经济学人401:书卷中的英伦风光

 　　Books and Arts; Book Review; English landscape;Up hill, down dale

　　文艺；书评；书卷中的英伦风光;风光无限好
　　TOM FORT pedals down the A303 in Britain’s soft south. Paul Barker trudges 1 round Hebden Bridge in the hard north. Both writers are seeking something distinctive 2 about their chosen places. By the same token, both are sensitive to the idea of “non-place”, a phrase Mr Fort uses to describe service stations, shopping centres, airports and the space-bubbles inhabited by drivers. Mr Barker does not name it, but he nonetheless conveys his sense of the same thing—at the fancy grocer’s, selling Japanese wakame and cranberry 3 pressé, or the executive houses with stone bed-warmers on the windowsill and Range Rovers in the drive. These places might be anywhere or, for his purposes, nowhere.
　　Tom Fort 骑自行车从英国平坦的南部A303道顺道而下。Paul Barker在崎岖的北部的Hebden Bridge附近艰难跋涉。两位作家都在寻找他们所选择的地点的独特之处。同样的，二者都敏感关注 “非场所” 这个概念：Fort 用“非场所”来称呼服务站、购物中心、机场或车手居住的“太空泡泡车”；Barker虽然没有使用“非场所”这个词，但他却表达了同一种概念：在销售日本若目和蔓越橘调酒苏打水的花里胡哨的小店铺、窗台上放着暖床石壶的"行政"别墅，路途中的揽胜越野车。这些地方既可以是任何地方，而相对他的所求目标，又或根本不存在。
　　Both try not to be nostalgic, but in the end neither can help himself. The conflict is roughest in “Hebden Bridge”, partly because the author himself is implicated 4. He grew up there and in neighbouring Mytholmroyd. Back in the 1940s the place was “enwrappe”, as he puts it, in “the old ways”. Weaving mills and sewing factories that had claimed generations of his family were still in business, oblivious 5 to their coming collapse 6. Mr Barker then made the now classic move, the first in his family, to leave home for university, and never come back, except to visit.
　　两者都尽量使自己不要太过于怀揣着乡愁，然而，他们最终都情不自已。这一冲突在《Hebden Bridge》一书中表现得尤为突出，有部分原因是因为Barker本人与此地有着千丝万缕的联系。这儿以及附近的Mytholmroyd是他成长的地方。追溯到二十世纪四十年代，按他的说法，这里曾以“老传统方式”“缠绕着”生存。那些让他的家族数代人为之操劳的纺织业与服装厂虽然运作如常，却没有预料到它们随后倒闭的命运。于是，Barker作出了（现在再普通不过的）举动：他成为家中第一个离乡进大学的人，并且除了探访便不再回来了。
　　Meanwhile, others came in, “offcomers”, with new ways—hippies, artists, pagans—just in the nick of time, as the demolition 7 balls were swinging and the stone terraces falling. They squatted 8 and protested. The planners retreated. Bookshops sprang up; mills and chapels 9 became workshops, galleries and flats—then luxury flats, bringing different newcomers. With great foresight 10, in the late 1970s Mr Barker began to tape-record the old inhabitants, whose stories now fill the most interesting pages of his book.
　　在同一时刻，（拆迁机上的）吊锤在空中来回摇晃撞击，大理石的阳台坠落尘土，在这千钧一发之际，“外来者”——嬉皮士，艺术家，异教徒以一种新潮的方式涌入当地，他们占据旧址以示抗议。规划者撤退了下去；新书店则纷纷开张，磨坊和小教堂变成了工厂，画廊和公寓（之后是那些奢侈公寓）迎来了新人落户。Barker卓有远见，早在二十世纪七十年代末，他就开始用录音带录下那些老居民的故事，现在那些故事占据了他书中最有趣的章节。
　　Mr Barker has also taped an ageing hippy, a graphics 11 designer, a tattoo 12 lady, puppeteers 13 and others, for he knows how much the place owes to them. But the book only really comes alive when he is talking to the old sexton or the weavers 14 who started work at 13 (part-time at 11). Mr Barker knows these people and they know him—and his uncles and cousins. They speak easily, casually 15, slipping out the detail that hits the spot: the smell of corduroy in the sewing room; a jar taken to the grocer for “a ha’p’orth[注10] of treacle”; words to a mill child (the author’s father) for steadying himself with one hand and working with the other—“Barker, we pay thee to use two hands.”
　　Barker也同样录下了一位老嬉皮士，一个平面设计师，一位纹身女，一些玩木偶剧的人，因为他清楚这片土地亏欠了他们（这些人对家乡的维护之恩）。但是，只有当Barker在与教堂司事或者那些从13岁开始做纺织工（兼职从11岁开始）交谈时，这本书才真正生动起来。他了解这些人，这些人也了解他，还有他的叔叔们以及表兄弟姐妹们。他们轻松而随意地交谈，言语中不经意间就道出了那些应景的细节：缝纫车间灯芯绒的气味、一只被带到杂货铺要求装上半便士糖浆的罐子、对那个用一只手稳定身体用另一只手工作的磨坊童工（即作者的父亲）说的话——“巴克，我们付你工资可是要用两只手工作的。”
　　Tom Fort’s book, named for a well-used English road, is a smoother ride: elegantly written, with a dry humour and an eyebrow 16 raised at the failed “smart solutions” of transport ministers. His object is to reveal the special beauty of the landscape, particularly Salisbury Plain[ and Stonehenge (pictured). Mr Fort is a charming and knowledgeable 17 guide, who can people the hills with shepherds, and the manors 18 and rectories with eccentric antiquarians; who can tell you about an ancient system for flooding water meadows or the common names of chalk-loving flowers and butterflies. It is enough to make Wiltshire your next holiday destination.
　　Tom Fort的书以一条常被使用的英国公路命名，并且有着更为流畅的内容：优雅的笔触，带着些冷幽默，使读者在读到交通部长失败的“聪明解决方案”时扬起眉毛。他的目的是为了展现了风景的特殊的美丽，特别是索尔兹伯里原野和巨石阵。Fort是一个富有魅力且极具知识的向导，他可以与牧羊人一起居住在山丘上，也可以与性情古怪的古玩收藏家一起居住在庄园中。他也可以向你讲述无边草甸的古老制度或是喜钙的花朵或蝴蝶的常用名。这些都足够使威尔特郡成为你下一次度假的目的地。
　　The bits that stick, though, are his “non-places”: the Little Chef restaurant at Popham, Amesbury’s Solstice Park, a business development, and above all a hilarious 19 riff on “The Ancestor”, a huge sculpture outside a Holiday Inn—itself an example of “Neolithic chic”, the brochure says. “Very boutiquey, very contemporary.”
　　然而，当论该书令人按卷难忘之处，都是Fort所谓的“非场所”：据小册子上所述，波帕姆的小厨师餐厅，埃姆斯伯里冬至公园，一桩生意的开发。“所”中之最是一句对假日酒店外一座巨大雕塑“祖先”的评论，令人捧腹——雕塑本身就是一个典型的“新石器时代的时尚女”，介绍手册上如是说：它“非常精品，非常现代”。