閱讀時(shí)間：7分鐘

原文鏈接：

www.farnamstreetblog.com/2016/03/relationship-between-reading-and-writing/

翻譯：cyalice

閱讀更多的書(shū)能使我們成為一位更好的作家嗎？答案是肯定的。閱讀和寫(xiě)作是同一枚硬幣的兩面。正如安妮·拉莫特所說(shuō)，“反之亦然 ——寫(xiě)作使你成為更好的讀者。”

當(dāng)一個(gè)人更深刻的敬佩和專注閱讀一本書(shū)時(shí)，就能知道寫(xiě)作有多么難，特別是還要使寫(xiě)作看起來(lái)很輕松就難上加難了。你開(kāi)始以作家的眼光去閱讀。你找到了一種全新的方式去探索一位作家是如何用新穎，大膽和原創(chuàng)的方式描繪他或她的觀點(diǎn)。

史蒂芬·金，歐內(nèi)斯特·海明威和大衛(wèi)·福斯特·華萊士以他們充滿智慧的經(jīng)驗(yàn)和我們分享了閱讀和寫(xiě)作關(guān)系的看法。

為什么要閱讀

在「寫(xiě)作：工藝回憶錄」中，斯蒂芬·金解釋了為什么閱讀對(duì)于想寫(xiě)作的人來(lái)說(shuō)是如此重要。

如果你想成為一名作家，你必須做兩件事情，比其他人更多地閱讀和寫(xiě)作。沒(méi)有任何捷徑和方法繞過(guò)我所知道的這兩件事情。

我看書(shū)很慢，但我通常每年都會(huì)讀七十八本書(shū)，其中的大部分是小說(shuō)。我不是為了學(xué)習(xí)寫(xiě)作而讀書(shū)，我讀書(shū)只是因?yàn)槲蚁矚g閱讀。這是我晚上做的，踢在我的藍(lán)色椅子上。同樣，我也沒(méi)有看小說(shuō)學(xué)習(xí)小說(shuō)的藝術(shù)，只是因?yàn)槲蚁矚g故事。然而，還有一個(gè)學(xué)習(xí)過(guò)程。

閱讀的真正重要性在于它與寫(xiě)作過(guò)程形成了輕松和親密的關(guān)系;憑著作家的作品我們可以來(lái)到這位作家的寫(xiě)作國(guó)度。不斷閱讀會(huì)把你帶到一個(gè)你無(wú)意識(shí)情況下渴望寫(xiě)作的國(guó)度（或者是心靈模式——如果你更喜歡這個(gè)詞的話）。閱讀還能不斷給你提供不斷增長(zhǎng)的知識(shí)，包括已知的、未知的、真實(shí)的、新鮮的、有用的或者是正在消逝的、已經(jīng)消逝的。當(dāng)你閱讀得越多，就越不可能用你的筆或文檔來(lái)愚弄自己。

要讀什么

叔本華說(shuō)：??“一個(gè)人永遠(yuǎn)不會(huì)讀過(guò)太少的壞書(shū)，或是太多好書(shū)。壞書(shū)是智力毒藥，他們摧毀心靈。”

雖然這可能是眾所周知的規(guī)則，但King卻說(shuō)不好的書(shū)在教他如何寫(xiě)作上起了重要的作用。

「小行星礦工」（這不是標(biāo)題，但足夠接近）是我人生中重要的一本書(shū)。大多數(shù)作家可以記住開(kāi)啟他/她思想的第一本書(shū)：我可以做得比這更好。天啊，我真的可以做得比這更好！對(duì)于正在奮斗的作家而言，還有什么比意識(shí)到自己所寫(xiě)的文章毫無(wú)疑問(wèn)地比另一些人被付費(fèi)所寫(xiě)的文章好更讓作家們感到振奮和鼓舞呢？

閱讀糟糕的散文能讓一個(gè)人知道寫(xiě)作過(guò)程中不能做什么像小行星礦工（或??娃娃谷，??鮮花的閣樓，和??廊橋遺夢(mèng)，僅舉幾例）是值得用一學(xué)期去學(xué)習(xí)的。

