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| 2015/05/12 13:27:54瀏覽660｜回應1｜推薦16 | |
| 德州大哥近作。
此篇乃書癡囈語，講一個不務正業的專業人士的異常癖好。我的朋友德州大哥，從第一本 Isak Dinesen 的 Out of Africa, 到 Faulkner 的 Wild Palm, 共蒐羅了133本現代文庫（Modern Library）的善本書。他也分享了多年來在 e-Bay 與人勾心鬥角競標買書的經驗。 德州大哥念過的書，大多數我皆未曾聽聞。有時他在我的部落格留言，用不同的化名，我一查，皆是某英美文學作家的名字；這多少透露他讀書的“進度” -- 至於到底何謂“進度“，只有他知道。 我挑了幾段翻譯。無法全文翻譯，主因是現在力不從心。我的選擇帶有"課綱微調"的精神，翻譯也有點隨興；知我而不罪我者，唯大哥乎？ -------- 三墳五典八索九丘 ---------- It is done; there will be no more trophies to claim, no next prey to track down, no other rival hunters to beat, and never again another monkey to chase off my back. I hope how I start this babbling hasn't got your hope high thinking that we would be discussing ‘The Hunger Game’ and its sequels, of which I fortunately know only by its title name and some plot synopsis out of Wikipedia. I want to talk about a little nasty hobby of mine called books collecting, and to be more specific, collecting the Random House’s Modern Library reprint series published between 1980 and 1990. My infatuation with Modern Library (ML) began on Oct. 17th, 1986, when I received my first ML book, a copy of Isak Dinesen’s ‘Out of Africa’ mailed to me from my then girlfriend (now darling wife) to answer my desperate need for anything readable to fend off death from boredom in the Navy training camp – so much about marching out there to defend my beloved motherland with my life. That Dinesen book wasn’t particularly well written but its print, the binding, and especially the dust jacket design had me at the first sight. In the early 1980s Random House contracted Stephan Alcorn to create a series of woodcuts for the new ML dust jacket design and about one-third of the series had the privilege of wearing them on the cover. Placed inside my locker right next to a bottle of cheap-ass paper glue - I don't know why Navy issued it to us - my copy of Out of Africa had its dust jacket badly damaged when the glue got tipped and poured all over it. I tried my best to clean out the glue and salvage the dust jacket but it came out badly scarred. Later on I had many opportunities, in Taiwan or in the States, to get another copy but I never gave that idea any serious thought. How could I? However wrinkled and faded in color it has been and shall always be my first love and my last passion. I remember vividly reading (savoring is probably a much better word) a few pages every night inside my mosquito net before lights-out. If that theme couldn't inspire in me all those foolish Colonial-British Northwestern Front notions that I am still regurgitating today, I don't know what else could. If the Dinesen was my Alpha then the Faulkner's 'Wild Palm' would be my Omega, which I'd won fair and square on e-bay two weeks ago. Through all those years of bidding wars I have created a list of the e-bay queers like me, all in our 'user-names', of course, and have developed certain respects for my fellow sportsmen, to the point that I would take a casual look at a bid item - just long enough to find out who the highest bidders was - and estimated quite accurately what his maximum bid would be to aid my bidding decision. Now that I don't need to monitor my e-bay account anymore, I actually miss all these long-time rivals of mine, toward whom I had developed a somewhat twisted sense of camaraderie - something along the line of once having their swords crossed the two warriors would have their fates forever linked. I guess I should still stop by every once in a blue moon to jack up the bid price with no intention to buy. After all, some jackass out there had done it to me more than a few times so what goes around, comes around, and I can always defend my action as a pure and jolly good sport. The crown jewel of my 133 volumes of ML collection is a 3-volume set of Gibbon's Decline and Fall of Roman Empire. Actually, I have 2 ML sets of that book and the specific one I am referring to is a copyright infringing edition that I bought in Taiwan during my Navy days, from the city of Kao-Shong generally known as a cultural desert. On one sunny Sunday afternoon in November I had a half-day shore leave, too short for an eight-hour train ride back to Taipei, so I decided to check out the city a bit. After a hearty lunch I wandered in my girly Navy uniform along some boulevard having an impressively vulgar but fortunately easily-forgetful name and soon found myself inside a bookstore selling foreign books. 