查看完整版本: 【分享】普拉切特卡内基奖获奖感言（附刚做完的译文）

【分享】普拉切特卡内基奖获奖感言（附刚做完的译文）

为奇幻文学辩护，写得很有意思。

Speech by Terry Pratchett winner of the CILIP Carnegie Medal 2001
Winning title: The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents

I’m pretty sure that the publicists for this award would be quite happy if I said something controversial, but it seems to me that giving me the Carnegie medal is controversial enough. This was my third attempt. Well, I say my third attempt, but in fact I just sat there in ignorance and someone else attempted it on my behalf, somewhat to my initial dismay.

The Amazing Maurice is a fantasy book. Of course, everyone knows that fantasy is 'all about' wizards, but by now, I hope, everyone with any intelligence knows that, er, what everyone knows...is wrong.

Fantasy is more than wizards. For instance, this book is about rats that are intelligent. But it also about the even more fantastic idea that humans are capable of intelligence as well. Far more beguiling than the idea that evil can be destroyed by throwing a piece of expensive jewellery into a volcano is the possibility that evil can be defused by talking. The fantasy of justice is more interesting that the fantasy of fairies, and more truly fantastic. In the book the rats go to war, which is, I hope, gripping. But then they make peace, which is astonishing.

In any case, genre is just a flavouring. It's not the whole meal. Don't get confused by the scenery.

A novel set in Tombstone, Arizona, on October 26, 1881 is what– a Western? The scenery says so, the clothes say so, but the story does not automatically become a Western. Why let a few cactuses tell you what to think? It might be a counterfactual, or a historical novel, or a searing literary indictment of something or other, or a horror novel, or even, perhaps, a romance – although the young lovers would have to speak up a bit and possibly even hide under the table, because the gunfight at the OK corral was going on at the time.

We categorize too much on the basis of unreliable assumption. A literary novel written by Brian Aldiss must be science fiction, because he is a known science fiction writer; a science fiction novel by Margaret Attwood is literature because she is a literary novelist. Recent Discworld books have spun on such concerns as the nature of belief, politics and even of journalistic freedom, but put in one lousy dragon and they call you a fantasy writer.

This is not, on the whole, a complaint. But as I have said, it seems to me that dragons are not really the pure quill of fantasy, when properly done. Real fantasy is that a man with a printing press might defy an entire government because of some half-formed belief that there may be such a thing as the truth. Anyway, fantasy needs no defence now. As a genre it has become quire respectable in recent years. At least, it can demonstrably make lots and lots and lots of money, which passes for respectable these days. When you can by a plastic Gandalf with kung-fu grip and rocket launcher, you know fantasy has broken through.

But I’m a humorous writer too, and humour is a real problem.

It was interesting to see how Maurice was reviewed here and in the US. Over there, where I've only recently made much of an impression, the reviews tended to be quite serious and detailed with, as Maurice himself would have put it, 'long words, like "corrugated iron"' Over here, while being very nice, they tended towards the 'another wacky, zany book by comic author Terry Pratchett'. In fact Maurice has no wack and very little zane. It's quite a serious book. Only the scenery is funny.

The problem is that we think the opposite of funny is serious. It is not. In fact, as G K Chesterton pointed out, the opposite of funny is not funny, and the opposite of serious is not serious. Benny Hill was funny and not serious; Rory Bremner is funny and serious; most politicians are serious but, unfortunately, not funny. Humour has its uses. Laughter can get through the keyhole while seriousness is still hammering on the door. New ideas can ride in on the back of a joke, old ideas can be given an added edge.

Which reminds me... Chesterton is not read much these days, and his style and approach belong to another time and, now, can irritate. You have to read in a slightly different language. And then, just when the 'ho, good landlord, a pint of your finest English ale!' style gets you down, you run across a gem, cogently expressed. He famously defended fairy stories against those who said they told children that there were monsters; children already know that there are monsters, he said, and fairy stories teach them that monsters can be killed. We now know that the monsters may not simply have scales and sleep under a mountain. They may be in our own heads.

In Maurice, the rats have to confront them all: real monsters, some of whom have many legs, some merely have two, but some, perhaps the worse, are the ones they invent. The rats are intelligent. They're the first rats in the world to be afraid of the dark, and they people the shadows with imaginary monsters. An act of extreme significance to them is the lighting of a flame.

