作家之蜜糖，读者之砒霜 | 经济学人文化
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Culture | The death of the hatchet job
文化 | 辣评之死
英文部分选自经济学人20230729期文化板块
Culture | The death of the hatchet job
文化 | 辣评之死
Critics are getting less cruel. Alas
唉呀妈呀，这批评家们嘴咋不毒了？
This is good news for writers and bad for readers
作家之蜜糖，读者之砒霜
It is delicious to know that one reviewer called John Keats’s poetry “drivelling idiocy”. It is more pleasing yet that Virginia Woolf considered James Joyce’s writing to be “tosh”. And surely no one can be uncheered to hear that when the critic Dorothy Parker read “Winnie the Pooh” she found it so full of innocent, childish whimsy that she—in her own moment of whimsical spelling—“fwowed up”.
有一位评论家曾经锐评约翰·济慈（John Keats）的诗歌是“没有脑子的胡言乱语”，人们对此津津乐道。更有意思的还有弗吉尼亚·伍尔夫（Virginia Woolf）将詹姆斯·乔伊斯（James Joyce）的作品称作是“废话连篇”。当然，人们在听闻评论家多萝西·帕克（Dorothy Parker）辣评《小熊维尼》时，也无不为之会心一笑，因她说她在阅读该书时发现其中充斥着无厘头式童言稚语，以至于她说自己都“呕吐吐了（fwowed up）”——她模仿书中拼写把throwed up写成fwowed up。
For the reader, life offers few purer pleasures than a very good, very bad review. For the writer, life offers few purer pains. After Parker, A.A. Milne never wrote another “Whimsy” the Pooh again; the mere word “whimsical” became “loathsome” to him. After the “drivelling idiocy” comment, Keats obligingly dropped dead. “Snuffed out”, Lord Byron wrote, “by an article”.
对于读者来说，生活中鲜有比阅读一篇出色而犀利的书评更纯粹的享受。但对于作者来说，生活中鲜有比此更深切的苦楚。在帕克评论过之后，艾伦·亚历山大·米尔恩（A.A. Milne）再也未创作过另一部“无厘头的”小熊维尼，于他而言“无厘头”这个词变成了“恶心”。济慈在“没有脑子的胡言乱语”这一评论之后就此离世了。拜伦勋爵说他“被一篇文章扼杀了”。
注释：
艾伦·亚历山大·米尔恩，英国著名剧作家，小说家，童话作家和儿童诗人，《小熊维尼》的作者。
Literary life rarely offers such splendid spectacles today. Open book-review pages, and you are more likely to see writers describing each other and their work with such words as “lyrical”, “brilliant” and “insightful” rather than, as they once did, “tiresome“, “an idiot” and a “dunghill”. On literary pages there is now what one writer called “endemic” grade inflation. An editor for BuzzFeed, a news site, even announced that its books section would not do negative book reviews at all. This was wonderful news for writers (and their mums) everywhere. It was much less good news for readers. The literary world may no longer need to mourn spurned poets; it does need to mourn the death of the hatchet job.
如今的文学界已鲜有如此精彩的场景。打开书评版面，你更可能看到作家们用“富有诗意”，“才华横溢”和“富有洞见”等词汇来吹捧彼此和他们的作品，而不似过往那般，用“乏味”、“白痴”和“粪堆”等字眼来互相贬低。今天的文学版面上存在一种现象，某位作家称之为“业内流行”的评分膨胀。BuzzFeed新闻网站的一位编辑甚至宣布，他们的书籍版块不会发表任何负面书评。这对全世界的作家（以及他们的母亲）来说可谓值得庆贺，但对读者来说这就不是什么好消息了。文学界可能不再需要向被唾弃的诗人致哀；但它确实需要哀悼文学作品辣评的消亡。
Few will lament it loudly. Criticism is not a noble calling: as the old saying has it, no city has ever erected a statue to a critic. But then few cities have erected statues to sewage engineers or prostate surgeons either. But they are useful, just as critics are. A well-read person might read 20 or so books a year. By contrast, 153,000 books were published last year in Britain alone, according to Nielsen BookData. That is an average of 420-odd books a day. Last year’s crop included “Thinking About Tears: Crying and Weeping in Long-Eighteenth-Century France” and “Is Your Cat a Psychopath?” It might be that these books all deserve epithets such as “insightful”. It seems unlikely.
