閱讀的樂趣

The Pleasures of Reading

閱讀的樂趣

Bennett Cerf

貝內(nèi)特.瑟夫

作者簡介

貝內(nèi)特.瑟夫（Bennett Cerf，1898—1971），著名出版家，美國大型出版社蘭登書屋（Random House）的創(chuàng)始人。他的回憶錄《我與蘭登書屋》（At Random: The Reminiscences of Bennett Cerf）是一部生動反映美國20世紀(jì)出版業(yè)風(fēng)云變幻的經(jīng)典著作，同時也是一部充滿趣味、幽默與智慧的文學(xué)作品。

本文選自貝內(nèi)特.瑟夫1957年出版的《閱讀為樂》（Reading for Pleasure）。作為資深出版家，作者可謂閱書無數(shù)。讀書于他，不是負(fù)擔(dān)，而是享受。本文將圖書館的藏書比作城市中的建筑，氣勢宏大而貼切入微，類似的比喻比比皆是。作者的不凡氣度令人嘆服。

All the wisdoms of the ages, all the stories that have delighted mankind for centuries, are easily and cheaply available to all of us within the covers of books—but we must know how to avail ourselves of this treasure and how to get the most from it. The most unfortunate people in the world are those who have never discovered how satisfying it is to read good books.

I am most interested in people, in meeting them and finding out about them. Some of the most remarkable people I’ve met existed only in a writer’s imagination, then on the pages of his book, and then, again, in my imagination. I’ve found in books new friends, new societies, new words.

If I am interested in people, others are interested not so much in “who” as in “how”. “Who” in the books includes everybody from science fiction superman two hundred centuries in the future all the way back to the first figures in history. “How” covers everything from the ingenious explanations of Sherlock Holmes to the discoveries of science and ways of teaching manner to children.

Reading is a pleasure of the mind, which means that it is a little like a sport: your eagerness and knowledge and quickness make you a good reader. Reading is fun, not because the writer is telling you something, but because it makes your mind work. Your own imagination works along with the author’s or even goes beyond his. Your experience, compared with his, brings you to the same or different conclusions, and your ideas develop as you understand his.

歷代智慧、千古趣事，都可輕易從書中獲得，而且耗資不多。但我們須知道如何充分利用這一寶藏，并惠及自身。不知閱讀好書之樂者，可謂世間最為不幸之人。

我對書中人物最感興趣，樂于同他們相會相知。我遇見的一些卓越人士，起初只存在于作家的想象中，后來出現(xiàn)在某些作品里，再后來重現(xiàn)于我的想象中。我在書中發(fā)現(xiàn)了新朋友、新階層、新詞語。

我喜愛書中人物，他人則更關(guān)注書中情節(jié)。從先古歷史人物，到2萬年后的科幻超人，皆屬“人物”；從福爾摩斯的巧妙推理，到科學(xué)領(lǐng)域的眾多發(fā)現(xiàn)，再到教育孩子的方式方法，則屬“情節(jié)”。

閱讀是種精神享受，熱忱、學(xué)識、悟性使你成為一名優(yōu)秀的讀者——這和體育運(yùn)動有幾分相似。閱讀之所以有趣，不是因?yàn)樽髡吒嬖V你什么，而是因?yàn)殚喿x活躍你的思想。你隨作者一同想象，甚至超越他的想象。你拿自己的經(jīng)歷與作者的相比，會得出相同或相異的結(jié)論。隨著對作者的理解不斷加深，你自己的想法也會不斷拓展。

Every book stands by itself, like a one-family house, but books in a library are like houses in a city. Although they are separate, together they all add up to something; they are connected with each other and with other cities. The same ideas, or related ones, turn up in different places; the human problems that repeat themselves in life repeat themselves in literature, but with different solutions according to different writings at different times. Books influence each other; they link the past, the present and the future and have their own generations, like families. Wherever you start reading you connect yourself with one of the families of the ideas, and, in the long run, you not only find out about the world and the people in it; you find out about yourself, too.

Reading can only be fun if you expect it to be. If you concentrate on books somebody tells you, you “ought” to read, you probably won’t have fun. But if you put down the book you don’t like and try another till you find one that means something to you, and then relax with it, you will almost certainly have a good time—and if you become, as a result of reading, better, wiser, kinder, or more gentle, you won’t have suffered during the process.

每一本書如同獨(dú)門獨(dú)戶的房屋，孑然獨(dú)立。圖書館的藏書則像城市中的建筑——盡管它們各自獨(dú)立，卻構(gòu)成一個整體；房與房相互關(guān)聯(lián)，城與城相互聯(lián)系。相同或相關(guān)的思想在不同地方出現(xiàn)；人類生活中反復(fù)出現(xiàn)的難題在文學(xué)作品中也反復(fù)出現(xiàn)。但不同時期的不同作品卻提出了不同的解決方案。書籍相互影響，聯(lián)系過去、現(xiàn)在與未來。它們?nèi)缤易?，有自己的傳承。無論你從何處讀起，都會與某一思想體系相連。長遠(yuǎn)看來，你不僅能從書中理解世界和人類，還能審視自我。

只有你以閱讀為樂，閱讀才會有趣。若是別人說你“應(yīng)該”讀某書，你便埋頭苦讀，那很可能毫無樂趣。但若放下不愛讀的書，轉(zhuǎn)而嘗試另一本，直到發(fā)現(xiàn)你認(rèn)為有意義的書，那時再盡情享用，便會感到其樂無窮——這幾乎毫無疑問。如果通過閱讀，你變得更優(yōu)秀、更睿智、更善良、更文雅，就不再會視閱讀為煎熬了。

閱讀是種精神享受，熱忱、學(xué)識、悟性使你成為一名優(yōu)秀的讀者——這和體育運(yùn)動有幾分相似。

Bennett Cerf 貝內(nèi)特?瑟夫