8月新刊推荐 | 好文章如何开头？

Beginnings of Good Prose [本文来自：www.11jj.com]

By Tracy Kidder & Richard Todd

[原文来自：www.11jj.com]

∷黄红宇 译注

如何第一时间走进读者，一键启动他们头脑里理性启迪和感性愉悦的开关，对于全体作家和日常生活中的写作者而言，既是难题，也是诱惑。山穷水尽之际，不妨暂时从自我怀疑和胶着中走出来，在普利策奖获奖作家Tracy Kidder和《大西洋月刊》资深编辑Richard Todd的引领下，看看《白鲸记》、《冷血》、《向加泰罗尼亚致敬》、《说吧，记忆》是怎么开头的，听听《风格要素》给出了什么写作建议。在伟大的英语作家笔下，我们经常感受到一种从容和宁静的气质，一种平实明晰之美。赫尔曼·梅尔维尔，杜鲁门·卡波蒂，乔治·奥威尔，弗拉基米尔·纳博科夫，E. B. 怀特……这些风格大师的行文，在平易朴素的语言外表下，蕴含丰富的暗示性和情感召唤力，闪耀着洁净而生动的内在光辉。记住：好文章未必都有华美的“凤头”，朴实的开头同样可以让读者产生共鸣。

To write is to talk to strangers. You want them to trust you. You might well begin by trusting them—by imagining for the reader an intelligence at least equal to the intelligence you imagine for yourself. No doubt you know some things that the reader does not know (why else presume to write?), but it helps to grant that the reader has knowledge unavailable to you.1 This isn’t generosity; it is realism. Good writing creates a dialogue between writer and reader, with the imagined reader at moments questioning, criticizing, and sometimes, you hope, assenting2. What you “know” isn’t something you can pull from a shelf and deliver. What you know in prose is often what you discover in the course of writing it, as in the best of conversations with a friend—as if you and the reader do the discovering together.

 

写作就是和陌生人交谈。你希望他们信任你。你最好一开始就信任他们，一开始就设想读者的聪明才智绝不逊色于你本人的聪明才智。当然了，，你知道一些读者不知道的事儿（要不然何必擅自写作？），可是假定读者也拥有你所不知道的知识却很有帮助。这种态度不是抬举对方，而是现实主义。好文章在作家和读者之间创造了一种对话，假想的读者不时质疑你、批评你，有时也赞成你——你希望如此。你的“知识”并不是你可以从某个书架上抽出来,然后传达给读者的什么东西。你散文中表现出来的知识，经常是你在写作过程中的发现，正如和朋友的谈话进入佳境——就好像你和读者共同做出了这个发现。

 

Writers are told that they must “grab” or “hook” or “capture” the reader. But think about these metaphors. Their theme is violence and compulsion3. They suggest the relationship you might want to have with a criminal, not a reader. Montaigne4 writes: “I do not want a man to use his strength to get my attention.”