John Cheever told me long ago that it was his readers who kept him going, people from every part of the country who had written to him. When he was at work, he was aware of these readers and correspondents in the woods beyond the lawn. “If I couldn’t picture them, I’d be sunk,” he said. And the novelist Wright Morris, urging me to get an electric typewriter, said that he seldom turned his machine off. “When I’m not writing, I listen to the electricity,” he said. “It keeps me company. We have conversations.”
很久以前，约翰•契弗⑧对我说，让他坚持不懈地写作的是读者，那些从全国各地给他写信的人。写作时，他觉得那些读者和写信人就在草坪那边的小树林里。"脑 子里要是没有他们，那我就完了，"他说。还有小说家赖特•莫里斯〜极力劝我去买一台电动打字机，说他自己的打字机都很少关掉。"不写作的时候，就倾听电流 的声音，"他说，"它陪伴着我。我们可以交谈。"
I wonder how Mr. Teachout might square such idiosyncrasies with his “art forms as technologies.” Perhaps he would argue that these two writers had somehow isolated themselves from “broad-based cultural influence.” Mr. Teachout has at least one laudable purpose: He thinks that he sees a way to bring together the Great Public of the movies with the Small Public of the highbrows. He is, however, interested in millions: millions of dollars, millions of readers, millions of viewers.
不知道蒂奇奥特先生如何使这些个人习性与"作为技术的艺术形式"两者相容。也许他会说，这两位作家由于某种原因脱离了 "广泛的文化影响"。蒂奇奥特先生至少有一个值得称道的目的：他认为自己发现了一个方法，能使"电影大众"与"精英小众"协调起来。但是，他感兴趣的却是 几百万这个数字：几百万美元，几百万读者，几百万观众。
The one thing “everybody” does is go to the movies, Mr. Teachout says. How right he is.
蒂奇奥特先生说，"人人"都做的一件事情，就是去看电影。他说得对极了。
Back in the 20’s children between the ages of 8 and 12 lined up on Saturdays to buy their nickel tickets to see the crisis of last Saturday resolved. The heroine was untied in a matter of seconds just before the locomotive would have crushed her. Then came a new episode; and after that the newsreel and “Our Gang.” Finally there was a western with Tom Mix, or a Janet Gaynor picture about a young bride and her husband blissful in the attic, or Gloria Swanson and Theda Bara or Wallace Beery or Adolphe Menjou or Marie Dressler. And of course there was Charlie Chaplin in “The Gold Rush,” and from “The Gold Rush” it was only one step to the stories of Jack London.
回想20年代，每到周六，8到12岁的孩子们就会排队买张五美分的电影票，看看上个周六的危机是如何化解的。女主人公在火车就要辗过她之前几秒钟被松了 绑。接着新的一集开始了，然后就是新闻短片和《小顽童》"。最后是一部汤姆•米克斯的西部片;或者是一部珍妮《盖诺的电影，讲述年轻的新娘和她丈夫在阁楼 上的幸福生活，或是葛洛莉娅•斯旺森和蒂达•巴拉，或是华莱士 •比里，阿道夫•门吉欧，玛丽•杜丝勒等影星主演的影片。当然，还有�死怼蹲勘鹆值摹短越鸺恰罚�而《淘金记》离杰克•伦敦的故事只不过一步之遥。
There was no rivalry then between the viewer and the reader. Nobody supervised our reading. We were on our own. We civilized ourselves. We found or made a mental and imaginative life. Because we could read, we learned also to write. It did not confuse me to see “Treasure Island” in the movies and then read the book. There was no competition for our attention.
那时候观众和读者并不对立。没人去管我们的阅读。我们自己做主，自我教化。我们发现或者说创造了充满想象的精神生活。我们因为能够阅读，所以也学会了写 作。先看电影《金银岛》，然后再去读这本书，并没有让我感到困惑。那时候，电影和书籍并没有为吸引我们的注意力而争先恐后。
One of the more attractive oddities of the United States is that our minorities are so numerous, so huge. A minority of millions is not at all unusual. But there are in fact millions of literate Americans in a state of separation from others of their kind. They are, if you like, the readers of Cheever, a crowd of them too large to be hidden in the woods. Departments of literature across the country have not succeeded in alienating them from books, works old and new. My friend Keith Botsford and I felt strongly that if the woods were filled with readers gone astray, among those readers there were probably writers as well.
