mabokov
Jan 232012
Dec 312011
2011年再过几个小时就要过去了。回首过去，这一年很忙。但是感觉个人收获甚少……有点悲愤，有点无奈，还有点悔不该当初我要是不不拉不拉不拉不拉的该多好啊的懊恼和感慨，当然也少不了自责了一下自己的不求上进和庸庸碌碌……好在——都快要过去了~~~
2012年再过几个小时就要到来了。怀揣着几分期待，悄悄地展望一下未来：在新的一年里，可以继续忙并傻乐着，但是要努力让自己的成就感更加真切一些、强大一些——具体的，也说不好。就先展望这些吧~~~
最后
我们大家一起来
新年快乐！
Dec 022011
以下是《纽约时报》评选出的2011年度10本最佳图书。虚构类和非虚构类个5部。
The 10 Best Books of 2011
FICTION
By Chad Harbach
At a small college on the Wisconsin side of Lake Michigan, the baseball team sees its fortunes rise and then rise some more with the arrival of a supremely gifted shortstop. Harbach’s expansive, allusive first novel combines the pleasures of an old-fashioned baseball story with a stately, self-reflective meditation on talent and the limits of ambition, played out on a field where every hesitation is amplified and every error judged by an exacting, bloodthirsty audience.
By Stephen King
Throughout his career, King has explored fresh ways to blend the ordinary and the supernatural. His new novel imagines a time portal in a Maine diner that lets an English teacher go back to 1958 in an effort to stop Lee Harvey Oswald and — rewardingly for readers — also allows King to reflect on questions of memory, fate and free will as he richly evokes midcentury America. The past guards its secrets, this novel reminds us, and the horror behind the quotidian is time itself.
By Karen Russell. Alfred A. Knopf, cloth, $24.95; Vintage Contemporaries, paper, $14.95.
An alligator theme park, a ghost lover, a Styx-like journey through an Everglades mangrove jungle: Russell’s first novel, about a girl’s bold effort to preserve her grieving family’s way of life, is suffused with humor and gothic whimsy. But the real wonders here are the author’s exuberantly inventive language and her vivid portrait of a heroine who is wise beyond her years.
By Eleanor Henderson
Henderson’s fierce, elegiac novel, her first, follows a group of friends, lovers, parents and children through the straight-edge music scene and the early days of the AIDS epidemic. By delving deeply into the lives of her characters, tracing their long relationships not only to one another but also to various substances, Henderson catches something of the dark, apocalyptic quality of the ’80s.
By Téa Obreht
As war returns to the Balkans, a young doctor inflects her grandfather’s folk tales with stories of her own coming of age, creating a vibrant collage of historical testimony that has neither date nor dateline. Obreht, who was born in Belgrade in 1985 but left at the age of 7, has recreated, with startling immediacy and presence, a conflict she herself did not experience.
NONFICTION
Essays.
By Christopher Hitchens
Our intellectual omnivore’s latest collection could be his last (he’s dying of esophageal cancer). The book is almost 800 pages, contains more than 100 essays and addresses a ridiculously wide range of topics, including Afghanistan, Harry Potter, Thomas Jefferson, waterboarding, Henry VIII, Saul Bellow and the Ten Commandments, which Hitchens helpfully revises.
A Father’s Journey to Understand His Extraordinary Son.
By Ian Brown
A feature writer at The Globe and Mail in Toronto, Brown combines a reporter’s curiosity with a novelist’s instinctive feel for the unknowable in this exquisite book, an account — at once tender, pained and unexpectedly funny — of his son, Walker, who was born with a rare genetic mutation that has deprived him of even the most rudimentary capacities.
A Life of Reinvention.
By Manning Marable
From petty criminal to drug user to prisoner to minister to separatist to humanist to martyr. Marable, who worked for more than a decade on the book and died earlier this year, offers a more complete and unvarnished portrait of Malcolm X than the one found in his autobiography. The story remains inspiring.
By Daniel Kahneman. Farrar
We overestimate the importance of whatever it is we’re thinking about. We misremember the past and misjudge what will make us happy. In this comprehensive presentation of a life’s work, the world’s most influential psychologist demonstrates that irrationality is in our bones, and we are not necessarily the worse for it.
Britain’s Crucial Role in the American Civil War.
By Amanda Foreman
Which side would Great Britain support during the Civil War? Foreman gives us an enormous cast of characters and a wealth of vivid description in her lavish examination of a second battle between North and South, the trans-Atlantic one waged for British hearts and minds.
