快就會將像書籍一樣，走進市場，擺上貨架銷售。他還斷言科技的神奇魔力將引領我們跨入一個嶄新的時代。“到那時候，我想獨立製片電影 將會取代小說，成為二十一世紀嚴肅故事敘述的主要形式”。
為了佐證他的觀點，蒂僑特先生還援引了一些數據，來說明書籍銷售量銳減，而電影觀眾數激增：“對30歲以下的美國人來說，電影已取代小說，成為最主要的藝術表現形式。”他補充道，就算是湯姆•克蘭西和史蒂芬•金 這樣的頂級暢銷小說家，“他們作品的最高銷量也不過一百萬冊左右，相比之下，收看美國國家廣播公司投拍的《歡樂酒店》大結局的觀眾則多達四千兩百萬”。
僅以受眾的多寡論，電影大獲全勝。 “現在小說再也不能像原來那樣成為全民熱議的話題了”，蒂僑特先生如是說。但是我卻不記得《白鯨》與《紅字》在其麵世之時是否是什麽“全民熱議的話題”。十九世紀中葉對大眾產生了重大影響的小說應該是《湯姆叔叔的小屋》。而《白鯨》則是一部小眾小說。
二十世紀的文學巨著的作者們大都不是為了迎合大眾而創作的。普魯斯特和喬伊斯創作小說時，正值文化式微，他們壓根沒有想過作品會受到大眾的讚許與追捧。
蒂僑特先生在《華爾街日報》發表的這篇文章采用了觀察家們常用的套路，意在指出大勢何趨。“最新研究表明，55%的美國人每天閱讀少於30分鍾……我們甚至可以說電影之所以取代小說，不是因為美國人日漸愚鈍，而是由於小說這種藝術技術已經過時了” 。
“我們還不太習慣把藝術形式當作技術來看待，”他說，“但事實上它們就是技術。也就是說隨著科技的日新月異，這種陳腐的技術已經奄奄一息。”
除了強調科技至上之外，我們還隱約可見蒂僑特的另一個重點：即最好做到隨大流，周圍的人幹什麽你就幹什麽，做寥寥數千讀書人中的一員不如加入電影觀眾的百萬大軍。 況且，讀書時獨處一室、孑然一人，而看電影的人則濟濟一堂、人多勢眾、並坐擁現代設備之利。除此之外，他還告訴我們：避免技術的過時是非常重要的；另外，無論一個人是多麽地卓爾不群，他做出的抉擇都不如技術可靠。
很久以前，約翰•契弗 告訴我，正是全國各地的讀者的來信激勵著他一直筆耕不輟。 寫作的時候，他能感受到讀者的存在。他們在偏遠的森林裏，在都市的草坪前，在美國的每一個地方。“要是哪天我感受不到他們，那我就完了”，他說。賴特•莫裏斯 則一直催著我買個電動打字機。他說他的打字機基本都是開著的，“要是我不寫東西，我就聽聽電流的聲音”，他說，“他給我做伴，我們經常說說話”。
我很想知道蒂僑特先生如何用他的“藝術即技術”理論來解釋這兩位作家的癖好。也許他會辯解說這兩位作家離群索居，多少有點缺乏“廣泛的文化影響”。不過蒂僑特先生至少有一點意圖值得稱道：他認為他在尋找一條將廣大的電影觀眾與小眾的讀書人聯合在一起的道路。然而，他其實是對“百萬”這個數字感興趣而已：數以百萬計的美元，數以百萬計的讀者，數以百萬計的觀眾，如此而已。
蒂僑特先生說“每個人”都做過的事就是看電影。一點不假。
記得二十年代的時候，8到12歲的小孩們一到周六就會排隊去買五分錢一張的兒童票，等著看上周電影中的驚險場麵結局如何。女主角被綁在鐵軌上，火車頭呼嘯而來，眼看就要粉身碎骨，就在這千鈞一發之刻，她終於掙脫了繩索，逃出生天。然後接著播放下一集。接下來會播一段新聞片和一集《小頑童》 。壓軸的是湯姆•米克斯主演的西部片，或者是珍妮•蓋諾演繹的年輕的新娘與新郎在閣樓上的幸福生活，要麽就是葛羅莉亞•史璜生、希妲•芭拉、華萊士•比裏、阿道夫•門吉歐、瑪麗•德雷斯勒這些演員主演的電影。噢，當然還少不了查理•卓別林主演的《淘金熱》。而這部電影讓我們很容易想起傑克•倫敦 的小說。
其實，看電影與讀書之間並不衝突。沒有人左右我們如何讀書。我們自己選擇，自己提高修養，自己尋找或者創造充滿想象的精神家園。因為我們可以讀書，也可以學著寫作。我可以先看《金銀島》的電影，然後再看原著，也沒有迷惑不解。我們完全可以一心二用，因為兩者並無競爭。
美國有一個頗為引人關注的奇怪現象，即就算是少數派也人數眾多。即便是人數達到數百萬的少數派團體也屢見不鮮。然而，事實上美國有著數以百萬通文達藝的人，他們彼此卻很少溝通。比如說契弗的讀者群就十分龐大，人數多到無法忽視。美國大學的文學院係也無法脫離書本，脫離經典著作或最新力作。我與老友基思• 博茨福德都深信如果大量的讀者迷失在森林裏，那麽迷失其中的肯定也不乏作家 。
