By Bob Mondello

Libraries’ Leading Roles: On Stage, on Screen and in Song

By Bob Mondello1

When I was 9, I spent a lot of time at a public library2作者童年時(shí)住在馬里蘭州的貝塞斯達(dá)，他經(jīng)常去的是附近馬薩諸塞大道的小瀑布圖書(shū)館。just down the street; I was already a theater nerd, and it had a well-stocked theater section. Not just books, but original cast albums for Broadway shows old and new. One day, an addition: The Music Man31957年上演的百老匯音樂(lè)劇。, about a salesman who was crazy about a girl named, as one song put it, “Marrrrrrrion, madam librarian.”

[2] I just assumed our librarian, who was maybe 23, was that most regrettable of midcentury things, a “spinster.”Later I learned that The Music Man was spoofing that idea, by making Marian young—maybe 23—and sexy once she let down her hair and utterly irresistible to the traveling salesman, who’d presumably had many a fling.

9歲時(shí)，我在街那頭的公共圖書(shū)館消磨了不少時(shí)光；那時(shí)我已經(jīng)迷上了看戲，而這家圖書(shū)館收藏著豐富的戲劇資料。這里不僅有圖書(shū)，還有經(jīng)典和新編百老匯舞臺(tái)劇的原聲唱片。有一天，新進(jìn)了張唱片《音樂(lè)奇才》，講的是推銷(xiāo)員瘋狂愛(ài)上一個(gè)姑娘的故事，姑娘的名字就像歌里唱的“圖書(shū)館員瑪——麗——安”。

[2]我們的圖書(shū)館員大概23歲，我想當(dāng)然地以為她是20世紀(jì)中期最不幸的角色：一個(gè)“老姑娘”。后來(lái)我才知道，《音樂(lè)奇才》嘲諷了這種成見(jiàn)，劇中瑪麗安放下頭發(fā)的時(shí)候，看起來(lái)年輕性感（大概23歲），把生性風(fēng)流的旅行推銷(xiāo)員迷得神魂顛倒。

[3] But then of course the Spinster Librarian is a durable literary construct and hardly the only one I picked up from pop culture. Others include librarians as detectives, libraries as fortresses protecting us from ignorance, whole science-fiction worlds devoted to the storage of ideas and history. Like, say, the deserted planet in an early episode of Star Trek4派拉蒙公司制作的科幻影視系列。that seems the only remaining trace of an entire civilization.

[4] It’s hardly surprising that writers, who deal all the time with words, would find fascination in great repositories of them—Jorge Luis Borges, imagining the universe as a “Library of Babel” containing all possible books; Neil Gaiman stocking Lucien’s Library, in The Sandman, with every volume anyone has ever dreamed of writing but never written; George Lucas imagining holobooks and datasticks for his Jedi Temple library; a whole universe’s worth of knowledge stored in Doctor Who on a planet-sized library that contains whole continents of biographies.

On earth as it is in the heavens

[5] These are all otherworldly libraries, not much resembling the Terran ones where you can actually check out a book. But pop culture is littered with those, too. Sometimes they’re pictured as dreadful dead ends, as in It’s a Wonderful Life, when Clarence reveals to George Bailey that without him around, his wife Mary Hatch would never have married; instead she’d ’ve spent lonely evenings closing up the library after everyone had gone home. Happily, that was the same year an eager young bibliophile was haunting her local bibliotheque in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, trying to read every book on the shelves in alphabetical5alphabetical 按字母順序的。order, so she would know“everything in the world.”

[3]不過(guò)當(dāng)然，老姑娘圖書(shū)館員是個(gè)經(jīng)久不衰的文學(xué)題材，這可不是我從流行文化中找到的唯一一個(gè)。還有其他題材，包括圖書(shū)館員當(dāng)偵探，圖書(shū)館成為保護(hù)我們免遭愚昧侵襲的堡壘，整個(gè)科幻小說(shuō)界都致力于描寫(xiě)這個(gè)儲(chǔ)存思想和歷史的地方。比如說(shuō)，在《星際迷航》早期的一集中，荒蕪星球上的圖書(shū)館似乎是整個(gè)文明遺留的唯一痕跡。

[4]整日和文字打交道的作家會(huì)沉迷于這些巨大的知識(shí)寶庫(kù)，也不足為奇。豪爾赫·路易斯·博爾赫斯把宇宙想象成“巴別圖書(shū)館”，藏書(shū)應(yīng)有盡有；在漫畫(huà)《睡魔》中，尼爾·蓋曼為呂西安的圖書(shū)館收集了人們夢(mèng)想撰寫(xiě)卻從未寫(xiě)出的每本書(shū)；喬治·盧卡斯為他的絕地圣殿圖書(shū)館構(gòu)想了全息書(shū)和數(shù)據(jù)棒；在電視劇《神秘博士》中，整個(gè)宇宙的知識(shí)都儲(chǔ)存在行星大小的圖書(shū)館里，這里收藏著世上所有的傳記。

