Pride and Prejudice is kind of a literary Rosetta Stone, the inspiration, basis, and model for so many modern novels. You’re probably more familiar with its plot and characters than you think. For a book written in the early 19th century, it’s modernity is surprising only until you realize that this is the novel that in many ways defined what a modern novel is.
《傲慢与偏见》可以说是文学界的一块罗塞塔石碑,同时也是许多现代小说的模板,所以你对其中的情节和人物可能比你自己想象中要熟悉。作为一本写于19世纪的书,它的现代性是非常惊人的,而你稍作了解之后就会知道,这是因为现代小说在很大程度上就是被这本书定义的。
Ulysses did “stream of consciousness” before the term existed, and it’s also a sprawling novel dense with allusions, wordplay, obscure jokes, and intensely, opaquely personal ruminations by the characters.
《尤利西斯》在“意识流”这个概念出现之前就开始使用它了。同时,它也是一本相当错综复杂的小说,充满了隐喻、文字游戏、隐晦的玩笑、以及角色们欲说还休的个人沉思。
Moby-Dick has an unearned reputation for being, well, dull. Melville’s novel wasn’t received well on publication (it took decades before people really started to 'get' how great it is), and the negative sentiment is echoed every year when groaning students are forced to read it.
好吧,其实《白鲸》是出了名地乏味。梅尔维尔的小说在刚发行的时候反响并不好(过了几十年人们才意识到这本书到底有多棒)。而随着每年都有大量学生被迫读这本书,这种负面情绪也一直挥之不去。
It’s rare for a novel to remain as on-point as Mockingbird for more than five decades. If you want to know how Harper Lee managed the trick, you’re gonna have to read it. At about seven hours to read, you can totally squeeze it in.
一本小说能连续50年不衰,这是很罕见的。如果你想知道哈柏·李是如何做到的,那你就得读读这本书。而只需要7小时的阅读时间,你就能完全读完这本书了。
It’s true that the book is written in what seems to modern audiences like a self-consciously tough style, peppered with old-fashioned slang, and the plot is famously complex, even for a mystery, and actually has several loose ends that never get resolved, but it doesn’t matter.
确实,对于现代读者来说,这本书有一股过于刻意的硬汉风,其中穿插着很多老式的黑话;至于情节呢,即使是对于一本悬疑小说来说也是出了名的复杂,而且书中的很多未讲明的谜团直到今天也没有被破解;但这些都不叫事儿。