【经济学人】最伟大的美国在世作家丨2016.11.05丨总第725期

Hometown hero 

家乡英雄

ONE of the reading rooms of the public library in Newark, New Jersey, where the teenage Philip Roth fired his imagination, is an events room now, empty of books. Another is a dusty storeroom for the library’s collection of art-history volumes. Hardly anyone reads them.

在新泽西州纽瓦克市的公共图书馆里，菲利普.罗斯曾在其一间阅览室里留下了他想象的痕迹，今日这间阅览室已被改成了活动室，书已被搬空。而另一间阅览室则布满了灰尘，成了该馆的艺术-历史书籍储藏室，这些书籍鲜有人翻阅了。

• Fire one’s imagination 激发某人的想象力

Erected by public demand in the 1890s as one of the first civic buildings in what was then a swelling industrial town near the mouth of the Hudson river, the library is now as much an information service for the poor as a books repository. Half the 10,000 people who pass through the main library and its seven branches each week are looking for help getting access to social services, or to type out a job application, or to learn English. This is important work, but not what its ambitious architects—who modelled the library on a 15th-century Florentine palazzo—had in mind. Paying for the library is a constant worry; its main benefactor, the city, is one of America’s poorest. During the recession in 2008, the library had its annual funding of $11m slashed by a third.

19世纪90年代，在哈德孙河口旁的一座不断壮大的工业小镇上，该图书馆在民众的呼声中建成了，它在当时第一批公共建筑中的其中一座。现在它既为穷人提供信息服务，也是书籍储藏室。每周穿过主图书楼和它的七栋附楼的10,000人中，有一半的人是为了寻求帮助以获得社会服务，或是为了打印工作申请，又或是为了学习英语。为民众提供服务着实重要，然而这却不是当时以15世纪佛罗伦萨豪华宫殿为参考来修建该馆的建筑师们的初衷。图书馆的运营经费一直是一个令人头疼的问题。它所在的这座城，也就是它的捐助者，是全美最穷的地方。2008年经济萧条时，图书馆得到的年度拨款1100万，比以往拨款少了三分之一。 

• Repository 储藏室、仓库

• Benefactor 捐助者

纽瓦克图书馆

To this pathetic tale of urban decline, Mr Roth has added an interesting twist. The 83-year-old novelist, who used the library as a student and later researched his monumental “American Trilogy” in one of its reference rooms, plans to bequeath his personal library to it. Mr Roth has annotated many of the 4,000 books; they are a record of how, as well as what, the novelist spent a lifetime reading. It should be compelling to scholars and thrilling to his fans.

罗斯先生为城市没落这样一个令人同情的故事带来了一个有趣的剧情反转。罗斯先生现已83岁，当他还是学生的时候他常到这里读书，后来在创作巨作“美国三部曲”的时候，他也是在这里的一个资料室里完成了资料收集。现在，他计划将自己的私人藏书遗赠给这座图书馆，他在4000本书做了注释，这些注释记录了这位小说家一生的读书时光，在这里我们将有幸探知他读何书以及如何读书。这对学者们来说极具吸引力，对他的小说迷来说则更是天赐恩宠。

• Trilogy 三部曲、三部剧

• Bequeath 遗赠、把… 传下去

《美国三部曲》（从左至右）

《美国牧歌》、《我嫁给了共产党人》、《人性的污秽》

Timothy Crist, president of the library’s board, is naturally cock-a-hoop. He talks of the library becoming a global “literary destination”. “There are probably as many Roth fans in France as there are in America,” he says gleefully. The unloved art-history tomes will be shifted and their high-ceilinged storeroom lavishly renovated to accommodate Mr Roth’s gift.

蒂莫西.克里斯特是这座图书馆理事会的董事长，自然对此很得意。他说这座图书馆已经成为一座全球性的“文学胜地”。他兴高采烈地说：“也许在法国的罗斯迷一点也不少于在美国的罗斯迷呢”。无人问津的艺术-历史巨著将移迁别居，高房顶的储藏室将重新豪华布置，以栖罗斯之礼。

• Cock-a-hoop 洋洋得意

To evoke the author’s Connecticut house, the redesign of the library will have a modernist twist. Mr Roth is also donating a couple of his writing desks, reading chairs and a long refectory table, at which people will be able to peruse his books pretty much as he did. The books will be available to all. Tentative fundraising for the project has been “very encouraging” says Mr Crist; so much so, that he hopes to make this part of a much grander, $20m refurbishment of the entire library. Architects’ plans have already been approved.

为了给图书馆增添一点罗斯先生在康乃迪克州的家的气息，这座图书馆的新布局将会是现代主义风格的。罗斯先生也捐赠了几张写字台、几把椅和一张长餐桌，这样一来，人们便也能像他过去读书那样细品他的书籍了。人人皆能读他的藏书。（期待您的翻译，明天会有针对这句话的读者试译详解哟~）

最伟大的美国在世作家——罗斯

It is a splendid, quietly subversive, gesture by Mr Roth; a rich university would have paid handsomely for his books. It is also a reminder of how touchingly respectful of Newark, transformed though it has been by immigration, deindustrialisation and riots, he always is. Not for him or any of his fictional alter-egos the traditional contempt of the homeward-looking literary exile—of James Joyce for Ireland, the “old sow that eats her farrow”. Before entering the library, you pass through the straggly inner-city park outside it, where Neil Klugman, the librarian protagonist of Mr Roth’s “Goodbye, Columbus”, acknowledges his “deep knowledge of Newark, an attachment so rooted that it could not help but branch out into affection”. The real Mr Roth has explained his bequest as motivated by a “long-standing sense of gratitude to the city where I was born”.

罗斯这一举动很是漂亮，并且有点低调性反抗的意味；要想想一所有钱的大学定会出更高的价钱去买他的藏书。这同时也展现了他对纽瓦克市无限的诚挚敬意，尽管纽瓦克市已被移民、去工业化和暴动易容了不少。他抑或是他书中的自己，都没有文学流亡者身上所固有的、对家乡的藐视——如詹姆斯.乔伊斯对家乡爱尔兰的蔑视，可堪比“吃掉自己幼崽的老母猪”。要进入图书馆，需经过图书馆前面的市内公园，园里植物蔓生；罗斯《再见吧，哥伦布》里的主角尼尔克.鲁格曼是一名图书管理员，他就是在这公园里阐发了“他对纽瓦克市的深刻认识，他对纽瓦克市怀有极深的依恋，他的依恋不禁从内心中溢出成了爱慕”。罗斯先生解释道，他的遗赠“是对这座养育了我的城市的永远的感激”。

• deindustrialisation 去工业化

翻译 ▍栏目四第一组

审核 ▍MO

编辑 ▍璃儿