隻有創辦《文學世界》這樣的雜誌，我們才能了解他們到底散落何處。如果我們給予鼓勵，那些原本籍籍無名、無甚希望的作者將會實現他們的夢想。早期有位讀者在給我們的來信中評價道：“（雜誌）內容新穎、直指人心，真實可信而非矯揉造作，引人入勝”。 她注意到我們的雜誌沒有刊登任何廣告，所以問道“這樣行嗎？能維持下去嗎？”，並稱之為“解決我們人文精神萎縮的一劑良方”。在信的末尾，這位讀者補充到：“老一輩的人理應提醒年輕人，我們過去如何，以後應該如何。”
這也正是我和基思•博茨福德對這份“文學小報 ”所寄托的期望。過去的兩年我們也的確做到了這一點。我們倆是有著烏托邦式理想的怪老頭。為文學做點事情，我們覺得義不容辭、責無旁貸。我希望我們不會像掌管人文科學的袞袞諸公那樣，等馬兒都要渴死了，還在市政廳廣場大肆募捐，口口聲聲要為馬購置水槽。
在這個國家廣袤的土地上，還有多少自學成才、獨立思考的文學專家和愛好者我們無從得知。從我們掌握的一點情況看我們隻知道我們的出現使他們歡呼雀躍、心存感激。他們需要更多的機會，更大的平台。而無所不能的科技卻無法給予他們最需要的東西。
注：1. 普魯斯特，法國20世紀最偉大的小說家，代表作為《追憶似水年華》。喬伊斯，愛爾蘭作家，詩人，代表作為《尤利西斯》。托馬斯•愛德華•勞倫斯，以阿拉伯的勞倫斯而聞名，著有《智慧的七柱》等。帕斯捷爾納克，蘇聯作家、詩人，憑其長篇小說《日瓦戈醫生》於1958年獲諾貝爾文學獎。卡夫卡，20世紀德文小說家，對後世文學影響極為深遠，最著名的作品為《變形記》。
2. 普魯塔克，希臘高產作家，著有《傳記集》等。莎士比亞，英國文藝複興代表人物，曆史上最偉大的英語作家，著有37部戲劇，154首十四行詩。
3. 斯韋沃，意大利小說家，被譽為20世紀最出色小說家之一。安德烈•別雷是俄羅斯象征主義的主要代表者之一，著有《莫斯科》等。
4. 即D H勞倫斯，英國文學家，詩人，著有《查泰萊夫人的情人》（1928），《兒子與情人》，《虹》等。
5. 所多瑪是《聖經》中記載的城市，因罪孽深重招致上帝降下硫磺火而毀滅。原文見聖經《創世紀》第十八章。
6. 夏呂斯男爵是小說《追憶逝水年華》中的人物，被認為是腐朽貴族的代表人物。
7. 《商船隊》和《薩維齊博士》是美國著名的暢銷廉價雜誌，其中《商船隊》被認為是美國廉價雜誌的鼻祖，而《薩維齊博士》則以刊登與刊物同名的故事連載聞名。
8. 美國一些學者認為當今社會人與人之間缺乏溝通，個人的追求和觀點很難形成互動。人與人之間的關係就像沙粒一樣沒有融合。
9. 獨立製片電影是指非主流或非商業目的低成本電影。相對於更注重票房的大電影製片公司的商業電影，獨立製片電影更注重影片的藝術品位。
10. 湯姆•克蘭西，美國軍事作家，當今世界最暢銷的反恐驚悚小說大師，代表作《獵殺“紅十月”號》、《愛國者遊戲》、《燃眉追擊》和《驚天核網》先後被搬上銀幕。斯蒂芬•金，美國暢銷書作家，其作品銷售超過3億5000萬冊，以恐怖小說著稱，其作品《肖申克的救贖》，《閃靈》等被拍成電影，頗受好評。
11. 約翰•契弗，美國當代作家，被譽為紐約郊區的契訶夫，獲1979年“普利策小說獎。”
12. .賴特•莫裏斯，美國心理現實主義小說代表人物之一，著有《我的達得利叔叔》等。
13. 《小頑童》是美國二三十年代熱播的兒童係列喜劇，由米高梅公司出品，講的是一群頑皮的小孩子以及他們讓人啼笑皆非的故事。
14. 傑克•倫敦本人曾加入“淘金熱”大軍，卻空手而歸。歸來後，他根據自己積累的素材埋首寫作，寫出了大量反映淘金者艱苦生活的作品，如《野性的呼喚》等。
15. 基思•博茨福德曾經談到，美國大學裏的文學老師隻願意講解卡夫卡、喬伊斯等作品“較晦澀”的作家，而不願意涉獵自己研究範圍之外的作家，因循守舊。博茨福德甚至尖銳地把他們稱為“寄生蟲”。另外，博茨福德與貝婁認為美國缺少嚴肅對待純文學的雜誌，使得文學愛好者如同迷失在茫茫森林，因此，他們決定創辦這一雜誌。
維基百科上麵關於 陽春白雪的解釋
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_culture
By Saul Bellow
When I was a boy “discovering literature”, I used to think how wonderful it would be if every other person on the street were familiar with Proust and Joyce or T. E. Lawrence or Pasternak and Kafka. Later I learned how refractory to high culture the democratic masses were. Lincoln as a young frontiersman read Plutarch, Shakespeare and the Bible. But then he was Lincoln.
