去美國(guó)之前必讀的5本書

Heading Stateside for your own voyage of discovery? Take some inspiration from a couple of these titles.
即將去美利堅(jiān)開啟你的探索之旅嗎？先來讀讀下面這幾本書獲得一點(diǎn)啟發(fā)吧。

1. Jack Kerouac, On the Road
《在路上》，杰克·凱魯亞克著

Published in 1957, Kerouac’s masterpiece captured the voice of America’s ‘Beat Generation’, an iconoclastic group of writers that sprung up in the post-war US as a reaction against mainstream social values:materialism, capitalist accumulation, passive acceptance of religious and ethical codes. On the Road describes the whistle-stop travels of Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty. The story is enriched by the clarity of Kerouac’s spontaneous prose, yet has resounded with young readers to this day for its underlying values of exploration, experimentalism, and the (ultimately fruitless) search for true value in life.
凱魯亞克在1957年出版的這部杰作發(fā)出了美國(guó)“垮掉的一代”的聲音，這一派作家的思想有悖于傳統(tǒng)信仰，在二戰(zhàn)后的美國(guó)迅速崛起，反應(yīng)了對(duì)戰(zhàn)后祖國(guó)主流價(jià)值觀，即物質(zhì)主義、資本積累、對(duì)宗教和道德準(zhǔn)則的被動(dòng)接受等的抗議。《在路上》描繪了薩爾（Sal Paradise）與狄安（Dean Moriarty）的美國(guó)之行。凱魯亞克的散文自然真切，也因?yàn)楣适聝?nèi)在的價(jià)值觀——探索、嘗試、（雖說最后沒有成功卻）不斷尋找生命的真實(shí)意義等——一直引起年輕讀者的共鳴。

2. John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath
《憤怒的葡萄》，約翰·史坦貝克著

Arguably Nobel Prize-winning American writer John Steinbeck’s greatest work, The Grapes of Wrath follows the fortunes of the Joads, a family of Oklahoman farmers forced to flee their Dust Bowl home during the Great Depression. On the road to California, they encounter hunger, poverty, abandonment, and exploitation, yet also great generosity, sacrifice, maturity, and finally rebirth. Upon publication, the novel’s accessible prose and sensitivity to the plight of America’s labouring poor both resonated with the country’s working classes and aroused the ire of some of Steinbeck’s contemporaries. A true paean to the power of the human spirit, it is studied in high school English classrooms to this day.
《憤怒的葡萄》可以說是諾貝爾文學(xué)獎(jiǎng)獲得者、美國(guó)作家約翰·史坦貝克最出色的長(zhǎng)篇小說，故事描寫了約德家族的興衰。20世紀(jì)30年代大蕭條時(shí)期，這個(gè)俄克拉荷馬州的農(nóng)家因?yàn)槠滢r(nóng)場(chǎng)位于美國(guó)中部的“灰盆”（當(dāng)時(shí)因?yàn)闅夂蛟蝾l繁爆發(fā)大規(guī)模沙塵暴），被迫逃離家園。在走向加州的路上，他們?cè)庥隽损囸I，貧窮，被遺棄和剝削等悲慘經(jīng)歷，同時(shí)也見證了同胞的慷慨、犧牲、成熟和最后的重生。小說剛剛出版時(shí)，因史坦貝克的文筆樸實(shí)感性，體恤民情，引起了美國(guó)工人階級(jí)的共鳴，但同時(shí)也激起了一些同時(shí)代人士的怒火。這部小說歌頌了人文精神的力量，迄今都是美國(guó)學(xué)生英語課堂里的必學(xué)材料。

3. Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
《禪與摩托車維修藝術(shù)》，羅伯特·梅納德·波西格著