人間天堂

[5]這些都是超脫塵世的圖書(shū)館，不太像你真正可以借書(shū)的人間圖書(shū)館。然而，流行文化里也到處都有此類(lèi)描寫(xiě)。有時(shí)候，圖書(shū)館被描述成令人生畏的絕境，就像電影《生活多美好》里的那樣，天使克拉倫斯提醒喬治·貝利，如果他從未來(lái)到世間，他的妻子瑪麗·哈奇將永遠(yuǎn)都嫁不出去，她會(huì)在人們回家后關(guān)上圖書(shū)館的大門(mén)，度過(guò)孤寂的黑夜。幸運(yùn)的是，同年上映的電影《布魯克林有棵樹(shù)》中，有個(gè)熱愛(ài)讀書(shū)的小女孩在本地圖書(shū)館流連忘返，打算按照字母順序讀完書(shū)架上的每本書(shū)，這樣她就能了解“世間萬(wàn)物”。

[6] Knowing everything in the world would make her—well, a librarian, more or less. They know so much, in fact, that they can even beat computers, or at least Katharine Hepburn could in 1957’s Desk Set6二十世紀(jì)?？怂构镜南矂‰娪?，由凱瑟琳·赫本和斯賓塞·屈塞主演。. Admittedly, while she could quote Longfellow from memory, she was also a little high-strung. Happily, Spencer Tracy was around to calm her down.

[7] The notion of librarians as obsessive and almost devout about books leads naturally to connections between religion and libraries. In literature, that’s reflected in, say, the illiterate monks of A Canticle for Leibowitz, who archive what’s left of civilization after an atomic war. Or the friars in The Name of the Rose, a medieval mystery in which a Franciscan7Franciscan 方濟(jì)各會(huì)修士。realizes that a series of priestly suicides may be related to what cannot be found in the monastery’s library.

[6]如果了解了世間萬(wàn)物，差不多會(huì)讓她當(dāng)上——圖書(shū)館員。實(shí)際上，圖書(shū)館員知識(shí)淵博，甚至可以打敗電腦，至少凱瑟琳·赫本在1957年的電影《電腦風(fēng)云》中做到了。當(dāng)然，雖然她能憑借記憶引用朗費(fèi)羅的詩(shī)句，但她也容易情緒激動(dòng)，幸好斯賓塞·屈塞可以讓她平靜下來(lái)。

[7]圖書(shū)館員對(duì)圖書(shū)的迷戀和近乎虔誠(chéng)的觀(guān)念，自然引出了宗教與圖書(shū)館的淵源。這在文學(xué)作品中也有所體現(xiàn)，比如科幻小說(shuō)《萊博維茨的贊歌》中從未受過(guò)教育的僧侶，在核戰(zhàn)爭(zhēng)爆發(fā)后保存了文明的遺跡?；蚴恰睹倒逯分械男奘?，在這部講述中世紀(jì)故事的神秘小說(shuō)中，一位方濟(jì)各會(huì)修士意識(shí)到，接連發(fā)生的修士自殺案也許與修道院圖書(shū)館中不見(jiàn)蹤影的書(shū)籍有關(guān)。

“Where are the books?” he wonders, as the author turns the abbey’s library into a maze, in both a literal and a literary sense, providing fun for readers and lending the stacks an air of excitement they don’t always possess.

[8] That complements the cool factor that teen fiction has bestowed on libraries, which often offer a little something extra in that genre—the dragon section Harry Potter could consult at Hogwarts, for instance, and the towering bookshelves Belle fell for before she fell for the Beast who owned them. The archive where Batgirl was a librarian. And of course, the school library perched atop a hellmouth at Sunnydale High, where the point is less getting students to read than it is giving Buffy8電視劇《吸血鬼獵人巴菲》的主角。and her vampire-slaying buddies the tools to fight for their lives.

When a school failed a giant, a library offered refuge

[9] There are few weapons more powerful than facts and ideas, and as libraries are full of those, they naturally appeal to firebrands9firebrand 狂熱分子。. Playwright August Wilson, for instance, who wrote Fences, The Piano Lesson and the eight other plays in a decalogue that’s among the crowning achievements of American theater. As a 1960s teenager, Wilson practically lived at his local library, which turned out to be great for his writing, less great for his grades. He penned one paper on Napoleon that was so well researched, his history teacher rejected it.