Later when I was traveling in the Midwest by car, bus and train, I regularly visited small-town libraries and found that readers in Keokuk, Iowa, or Benton Harbor, Mich., were checking out Proust and Joyce and even Svevo and Andrei Biely. D. H. Lawrence was also a favorite. And sometimes I remembered that God was willing to spare Sodom for the sake of 10 of the righteous. Not that Keokuk was anything like wicked Sodom, or that Proust’s Charlus would have been tempted to settle in Benton Harbor, Mich. I seem to have had a persistent democratic desire to find evidences of high culture in the most unlikely places.
For many decades now I have been a fiction writer, and from the first I was aware that mine was a questionable occupation. In the 1930’s an elderly neighbor in Chicago told me that he wrote fiction for the pulps. “The people on the block wonder why I don’t go to a job, and I’m seen puttering around, trimming the bushes or painting a fence instead of working in a factory. But I’m a writer. I to Argosy and Doc Savage,” he said with a certain gloom. “They wouldn’t call that a trade.” Probably he noticed that I was a bookish boy, likely to sympathize with him, and perhaps he was trying to warn me to avoid being unlike others. But it was too late for that.
From the first, too, I had been warned that the novel was at the point of death, that like the walled city or the crossbow, it was a thing of the past. And no one likes to be at odds with history. Oswald Spengler, one of the most widely read authors of the early 30’s, taught that our tired old civilization was very nearly finished. His advice to the young was to avoid literature and the arts and to embrace mechanization and become engineers.