我蒐集的133本現代文庫叢書當中，可稱極品者，要算一套三冊吉朋所著的羅馬帝國興亡史。其實我另有個一套兩冊的版本；這一套三冊的秘典，是我服役海軍時、在俗稱文化沙漠的高雄所買的盜版書。記得是十一月某個陽光普照的週日下午，有半天假，時間不夠回台北，遂決定在高雄逛逛。飽餐一頓後，穿著冶豔的海軍制服的我順著一條名字俗氣的大馬路溜達，不知不覺竟晃到一家外文書店裡頭。 Now that I think of it, the bookstore must have been very close to where a medical college locates because it sold mainly medical science books of which I had no interest at all. I browsed around the 'general book' section and accidentally bumped into an aged nun, a Dutch blonde who must have been quite a looker when she was young (please feel free to invent your own story about why she took the vow.) She was trying to reach a children's book on the top shelf and in getting it for her I ran into my set of Gibbon. I guess one can attribute my finding the set of Decline and Fall to a divine will, or something to the same effect but only issued from the 'opposite order.' 現在回想起來，那家書店一定位於某醫學院附近，因為店裡大多陳列醫學書籍。我對醫學書籍既無興趣，便在一般書籍區瀏覽，湊巧遇見一金髮荷蘭籍的年長修女。她年輕時應是個美人，至於為何成為修女，則非吾所能臆測。書架頂層有本童書，她構不著，我便幫她拿，就在這當口我發現了那套吉朋。我想，這也算是某種神意吧？ The set was a truly wonder of forgery art, just a bit poorer in print and paper quality, and having a rather ugly red cloth binding rather than the imitated Moroccan leather of a genuine ML. I bought the whole set for $1,450 NT, not a small fortunate when measured against 1980s' Taiwanese cost of living. But no one could really say no to a set of Gibbon, could they? 這套書洵乃仿冒藝術的傑作，除了印刷與紙質稍劣，以及醜陋的紅色布面封皮（而非正版現代文庫所用的摩洛哥皮套），此外幾可亂真。整套花了我台幣1450元，以1980年代的台灣物價而言不算便宜；但誰能輕易放過一套吉朋而不欲據為己有呢？ Why the hell would a publisher commit himself to such an unprofitable business act stays a mystery to me forever. Perhaps he wanted to show off his profession skill and pride, and to what a glorious and benevolent end he had brought us the poor (speaking both literally and figurative) readers. 到底是哪個想不開的出版商為此無利可圖之舉？此事永遠成謎了。或許為了向同行炫耀他獨步文林的仿冒絕技吧？但不論其動機為何，我們這些經濟與文化兩皆困乏的讀者卻深受其惠。 Nowadays whenever I heard Taiwanese people debating about the Culture Industry, of what is and what isn't, or who qualifies and who doesn't, I thought about my copy-right infringing Gibbon. Perhaps the free-roaming spirit of piracy in the good-old days was as close to a Culture Industry the island is ever capable of, and after all it wasn't such a bad thing either. I daresay its motif, execution, and results beat 99% of whatever nonsense coming out of the place for the next 20-plus years on. My point is: If you really must copy someone else's work, at least copy something that's the best of its class. Why waste time copying a soap opera about a bunch of good-looking (actually, not *that* good-looking) boys and girls, and staple (perhaps they should consider using Navy paper-glue) to it a silly title crammed with bubbly words like meteor, garden, or whatever for reasons incomprehensible to any rational human mind as these words often have almost nothing to do with the program? 現在，每逢聽到台灣種種關於文創產業的爭辯（什麼算做文創，誰夠資格稱作文創，等等），我就想到盜版的吉朋。或許當年那種逍遙法外的海盜精神，是台灣小島的文創產業所能達到的最佳境界。畢竟那也不算什麼真正的壞事。我敢說，當時的“海盜文創”，從宗旨到執行到成果，恐怕勝過之後二三十年所做的99%的無謂虛功。我的意思是：就算要抄襲別人的作品，至少也挑最好的來抄。幹嘛浪費時間抄那些俊男美女當家的肥皂劇，然後釘上個什麼流星啊、花園啊，凡稍具理智的人皆無法理解的腦殘名稱（且往往與劇情毫不相干）。 I'm sorry about the ranting above.; it's rather unnecessary but certainly feels great once executed. Do allow me get off my moral high horse now and wrap up this nonsense about my private obsession: Now that I have acquired all my ML books, is this the beginning of the end or the end of the beginning for me? (Good god I really can't stand that bulldog Winston.) I guess now I will have no choice but to read all my books; what a bummer! Or, since I did hear about this famous story of a London bookbinder turned publisher promised (in 1906) to publish new and beautiful editions of world's classics at one shilling a volume, 'to appeal to every kind of readers: the worker, the student, the cultured man, the child, the man and the woman...', perhaps I shall look into that promise instead. I want to know: Wouldn't such a grand ambition end up producing a most magnificent library for everyman? Did such a set of Everyman's Library truly exist in the past or was it just another El Dorado legend for the chowder-heads like me? A battle might have been concluded but the war rages on. |
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