Words per Minute

Ishare my name with an aerobatic bird that can whiz across a whole summer sky in seconds. A swift is so equipped for speed that it can scarcely cope with being stationary. I once came across an unlucky young specimen that had somehow grounded itself on a lawn and， with its minuscule legs and long encumbering wings， couldn’t regain the air. I lifted it on the perch of my finger and it was gone in a flash.

我的名字和一種具有特殊飛行技能的鳥同名，這種鳥能在幾秒鐘內(nèi)嗖地掠過夏日的天空。Swift，即褐雨燕，在速度方面稟賦異常，靜止時幾乎不知所措。有一次，我撞見一只不幸的幼鳥，不知怎的，擱淺在草坪上，因細小的雙腿和碩長礙事的翅膀，無法重回空中。我捧起它，把它托在指尖，轉(zhuǎn)眼它就飛走了。

But I am a novelist， so I also know about slowness. Novels， in my experience， are slow in coming， and once I’ve begun them I know I have years rather than months of work ahead of me. This doesn’t worry me. I like the slow pace of novel writing， the feeling that I have employment for a long period. I don’t crave the quick result that would only leave me with the problem of what to do next.

至于我，我是個小說家，了解慢的狀態(tài)。根據(jù)我的經(jīng)驗，小說的誕生是個緩慢的過程，一旦開始動筆，我知道擺在面前的是幾年而不是幾個月的工作。這并不讓我憂慮苦惱。我喜歡小說寫作的悠緩節(jié)奏，喜歡被一件事長期占據(jù)的感覺，不渴望速成，那只會留給我接下來該做什么的難題。

All novelists must form their personal pacts in some way with the slowness of their craft. There are some who demand of themselves a “rate of production， ” for whom it’s a matter of pride to complete， say， a book every year. But I think most novelists， after writing their first two or three， take philosophical stock of the fact that in an average lifetime they will produce a finite and not so large number of novels and that the point of being a novelist is not to see how many you can write or how quickly you can do it. Quite a few novelists， I suspect， even carry in their heads the notion of the one， all-sufficient and perfect novel they might write， which would render all further effort redundant. It’s only because this ideal and singular novel is unattainable that they have to keep writing another， then another.

所有小說家都必須以某種方式和自身技藝的快慢達成個人約定。有些小說家對自己有“產(chǎn)出率”的要求，對他們而言，比方說一年完成一本書，是一種驕傲。可我認為，大多數(shù)小說家在寫了前兩三部作品后，會泰然地思量一個事實：一般說來，他們一生可創(chuàng)作的小說數(shù)量有限，不會很多，身為小說家的意義，不在于能寫多少或能寫多快。我猜，不少小說家腦中甚至懷有這樣的念頭，他們也許能寫出一部獨領(lǐng)風(fēng)騷、圓滿無缺的完美小說，令其他所有努力都成多余。只因這本理想的孤作不可企及，所以不得不堅持一本接一本的寫下去。

It can be dismaying， all the same， for a novelist to compare the slowness of the writing with the speed of the reading. Novels are read in a matter of days， even hours. A writer may labor for weeks over a particular passage that will have its effect on a reader for an instant — and that effect may be subliminal or barely noticed. The vibrations of thought and feeling that a single sentence in its context can release in a reader may be too rapid for measurement. “It leapt off the page” is what we say of a happy reading experience.

可是，比較寫作的緩慢與閱讀的速度仍舊會打擊小說家的士氣。閱讀小說是幾天、乃至幾小時內(nèi)的事。作者也許要千辛萬苦、花數(shù)星期寫出一個段落，在讀者身上產(chǎn)生的效應(yīng)只是短暫一瞬——而且這種效應(yīng)可能是潛意識或幾乎難以察覺的。上下文中單獨一個句子能讓讀者釋放出的思維與情緒的波動，也許快得無法測量。有時候我們用“一目十行”形容愉快的閱讀體驗。

Yet we generally think of reading as an innately slow activity — hardly an activity at all. We do it statically， seated in a chair or lying in a bed. We do it “in our own time， ” and we can take our time over it. We apparently control the tempo， but a novel can also take us involuntarily out of normal time and allow us to inhabit a strange zone that’s not strictly temporal. The chief spur to reading may be that we want to know what happens next， but it would be a poor and unsatisfying novel that merely hurried us forward in this way. A good novel is like a welcome pause in the flow of our existence; a great novel is forever revisitable. Novels can linger with us long after we’ve read them — even， and perhaps particularly， novels that compel us to read them， all other concerns forgotten， in a single intense sitting. We may sometimes count pages as we read， but I don’t think we look at our watches to see how time is slipping away.