Nov 282011
迷惘与挣扎[*]
——《白牙》的“离散”主题分析
1975年出生的扎迪·史密斯（Zadie Smith）堪称当今英伦最富盛名的后起之秀。她在不到10年的时间里创作并发表了三部作品：《白牙》（White Teeth，2000）、《签名收藏家》（Autograph Man，2003）、和《关于美》（On Beauty，2005）。不仅每一部都取得了巨大的商业成功，而且几乎全部赢得了批评界的高度赞誉。《白牙》是扎迪·史密斯的第一部长篇小说。正是凭借此部作品，作者得以成名，其影响已不仅止于英美文学界。在《白牙》面世之后不久，各种奖项便扑面而来：2000年“詹姆斯·泰特·布莱克纪念奖”的小说奖、2000年“惠特布莱德图书奖”最佳小说一等奖、“卫报杰出图书奖”一等奖、“共同体作家图书奖”一等奖，以及“贝蒂·特拉斯克奖”，等等。此外，《时代》杂志还把这部作品收入了《1923-2005〈时代〉百部最佳英语作品集》。可见，《白牙》已经成功跻身经典作品的殿堂。
虽然在作品的出版过程中，商业运作也是其取得成功的重要一环，但是更为重要的当然是其自身的价值。尤其值得注意的是《白牙》这部作品所反映的主题正是当今世界在全球化背景下最引人关注的有关文化的融合与冲突问题。也许与其自身的身份特征有关[1]，作者关注的焦点始终是处于这一问题中心的“离散”人群。
所谓“离散”（Diaspora），通常是指某一族群中的个体或者群体在自愿或者被迫的前提下移居到自己本族群常居地之外的国家或地区。和原居住地的文化发展相比，“离散”文化的发展有其自身的独特性。一方面，“离散”者（diasporas）努力保有自己的语言和宗教习俗的传承；而另一方面，他们由于远离了原初的居住地和文化氛围，因而又与本族群文化的发展产生了距离。在2004年澳门召开的“‘离散’研究国际研讨会”上，专家们对“离散”这一概念的基本框架形成了共识，一致认为“离散”人群就是定居在别国并籍以确立其身份的那些社会团体，而他们自身又存在着千差万别的属性（Smith and Stares, 2007: 5）。以此概念为基础，本文将围绕人物对《白牙》中的“离散”主题展开论述。
一
小说主要围绕琼斯和伊克鲍这两个家庭展开。这两位1945年曾一起为英国在欧洲征战，是生死与共的战友。阿奇鲍尔德·琼斯是英格兰人，萨马德·伊克鲍是孟加拉国人。第二次世界大战结束以后，伊克鲍移民到了英国。两位好友成了邻居。琼斯在一次失败的婚姻之后与移民到英国不久的牙买加姑娘克拉拉结婚。而萨马德·伊克鲍经过了多年在英国的独自闯荡，也终于娶了一位同样来自孟加拉国的姑娘阿尔萨娜。于是我们看到了两种典型的“离散”者家庭模式。而伊克鲍一家则更具代表性。事实上，尽管《白牙》是以琼斯的故事开始，以琼斯的故事结束，但是整部作品的核心却是伊克鲍一家。
通常，对于“离散”者而言，当生存问题仍然是个人生活需要解决的首要问题时，各种文化、宗教等精神层面的问题往往都会退居到次要的地位，甚至似乎被人们忽略。而当生活渐趋稳定，尤其在第二代出现以后，文化和精神层面的需求则变得越来越重要，随之而产生的矛盾和冲突也会逐渐显露。对于本民族文化的精神需求往往会逐渐增强，或者在经历了某次偶然的事件之后而变得异常强烈。这几乎是“离散”者人群中的一种普遍状况。伊克鲍就是这样的一个典型例证。
伊克鲍有着强烈的本民族文化情结。而他的这种情结在遭遇了一次表面上的情感问题实质上的文化冲突之后变得更加清晰和强烈。伊克鲍有一对双胞胎儿子。生活的压力可想而知。随着孩子们的长大，生活也渐趋稳定。而不如意的夫妻生活使得他有了再次燃烧一下激情的冲动。他邂逅了一位英格兰白人姑娘珀珮·布尔特-琼斯，于是便不顾一切地去实践婚外情给他带来的刺激。他们第一次真正的约会意味深长。珀珮特意给他带来一件礼物。然而，与他想象的浪漫完全不同，情人的礼物竟然是“一把牙刷”（Smith, 2000: 152）[†]。这令他感到错愕惊讶，同时也促使他意识到了自己民族文化情结的存在和牢固。
透过这一带有几分荒诞的细节，读者至少可以领会到这样一个信息——生活的真实其实是冷冰冰的，并没有人们想象的那么多温馨和浪漫。而“牙刷”在这里已经演变成了一个代表文化差异的符号。此前，叙述者已经介绍过，像伊克鲍这样的孟加拉国移民有不刷牙的习惯。珀珮也许真的享受和伊克鲍在一起交谈的乐趣，甚至对伊克鲍本人也算真有志趣相投的好感，但是她却无法忽略伊克鲍不刷牙的陋习。她作为礼物的牙刷其实包含了两层含义：一是提醒伊克鲍他们之间的差异；二是提出进一步交往的前提条件，即要求伊克鲍寻求以珀珮为中心的趋同。引申一步讲，珀珮以牙刷所暗示的交往条件代表了主流文化对想要获取认同的“离散”者所采取的一贯做法，即要求“离散”者寻求向主流文化的趋同。
牙刷也让我们看到了这样一个事实，即伊克鲍和珀珮讲的其实不是同一种语言。雷蒙德·威廉斯对“我们其实讲的不是同一种语言”有过如下的阐述：
当我们说“我们说的其实不是同一种语言”的时候，我们指的是更具一般意义的东西：即我们有截然不同的价值标准，或者不同类型的评价方式；或者我们似有所悟地意识到了能力和兴趣的不同形式和不同分布。在这样的情况下，每一方都在讲着自己最熟悉的语言，但是其用法却大相径庭，尤其当涉及到一些处于争论中的强烈的情感问题抑或重大观点的时候。虽然暂时占据统治地位的一方可能会试图将它自己的语言作为“正确”的用法强加出去，但是，按照无论哪种语言学的标准，没有哪一方是“错误”的。（Williams, 1976: 11） Continue reading »
Nov 242011
从人人网上看到了个段子，挺好玩的：
早起是学语言和收破烂的；晚睡是学语言和按摩院的；没饭点儿是学语言和要饭的；男人不着家是学语言和花天酒地的；女人不顾娃是学语言和搞婚外恋的；随叫随到是学语言和发快件儿的；加班不补休是学语言和摆地摊儿的；24小时接客是学语言和天上人间的；周末节日不休是学语言和淘宝开店。【by @杨禹龙_Thomas】
把“学语言”的描述得如此悲催——真的有这么不堪吗？
不至于吧~~~
反正我没觉得……
Nov 182011
