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好吧,但这真是文学吗?

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2019年05月23日

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Yes, But Is It Art?

好吧,但这真是文学吗?

C. Alan Joyce & Sarah Janssen

C. 艾伦.乔伊斯 萨拉.詹森

作者简介

C. 艾伦.乔伊斯(C. Alan Joyce),自由撰稿人、图书编辑,热爱与书籍相关的一切,拥有多年图书出版经验,曾任《世界年鉴》(The World Almanac and Book of Facts)主编,《纽约时报年鉴》(The New York Times Almanac)和《纽约时报基本知识指南》(The New York Times Guide to Essential Knowledge)的执行主编。

萨拉.詹森(Sarah Janssen),《世界年鉴》编辑,主要负责艺术与传媒、消费者信息、历史、体育等方面内容。

本文选自2009年出版的《书页之间》(Under the Covers and Between the Sheets)。书海之大,无奇不有:有些书没有动词,有些书没有标点,有些书甚至通篇不出现某个字母。这些另类作品仿佛罕见生物,让浩瀚书海更加多姿多彩。观赏奇书的体验或许不亚于一次冒险旅行。

You thought Moby Dick was tough reading? Try these on for size: These are works of serious literature, where some are written without verbs, without punctuation...Or even without the letter “e”.

James Joyce, Finnegan’s Wake (1939):

Joyce said that this opaque and multilayered text was meant “to keep the critics busy for three hundred years” (so check back with us in 2239, when all its secrets will presumably have been uncovered). The text draws inspiration from the historical theories of Italian philosopher Giambattista Vico; forms a closed narrative loop, with the first sentence of the book completing the final sentence; and makes liberal use of invented words, derived from dozens of languages. Among these are a collection of hundred-letter words representing “thunderclaps,” which announce the start of each age of history. (Eg: Bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonnerronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthurnuk.) What could be simpler?

你觉得《白鲸记》晦涩难读?试试这些作品是否合适:它们都是严肃文学作品,有的不用动词,有的没有标点……有的甚至不出现字母e[1]。

詹姆斯 • 乔伊斯,《芬尼根守灵夜》(1939)

乔伊斯表示,这部晦涩难懂、有多重含义的作品旨在“让评论家忙上300年”(因此到2239年,也就是书中一切秘密都被揭晓时,记得回来找我们)。这部作品的灵感来自意大利哲学家詹巴蒂斯塔 • 维柯的历史理论。全书的叙事构成一个封闭循环[2],第一句话与最后一句话相接。书中还随意使用源于多种语言的自创词。其中有一个用100个字母拼成的词,意为“雷声”,用于宣告历史上每个时代的开端(如:Bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonnerronnt-uonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthurnuk)[3]。还能更简单点吗?

Ernest Vincent Wright, Gadsby: Champion of Youth (1939):

Though many writers had written shorter works under similar conditions, Wright challenged himself to write a complete novel without using the letter “e”: The 50,110-word Gadsby is the staggering result. The preface notes that as he wrote, “a whole army of litter E’s gathered around my desk, all eagerly expecting to be called upon.” Years later, Georges Perec accepted the same challenge, producing La Disparition (A Void) in 1969. The French original and English translation also omitted the letter “e”—but the Spanish translation omitted “a”, the most common letter in that language, instead.

Jerzy Andrzejewski, Bramy Raju (Gates of Paradise) (1961):

Andrzejewski’s serious novella about the Children’s Crusade of 1212 clocks in at 40,000 words...but only one sentence, with no punctuation except commas.

欧内斯特 • 文森特 • 赖特,《加兹比:青年冠军》(1939)

尽管不少作家都写过类似的短篇作品,但赖特对自己发起挑战,写了一部通篇不带字母e的小说。《加兹比》长达50110个词,这一结果令人瞠目结舌。作者在前言中写道:“一支字母e组成的军队集结在我的桌旁,眼巴巴地期待我的征召。”[4]多年后,乔治 • 佩雷克接受了同样的挑战,在1969年写出了小说《消失》。该书的法文原版和英文译本都没用字母e,西班牙译本则没用这种语言最常见的字母a。

耶日 • 安杰耶夫斯基,《天堂之门》(1961)

安杰耶夫斯基的这部中篇严肃小说用40000字记录了1212年儿童十字军东征……但只用了一句话。除了逗号,没有用其他标点。

Viadimir Nabokov, Pale Fire (1962):

The ostensible “text” of Nabokov’s peculiar book is a 1,000-line narrative poem (entitled “Pale Fire”) by the fictional poet John Shade—but the real story is told through accompanying commentary and footnotes that overwhelm the poem and comprise the bulk of the book.

William Gaddis, JR (1975):

Twenty years after publication of his über-challenging The Recognitions, Gaddis returned with this story about an 11-year-old who creates a business empire from a pay phone in his school—told in more than 700 pages of nearly pure dialogue, creating a symphony (or cacophony, depending on your attention span) of interweaving voices and conversations.