另一方面，良好的寫(xiě)作教導(dǎo)一位正在學(xué)習(xí)的作者關(guān)于寫(xiě)作的風(fēng)格，優(yōu)雅地?cái)⑹觯楣?jié)發(fā)展，創(chuàng)造美麗的人物和真實(shí)的講故事。像「憤怒的葡萄 」這樣的小說(shuō)???可能會(huì)讓一個(gè)新的作家感到絕望和嫉妒 -——“我永遠(yuǎn)無(wú)法寫(xiě)出任何好的東西，除非我活到1000歲” - 但這樣的感覺(jué)也可以作為一種刺激，使作家更努力地工作，設(shè)立更高的目標(biāo)。被偉大的故事和偉大的寫(xiě)作相結(jié)合的作品打擊其實(shí)是每一個(gè)作家寫(xiě)作過(guò)程中必不可少的一部分。直到你完成寫(xiě)作，否則你不能奢望在寫(xiě)作過(guò)程中不會(huì)被其他作家所影響。

誰(shuí)讀

1935年，在海明威寫(xiě)給Esquire的文章中，他回憶了當(dāng)時(shí)他給一個(gè)知名作家的建議。這個(gè)有趣的故事出現(xiàn)在海明威寫(xiě)作上。

小孩：作家必須讀什么書(shū)？

YC [你的通訊員]：他應(yīng)該閱讀所有的書(shū)，以便他知道他要擊敗什么。

小孩：他沒(méi)有精力閱讀所有的書(shū)。

YC：我沒(méi)有說(shuō)他能做到，我的是他應(yīng)該做。當(dāng)然，他是做不到的。

小孩：那什么書(shū)是必須讀的呢？

YC：他應(yīng)該讀托爾斯泰的??戰(zhàn)爭(zhēng)與和平??和??安娜·卡列尼娜，由，??福樓拜的包法利夫人?～（此處省略）等30多本書(shū)。

小孩：太快了，我記不下來(lái)了。還有多少本？

YC：我會(huì)再給你一天的時(shí)間記下來(lái)。大約還有三倍那么多。

小孩：一位作家應(yīng)該閱讀這么多書(shū)？

YC：所有這些，還有更多。否則他不知道他要擊敗什么。

小孩：你所說(shuō)的“必須打敗”是什么意思呢？

YC：寫(xiě)以前被人寫(xiě)過(guò)的沒(méi)有什么用，除非你可以寫(xiě)得更好。當(dāng)今時(shí)代的作家必須寫(xiě)前人未寫(xiě)過(guò)的或者寫(xiě)出比前人寫(xiě)過(guò)更好的書(shū)。讓作家知道他寫(xiě)得如何的唯一方式就是和已故的作家做對(duì)比，而這是當(dāng)代已存在的作家所不能提供的。因?yàn)樗麄兊拿暿怯膳u(píng)家創(chuàng)造的。批評(píng)家們總是需要一個(gè)季度里被擁護(hù)為天才的人，一個(gè)他們完全理解的人，并且能在贊美中得到安全感。但是當(dāng)天才的作家逝世時(shí)，批評(píng)家們就不復(fù)存在了。?一個(gè)認(rèn)真的作家所競(jìng)爭(zhēng)的應(yīng)該是他所知道的已逝的最好作家。?它就像與時(shí)間的小小競(jìng)跑，而不是常識(shí)去打敗跟他同個(gè)跑道的人。除非他與時(shí)間賽跑，否則他永遠(yuǎn)不會(huì)知道他能夠?qū)崿F(xiàn)什么。

小孩：但閱讀所有好的作家可能會(huì)讓你感到挫敗。

YC：那就感到挫敗吧。

如果您一直想閱讀經(jīng)典書(shū)，卻一直做不到，請(qǐng)嘗試將任務(wù)分解成可管理的塊。

何時(shí)何地閱讀

史蒂芬·金建議有志的作家在任何可能的地方閱讀。

閱讀是作家生活的創(chuàng)作中心。我隨身帶著一本書(shū)，找到了各種各樣的機(jī)會(huì)沉下心去閱讀。訣竅就是在囫圇吞棗中盡可能細(xì)地去閱讀。在等候室里都是書(shū)。演出開(kāi)始前的戲劇大廳，漫長(zhǎng)而無(wú)聊的結(jié)賬等候線，甚至可以在開(kāi)車時(shí)進(jìn)行閱讀。感謝有聲讀物革命。在我每年讀的書(shū)中，有六到十幾本是通過(guò)磁帶朗讀進(jìn)行閱讀的。

