Letters of E. B. White, Revised Edition《读书笔记》

怀特的书信集，先看1976年第一版的，后看2006年增订版，把看了两本书的笔记都贴于此：

（2006年版）

《怀特书信集》（Letters of E.B.怀特）首版出版于1976年，编者为怀特一位老友的女儿Dorothy Lobrano Guth（怀特叫她Dotty），收入的书信止于1975年5月20日。怀特去世于1985年10月1日，这样，修订《怀特书信集》似乎是自然而然的事。修订版出版于2006年，怀特的孙女Martha White参与了编纂，名作家John Updike写了前言（http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2006/nov/18/featuresreviews.guardianreview6），我译的《从街角数起的第二棵树》出版时，编辑在封底放的宣传语（“E.B.怀特的散文，沿着睿智达理、广闻博识的轨迹慢跑，直到，冷不防地，击出诗意的一拳”）即来自厄普代克给怀特书信集写的序言，值得一提的是。怀特书信集收入几封给厄普代克的信，在后者踏入文坛之时，怀特曾对他不吝赞扬，两人的友谊一直持续至怀特的晚年，厄普代克也和《纽约客》有千丝万缕的关系。

《怀特书信集》（修订版）正文达685页，收入的书信早至1908年10月21日，怀特时年9岁，最晚至1985年1月5日怀特病中口述的一封信，跨度近80年，也可以说是怀特的另一种传记，读下来，可以完整地了解怀特生活的诸多方面。在我眼里，怀特其人其文极为统一，简直可以称为“完人”（尽管这个词如今没那么吃香）。二十年多年前，怀特的传记（Scott Elledge著）出版时，《萨克拉门托蜜峰报》发表了一篇书评称“谁要想去发现怀特身上黑暗的一面，也许还要久等”。怀特已逝二十五年，他的人格魅力依然如故，我们大可以放心地去爱怀特，读他的作品。

这本《怀特书信集》国内已购版权，今年应该出版，但有点遗憾的是会出一本（两本？）选集，没有喜欢上怀特的读者当然无所谓，而喜爱怀特的读者当然应该希望出得越全越好，我不知道他们最后有没有这个福气。

下为从修订版上摘录：

P621 关于其先逝的妻子Katherine.

She was the one great award of my life and I'm I awe of having received it. I find life difficult without her not just because she helped me in so many practical ways but because she steadied me day and night and I with the evens of the day or the contents of my mail sack.

P629 怀特的自嘲

In summertime cars pass slowly by the house with people gaping to see where America's oldest living author lives and sulks. In summertime bad boys on fast motorcyles roar by at naptime and the phone rings and it is a man calling from a bar in Palo Alto or a bar in La Jolla to tell me that he is in tears because of something I wrote in 1937. (He has had three martinis and could easily break down from reading a Macy ad.)

P633 事关有些人的“封笔”

There is no such thing as retiring from wrting. You just run out of gas.

P665 怀特为他的传记作者惋惜

The man who is writing my biography is in worse shape than I am. He has pulmonary trouble and is worried because he picked the wrong person to write a biography about. After all I'm no Norman Mailer with his seven wives and occasional knifings.

P677 还在是写给其传记作者的信中

I wish you joy of the book and am only sorry my life wasn't crowed with exciting bawdy violent events. I know how hard it is to write about a fellow who spends most of his time crouched over a typewriter. That was my fate too.

==================

1976年版

E.B.怀特的著作，现在国内引进得越来越多了，先是他的三部童话，然后是他的散文——我也掺和过一把，翻译了《从街角数起的第二棵树》——目前还有一本散文集《One Man’t Meat》和他的书信集正在译介过程中，如果以后还能引进他为《纽约客》所写的作品选（Writings for New Yorker）以及他的诗集等，怀特作品全貌就大致呈现在读者面前了。

怀特曾说过：“无论是谁，下笔时所写的都是自己，无论是否自知”。所以从读他的童话和散文等，我已经对其人其文了解很多，而读完厚厚的一本《怀特书信集》，这种了解又提高了一个层次。为了解一个人，这样执迷式地去穷尽阅读他的著作，值得吗？拿这种话去问问真正的怀特粉丝吧，他们恐怕都理解这样的做法。这本书信集用约翰·厄普代克的话说，既是他篇幅最长的，又是他最具自传性质的作品。我自己读了这本更能深入怀特内心的书信集后犹未满足，得陇望蜀地想，如果怀特的日记能够出版就更好了。

怀特高寿（86岁仙逝），一生写作不已，也是个喜欢写信的人。这本厚达686页的书信集中收入的信件早至1908年怀特9 岁时，晚至1976年怀特76岁时。编者是怀特一位老友的女儿多萝西·洛布拉诺·古斯，怀特本人也认可这本书信集的编辑及出版，还把他的自选随笔集专门押后出版，让这本书信集先出（1976年）。

我断断续续读这本厚厚的书信集，一读几个月，仿佛是陪着写信人怀特度过了一生，结识了怀特的家人、友人、读者等等。读怀特的文字是享受，而这种文字背后的思想和人格魅力，更有吸引人之处，也获得了力量，用怀特自己的话来说，是“别具含义，接近真理的熊熊烈火，读者有时感觉到了热量”。