美国有一件更引人注目的奇事，那就是我们的少数群体数目众多，规模庞大。几百万人构成一个少数群体，根本算不得反常。但实际上，还有几百万能识文断字的美 国人，相互之间处于隔离状态。可以说，阅读契弗作品的人，就是一个数量大得无法藏身于小树林的群体。全国各地的文学系没能让他们疏远书籍，无论是旧作还是 新书。我和我的朋友基思•博茨福德都深深感到，如果小树林中挤满了迷路的读者，那么其中很可能也有作家。
To learn in detail of their existence you have only to publish a magazine like The Republic of Letters. Given encouragement, unknown writers, formerly without hope, materialize. One early reader wrote that our paper, “with its contents so fresh, person-to-person,” was “real, non-synthetic, undistracting.” Noting that there were no ads, she asked, “Is it possible, can it last?” and called it “an antidote to the shrinking of the human being in every one of us.” And toward the end of her letter our correspondent added, “It behooves the elder generation to come up with reminders of who we used to be and need to be.”
要详细了解他们的生存状态，你只需办一份像《文学界》这样的杂志。一旦得到鼓励，原先的无望之辈，就会显山露水。一位早期读者来信说，我们的刊物"内容非 常新鲜、非常亲切"，"真实、不造作，阅读时不会让人分心。"她注意到上面没登广告，便问，"这行吗?能办得下去吗?"还将其称作"一味解毒剂，治疗我们 每个人身上的人性萎缩症。"在书信末尾，我们这位笔友补充道，"老一代人有必要站出来提醒一下，我们过去是什么样的人，应该成为什么样的人。"
This is what Keith Botsford and I had hoped that our “tabloid for literates” would be. And for two years it has been just that. We are a pair of utopian codgers who feel we have a duty to literature. I hope we are not like those humane do-gooders who, when the horse was vanishing, still donated troughs in City Hall Square for thirsty nags.
这正是当初我和基思•博茨福德期望中的"读书人小报"。两年来，刊物信守着这个理念。我们俩是一对乌托邦式的老怪物，总觉得对文学负有责任。我希望我们别像那些不现实的行善者，马匹都快绝迹了，居然还把料槽捐赠到市政广场，以备口渴的马儿饮水。
We have no way of guessing how many independent, self-initiated connoisseurs and lovers of literature have survived in remote corners of the country. The little evidence we have suggests that they are glad to find us, they are grateful. They want more than they are getting. Ingenious technology has failed to give them what they so badly need.
我们无从猜测，究竟有多少独立、自发的文学鉴赏者和爱好者在全国各个偏远的角落里生存了下来。手头的点滴证据表明，他们为能够找到我们而高兴，也很感激。他们期望的比眼下得到的要多，精巧的技术并没有满足他们的迫切需求。
英译汉参考译文：
注释
1) 本文作者索尔•贝娄(1915―2005)为美国作家、1976年诺贝尔文学奖得主.原文发表于1999年10月11曰《纽约时��》，后收入《纽约时��： 作家谈写作选辑》。标题中"文学界"(the republic of letters) ―词来自拉丁语Respublica literaria, 18世纪盛行于欧美，指的是一个由文人组成的、想象的"共和国"，不受地域和国别限制，这一概念对启蒙时代的学者影响很大。
2) 普鲁塔克(46? -120?),古希腊传记作家、散文家，著有《希腊罗马名人比较列传》等。
3) 斯维沃(1861―1928),意大利商人、作家，著有《泽诺的意识》等。
4) 安德烈•别雷(1880~1934),俄罗斯诗人、文艺理论家，著有《银鸽》、《彼得堡》等。
5) 圣经《创世纪》第18章：上帝欲灭所多玛城，亚伯拉罕代为求恳，上帝允诺若城内有十名义人.便不施惩罚。
6) 夏吕斯男爵为普鲁斯特小说《追忆似水年华》中的人物，生活堕落。
7)《大商船》是美国一份通俗杂志，创刊于1882年，一般认为是美国第一份通俗杂志，《萨维奇博士》是美国一份杂志，1933年至1949年发行，1964年起，杂志中的故事先后单独出版发行，影响颇大。
8) 斯宾格勒(1880~1936),德国史学家、哲学家，著有《西方的没落》等。
9) 汤姆•克兰西(1947―),美国通俗小说家，著有《猎杀红色十月》等，斯蒂芬•金(1947―),美国畅销作家,著有《肖申克的救赎》等。
10) 美国一部情景喜剧。
11) 约翰•契弗(1912―1982),美国小说家，著有《华普肖一家》、《大收音机》等。
12) 赖特•莫里斯(1910"―1998),美国小说家，著有《幻象之地》、《草原之歌》等。
13) 美国20世纪初一部流行的喜剧短片。
