by Eve Chase

小狐譯

閱讀教給我的人生

Reading Taught Me All about Life

by Eve Chase

小狐譯

N ature. Nurture. Novels. If you grew up preinternet—we’re talking the 70s and 80s (“the olden days”, as my daughter calls it) —books brought you up,1)exerting as much influence on who you were and who you became as anything, or anyone. My school friends and I, some bookish, others not, all read ourselves into being and navigated our way through the wilds of childhood and adolescence with2)dog-eared novels as maps. There wasn’t much else to do. And you had to get your information from somewhere.

自然。滋養(yǎng)。小說。如果你成長于互聯(lián)網誕生前的時代——我們說的是70年代和80年代（“舊時代”，就像我女兒說的那樣）——書籍伴你成長，就像其他任何東西或任何人一樣，影響著你的性格，還有你的人生路。我和學校里的朋友們，有些是書癡，有些不是，都通過閱讀來造就性格，并用被翻得卷角的小說作為地圖，指引我們安全地行駛過童年期和青少年時期的狂野時光。沒有太多別的事情可做。而你又不得不通過某種途徑來獲取信息。

在網絡無處不在的今天，我們的工作、生活幾乎離不開網絡。90后、00后這些“網絡原住民”甚至想象不出沒有電腦的生活是怎樣的。那時候，書籍可以說是我們最忠誠的伙伴。

1) exert [?g'zз?t] v. 發(fā)揮（威力等），使受（影響等)

2) dog-eared adj. 卷角的，翻舊了的

3) laissez-faire adj. 自由放任主義的

4) helicopter parenting 直升機式教育（指家長過度關注孩子，就像直升機的螺旋槳一樣盤旋在上方）

Parents—3)laissez-faire baby boomers (4)helicopter parenting hadn’t been invented)—weren’t particularly interested and, if asked, would usually send you off in the wrong direction, to the wrong bookshelf, to something dusty—“Oh, I loved Vanity Fair at your age!” —not understanding our craving for fat books with silver-5)embossed covers, smelling of hormones and airports and America, page corners sticky from rereading, books that showed us dazzling new worlds—outside the suburb, beneath our skirts—and had all the best lines.

At a time when TV was rubbish, the local library was a refuge and a computer game meant6)Pac Man, we read7)ferociously, without cynicism or snobbery, inhabiting every page, dream readers—frst as kids, then under the8)duvet with a camping torch, then as young teens—and it infuenced who we were, who we became.

It’s all still there: we are what we read. The current teen generation will leave behind a huge digital footprint—endless mortifying photos, videos, texts—but we left little, a few red-eyed snaps, some scratched9)vinyl records and a long, beloved reading list spanning Malory Towers to Sweet Valley High, Adrian Mole to Anne of Green Gables.

At a time when talking to children about emotions was seen as largely unnecessary—“Nope, life’s not fair,”distracted parents would shrug—books flled in childhood’s lonelier gaps, made us feel better, a little more understood.

父母親們——嬰兒潮時期出生的自由主義者們（“直升機父母”尚未出現(xiàn)）——對孩子們并不是特別感興趣，而且，如果被問及的話，常常會給你指錯方向，指錯書架，指到某些故紙堆里去——“噢，我在你這個年齡的時候喜歡看《名利場》！”——不明白我們的渴望，我們渴望那些銀色浮雕封面的大部頭作品，那些荷爾蒙、機場和美國的氣息，那些因反復閱讀變得黏糊的書角，那些向我們展示閃亮新世界的書籍——郊區(qū)之外，裙子之下——還有著一切最美的文字。

曾幾何時，電視節(jié)目一文不值，本地的圖書館是人們的避難所，而電腦游戲只有《吃豆人》，我們于是狠命讀書，既不憤世嫉俗也不附庸風雅，以每一頁為寄托，成為理想的讀者——首先是孩提時代，然后是打著野營手電筒藏在羽絨被下的日子，后來成了青少年——它影響了我們的性格，還有我們的人生路。

那些影響依然存在：我們成為怎樣的人取決于我們讀了什么書。如今的青少年一代將會留下巨大的數(shù)字印記——無數(shù)的惡搞照片、視頻、段子——但我們那一代幾乎沒有這些，只留下很少的紅眼照片、一些刮痕亂七八糟的黑膠唱片，還有一張長長的摯愛書單，包括了《瑪洛麗塔女中》、《甜蜜谷》、《少年阿莫的秘密日記》、《綠山墻的安妮》。

曾幾何時，與孩子們談論情感被視作毫無必要——“不，生活就是不公平的，”心不在焉的父母親們會聳聳肩說道——是書籍填滿了童年孤獨的空隙，讓我們感覺好點，被理解多一點。

5) emboss [?m'b?s] v. 使凸出; 浮雕(圖案)

