Daily Archives: 2011/10/15

安迪·博洛维茨&50位最有趣的美国作家

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《50位最有趣的美国作家》是美国作家安迪·博洛维茨编撰的一部新书。其中收录了自马克·吐温以来的一些有趣的作家的经典段落。新书推出后，博洛维茨接受采访，谈到了他的选择，并就一些问题做了解释。

Andy Borowitz（安迪·博洛维茨） is a writer and a comedian whose work appears in The New Yorker and at his satirical website, BorowitzReport.com, which has millions of readers around the world. The author of six books, he is the first-ever winner of the National Press Club’s humor award and a two-time finalist for the Thurber Prize for American Humor. He has been called a “Swiftian satirist” (The Wall Street Journal), and “America’s satire king” (The Daily Beast).

【以下是博洛维茨的解释：】

•On the predominance of writers from The New Yorker, where Borowitz is a contributor:
“No favoritism there. The New Yorker is the only American magazine that’s continuously published humor since the 1920s. When you publish everyone from Woody Allen to Dorothy Parker to David Sedaris, you’re going to make the list a bunch of times.”

•On the 51st funniest American writer:
 “Actually, a New Yorker writer: Robert Benchley. He’s as deserving as anyone on the list, but we couldn’t fit everybody.”

•On complaints about writers he left out:
“Three names come up a lot: Joseph Heller, David Foster Wallace and John Kennedy Toole. They’re all hilarious. But it was hard to take excerpts from their novels that lived up to the complete works. The same goes for Donald Westlake and Carl Hiaasen.”

•On omitting Kurt Vonnegut:
“Same problem. But the good news is that Library of America is publishing two entire volumes of Vonnegut. That should hose down the Vonnegut fans a bit.”

【以下是该书的目录。从中我们可以了解到博洛维茨选择的50位最有趣的美国作家到底是谁——】

The 50 Funniest American Writers:
An Anthology of Humor from Mark Twain to The Onion

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction, Andy Borowitz

Mark Twain
A Presidential Candidate
George Ade
The Lecture Tickets That Were Bought but Never Used
O. Henry
The Ransom of Red Chief
Sinclair Lewis
from Babbitt
Anita Loos
from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
Ring Lardner
On Conversation
H. L. Mencken
Imperial Purple
James Thurber
More Alarms at Night
Dorothy Parker
The Waltz
S. J. Perelman
Farewell, My Lovely Appetizer
Langston Hughes
Simple Prays a Prayer
Frank Sullivan
The Night the Old Nostalgia Burned Down
E. B. White
Across the Street and into the Grill
Peter De Vries
The House of Mirth
Terry Southern
from The Magic Christian
Lenny Bruce
from How to Talk Dirty and Influence People
Tom Wolfe
The Secret Vice
Jean Shepherd
The Counterfeit Secret Circle Member Gets the Message, or The Asp Strikes Again
Hunter S. Thompson
The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved
Woody Allen
A Look at Organized Crime
Bruce Jay Friedman
The Tax Man
Philip Roth
Letters to Einstein
Nora Ephron
A Few Words about Breasts
Henry Beard, Michael O’Donoghue, George W. S. Trow
Our White Heritage
Fran Lebowitz
Better Read Than Dead: A Revised Opinion
Charles Portis
Your Action Line
Donald Barthelme
In the Morning Post
Veronica Geng
Curb Carter Policy Discord Effort Threat
John Hughes
Vacation ’58
Mark O’Donnell
The Laws of Cartoon Motion
Garrison Keillor
The Tip-Top Club
Bruce McCall
Rolled in Rare Bohemian Onyx, Then Vulcanized by Hand
Molly Ivins
Tough as Bob War and Other Stuff
Calvin Trillin
Corrections
Dave Barry
Tips for Women: How to Have a Relationship with a Guy
The Onion
Clinton Deploys Vowels to Bosnia
Susan Orlean
Shiftless Little Loafers
Roy Blount Jr.
Gothic Baseball
George Carlin
If I Were in Charge of the Networks
Ian Frazier
Laws Concerning Food and Drink; Household Principles; Lamentations of the Father
David Rakoff
The Writer’s Life
Bernie Mac
from I Ain’t Scared of You
David Sedaris
Buddy, Can You Spare a Tie?
Wanda Sykes
It’s So Hard
Jack Handey
What I’d Say to the Martians
David Owen
Your Three Wishes: F.A.Q.
George Saunders
Ask the Optimist!
Jenny Allen
Awake
Sloane Crosley
The Pony Problem
Larry Wilmore
If Not an Apology, at Least a “My Bad”