In refusing to be obsolete, you challenged and defied the evolutionist historians. I had great respect for Spengler in my youth, but even then I couldn’t accept his conclusions, and (with respect and admiration) I mentally told him to get lost.
Sixty years later, in a recent issue of The Wall Street Journal, I come upon the old Spenglerian argument in a contemporary form. Terry Teachout, unlike Spengler, does not dump paralyzing mountains of historical theory upon us, but there are signs that he has weighed, sifted and pondered the evidence.
He speaks of our “atomized culture,” and his is a responsible, up-to-date and carefully considered opinion. He speaks of “art forms as technologies.” He tells us that movies will soon be “downloadable”—that is, transferable from one computer to the memory of another device—and predicts that films will soon be marketed like books. He predicts that the near-magical powers of technology are bringing us to the threshold of a new age and concludes, “Once this happens, my guess is that the independent movie will replace the novel as the principal vehicle for serious storytelling in the 21st century.”
In support of this argument, Mr. Teachout cites the ominous drop in the volume of book sales and the great increase in movie attendance: “For Americans under the age of 30, film has replaced the novel as the dominant mode of artistic expression.” To this Mr. Teachout adds that popular novelists like Tom Clancy and Stephen King “top out at around a million copies per book,” and notes, “The final episode of NBC’s ‘Cheers,’ by contrast, was seen by 42 million people.”
On majoritarian grounds, the movies win. “The power of novels to shape the national conversation has declined,” says Mr. Teachout. But I am not at all certain that in their day “Moby-Dick” or “The Scarlet Letter” had any considerable influence on “the national conversation.” In the mid-19th century it was “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” that impressed the great public. “Moby-Dick” was a small-public novel.
The literary masterpieces of the 20th century were for the most part the work of novelists who had no large public in mind. The novels of Proust and Joyce were written in a cultural twilight and were not intended to be read under the blaze and dazzle of popularity.
Mr. Teachout’s article in The Journal follows the path generally taken by observers whose aim is to discover a trend. “According to one recent study 55 percent of Americans spend less than 30 minutes reading anything at all…. It may even be that movies have superseded novels not because Americans have grown dumber but because the novel is an obsolete artistic technology.”
“We are not accustomed to thinking of art forms as technologies,” he says, “but that is what they are, which means they have been rendered moribund by new technical developments.”
Together with this emphasis on technics that attracts the scientific-minded young, there are other preferences discernible: It is better to do as a majority of your contemporaries are doing, better to be one of millions viewing a film than one of mere thousands reading a book. Moreover, the reader reads in solitude, whereas the viewer belongs to a great majority; he has powers of numerosity as well as the powers of mechanization. Add to this the importance of avoiding technological obsolescence and the attraction of feeling that technics will decide questions for us more dependably than the thinking of an individual, no matter how distinctive he may be.
John Cheever told me long ago that it was his readers who kept him going, people from every part of the country who had written to him. When he was at work, he was aware of these readers and correspondents in the woods beyond the lawn. “If I couldn’t picture them, I’d be sunk,” he said. And the novelist Wright Morris, urging me to get an electric typewriter, said that he seldom turned his machine off. “When I’m not writing, I listen to the electricity,” he said. “It keeps me company. We have conversations.”
I wonder how Mr. Teachout might square such idiosyncrasies with his “art forms as technologies.” Perhaps he would argue that these two writers had somehow isolated themselves from “broad-based cultural influence.” Mr. Teachout has at least one laudable purpose: He thinks that he sees a way to bring together the Great Public of the movies with the Small Public of the highbrows. He is, however, interested in millions: millions of dollars, millions of readers, millions of viewers.
The one thing “everybody” does is go to the movies, Mr. Teachout says. How right he is.
Back in the 20’s children between the ages of 8 and 12 lined up on Saturdays to buy their nickel tickets to see the crisis of last Saturday resolved. The heroine was untied in a matter of seconds just before the locomotive would have crushed her. Then came a new episode; and after that the newsreel and “Our Gang.” Finally there was a western with Tom Mix, or a Janet Gaynor picture about a young bride and her husband blissful in the attic, or Gloria Swanson and Theda Bara or Wallace Beery or Adolphe Menjou or Marie Dressler. And of course there was Charlie Chaplin in “The Gold Rush,” and from “The Gold Rush” it was only one step to the stories of Jack London.