The poet John Ashbery was honored for his lifetime of work.
2011年度美国国家图书奖的各个奖项已经揭晓？
- Jesmyn Ward描写飓风卡特林娜的小说Salvage the Bones因其犀利的卓尔不凡的比喻赢得本年度美国国家图书奖小说奖；
- Nikky Finney的Head Off and Split获国家图书奖诗歌奖；
- Thanhha Lai的Inside Out and Back Again 获青少年文学奖；
- Stephen Greenblatt的传记The Swerve: How the World Became Modern获非虚构类图书奖；
- 诗人John Ashbery获颁美国文学杰出贡献奖（The award for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters）【John Ashbery已经出版了 20多部诗集，获得过一次普利策奖（ Pulitzer Prize）和一次国家图书奖。
以下是一篇来自BBC NEWS的报道：
Salvage the Bones wins US National Book Award
A novel about a Mississippi family confronting Hurricane Katrina has won the US National Book Award for fiction.
The judges praised Jesmyn Ward’s Salvage the Bones for its use of “piercing metaphor and simile”.
Nikky Finney’s Head Off and Split took the poetry prize, while Thanhha Lai’s Inside Out and Back Again won the award for young people’s literature.
Stephen Greenblatt’s The Swerve, about Latin poet Lucretius, triumphed in the non-fiction category.
Author Ward (far right) was in Mississippi with her family when Hurricane Katrina hit
In her acceptance speech, Ward said the death of her younger brother – who was hit by a drunk driver when she was in college – had inspired her to become a writer.
She said she realised life was a “feeble, unpredictable thing,” but that books were a testament of strength in the face of a punishing world.
Greenblatt, tearful in victory, noted the miracle of words in making an ancient poet such as Lucretius matter so greatly centuries later.
University of Kentucky creative writing professor Finney also gave a poetic acceptance speech for her work, which delves into African-American life.
Actor John Lithgow, the show’s host, called it “the best acceptance speech for anything that I’ve heard in my entire life”.
The winners of the awards – which are among the most prestigious in US publishing – each received $10,000 (£6,400).
The awards were hit by controversy last month when the nominees were first announced and author Lauren Myracle mistakenly appeared on the shortlist, in the young people’s literature category, for her book Shine.
The book was withdrawn after the National Book Foundation cited a “miscommunication”. It appeared Myracle’s book had been confused with Franny Billingsley’s similar-sounding novel Chime.
Shortly after, the Foundation welcomed Shine back into the category “based on its merits”, but Myracle was asked to withdraw a number of days later “to preserve the integrity of the award”, the author said.
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