弗拉基米尔 • 纳博科夫,《微暗的火》(1962)

纳博科夫的这本奇书,表面上看是虚构诗人约翰 • 谢德所写的题为“微暗的火”的千行叙事诗——但真正的故事靠附带的评论和脚注讲述。这些评论和脚注比诗本身长得多,构成了全书的绝大部分。

威廉 • 加迪斯,《小大亨》(1975)

在他极富挑战性的著作《承认》出版20年后,加迪斯携本书回归文坛。故事讲述了一个11岁的孩子从学校的付费电话起家,建立了自己的商业帝国。全书有700多页,几乎全部以对话形式呈现,创造了一首声音与对话交织的交响曲(也有可能是杂音,取决于你的投入程度如何)。

Michel Thaler, Le Train de Nulle Part (The Train From Nowhere) (2004):

Thaler’s 233-page novel offers plot, character, action...but not a single verb. According to Thaler, “The verb is like a weed in a field of flowers. You have to get rid of it to allow the flowers to grow and flourish. Take away the verbs and the language speaks for itself.” In June 2004, the author (whose real name is Michel Dansel) even held a ceremony to “bury” the verb at Paris’s Sorbonne University.

Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves (2000):

This bizarre book—which seems to be equal parts of horror novel, film analysis, memoir, and collage—is about a house with more space inside than outside, hiding an unseen and presumably evil force. One of the book’s multiple narratives analyzes a film about the house, another analyzes that analysis...and in the meantime, text flows in all directions on the page, interspersed with meandering footnotes and eye-straining layout tricks.

米歇尔 • 塔莱,《从无处来的列车》(2004)

塔莱这本233页的小说有情节、角色、活动……但是没有一个动词。根据塔莱的说法,“动词就像花圃里的杂草。你必须除掉杂草,让鲜花茁壮成长。去掉动词,语言会不言自明”。2004年6月,作者(其真名为米歇尔 • 当塞尔)甚至举办了一场葬礼,在巴黎索邦大学“埋葬”了动词。

马克 • Z. 丹尼尔维斯基,《书页之屋》(2004)

这本怪书看上去像是恐怖小说、影片分析、回忆录、拼贴画的集合体,它描述了一座内部空间大于外部空间的屋子,屋中藏着一种看不见的、或许存在的邪恶力量。书中有多重叙事,其中一重叙事分析了一部关于这间屋子的电影,另一重叙事分析了这篇影片分析……与此同时,书页上的文本向各个方向蔓延,其间点缀着蜿蜒而行的脚注,页面布局令人眼花缭乱。

Hannu Luntiala, Viimeiset Viestit (The Last Message) (2007):

If a novel like this was going to be written, it was inevitably going to come from Finland, the home of Nokia: Luntiala’s book is written entirely in text messages—about 1,000 of them, covering more than 300 pages. We just hope that the main characters had bargain-basement rates on their cell-phone service.

DOGGONE IT

The original manuscript for On the Road was written on a 119-foot-long scroll of paper. Literature lovers have long been able to visit the scroll at exhibitions in museums and libraries across the country. However, no one knows exactly how long the manuscript was when Kerouac completed it or what the treatise’s original ending lines were. Kerouac’s handwriting appears at the end of the scroll, noting that a cocker spaniel belonging to Lucien Carr, a friend (and the father of writer Caleb Carr), had eaten the last lines.

汉努 • 伦蒂亚拉,《最后的信息》(2007)

如果说哪里会出现这样一部小说,那必然是诺基亚的故乡芬兰。伦蒂亚拉的书完全由1000条左右的短信构成,长达300多页。我们只希望主人公的手机有短信优惠套餐。

狗娘咬的

《在路上》的原始手稿写在一个119英尺长的纸卷上。一直以来,文学爱好者都能在全国各地博物馆和图书馆的展览上见到它。但没有人知道,凯鲁亚克刚写完这部作品时手稿有多长,还有原稿最后几行写的是什么。纸卷末尾有一段凯鲁亚克的亲笔手书,上面记录着:作者的朋友卢西恩 • 卡尔(作家凯莱布 • 卡尔之父)的小可卡犬吃掉了最后几行字。

试试这些作品是否合适:它们都是严肃文学作品,有的不用动词,有的没有标点......有的甚至不出现字母e。

C . Alan Joyce & Sarah Janssen

C .艾伦•乔伊斯 萨拉•詹森

[1] 根据亨利.贝克和弗雷德.派珀所著的《密码系统:通讯保护》一书,从报刊随机选取的含100362个字母的文章中,出现频率最高的三个字母是E(12.7%)、T(9.1%)和A(8.2%)。

[2] 《芬尼根守灵夜》结尾“A way a lone a last a loved along the”与开头的“river run , past Eve and Adam’s”连成一句,构成了小说的循环,表示“生生不息”的轮回。

[3] 该词模拟雷声不断,由10多种不同语言(含日语和印度斯坦语)中的“雷”字组成。

[4] 赖特为规避字母e,可谓煞费苦心,甚至-ed词尾和火鸡(turkey)等词都要另寻表达。他最终成功了!但遗憾的是,赖特并没有看到这本书面市。该书在他66岁生日当天出版,他则于同一日去世。


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