There was no rivalry then between the viewer and the reader. Nobody supervised our reading. We were on our own. We civilized ourselves. We found or made a mental and imaginative life. Because we could read, we learned also to write. It did not confuse me to see “Treasure Island” in the movies and then read the book. There was no competition for our attention.
[ Last edited by kittylinda at 2010-12-10 10:47 AM ]
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Post time 2010-7-6 16:13:36 |View the author only
One of the more attractive oddities of the United States is that our minorities are so numerous, so huge. A minority of millions is not at all unusual. But there are in fact millions of literate Americans in a state of separation from others of their kind. They are, if you like, the readers of Cheever, a crowd of them too large to be hidden in the woods. Departments of literature across the country have not succeeded in alienating them from books, works old and new. My friend Keith Botsford and I felt strongly that if the woods were filled with readers gone astray, among those readers there were probably writers as well.
To learn in detail of their existence you have only to publish a magazine like The Republic of Letters. Given encouragement, unknown writers, formerly without hope, materialize. One early reader wrote that our paper, “with its contents so fresh, person-to-person,” was “real, non-synthetic, undistracting.” Noting that there were no ads, she asked, “Is it possible, can it last?” and called it “an antidote to the shrinking of the human being in every one of us.” And toward the end of her letter our correspondent added, “It behooves the elder generation to come up with reminders of who we used to be and need to be.”