不過，我們通常把閱讀視作天生慢節(jié)奏的活動——簡直算不上活動。閱讀時，我們處于靜止狀態(tài)，坐在椅子上或躺在床上。我們“利用屬于自己的時間”，可以從容不迫地做這件事。顯然，掌控節(jié)奏的是我們?？尚≌f也會不知不覺地帶我們脫離常規(guī)時間，讓我們置身于一個不嚴格以時間為順序的奇特地帶。閱讀的主要動力或許來自我們想知道接下來發(fā)生了什么，可假如一本小說只是這樣一味地趕我們前行，那定是拙劣而不盡人意的。好的小說，猶如我們?nèi)松L河中一個備受歡迎的驛站；優(yōu)異的小說永遠值得反復(fù)回顧。小說可以在讀完后久久縈繞在我們心頭——一本小說甚至?xí)仁刮覀兺浧渌檻]，以一個不變的緊張坐姿把書讀完。有時，我們可能一邊閱讀，一邊數(shù)頁數(shù)，可我相信，沒有人會看表，看看到底過去了多少時間。

That， in fact， is the position of the skeptical nonreader who says， “I have no time to read， ” and who deems the pace of life no longer able to accommodate the apparently laggard process of reading books. We have developed a wealth of technologies that are supposed to save us time for leisurely pursuits， but for some this has only made such pursuits seem ponderous and archaic. ?“Saving time” has made us slaves to speed.

事實上，這正是對閱讀抱持懷疑的、不讀書的人的立場，他們說，“我沒時間讀書，”認為生活的步調(diào)已不再能容下明顯落后拖沓的讀書過程。我們發(fā)展了眾多旨在幫我們節(jié)省時間、享受休閑活動的科技手段，可對部分人而言，那只會讓這些休閑活動顯得吃力過時?！肮?jié)省時間”令我們成了速度的奴隸。

A good novel should satisfy on both counts. Its immediate verbal impact can be faster， more complex and subtler than any mouse-clicked effect on a pulsating screen. But the total， absorbed experience of a novel actually removes us from the tyranny of our sense of time. It’s like a little life within life， obeying its own permissive laws of narrative physics. My most recent novel has at one level a time span of just a few crucial days， though much of it is more hour by hour. There are episodes that occur in the same time it takes to read them. At another level it spans whole lives and takes in more than one generation.

好的小說應(yīng)同時滿足兩方面的要求。第一時間的語言沖擊力，它比熒光閃閃的屏幕上鼠標的點擊效果更加快速、復(fù)雜、微妙，小說整體帶來的引人入勝的體驗，實際則是讓我們擺脫主宰一切的時間感。那像人生里的一小段人生，遵從敘事學(xué)自身許可的法則。我的最新小說，在一個層面上，時間跨度只有關(guān)鍵的幾天，而其中大部分更多是以小時而計算。里面的情節(jié)，發(fā)生的時間與閱讀所花的時間一樣。在另一層面，故事跨越了人物的一生，涵蓋了不止一代人。

As a form， the novel has this wonderful elasticity and unrestricted velocity， yet it is also unrushed and unrushing. However much actual time a reader brings to it， it is entirely amenable and cooperative. It will always be patiently there.

小說這一體裁，具有這種奇妙的伸縮性和無限制的速率，然而它既不被動、也不主動地倉促疾行。無論讀者抽出多少實際時間給它，它都完全接納合作，始終耐心地安守本分。

I’m not disheartened by the thought that what takes me years to write may occupy a reader for just a few hours. To have made， perhaps， a benign intrusion into someone else’s life for even such a short duration seems to me quite a feat of communication， and if that communication becomes for readers not just a means of passing those hours， but a time-suspending experience that stays with them well after they’ve closed the book and that they might one day wish to return to， then that’s as much as any novelist can hope for.

想到我用數(shù)年寫成的作品，可能只占去讀者幾個小時，我并不氣餒。能友好地闖入別人的人生，即便是停留如此短暫的時光，在我看來，已是相當(dāng)了不起的壯舉，如果這種交流，不僅成為讀者消磨那幾個小時的方式，而且在合上書后，變成駐留在他們心中的一次時間暫停的經(jīng)歷，并且或許有一天希望重拾這種經(jīng)歷，作為小說家，夫復(fù)何求？?

Graham Swift因《杯酒留痕》(Last Orders) 獲1996年布克獎。他的最新小說為《愿你在此》(Wish You Were Here)。