“書(shū)都藏哪兒了？”他滿(mǎn)心疑惑，而作者把這座修道院的圖書(shū)館打造成語(yǔ)言和文學(xué)的迷宮，為讀者帶來(lái)了推理的樂(lè)趣，也讓圖書(shū)館蒙上不常有的驚悚氛圍。

[8]這是對(duì)青春小說(shuō)給圖書(shū)館帶來(lái)的前衛(wèi)元素的補(bǔ)充。青春小說(shuō)里的圖書(shū)館往往有些另類(lèi)：比如，哈利·波特可以在霍格沃茨圖書(shū)館查閱關(guān)于龍的資料；美女先是喜歡上巍峨的書(shū)架，然后才愛(ài)上書(shū)架的主人野獸。蝙蝠女也當(dāng)過(guò)圖書(shū)館的管理員。當(dāng)然，還有位于地獄口上方的太陽(yáng)谷高中圖書(shū)館，這個(gè)地方與其說(shuō)是讓學(xué)生們讀書(shū)，不如說(shuō)是為巴菲和她的吸血鬼獵人同伴提供為生存而戰(zhàn)的武器。

文學(xué)巨匠在學(xué)校碰壁，卻在圖書(shū)館得到庇護(hù)

[9]幾乎沒(méi)有比思想和真相更有威力的武器，由于圖書(shū)館里不乏思想和真相，自然會(huì)吸引那些充滿(mǎn)激情的人。比如劇作家?jiàn)W古斯特·威爾遜，他編寫(xiě)了《籬笆》《鋼琴課》和其他8部戲劇作品，憑借10部佳作取得了美國(guó)戲劇界的最高成就。早在20世紀(jì)60年代，少年威爾遜幾乎生活在當(dāng)?shù)貓D書(shū)館里，顯然，這對(duì)他的寫(xiě)作很有好處，對(duì)他的學(xué)業(yè)沒(méi)什么幫助。他寫(xiě)了一篇深入研究拿破侖的論文，卻遭到歷史老師的否定。

“He didn’t think I had written it,”remembered the playwright many years later, adding that at 15, this so infuriated him that he threw it in a wastebasket and stomped out of school, never to return.

Where he went instead—avoiding truant officers for three years, while getting an education good enough to inspire Pulitzer Prize-winning art—was Pittsburgh’s public library.

[10] Germaine Greer wrote that“a library is a place where you can lose your innocence without losing your virginity,” and songwriters have joined poets and philosophers to offer their own takes on that notion—from Jimmy Buffett, in his song “Love in the Library,” to Tori Amos, who on her album Tales of a Librarian arranged the tracks according to the Dewey Decimal System.

“他認(rèn)為這不是我寫(xiě)的?！边@位劇作家很多年后回憶道，年僅15歲的他大為光火，把文章扔進(jìn)廢紙簍，憤然離開(kāi)了學(xué)校，再也沒(méi)有回去。

相反，在躲避逃學(xué)訓(xùn)導(dǎo)員的三年時(shí)間里，他在匹茲堡的公共圖書(shū)館接受了良好的教育，足以激勵(lì)他寫(xiě)出榮獲普利策獎(jiǎng)的藝術(shù)佳作。

[10]杰曼·格里爾寫(xiě)道，“圖書(shū)館是你不用失去童貞就會(huì)丟失天真的地方”。歌曲作者也像詩(shī)人、哲學(xué)家那樣，表達(dá)自己對(duì)圖書(shū)館的看法：吉米·巴菲特演唱了歌曲“愛(ài)在圖書(shū)館”；托麗·阿莫斯則按照杜威十進(jìn)制圖書(shū)分類(lèi)法，為自己的專(zhuān)輯《圖書(shū)館員的故事》安排歌曲順序。

[11] In songs and books and movies and art, libraries are sanctuaries, places of bustling quiet, storehouses of ideas that fuel the imagination.

[12] “When you’re growing up,” a wise man once said, “there are two institutional places that affect you most powerfully: the church, which belongs to God, and the public library, which belongs to you.”

That wise man was Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones, who ran up thousands of dollars in overdue-book fees.

[13] Don’t believe me? I know where you could look it up. ■

[11]在歌曲、圖書(shū)、電影和其他藝術(shù)作品中，圖書(shū)館是神圣的殿堂、享受安靜的處所、激發(fā)想象力的思想寶庫(kù)。

[12]“在成長(zhǎng)的過(guò)程中，”有位智者曾這樣表示，“有兩個(gè)地方對(duì)你的影響最大：一個(gè)是屬于上帝的教堂，另一個(gè)就是屬于你的公共圖書(shū)館。”

這位智者就是滾石樂(lè)隊(duì)的基思·理查茲，他曾因圖書(shū)逾期未還而被罰數(shù)千美元。

[13]你不信嗎？我知道你在哪兒可以找到這句話(huà)。 □

戲劇、電影和歌曲中的圖書(shū)館

文/鮑勃·蒙代洛 譯/孟潔冰

美國(guó)電影評(píng)論家。本文是他為美國(guó)國(guó)家公共廣播電臺(tái)撰寫(xiě)的評(píng)論。