Literature Prize（文学奖）

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这里的”Literature Prize” 不是一个笼统的说法，而是一个新的独立的文学奖项。并且意欲与久负盛名的Man Booker Prize分庭抗礼。新“文学奖”认为布克奖的评选过分重视了可读性，而忽略了艺术性。另外，“文学奖”的受众面也较之布克奖有很大的拓展：“文学奖”面向所有在英国出版的英语作品。这个奖项计划明年颁出第一期。【以下是来自BBC的相关报道】

New literature prize launched to rival Booker

A group of leading lights from the literary world have launched a book prize in response to what they see as the changing priorities of the Man Booker Prize.

The organisers of the new Literature Prize claimed the Booker “now prioritises a notion of ‘readability’ over artistic achievement”.Man Booker administrator Ion Trewin dismissed that idea as “tosh”.

Booker 2011 judges: (l-r) Susan Hill, Chris Mullin, Dame Stella Rimington, Matthew d'Ancona, and Gaby Wood

The winner of the £50,000 annual Booker prize will be announced on 18 October.

“This is not about attacking the Booker or any books on the shortlist,” literary agent Andrew Kidd, spokesman for the Literature Prize, told the BBC.

“The Booker has made certain choices about how it wants to position itself and that’s great – but we think there’s a place for both of us and there can be a happy co-existence.”

The Literature Prize names among its supporters writers John Banville, Pat Barker, Mark Haddon, Jackie Kay and David Mitchell.

An announcement about the committee and funding for next year’s prize is expected within weeks.

‘Quality and ambition’

The Literature Prize will be open to any novel in the English language and published in the UK. The Booker competition is only open to those from the British Commonwealth and Ireland.

“The prize will offer readers a selection of novels that, in the view of these expert judges, are unsurpassed in their quality and ambition,” said the Literature Prize’s launch statement.

“For many years this brief was fulfilled by the Booker (latterly the Man Booker) Prize. But as numerous statements by that prize’s administrator and this year’s judges illustrate, it now prioritises a notion of ‘readability’ over artistic achievement,” it said.

Dismissing that as “tosh”, Man Booker’s Trewin told The Bookseller: “I think I have gone on record in the past as saying that I believe in literary excellence and readability -the two should go hand in hand.”

Jonathan Taylor, chairman of The Booker Prize Foundation, said: “Since 1969 the prize has encouraged the reading of literary fiction of the highest quality and that continues to be its objective today.

“We welcome any credible prize which also supports the reading of quality fiction.”

The Man Booker winner will be announced on 18 October

Julian Barnes is among six authors featured on this year’s Man Booker Prize shortlist. He is the bookies’ favourite for his novel The Sense of an Ending.

Stephen Kelman, AD Miller, Carol Birch, Patrick deWitt and Esi Edugyan are also on the shortlist.

There were raised eyebrows in literary circles when previous Booker winner Alan Hollinghurst’s The Stranger’s Child did not make the final six.

Last week, chair of the Booker judges and former MI5 chief Dame Stella Rimington hit back at critics of the judges’ choices, which include two first-time novelists.

She told The Guardian: “As somebody interested in literary criticism, it’s pathetic that so-called literary critics are abusing my judges and me. They live in such an insular world they can’t stand their domain being intruded upon.”

Her fellow Booker jurors are writer and journalist Matthew d’Ancona, author Susan Hill, author and politician Chris Mullin and Gaby Wood of the Telegraph.

Kidd denied that the Literature Prize was about elitism.

“It’s a silly accusation,” he said.

“It is more about our feeling that a space has opened up for a new prize which is unequivocally about excellence – even if that sometimes means shortlisted books are more challenging and don’t necessarily fall under the easy description of readable.”