6) Pac Man 吃豆人游戲

7) ferociously [f?'r?u??sl?] adv. 兇猛地, 殘忍地，激烈地

8) duvet ['du?ve?] n. 羽毛被褥

9) vinyl ['va?n?l] n. 乙烯基；（尤指舊時）壓制唱片的塑料

For sweet, brutal justice there was Roald Dahl—Veruca Salt had it coming. The sisterless had Little Women (“What would Jo do?”). For the fantasy of hearty sibling adventure on boats while we10)squabbled in the landlocked shires, The Famous Five—although the best thing about Enid Blyton was that she was so11)prolific, it meant you’d almost never run out of books. And if you were a12)latchkey kid, there was the happy possibility of stumbling into your very own secret garden, a patch of the13)rec behind the broken swing that could be yours, somewhere you could read undisturbed without being called a14)swot. When things got really bad—bullied at school, forced to share the dampest, smallest bedroom with your most annoying brother—well, at least you weren’t at Gateshead Hall with poor Jane Eyre.

When15)puberty hit, books could save your life, certainly save face. School sex education merged with worrying diagrams, forcing us to retreat to the warm bath of Judy Blume’s novels—Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret and Forever in particular. If Blume knew what crushes and periods and being 13 felt like, Jilly Cooper knew all about the dizzying possibilities of a riding crop and studded our dreams with Rupert Campbell-Black. In a paragraph, Jackie Collins could transport us from a16)grubby bunk bed to a Hollywood fourposter. While Shirley Conran, author of the unsurpassable Lace, introduced us to kick-ass career women.

想要看美好而無情的正義，有羅爾德·達爾的小說，里面的人物維露卡·索爾特就遭遇到了。沒有姐妹的孩子可以看《小婦人》（“喬會怎么做呢？”）。對于喜愛幻想兄弟姐妹一起乘船大冒險卻又整天在內陸城鎮(zhèn)吵得不可開交的我們來說，有《五伙伴歷險記》——盡管伊妮德·布萊頓最棒的一點是她特別高產，這就意味著你幾乎從來不會沒書可讀。而如果你是個“鑰匙兒童”的話，你也許能開心地蹣跚步入你自己的秘密花園，破舊秋千后的一小塊場地可以是你的地盤，在那里你可以不被打擾地盡情閱讀而不會被人叫做書呆子。當情況糟糕透頂時——在學校被欺負，在家被迫與你最煩人的兄弟共住最潮濕最狹小的臥室——嗯，至少你不是和可憐的簡·愛一起住在蓋茨黑德府。

當青春期來襲時，書籍可以拯救你的人生，當然也可以挽救你的顏面。學校里的性教育融入了各種令人擔心的示意圖，強迫我們撤退到朱迪·布魯姆的小說的溫暖沐浴中去——特別是《上帝，你在那里嗎？是我，瑪格麗特》和《永遠》。如果說布魯姆明白迷戀上別人、來例假和13歲時的心理狀態(tài)，那么吉莉·庫珀就懂得一切關于馬鞭的令人頭昏眼花的可能性，且靠魯伯特·坎貝爾-布萊克裝點了我們的夢想。在某段文章里，杰基·科林斯會將我們從邋遢的雙層床里送往好萊塢的四帷柱大床上去。而雪莉·康蘭，無可超越的小說《蕾絲》的作者，則給我們介紹了了不起的職業(yè)女性們。

10) squabble ['skw?b(?)l] v. 爭吵

11) prolifc [pr?'l?f?k] adj. 多產的，作品多的

12) latchkey kid 鑰匙兒童（掛著鑰匙的孩子,父母都工作,因此放學后得獨自在家的兒童）

Word of mouth was everything. If your best mate didn’t rate it, it probably wasn’t worth reading. It was always about the story and characters, never the author, who usually looked as dreary as any other grownup in the jacket photo and who, like your parents, somehow got in the way of the experience. Cult books were heatedly passed from one girl to another, dissected late into a sleepover, held above our heads as we sunbathed covered in baby-oil in parks, borrowed, “l(fā)ost”, reluctantly returned. Infnitely precious, they would tell you things that even your17)ballsiest big sister didn’t know, that your mother didn’t think you should know. So18)subversive, they were thrillingly never stocked in the school library. Virginia Andrews’Flowers in the Attic was one, a brilliantly19)implausible saga of an evil grandmother. Better still, it was part of a series, like all the best books. You could create collections. Nothing beat the sight of my sacred Andrews books—all bought with hard-earned newspaper round money—lined up on my bookshelf, in order.