This is what Keith Botsford and I had hoped that our “tabloid for literates” would be. And for two years it has been just that. We are a pair of utopian codgers who feel we have a duty to literature. I hope we are not like those humane do-gooders who, when the horse was vanishing, still donated troughs in City Hall Square for thirsty nags.
We have no way of guessing how many independent, self-initiated connoisseurs and lovers of literature have survived in remote corners of the country. The little evidence we have suggests that they are glad to find us, they are grateful. They want more than they are getting. Ingenious technology has failed to give them what they so badly need.
隱於技術帝國背後的文學世界 BY csuer
還是一個剛剛踏上文學探究之路的小孩子時，我時常會想：如果每一個人都熟諳普魯斯特、喬伊斯、托馬斯•愛德華•勞倫斯、帕斯捷爾納克或者卡夫卡 ，該是一件多麽美好的事情啊！後來我才明白，普羅大眾對於陽春白雪的高雅文化是多麽地抗拒與排斥。林肯年少時居住在美國西部邊陲之地，但那時他就讀過了聖經、以及普魯塔克與莎士比亞的著作 。然而他畢竟是林肯。
後來，我到美國的中西部地區旅遊，不論是自己開車，還是坐汽車或火車，我都經常去小鎮子上的圖書館看一看。在愛荷華州的基奧卡克，或者密歇根州的本頓港這樣的地方，我翻閱了圖書館的借閱記錄，發現普魯斯特、喬伊斯甚至斯韋沃與安德烈•別雷 的作品都很受歡迎。戴維•赫伯特•勞倫斯 的作品也頗受青睞。這讓我有時會想起上帝願為十個義人而饒恕所多瑪城裏眾人的故事 。我倒不是說基奧卡克與傳說中的罪惡之城所多瑪有任何的相似之處，或者說夏呂斯 男爵會覺得本頓港是他的安居之地。隻是我有一份難以割舍的平民情結，執著地在最不可能之處尋覓高雅文化的蛛絲馬跡。
現如今，我寫小說也已經有幾十年了。其實，從一開始，我就知道以此為業不怎麽靠譜。三十年代我住在芝加哥的時候，一位年長的鄰居告訴我說，他為一些不入流的廉價雜誌寫小說。“鄰居們見我每天總是東遊西蕩、無所事事，不是修剪草坪就是粉刷籬笆，就是不去上班，都感到很納悶：這個人怎麽也不找個工作呢？但其實我是一個作家。我以賣文為生，一般向《商船隊》和《薩維齊博士》這些雜誌投稿 ”，他鬱鬱地說。“他們覺得這可算不得什麽正當營生。”他對我說這番話可能是因為看出我這個人頗有些書生氣，因而也許會產生共鳴，抑或他是想提醒我不要特立獨行、標新立異。可惜他的勸告已然來得遲了。
同樣，也是從一開始就有人警告過我小說已經到了彌留之際，如同城牆與弓弩，早已是明日黃花。沒有人願與曆史潮流相悖而行。奧斯瓦爾德•斯賓格勒是二十世紀三十年代初期最受歡迎的作家之一，他就曾教誨我們說，腐朽陳舊的古老文明已經死氣沉沉、行將就木。他建議年輕人應該丟掉文學和藝術，擁抱機械化時代，去做工程師。
倘若拒不承認文學已經過時的話，你就是在挑戰和藐視社會進化論曆史學家的權威。年輕時我對斯賓格勒一度極為推崇，即便如此，我也不能苟同他的觀點。因此我隻有滿懷尊重與欽佩之情暗暗腹誹：請您還是一邊待著去吧。
時隔六十年，我在最近的一期《華爾街日報》上又看到了斯賓格勒式論點的老調重彈。不過是新瓶裝舊酒，換湯未換藥。這次是泰瑞•蒂僑特。他倒未像斯賓格勒般旁征博引，拋出鋪天蓋地、堆砌如山的曆史理論，而是對例證權衡輕重、精挑細選、再三斟酌。