Simultaneously a thrilling piece of travel literature and a philosophical treatise, Robert M. Pirsig’s 1974 novel Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance traces the author’s bike trip from Minnesota to California. Interspersed with vivid sweeps of the American prairies, each chapter also chronicles a series of philosophical discussions as a father recovering from electroconvulsive therapy gradually tries to reconcile his own worldviews with those of the people around him and liberation from a materialist spiritual vacuum. Drawing on both the Western and Eastern philosophical canon, this challenging read ultimately serves as a platform for Pirsig to introduce his own Metaphysics of Quality.
這是一部很有意思的旅游文學(xué)作品，也可以被看作一篇哲學(xué)論文。波西格74年出版的長(zhǎng)篇小說《禪與摩托車維修藝術(shù)》描繪了作者從美國(guó)明尼蘇達(dá)州到加州的一段騎行之旅。除了對(duì)北美莽莽大草原的生動(dòng)描述，每一章里，波西格還針對(duì)一系列哲理性話題進(jìn)行了探討。隨著作者的討論，主人公——一位從電痙攣治療中逐漸恢復(fù)的父親，不斷嘗試協(xié)調(diào)自己和周圍人的世界觀，并試圖擺脫物質(zhì)文化帶給他的空虛感。波西格借用東西方的哲學(xué)論點(diǎn)，闡述了自己的“質(zhì)量形而上學(xué)論”，雖然要看懂相當(dāng)不易，一旦讀完卻絕對(duì)會(huì)受益匪淺。

4. Alice Walker, The Color Purple
《紫色姐妹花》，愛麗絲·沃克著

Alice Walker’s Pulitzer Prize-winning epistolary novel The Color Purple won huge acclaim for its sensitive exploration of the lives of African-American women in America’s Deep South during the 1930s. Set in rural Georgia, Celie, the novel’s protagonist, suffers immense abuse and victimisation as a black girl growing up in a racially segregated community. Later, her meeting with Shug Avery, a glitzy singer and magic-maker, helps Celie push back against the repressive society around her and take charge of her own destiny.
由愛麗絲·沃克所著，曾獲普利策文學(xué)獎(jiǎng)的書信體小說《紫色姐妹花》，因其對(duì)30年代居住于美國(guó)南方腹地的非裔美國(guó)女性生活的感性探討，備受稱贊。故事發(fā)生于喬治亞州的鄉(xiāng)村地區(qū)，當(dāng)時(shí)因種族隔離制度，小說的黑人女主角西麗（Celie）在成長(zhǎng)過程中遭受了大量的虐待和迫害。后來，她認(rèn)識(shí)了一位耀眼的歌手兼魔術(shù)師阿弗利（Shug Avery），由此開始抵抗這個(gè)壓抑的社會(huì)并主動(dòng)掌握自己的命運(yùn)。

5. Philip K. Dick, The Man in the High Castle
《高堡奇人》，菲利普·迪克著

A novel of diffuse influences and phenomenal imaginative power, Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle challenged the foundations of American exceptionalism. Dick postulates an alternate ending to the Second World War, one which witnessed the defeat of the Allies, the conquest of the American continent by the Japanese Empire and Nazi Germany, and the subsequent Cold War ‘fought’ between the two new Axis Powers. Suffused with East Asian philosophy, and featuring passages written in stunning Japanese-English creole, the book explores the veracity of the reality we live in, how we negotiate ‘true’ or ‘fake’ identities in the face of persecution, and how much true ‘value’ can be derived from any sense of national pride.
這本小說的靈感集眾家之長(zhǎng)，作家的想象力也令人贊嘆。《高堡奇人》挑戰(zhàn)了“美國(guó)例外主義”的基本原則。迪克在書中假設(shè)二戰(zhàn)有了另外一種結(jié)局，反法西斯同盟被打敗，全北美洲都被日本帝國(guó)和納粹德國(guó)所征服，接下來這兩大軸心國(guó)之間便開始“冷戰(zhàn)”。整本書充滿了東亞哲學(xué)原理，還包含了迪克自編的令人驚嘆的“日英混合語”。作者通過創(chuàng)造這個(gè)平行世界，探討了現(xiàn)實(shí)世界的真實(shí)性，人們面對(duì)迫害表達(dá)個(gè)性的方式，以及從民族自豪感中到底能獲得多少真實(shí)“價(jià)值”。

（來源：滬江英語 編輯：許晶晶）