我为怀特文字上的早熟而惊讶，也为他对他人满怀热忱又坚持原则的精神所打动。因为能从书里读到不少背景信息，也让我对已经读过的怀特其他作品增进了了解。看的时候，有时会嫌这本书信集的厚重，读到最后又希望这本书可以再厚些，让我多读上一年半载才好。不过我知道，这本书以后我还会细细阅读的，也许还不止一遍。

摘录

（很希望喜欢怀特的读者能耐心读读，别的不说，可都是我一个字母一个字母敲出来的哦）：

P121 怀特对写文章用“我们”而不用“我”比较反感：

It is almost impossible to write anything decent using the editorial “we” unless you are the Dionne Family. Anonymity plus the “we” gives a writer a cloak of dishnonesty and he finds himself going around like a masked reveler at a ball kissing all the pretty girls.

P146 My other reason is the one everything really hangs on: the importance of a writer's maintaining his *** standing.

P154 怀特把写作比与自渎，可谓惊人之论：

Writing is a secret vice like self abuse. A person afflicted with poetic longings of one sort or another searches for a kind of intellectual and spiritual privacy in which to indulge his strange excesses.

P180

A writer is like a beanplant-he has his little day and then gets stringy.

P189 这封信短，值得抄下来，事关怀特向一位朋友要一本豪斯曼的诗集送给尚年幼的儿子：

Dear Miss Terry

Would you have your office order me a copy of “Last Poems” by A.E.Housman? I want to give it to Roger for Christmas. He asked for Houseman poems a bottle of Amontillado and a top hat. I can only assume that he is going to sit around in the hat drinking the sherry reading the poems and dreaming the long long dreams of youth.

Your distant friend

E.B.white

P 285 怀特对麦卡锡主义一开始就反对，在看到《纽约先驱论坛报》上登了一篇立场模糊的文章后，马上致书，中间有句，讥刺社论作者对于美国宪法第一修正案（即保护言论自由）的无视：

It's hard to me to believe that the Herald Tribune is backing away from the fight and I can only assume that your editorial writer in a hurry to get home for Thankgiving tripped over the First Amendment and thought it was the office cat.

后文又有：

It is not a crime to believe anything at all in America. To date it has not been declared illegal to belong to the communist party. Yet ten men have been convicted not of wrongdoing but of wrong believing. That's news in this country and if I have not misread history it is bad news.

P290 又与麦卡锡主义有关：

It seems that all you have to do be tagged “dangerous” nowadays is to stand up for the First Amendment to the Constitution.

P320 怀特拒绝评论他人的书，但也不排除跟太太交换意见，这是一封短信:

It wouldn't do any good to send me galleys of a book because I don't comment on books – except to my wife under cover of darkness.

P322 评论另一位《纽约客》作家瑟伯，又谈到自己的写作：

Thurber can write you an informative letter about American lettters and trends in same but I can't as letters have never been my interest only my fate.

P346

And remember that writing is translation and the opus to be translated is yourself.

P358 关于麦卡锡主义猖獗时好莱坞的黑名单：

I think the most depressing thing that has happened in my lifetime is that an official blacklist of actors and radio artists called “Red Channels” has acutally become a handbook to which radio and television directors turn before hiring an actor. This has changed the whole climate of our country. It has introduced a contagion that can sweep into every home and office changing the world we now know into an entirely different world. I think it is terribly important that we don't permit that change to take place.

P361 怀特不想让自己为政治竞选活动所用，写此短信：

I don't want to lend my name to sponsor a political candidate because I occasionally contribute editorials to the New Yorker. The only sensible way for an editorial writer to live is to limit his political activities to the interior of the voting booth – that wonderful wonderful place.

P390 《夏洛的网》取得了巨大成功，在从编辑那里收到一本样书后，怀特高兴地写道：

The beautiful copy of “Charlotte's Web” arrived and is being much admired. I show it around as though I had bound it myself. I haven't inscribed it to myself yet as I haven't been able to think what to write on that page that tells how it sold so many copies but I am looking forward to the autographing from me to me – a wonderful narcissistic occasion. I'm going to do it while leaning over a pool.

P391 谈到编辑：

An editor is a person who knows more about writing than writers do but who has escaped the terrible desire to write.

P406 怀特向来对海明威评价不高

Take Hemingway an Willa Cather – two well known American novelist. The first is extrememly self-conscious and put himself into every sentence and every situation the second is largely self-effacing and loses herself completely in the lives of her characters.

P421 怀特读拉德纳的感觉。拉德纳对人性其实是很悲观的，所以怀特读了之后心里并不好受。

K．Gave me “Ring Lardner” for my birthday and I finished it last night and it made me unutterably sad along toward the end.

P479 关于《精灵鼠小弟》最后开放式的结尾：

My reason (if indeed I had any) for leaving Stuart in the midst of his quest was to indicate that questing is more important that finding and a journey is more important than the mere arrival at a destination. This is too large an idea for young children to grasp but I threw it to them anyway. They'll catch up with it eventually. Margalo I suppose represents what we all search for all our days and never quite find.

