关于流行小说家的几点思考（附英文）

J·B·普里斯特利（1933）

在开始写作另一部小说之前，我想找到一种新的叙事形式，一种令我振奋的叙述形式。我厌倦了小说的

常见形式。这不是因为我小说写得太多，而可能是因为我读了太多。现在，叙述者的常用手法似乎乏味得可怕。我想，这就是为什么最近我开始写剧作的一个原因：一段时间里完全摆脱叙事体是一个可喜的改变。传统的混合手法是部分客观，部分主观。“意识流”的技巧则与多萝西·理查森小姐、詹姆斯·乔伊斯先生和弗吉尼亚·伍尔夫夫人联系在一起。我发现，它比混合手法更令人生厌。“意识流”非常容易写砸。当然，上边的三位小说家做得很好。但就算是这样，一小段意识流就能让我够受。

在所有的小说手法中，“意识流”无疑是最为“凌乱”的一种。一旦你掌握它，一旦你从最初的惊喜冲击中回过神来，它的凌乱很快就开始让你厌烦。此外，这种手法严重限制了小说读者的理解范畴：它总是让我联想到一个邋遢的女人，整天

穿着宽大晨衣和寝用拖鞋在屋子里晃荡，懒得澡都不洗，更别提什么改变，连走出去看一看外边的世界都不会。对我来说，即使是这一手法的最卓越运用者，他们似乎都根本不是真正的小说家，而是荒诞的独白者和散文诗人，就像伍尔夫夫人和乔伊斯先生。后者曾经声称，小说因他而重获生机。但是，最近一代的小说家却给我不同的经验。在我看来，他的影响似乎非常小，而且实际上正在减弱。对于伍尔夫夫人，非常明智地说，她更受钦佩而不是被模仿。

对于小说的创作，意识流的相反取向是完全的客观手法。即是说，小说全部由描述和对话组成，看不到人物的内心活动。这也可以写得很有意思。海明威就是这样做的。当然，他的写作具有非常强烈的个人风格。这对他自己来说是一个好的表现手段，但是其他人就应该避免了。其实，我心里的这种客观小说与有声电影剧本没有什么不同。对话和描述交替出现，并且地点时时变化。这样，你就可以呈现出广阔的场景。

现代小说朝着两个方向推进。“意识流”作家是为向内。向外，则是要包罗最可能多的人物角色。这种“博览法”正是我们时代的特色：为你连续展现所有相关人物的生命快镜头。那些小说描述着宾馆、旅舍、船舶、办公室等等。它们都是这种“博览法”的例子。显然，它满足了我们这个时代的某种特定需求。并且，它可能是在对抗将人类抽象化的趋势。精细化的社会组织中，人的抽象是不可避免的。对于某个人物，

这些小说并没有告诉你那么多。但是，它们在人物人性化的问题上成功了。可以这么说，之前仅仅是社会机器一部分的东西都被赋予了人性。当然，它们也有对幕后世界的强烈兴趣。我怀疑，这些小说写得还算好并不难，但是难于成为文学作品。

尽管我自己有一些失败，但是我仍然坚守在小说创作伊始就持有的信念：当代小说的拯救之道自始至终都是某种戏剧化象征主义。这是一种在多层世界同时推进的叙事手法。小说，如果迷失于主观性之中，就不再成其为小说。但是，它也必须具有它的主观旨趣。这又是一种精神与灵魂的“戏剧”。对我而言，激起我最浓厚兴趣的现代小说似乎大都是象征主义。按照我的意思，托马斯·曼的《魔山》就是一个相当不错的例子。只是在某些地方，他完全抛弃了现实主义叙事的常调与虚词。这样，中间章节的那些长篇议论成为了不和谐音。

不过，我不喜欢象征主义故事。我们的时代中，这种故事有好几个德语例子。

究其本身而言，这种叙事所表现出的外部事件荒诞不经。在你理解到它的象征之前，它根本就毫无意义。如此这般，设想你的故事是一个人奋力拯救他的房子。结果我们说，这座房子实际上是这个人灵魂的象征。但是，我想事情不是这么回事。如果房子被视为房子而不是灵魂的象征，那么这个故事就是荒谬可笑的。这还不如直接去写灵魂的那些事，并且也就完事了。不，这种叙事变得喜闻乐见也应该是可能的。它可以讲述成一个人与他房子的奇遇。

你追求的是什么？当然，小说的吸引力同时存在于不同的层面上。这正是为什么《唐吉诃德》就这样成为巨著的原因。并且，它还可能被视为是所有小说的模式。在这里，我要承认这也是我在小说中所一直追求的东西。我还得承认，我从没有成功过。我的读者不多，不过我相信比大多数评论家更接近成功。他们常常急近过度，他们会容许我这么说。与这种文学差事相比，我认为那些乖张哗众的常用噱头十足就是小儿科。他们是所谓的小说“知识分子”，“意识流”之流，大块啃书的坐家，以及吹毛钻角精工控。