他談到了我們的“散沙文化 ”， 其觀點倒也有理有據、新穎應時、細密周詳。他提出 “藝術即技術”。他說，電影很快就可以“自由下載”，即在電腦之間通過內存自由傳輸——而且，他還預言，電影很快就會將像書籍一樣，走進市場，擺上貨架銷售。他還斷言科技的神奇魔力將引領我們跨入一個嶄新的時代。“到那時候，我想獨立製片電影 將會取代小說，成為二十一世紀嚴肅故事敘述的主要形式”。
為了佐證他的觀點，蒂僑特先生還援引了一些數據，來說明書籍銷售量銳減，而電影觀眾數激增：“對30歲以下的美國人來說，電影已取代小說，成為最主要的藝術表現形式。”他補充道，就算是湯姆•克蘭西和史蒂芬•金 這樣的頂級暢銷小說家，“他們作品的最高銷量也不過一百萬冊左右，相比之下，收看美國國家廣播公司投拍的《歡樂酒店》大結局的觀眾則多達四千兩百萬”。
僅以受眾的多寡論，電影大獲全勝。 “現在小說再也不能像原來那樣成為全民熱議的話題了”，蒂僑特先生如是說。但是我卻不記得《白鯨》與《紅字》在其麵世之時是否是什麽“全民熱議的話題”。十九世紀中葉對大眾產生了重大影響的小說應該是《湯姆叔叔的小屋》。而《白鯨》則是一部小眾小說。
二十世紀的文學巨著的作者們大都不是為了迎合大眾而創作的。普魯斯特和喬伊斯創作小說時，正值文化式微，他們壓根沒有想過作品會受到大眾的讚許與追捧。
蒂僑特先生在《華爾街日報》發表的這篇文章采用了觀察家們常用的套路，意在指出大勢何趨。“最新研究表明，55%的美國人每天閱讀少於30分鍾……我們甚至可以說電影之所以取代小說，不是因為美國人日漸愚鈍，而是由於小說這種藝術技術已經過時了” 。
“我們還不太習慣把藝術形式當作技術來看待，”他說，“但事實上它們就是技術。也就是說隨著科技的日新月異，這種陳腐的技術已經奄奄一息。”
除了強調科技至上之外，我們還隱約可見蒂僑特的另一個重點：即最好做到隨大流，周圍的人幹什麽你就幹什麽，做寥寥數千讀書人中的一員不如加入電影觀眾的百萬大軍。 況且，讀書時獨處一室、孑然一人，而看電影的人則濟濟一堂、人多勢眾、並坐擁現代設備之利。除此之外，他還告訴我們：避免技術的過時是非常重要的；另外，無論一個人是多麽地卓爾不群，他做出的抉擇都不如技術可靠。
很久以前，約翰•契弗 告訴我，正是全國各地的讀者的來信激勵著他一直筆耕不輟。 寫作的時候，他能感受到讀者的存在。他們在偏遠的森林裏，在都市的草坪前，在美國的每一個地方。“要是哪天我感受不到他們，那我就完了”，他說。賴特•莫裏斯 則一直催著我買個電動打字機。他說他的打字機基本都是開著的，“要是我不寫東西，我就聽聽電流的聲音”，他說，“他給我做伴，我們經常說說話”。
我很想知道蒂僑特先生如何用他的“藝術即技術”理論來解釋這兩位作家的癖好。也許他會辯解說這兩位作家離群索居，多少有點缺乏“廣泛的文化影響”。不過蒂僑特先生至少有一點意圖值得稱道：他認為他在尋找一條將廣大的電影觀眾與小眾的讀書人聯合在一起的道路。然而，他其實是對“百萬”這個數字感興趣而已：數以百萬計的美元，數以百萬計的讀者，數以百萬計的觀眾，如此而已。
蒂僑特先生說“每個人”都做過的事就是看電影。一點不假。
記得二十年代的時候，8到12歲的小孩們一到周六就會排隊去買五分錢一張的兒童票，等著看上周電影中的驚險場麵結局如何。女主角被綁在鐵軌上，火車頭呼嘯而來，眼看就要粉身碎骨，就在這千鈞一發之刻，她終於掙脫了繩索，逃出生天。然後接著播放下一集。接下來會播一段新聞片和一集《小頑童》 。壓軸的是湯姆•米克斯主演的西部片，或者是珍妮•蓋諾演繹的年輕的新娘與新郎在閣樓上的幸福生活，要麽就是葛羅莉亞•史璜生、希妲•芭拉、華萊士•比裏、阿道夫•門吉歐、瑪麗•德雷斯勒這些演員主演的電影。噢，當然還少不了查理•卓別林主演的《淘金熱》。而這部電影讓我們很容易想起傑克•倫敦 的小說。
其實，看電影與讀書之間並不衝突。沒有人左右我們如何讀書。我們自己選擇，自己提高修養，自己尋找或者創造充滿想象的精神家園。因為我們可以讀書，也可以學著寫作。我可以先看《金銀島》的電影，然後再看原著，也沒有迷惑不解。我們完全可以一心二用，因為兩者並無競爭。
美國有一個頗為引人關注的奇怪現象，即就算是少數派也人數眾多。即便是人數達到數百萬的少數派團體也屢見不鮮。然而，事實上美國有著數以百萬通文達藝的人，他們彼此卻很少溝通。比如說契弗的讀者群就十分龐大，人數多到無法忽視。美國大學的文學院係也無法脫離書本，脫離經典著作或最新力作。我與老友基思• 博茨福德都深信如果大量的讀者迷失在森林裏，那麽迷失其中的肯定也不乏作家 。