無(wú)論您是用“小啜飲”的方式閱讀還是如一團(tuán)熊熊火焰般閱讀，如果你想成為一名作家就要更多地找時(shí)間進(jìn)行閱讀。

你必須廣泛閱讀，不斷改進(jìn)（和重新定義）你的作品。我很難相信一個(gè)閱讀很少的人能期望人們喜歡他們寫(xiě)的內(nèi)容。但這種情況是真實(shí)存在的。如果每當(dāng)一個(gè)人告訴我他/她想成為一名作家，但沒(méi)有時(shí)間閱讀時(shí)我就能獲得一個(gè)硬幣，那我現(xiàn)在都可以買一個(gè)相當(dāng)不錯(cuò)的牛排晚餐。更簡(jiǎn)單直白的說(shuō)，如果你沒(méi)有時(shí)間閱讀，你也沒(méi)有時(shí)間寫(xiě)作。

如何閱讀

作家會(huì)使用不同的閱讀技巧？大衛(wèi)·福斯特·華萊士（Foster Wallace）提出了費(fèi)曼原則來(lái)教你如何寫(xiě)得更好。他說(shuō)，學(xué)習(xí)寫(xiě)作需要“以不同的方式使用注意力”。

不僅要閱讀了很多，而且要注意句子放在一起的方式，所加入的條款，句子組成一個(gè)段落的方式。當(dāng)你拿起一本你真正喜歡的書(shū)，把自己當(dāng)成一個(gè)傻子去做練習(xí)。讀一頁(yè)書(shū)三遍、四遍，放下它，然后嘗試去模仿它的用詞，直到你的肌肉已經(jīng)形成了你所喜歡的文字表達(dá)方式的思維模式。如果你跟我一樣，那么你會(huì)發(fā)現(xiàn)其實(shí)你是無(wú)法復(fù)制它的。

...

聽(tīng)起來(lái)真的很愚蠢，但實(shí)際上你可以看一頁(yè)文字，對(duì)吧？而且“哦，那真是太好了”，但是在你開(kāi)始嘗試復(fù)制它們之前，你并沒(méi)有感覺(jué)到在這段文字中之前所帶給你的感覺(jué)。

原文：

During the Q&A for How to Read a Book, someone asked whether reading a lot makes us better writers. The short answer is yes. Reading and writing are two sides of the same coin. As Anne Lamott points out, the converse is also true – writing makes you a better reader.

One reads with a deeper appreciation and concentration, knowing now how hard writing is, especially how hard it is to make it look effortless. You begin to read with a writer’s eyes. You focus in a new way. You study how someone portrays his or her version of things in a way that is new and bold and original.

Speaking with the wisdom of experience, Stephen King, Ernest Hemingway and David Foster Wallace share their thoughts on the relationship between reading and writing.

Why to Read

In On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, Stephen King explains why reading is so important for those who want to write.

If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot. There’s no way around those two things that I’m aware of, no shortcut.

I’m a slow reader, but I usually get through seventy or eighty books a year, mostly fiction. I don’t read in order to study the craft; I read because I like to read. It’s what I do at night, kicked back in my blue chair. Similarly, I don’t read fiction to study the art of fiction, but simply because I like stories. Yet there is a learning process going on.

…

The real importance of reading is that it creates an ease and intimacy with the process of writing; one comes to the country of the writer with one’s papers and identification pretty much in order. Constant reading will pull you into a place (a mind-set if you like the phrase) where you can write eagerly and without self-consciousness. It also offers you a constantly growing knowledge of what has been done and what hasn’t, what is trite and what is fresh, what works and what just lies there dying (or dead) on the page. The more you read, the less apt you are to make a fool of yourself with your pen or word processor.

What to Read

Schopenhauer said “one can never read too little of bad, or too much of good books: bad books are intellectual poison; they destroy the mind.”

While that may be true as a general rule, King talks about the role badly-written books played in teaching him to write.

Asteroid Miners (which wasn’t the title, but that’s close enough) was an important book in my life as a reader. Almost everyone can remember losing his or her virginity, and most writers can remember the first book he/she put down thinking: I can do better than this. Hell, I am doing better than this! What could be more encouraging to the struggling writer than to realize his/her work is unquestionably better than that of someone who actually got paid for his/her stuff?

One learns most clearly what not to do by reading bad prose – one novel like Asteroid Miners (or Valley of the Dolls, Flowers in the Attic, and The Bridges of Madison County, to name just a few) is worth a semester at a good writing school, even with the superstar guest lectures thrown in.

Good writing, on the other hand, teaches the learning writer about style, graceful narration, plot development, the creation of beautiful characters, and truth-telling. A novel like The Grapes of Wrath may fill a new writer with feelings of despair and good old-fashioned jealousy – “I’ll never be able to write anything that good, not if I live to be a thousand” – but such feelings can also serve as a spur, goading the writer to work harder and aim higher. Being swept away by a combination of great story and great writing – of being flattened, in fact – is part of every writer’s necessary formation. You cannot hope to sweep someone else away by the force of your writing until it has been done to you.