People have already asked me if I had the current international situation in mind when I wrote the book. The answer is no. I wouldn't insult even rats by turning them into handy metaphors. It's just unfortunate that the current international situation is pretty much the same old dull, stupid international situation, in a world obsessed by the monsters it has made up, dragons that are hard to kill. We look around and see foreign policies that are little more than the taking of revenge for the revenge that was taken in revenge for the revenge last time. It's a path that leads only downwards, and still the world flocks along it. It makes you want to spit. The dinosaurs were thick as concrete, but they survived for one hundred and fifty million years and it took a damn great asteroid to knock them out. I find myself wonder wondering now if intelligence comes with its own built-in asteroid.

Of course, as the aforesaid writer of humorous fantasy I'm obsessed by wacky, zany ideas. One is that rats might talk. But sometimes I'm even capable of weirder, more ridiculous ideas, such the possibility of a happy ending. Sometimes, when I'm really, really wacky and on a fresh dose of zany, I'm just capable of entertaining the fantastic idea that, in certain circumstances, Homo Sapiens might actually be capable of thinking. It must be worth a go, since we've tried everything else.

Writing for children is harder that writing for adults, if you're doing it right. What I thought was going to be a funny story about a cat organizing a swindle based on the Pied Piper legend turned out to be a major project, in which I was aided and encouraged and given hope by Philippa Dickinson and Sue Coates at Doubleday or whatever they're calling themselves this week, and Anne Hoppe of HarperCollins in New York, who waylaid me in an alley in Manhattan and insisted on publishing the book and even promised to protect me from that most feared of creatures, the American copy editor.

And I must thank you, the judges, in the hope that your sanity and critical faculties may speedily be returned to you. And finally, my thanks to the rest of you, the loose agglomeration of editors and teachers and librarians that I usually refer to, mostly with a smile, as the dirndl mafia. You keep the flame alive.

译文

要是我说些有争议的话，这项奖的推广者肯定会很高兴。但我觉得把卡内基奖授予我这件事本身就够争议了。这是我第三次尝试竞争这个奖。说是第三回，其实我坐那毫不知情，别人代我办的，这让我开始还有点不高兴。

《神奇的莫里斯》是本奇幻书。当然了，大家都知道奇幻书“是讲巫师”的；但现在我希望每个有点头脑的人都明白，恩，大家知道的那些，是错的。


奇幻远不止巫师那么简单。比如说，这本书是讲有头脑的老鼠，但它也讲了一个更奇妙的观点：人也可以有头脑。把一件昂贵的首饰扔进火山来摧毁邪恶，远没有邪恶可能用交谈来化解的想法奇妙。讲正义的奇幻比说仙女的奇幻更有意思，也是真正“奇幻”的。这本书里的老鼠和人类开战，我希望这情节有吸引力。但让人吃惊的是，后来它们和人讲和了。

不管怎么说，书的类型只是佐料，绝不是饭菜的全部。别被背景迷惑了。

一部小说的故事发生在亚利桑那州的汤姆斯通，1881年10月26日，是什么？西部小说么？场景、衣服看起来都是，但故事并不因此自动成为西部小说。为什么让几枝仙人掌左右了你的想法？它可能是反事实的，或是历史小说，或是对什么事情的尖刻控诉，或是恐怖小说，甚至可能是浪漫小说——不过年轻的恋人恐怕得说话大点声，还得躲在桌子底下，那会墓碑镇正枪声大作呢。


我们给文学作品分类，太依赖先入为主的一些想法，而这些想法本身是靠不住的。布莱恩•阿尔迪斯写的文艺小说肯定是科幻，因为他是著名的科幻作家；而玛格丽特•阿特伍德笔下的科幻小说是文艺的，因为她是文艺小说家。最近出的碟形世界小说触及信仰的本质、政治，甚至还包括新闻自由，但只要在书里放进一只讨厌的龙，人们就会称你为“奇幻”作家。

总地说，这不是在抱怨。但就像前面提到的，我以为如处理得当，龙并非奇幻作品的要素。真正的奇幻是一个人和一个印刷厂对抗政府，就因为一个模糊的信念——这世上还可能有事实真相这东西。无论如何，现在奇幻不需要人为它辩护了。这些年它已成了一种挺体面的类型小说。至少大家眼见着它赚很多很多很多钱——正是现在“体面”的标志。你能买到带功夫抓地力和火箭发射器的塑料甘道夫，就知道奇幻小说有多大突破了。

但我还是一个幽默作家，幽默真是个问题。

看英美怎么评论《神奇的莫里斯》很有意思。在那边我刚给人留下点印象，评论倾向于较严肃，而且用了很多长词——莫里斯恐怕也会这么说——如“波状铁皮”。而这边呢，尽管对你很好，评论倾向于说“喜剧作家特里•普拉切特又一本古怪滑稽的书”。实话说莫里斯没什么古怪，也很少滑稽，不过是场景好笑罢了。