是的，我同时要承认，这些小说家所努力的事比我做得成功。或许，我的问题是，无论绸缪多么细致，我那由衷而蒂固的“常识”都会发挥它的作用。或者说，如果你坚持，那就是一种彻底平庸的执念。看来，我没有卓绝而高妙的思想。一旦完全置身小说创作，我就开始自娱自乐。有些人真的拥有卓绝而高妙的头脑。我自得其乐的眼界不会入他们的法眼。所以，即使不再流行已久，我还会仍然是一个“流行小说家”。

这不止是可能吧。

Before I begin writing another novel, I should like to find a new method of narration, a form that would excite me. Not because I 

write so much but probably because I read so much fiction, I am tired of the 

usual form of the novel. The ordinary 

devices of the narrator now seem horribly tedious. I think that is one reason why I have 

recently taken to writing plays: it is a pleasant change to get rid of 

narration altogether for a time. I find the “stream of consciousness” method, the method associated with Miss Dorothy Richardson, Mr James Joyce, and Mrs Virginia Woolf, even more tiresome than the conventional mixed method, partly subjective, partly objective. It is very easy to do badly, and even when done well, as it has been by the three novelists above, a little of it goes along way with me. It is easily the sloppiest of all methods in fiction, and once you are acquainted with it, once you have recovered from the first delightful shock of surprise, its sloppiness soon begins to annoy you. Moreover, this method very severely restricts your scope in the novel: it always reminds me of some slatternly woman who slops about the house all day in kimono and bedroom slippers, being too lazy to bath, change, and go out to have a look at the world. The writers who have done most with this method all seem to me people who are not really novelists at all, but fantastic monologuists and prose poets, like Mrs Woolf and Mr Joyce. The latter declared at one time that the novel was beginning all over again with him, but from my experience of the fiction of the newest generation, it seems to me that his influence is very small indeed and is actually waning. And Mrs Woolf is, very wisely, more admired than imitated.

It might be fun to go in the opposition direction, producing novels that were completely objective in manner, novels made up entirely of description and dialogue, with not a glimpse of anybody’s mind in them. Mr Ernest Hemingway has done this, of course,but very much in his own intensely individual manner, which is a fine instrument
for his own purpose but should be avoided by anyone else. No, the kind of objective novel I have in mind would be not unlike the scenario of a talking film, with its alternations of dialogue and description and its frequent changes of locality. With that you could present a wide scene. The modern novel has moved in two directions, inward with the “stream of consciousness” writers, and outward, that is, taking in the largest possible number of people as characters. This extensive method is very characteristic of our time: all these novels about hotels, boarding houses, ships, offices, and so on, that show you quick successive glimpses of the lives of all the people concerned, are examples of this extensive method. Obviously it fulfils some particular need of our own time, and may possibly be a protest against the tendency, inevitable in an elaborate social organization, to turn human beings into abstractions. These novels do not tell you a great deal about anybody, but they do succeed in humanizing, so to speak, what was before merely a part of the social machinery.
They have too, of course, a strong behind-the-scenes interest. I suspect that these novels are easy to do passably well, but hard to turn into literature.

In spite of some failures on my own part, I still cling to the belief I held when I first started writing fiction, that the way of salvation for the contemporary novel, which if it becomes lost in subjectivity ceases to be a novel and yet must have its subjective interests, its drama of the mind and soul, is through some kind of dramatic symbolism, in narratives that would move in more than one world at once. Most of the modern novels
that have excited my deepest interest seem to me to have been symbolical. (Mann’s Magic Mountain is a fairly good example of what I mean, though in places he abandons any pretence of ordinary realistic narrative, and the long debates in the middle chapters are out of key.) But I do not like the kind of story, of which there are several contemporary German examples, in which the narrative of outward events is preposterous in itself and means nothing at all until you understand its symbolism. Thus, suppose you have s story of a man trying to save his house. The house, we will say, is really a symbol of the man’s soul.

But it will not do, I argue, if the story is ridiculous when the house is seen as a house and not as a soul; better to write about the soul and have done with it. No, it ought to be

possible to enjoy the narrative as an account of a man’s adventures with his

house. What you are after, of course, is

the appeal on several different levels at the same time. That is why Don Quixote such is a colossal achievement, and may be regarded as

the pattern of all fiction. I will

confess, here and now, that this is what I have always been after in novels,

and I will also confess that I have never succeeded, though I believe I have

come nearer to success with a small number of readers than most reviewers, who

are usually in too much of a hurry, would allow. Compared with this task, I consider the

ordinary antics of so-called “intellectual” novelists, the “stream of

consciousness” people, the writers who cram in chunks of erudition, the

elaborate hair-splitters, to be so much child’s play; though I will admit at

once that these novelists do what they set out to do more successfully than I

do. Probably, my trouble is that no matter

how carefully I plan, a cheerful and robust common sense, or, if you insist,

downright commonplaceness of outlook, will come in. It seems I have not a distinguished and

fastidious mind; and once I am fairly set in a novel, I begin to enjoy myself,

and the sight of my enjoying myself is apparently not pleasing to people who

really have distinguished and fastidious minds.

So I shall remain a “popular novelist” even when – and this is more than

likely – I have long ceased to be popular.

J B

Priestley, “Some Reflections of a Popular Novelist” (1933)