Who to Read

In an article Hemingway wrote for Esquire in 1935, he recounts the advice he gave an aspiring writer known as Maestro, Mice for short. This entertaining excerpt appears in Hemingway on Writing.

Mice: What books should a writer have to read?

Y.C. [Your Correspondent]: He should have read everything so that he knows what he has to beat.

Mice: He can?t read everything.

Y.C.: I don?t say what he can. I say what he should. Of course he can?t.

Mice: Well what books are necessary?

Y.C.: He should have read War and Peace and Anna Karenina, by Tolstoi, Midshipman Easy, Frank Mildamay and Peter Simple by Captain Marryat, Madame Bovary and L?Education Sentimentale by Flaubert, Buddenbrooks by Thomas Mann, Joyce?s Dubliners, Portrait of the Artist and Ulysses, Tom Jones and Joseph Andrews by Fielding, Le Rouge et le Noire and La Chartreuse de Parme by Stendhal, The Brothers Karamazov and any two other Dostoevskis, Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, The Open Boat and The Blue Hotel by Stephen Crane, Hail and Farewell by George Moore, Yeats Autobiographies, all the good De Maupassant, all the good Kipling, all of Turgenev, Far Away and Long Ago by W.H. Hudson, Henry James? short stories, especially Madame de Mauves and The Turn of the Screw, The Portrait of a Lady, The American-

Mice: I can?t write them down that fast. How many more are there?

Y.C.: I?ll give you the rest another day. There are about three times that many.

Mice: Should a writer have read all of those?

Y.C.: All of those and plenty more. Otherwise he doesn?t know what he has to beat.

Mice: What do you mean “has to beat”?

Y.C.: Listen. There is no use writing anything that has been written before unless you can beat it. What a writer in our time has to do is write what hasn?t been written before or beat dead men at what they have done. The only way he can tell how he is going is to compete with dead men. Most live writers do not exist. Their fame is created by critics who always need a genius of the season, someone they understand completely and feel safe in praising, but when these fabricated geniuses are dead they will not exist. The only people for a serious writer to compete with are the dead that he knows are good. It is like a miler running against the clock rather than simply trying to beat whoever is in the race with him. Unless he runs against time he will never know what he is capable of attaining.

Mice: But reading all the good writers might discourage you.

Y.C.: Then you ought to be discouraged.

If you've always wanted to read the classics but keep putting it off, try breaking the task into manageable chunks.

When & Where to Read

Stephen King suggests aspiring writers read wherever and whenever possible.

Reading is the creative center of a writer’s life. I take a book with me everywhere I go, and find there are all sorts of opportunities to dip in. The trick is to teach yourself to read in small sips as well as in long swallows. Waiting rooms were made for books – of course! But so are theater lobbies before the show, long and boring checkout lines, and everyone’s favorite, the john. You can even read while you’re driving, thanks to the audiobook revolution. Of the books I read each year, anywhere from six to a dozen are on tape. As for all the wonderful radio you will be missing, come on – how many times can you listen to Deep Purple sing “Highway Star”?

Whether you read in “small sips” or curled up by the fire with a glass of wine, the point is that you need to find the time to read if you want to be a writer.

You have to read widely, constantly refining (and redefining) your own work as you do so. It’s hard for me to believe that people who read very little (or not at all in some cases) should presume to write and expect people to like what they have written, but I know it’s true. If I had a nickel for every person who ever told me he/she wanted to become a writer but “didn’t have time to read,” I could buy myself a pretty good steak dinner.? Can I be blunt on this subject? If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.

How to Read

Should aspiring writers use a different technique when reading? David Foster Wallace suggests a variation on the Feynman technique to teach yourself to write better. Learning to write, he says, requires “l(fā)earning to pay attention in different ways”.

Not just reading a lot, but paying attention to the way the sentences are put together, the clauses are joined, the way the sentences go to make up a paragraph. Exercises as boneheaded as you take a book you really like, you read a page of it three, four times, put it down, and then try to imitate it word for word so that you can feel your own muscles trying to achieve some of the effects that the page of text you like did. If you’re like me, it will be in your failure to be able to duplicate it that you’ll actually learn what’s going on.

…

It sounds really, really stupid, but in fact, you can read a page of text, right? And “Oh, that was pretty good…” but you don’t get any sense of the infinity of choices that were made in that text until you start trying to reproduce them.