问题在于我们认为好笑的反面是严肃，实际不是这样。就像切斯特顿指出的，好笑的反面是不好笑，而严肃的反面是不严肃。本尼•希尔好笑但不严肃，罗利•布莱默好笑又严肃。大部分政治家都很严肃，但不幸的是，不好笑。幽默有它的用处。笑能溜进钥匙孔，而严肃还在砸门呢。新想法可以用笑话的力量轻松进入人们的心，老想法也能借幽默增加锋芒。

这倒提醒了我，现在没多少人读切斯特顿，他的写作风格、方法属于另一个时代，会让现代人不耐烦。你不得不读用小有差异的语言写的文章。就在像“嗨，老板，来一品脱你这最好的英国麦芽酒！”这样的风格弄得你有些兴味索然时，眼前突然出现一段精彩文字，表达得那么恰如其分。他为童话的辩解很有名。在某些人看来，童话给孩子讲有妖怪，切斯特顿反驳说，小孩早就知道有妖怪，童话告诉他们妖怪是能被杀死的。而我们现在明白妖怪并不光是那些身上长鳞，睡在一座山下的家伙，它们可能就在我们的头脑里。

《神奇的莫里斯》里，这些老鼠不得不面对各种各样的妖怪，有的有很多条腿，有的只有两条，但有的，也许更可怕，是它们自己创造的。这些老鼠很聪明。它们是世上最早怕黑暗的老鼠，在它们的想象里，那些阴暗处充满了妖怪。它们最不寻常的举动就是划亮火柴。

人们问过我，写这本书的时候脑海里是否有现在国际形势的影子。答案是没有。就算是老鼠，我也不愿把它们变成就手可得的比喻来侮辱它们。只不过是现在的国际形势，很不幸又是那种不变的、愚蠢的老样子，到处是妖怪、杀不死的恶龙，而这些东西就是这世界造出来的。我们四下望去，看到的外交政策不外乎是为了上次被报复而报复。这条路只能让世界往下坡去，可大家还都沿着它成群结队地走。这事让你想啐一口。恐龙结实得像混凝土，生存了一亿五千万年，而一颗巨棒的小行星就把它们清除了。现在我琢磨人的智力是不是天生就带着这样的小行星来的。

当然了，就像前面说的，我是写幽默奇幻的作家，自然净是古怪滑稽的念头。其中之一是老鼠也没准能说话。可有时我还能蹦出更古怪荒唐的想法，比如快乐结尾的可能。我特别不着调，小丑习气又发作的时候，脑子就能自娱自乐地冒出奇妙的念头：特定环境下，人类真没准能思考哩。既然我们别的招都试遍了，这绝对值得一试。

给孩子写书比给成人写书难，要是你干得没错的话。原来想只是个好玩的故事，根据穿花衣的吹笛手传奇编的，讲一只猫设局骗钱，结果成了个大工程。其间得到道布尔戴出版社的费力帕•迪金森和苏•蔻茨（不管他们这周叫什么名字）的帮助、鼓励和带来的新希望；纽约哈珀科林斯出版社的安•霍珀，在曼哈顿一条小巷里堵住我，坚持要出版这本书，甚至还打包票说保护我不受最可怕的人（美国版编辑）的侵扰。

我还要感谢评委，希望你们的理性和评判能力能迅速恢复。最后，感谢在座的其他人，编辑、教师还有图书馆员们——我经常笑称为穿裙子的黑手党，是你们让火焰不灭。

剛看完譯文版的“衛兵，衛兵”

译文版上直接从原书里借鉴的插图不知该说什么好。。。

插图是国人做的，原版碟子没有插图的，只有童书蒂芬妮系列章节开头有小的题图。

那不知这些是啥

[url]http://www.paulkidby.net/GalleryPop6.html[/url]

[url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Guards-Guards-cover.jpg[/url]

前面一个是给碟形世界做周边的一个插图画家，这些图并不在原著里面。后一个是封面，一直和TP合作的插图画家Kirby的作品。封面和插图是两个概念。

好 我更正
译文版上直接从Paul Kidby和Jorsh Kirby的封面那里借鉴的插图不知该说什么好。。。

题头的图基本是照抄啊。。。

你能买到带功夫抓地力和火箭发射器的塑料甘道夫
= =我不得不说我被这句话给雷得相当焦
另，卡内基奖啊，普拉切特真是……