P485 关于自己的写作：

I do not write books to raise any group's cultural level I simply put down on paper the things I see and hear. I report speech as I hear it not as it appears in books of rhetoric. If you ever take up writing I advise you to keep your ears open and never mind about culture.

P487 《纽约时报》上有社论称怀特对于詹姆斯·瑟伯成名帮助极大，怀特认为这不是事实，就给编辑去函澄清，有这样一段：

Thurber's gateway was not me it was The New Yorker itself. As soon as Ross saw Thurber's writing he knew he had a humorist on the premises. I’m writing this disclaimer because although I would like to take credit for all the things you said the fact don't stand up and I think it must irritate Thurber's friends and relatives who know a great deal about the matter to hear me spoken of in this extravagant way. But thanks for the piece anyway – every man likes to be a king maker if only for a day.

P490 怀特对厄普代克非常欣赏：

I would rather read an unwritten novel by you than a written one by almost anybody else.

P510 在给一位后辈的信中，怀特对学习英语专业（相当于我们的中文系）有一番见解：

Your majoring in English was no mistake even though you do not become a critic or a publisher's assistant or a playwright or a novelist. English and English literature are the rock bottom of our lives no matter what we do and we should all do what in the long run gives us joy even if it is only picking grapes or sorting the laundry. “To affect the quality of the day that is the hightest of arts.” I agree with Mr. Thoreau himself a victim of youthful frustration.

P514 关于写作：

My only belief is that no writing by anybody begins to get good until he gets shed of tricks devices and formulae.

P551 怀特对影响了海明威等人的格特鲁德·斯坦因很不以为然：

And I never understood why the slightest fuss was made over G. Stein whose contribution to letters strikes me as very close to zero.

P536 还是谈到梭罗：

Thoreau has been greatly misconstrued and been made use of by all sorts groups and thinkers. He laid himself wise open to this as you can see by reading his stuff – which is full of contradictions and cryptic utterances. But he was I think a good seer and prophet and many of his sentences cover whole areas of modern life and the modern dilemma.

P558 关于《一头猪的死》这篇文章

The death of this animal moved me heightened my awareness. To confront death in any guise is to identify with the victim and face what is unsettling and sobering. As I said in the piece “I knew that what could be true of my pig could be true also of the rest of my tidy world.”

P569 怀特患有较严重的过敏性鼻炎，按说不该住在乡下，但是他的确深爱乡居生活：

By rights I should never have bought a place in the country and settled down to enjoy the land because of what it does to my mucous membranes. But I wouldn't trade my barn for the Taj Mahal or Onassis's yacht: and just to go down into my barn cellar at daylight to grain the sheep and pitch some hay down the chutes is compensation enough for all the misery of my silly nose.

P573 关于另一位《纽约客》作家S.J.Perelman，佩勒尔曼的词汇量很大，我读他的两本书，给我留下了深刻印象，我有幸译了他一篇小文章：《甭给我发奥斯卡》

Sid of course commands a vocalbulary that is the despair (and joy) of every writing man. I have to get along with a vocabulary of about fifteen hundred serviceable words that I just use over and over again trying to rearrange them in an interesting order. …He ears are as busy as an ant’s feelers. No word ever gets by him.

…

Humor is a by product that occurs in the serious work of some and not others.

P582 关于自己的写作：

Writing which is my way of serving is hard work for me and usually not attended with any joy. I has its satisfactions but the act of writing is often a pure headache and I don't kid myself about there bying any joy in it. When I want some fun I don't write. I go sailing. So I often find it hard to plan the day

P609 关于怀特和诗的关系

When it comes to poetry I take my own sweet time and allow myself no more than one poem a day. A good poem is like an anchovy: It makes you want another right away and pretty soon the tin is empty and you have a bellyache or a small bone in your throat or both.

P647 在给一些小学生的信中:

I was pleased that so many of you felt the beauty and goodness of the world. If we feel that when we are young then there is great hope for us when we grow older.

P649 关于写作

You asked me about writing – how I did it. There is no trick to it. If you like to write and want to write you write no matter where you are or what else you are doing or whether anyone pays any heed.

P650 关于理想，但是勿要随便模仿——想想《立春》吧

You are right that a person's real duty in life is to save his dream but don't worry about it and don't let them scare you. Henry Thoreau who wrote “Walden” said “I learned this at least by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams and endeavors to live the life which he has imagines he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.” The sentence after more than a hundred years is still alive.

P650 再谈到自己的童话

“Stuart Little” is the story of a quest or search Much of life is questing and searching and I was writing about that. If the book ends while the search is still going on that's because I wanted it that way. As you grow older you will realize that many of us in this world go through life looking for something that seems beautiful and good – often something we can't quite name. In Stuart's case he was searching for the bird Margalo who was his ideal of beauty and goodness. Whether he ever found her or not or whether he ever got home or not is less important than the adventure itself. If the book made you cry that’s because you are aware of the sadness and richness of life's involvements and of the quest for beauty.

Cheer up – Stuart may yet find his bird. He may even get home again. Meantime he is headed in the right direction as I am sure you are.