口碑決定一切。如果你最要好的哥們對其不置可否，那它有可能就不值得一讀。重要的永遠是故事和人物，而非作者，封面照上的人通常看上去和其他成年人一樣枯燥無味，就像你的父母親，不知怎的總是妨礙我們閱讀。邪典書籍在女孩們之間被熱切地傳遞，我們討論書籍內容至深夜，最后干脆留下來過夜，涂滿嬰兒油在公園里邊曬日光浴邊舉高書閱讀。書被借走，“丟失”，不情愿地歸還。極其寶貴的是，它們將會告訴你那些即便是你那膽大包天的姐姐都不知道的事情，而你母親則認為你壓根不應該知道。如此具有顛覆性，它們是絕對不會被收藏在學校的圖書館里的。維吉尼亞·安德魯斯的《閣樓之花》就是其中之一，這是一部極其令人難以置信的長篇小說，講述了一個邪惡的外婆的故事。更棒的是，它只是一個系列中的一本而已，就像所有那些最好的書一樣。你可以收集一整套。沒有什么能夠戰(zhàn)勝我那套神圣的安德魯斯合集——全都是用辛辛苦苦送報紙掙來的錢買的——在我的書架上按順序排得整整齊齊。

13) rec [rek] n. 運動場

14) swot [sw?t] n. 刻苦學習的人，書呆子

15) puberty ['pju?b?t?] n. 青春期

16) grubby ['gr?b?] adj. 污穢的，骯臟的

17) ballsy ['b??lz?] adj. 有膽量的

18) subversive [s?b'vз?s?v] adj. 顛覆(性)的，破壞(性)的

19) implausible [?m'pl??z?b(?)l] adj. 難以置信的

20) give a hoot about 在乎，關心

We read “proper” literature too, not 20)giving a hoot about genres or critical acclaim, only about the book. It rocked or it didn’t. It was silent, or it spoke to us—still the best test I think. I read Jeanette Winterson’s Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit over and over, feeling forever changed by it. The Catcher in the Rye whispered in our ear, disruptively, like our cleverest, most cynical friend during assembly, crossing decades and continents: we knew all about21)phonies after all. Anne Frank was a heroine: her voice leapt off the page. And who didn’t want to deliver a lemony22)one liner like Elizabeth Bennet? Or wander the midsummer meadows in Dodie Smith’s I Capture the Castle?

Of course, books23)enthrall and influence us all our lives but there is a rawness to reading when young, a blissfully entitled sense that the stories we read are ours, a world grownups, least of all parents, can’t enter. And still can’t: when I earnestly asked my 12-year-old son, a prolifc reader and fan of the kind of24)quasi-violent teenage fction I don’t really approve of, which books had inspired him (I was digging for R.J.Palacio’s Wonder or John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars), he looked away, shrugged,“Hmm, dunno really,” as if he’d never picked up a Kindle in his life.

I probably would have said just the same had my mother asked me the same question. Only she didn’t ask. Because it was the olden days and we were left to get on with it,25)roam free, read free. Lucky us.

我們也閱讀“正經”文學，從不在乎其體裁或評論的贊揚，只在乎書籍的本身。它是不是很棒。它是沉默無聲的，還是與我們對話的——我認為這仍然是最好的檢驗方式。我一遍又一遍地閱讀珍妮特·溫特森的《橘子不是唯一的水果》，感覺自己被其永久改變了。《麥田里的守望者》在我們的耳邊低語，擾亂我們的思緒，就像我們最聰明、最憤世嫉俗的朋友，在集會的時候，穿越了時光和大陸：畢竟我們完全明白什么是騙子。安妮·弗蘭克是位女英雄：她的話語躍然紙上。而有誰不想像伊麗莎白·班奈特那樣拋出一句酸溜溜的小笑話呢？或是在道迪·史密斯的《我的秘密城堡》里的夏日牧場里漫步呢？

當然了，書籍吸引并影響了我們的一生，但年輕時的閱讀是毫無經驗的，只是一種充滿快樂的感覺，覺得我們所閱讀的就是我們自己的，這是一個成年人，至少是所有的父母親們，無法進入的世界。而他們如今依然無法進入：當我熱切地詢問12歲的兒子，他是一個閱讀量豐富的讀者，也是我并不太贊成的某類準暴力青少年文學的粉絲，問他是哪些書籍給予他啟迪時（我期待的是R.J.帕拉西奧的《奇跡》或是約翰·格林的《星運里的錯》），他瞟向別處，聳了聳肩：“嗯，我也不知道，”就像他這輩子從未拿起過Kindle閱讀器一樣。

如果當初我母親問我同樣的問題，也許我也會做出一模一樣的回答。只不過她從來沒問過。因為那是在從前，我們被允許隨性生活，自由地漫步，自由地閱讀。我們真幸運。

21) phony ['f?un?] adj. 騙子, 假冒者

22) one liner 簡短、機警的詼諧語

23) enthrall [?n'θr??l] v. 迷住，吸引住

24) quasi ['kwe?za?] adj. 半，準，類似

25) roam [r??m] v. 游蕩，閑逛