隻有創辦《文學世界》這樣的雜誌，我們才能了解他們到底散落何處。如果我們給予鼓勵，那些原本籍籍無名、無甚希望的作者將會實現他們的夢想。早期有位讀者在給我們的來信中評價道：“（雜誌）內容新穎、直指人心，真實可信而非矯揉造作，引人入勝”。 她注意到我們的雜誌沒有刊登任何廣告，所以問道“這樣行嗎？能維持下去嗎？”，並稱之為“解決我們人文精神萎縮的一劑良方”。在信的末尾，這位讀者補充到：“老一輩的人理應提醒年輕人，我們過去如何，以後應該如何。”
這也正是我和基思•博茨福德對這份“文學小報 ”所寄托的期望。過去的兩年我們也的確做到了這一點。我們倆是有著烏托邦式理想的怪老頭。為文學做點事情，我們覺得義不容辭、責無旁貸。我希望我們不會像掌管人文科學的袞袞諸公那樣，等馬兒都要渴死了，還在市政廳廣場大肆募捐，口口聲聲要為馬購置水槽。
在這個國家廣袤的土地上，還有多少自學成才、獨立思考的文學專家和愛好者我們無從得知。從我們掌握的一點情況看我們隻知道我們的出現使他們歡呼雀躍、心存感激。他們需要更多的機會，更大的平台。而無所不能的科技卻無法給予他們最需要的東西。
注：1. 普魯斯特，法國20世紀最偉大的小說家，代表作為《追憶似水年華》。喬伊斯，愛爾蘭作家，詩人，代表作為《尤利西斯》。托馬斯•愛德華•勞倫斯，以阿拉伯的勞倫斯而聞名，著有《智慧的七柱》等。帕斯捷爾納克，蘇聯作家、詩人，憑其長篇小說《日瓦戈醫生》於1958年獲諾貝爾文學獎。卡夫卡，20世紀德文小說家，對後世文學影響極為深遠，最著名的作品為《變形記》。
2. 普魯塔克，希臘高產作家，著有《傳記集》等。莎士比亞，英國文藝複興代表人物，曆史上最偉大的英語作家，著有37部戲劇，154首十四行詩。
3. 斯韋沃，意大利小說家，被譽為20世紀最出色小說家之一。安德烈•別雷是俄羅斯象征主義的主要代表者之一，著有《莫斯科》等。
4. 即D H勞倫斯，英國文學家，詩人，著有《查泰萊夫人的情人》（1928），《兒子與情人》，《虹》等。
5. 所多瑪是《聖經》中記載的城市，因罪孽深重招致上帝降下硫磺火而毀滅。原文見聖經《創世紀》第十八章。
6. 夏呂斯男爵是小說《追憶逝水年華》中的人物，被認為是腐朽貴族的代表人物。
7. 《商船隊》和《薩維齊博士》是美國著名的暢銷廉價雜誌，其中《商船隊》被認為是美國廉價雜誌的鼻祖，而《薩維齊博士》則以刊登與刊物同名的故事連載聞名。
8. 美國一些學者認為當今社會人與人之間缺乏溝通，個人的追求和觀點很難形成互動。人與人之間的關係就像沙粒一樣沒有融合。
9. 獨立製片電影是指非主流或非商業目的低成本電影。相對於更注重票房的大電影製片公司的商業電影，獨立製片電影更注重影片的藝術品位。
10. 湯姆•克蘭西，美國軍事作家，當今世界最暢銷的反恐驚悚小說大師，代表作《獵殺“紅十月”號》、《愛國者遊戲》、《燃眉追擊》和《驚天核網》先後被搬上銀幕。斯蒂芬•金，美國暢銷書作家，其作品銷售超過3億5000萬冊，以恐怖小說著稱，其作品《肖申克的救贖》，《閃靈》等被拍成電影，頗受好評。
11. 約翰•契弗，美國當代作家，被譽為紐約郊區的契訶夫，獲1979年“普利策小說獎。”
12. .賴特•莫裏斯，美國心理現實主義小說代表人物之一，著有《我的達得利叔叔》等。
13. 《小頑童》是美國二三十年代熱播的兒童係列喜劇，由米高梅公司出品，講的是一群頑皮的小孩子以及他們讓人啼笑皆非的故事。
14. 傑克•倫敦本人曾加入“淘金熱”大軍，卻空手而歸。歸來後，他根據自己積累的素材埋首寫作，寫出了大量反映淘金者艱苦生活的作品，如《野性的呼喚》等。
15. 基思•博茨福德曾經談到，美國大學裏的文學老師隻願意講解卡夫卡、喬伊斯等作品“較晦澀”的作家，而不願意涉獵自己研究範圍之外的作家，因循守舊。博茨福德甚至尖銳地把他們稱為“寄生蟲”。另外，博茨福德與貝婁認為美國缺少嚴肅對待純文學的雜誌，使得文學愛好者如同迷失在茫茫森林，因此，他們決定創辦這一雜誌。
維基百科上麵關於 陽春白雪的解釋
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_culture
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