然而，鲜有人会因此而大声疾呼。批评家这种职业可算不上高尚：俗话说，没有哪座城市曾为批评家竖立过雕像。不过，也很少有哪个城市会为污水处理工程师或前列腺外科医生竖立雕像。但他们的存在和批评家一样，都有其价值。如果一个人阅读量大，大约一年要读20本书。与之形成对比的是，据尼尔森图书数据公司（Nielsen BookData）的统计，仅英国去年就出版了15.3万本书，相当于平均每天出版420多本。去年出版的图书包括《思考眼泪：十八世纪法国的哭泣与泪水》和《你的猫是精神病患者吗？》。也许这些书都可以称之为“富有洞见”，但好像令人难以信服。
It is an open secret in the literary world that most books are very bad indeed. It is the job of critics to fillet them, first physically (work on a books desk and your first, deeply dispiriting job will be to go through the sacks of books delivered each week) then literarily, with reviews. George Orwell, a veteran critic, knew that reviews should be brutal. He wrote, “In much more than nine cases out of ten the only objectively truthful criticism would be ‘This book is worthless,’” while the only truthful review would say, “This book does not interest me in any way, and I would not write about it unless I were paid to.”
实际上，大多书籍都属粗制滥造，这已然是文学界公开的秘密。而评论家的工作就是先从身体上（你首先要做的一项令人沮丧的工作就是坐在书桌前，翻阅每周送来的成袋书籍），然后再从文学上，通过评论去剖析书籍。乔治·奥威尔（George Orwell）是一位资深评论家，他认为评论就应该是残酷的。他写道：“绝大多数情况下，唯一客观真实的评价就是‘这本书毫无价值’，”而唯一真实的评论是：“我对这本书一点兴趣都没有，除非给我钱，否则我不会写这本书的评论。”
Reviews are rarely so punchy. Some publications keep up the tradition of forceful criticism, but too often reviews feel like a smug inside job. Literary newspapers are particularly prone to this. They tend to be rich in reviewers called “Ferdinand”; in words like “jejune”; and in headlines that read less like a promise than a threat: “Whither Somalia?”, “Structuralism Domesticated” or (the question that is on everyone’s lips) “Who’s Afraid of Close Reading?” Hatchet jobs, by contrast, usually opt for a less elevated style. In one notorious review the critic Philip Hensher wrote that an author was so bad “he could not write ‘bum’ on a wall.”
如此简短有力的评论并不多见。一些刊物保持一贯传统，给予有力批评，但这些评论往往给人一种内行自鸣得意的感觉。文学报纸尤其容易出现这种情况。文学报纸往往有很多被称作“费迪南德”的评论家、常常使用“幼稚乏味”之类的字眼、采用的某些标题读起来与其说是承诺，不如说是威胁：“索马里何去何从？”、“结构主义被驯化 ”或每个人都挂在嘴上的“谁害怕细读？” 相比之下，辣评通常就没那么高大上了。在一篇众所周知的评论中，评论家菲利普·亨舍（Philip Hensher）写道，某位作家的作品糟糕透顶，他连个“屁”都写不出！
Once, such zingers were common on literary pages. In the Victorian era, “reviews were seen as a kind of cultural hygiene, so there were high standards,” says Robert Douglas-Fairhurst, a professor of English at Oxford University. Reviewers were not merely taking a swipe at an enemy but cleansing the sacred halls of literature. Not that this stopped them from mild grubbiness themselves. For example, one reviewer called a fellow writer’s work “feculent garbage”; the reliably robust Alfred Tennyson called yet another “a louse upon the locks of literature”; while John Milton (apparently having momentarily lost paradise again) described another as an “unswill’d hogshead”.
曾几何时，文学评论中如此的妙语连珠时常见诸于文学版面。维多利亚时期，“人们把文学评论看作是一种文化保健，因此标准高”，牛津大学英文教授罗勃·道格拉斯-菲尔赫斯特（Robert Douglas-Fairhurst）如是说。评论家不仅仅要抨击敌人，而且还承担着清扫文学圣殿的角色。当然这也不会妨碍他们显露温柔的粗俗。例如，一位评论家称一位作家的作品就是“臭垃圾”； 时刻保持旺盛精力的阿尔弗雷德·丁尼生（Alfredlord Tennyson）则称另一位作家的作品是“文学发丝上的虱子”；约翰·弥尔顿（John Milton）（很显然暂时再次“失乐”）描述一名作家的作品是“发酵的大桶”。
Brandish your weapons
挥舞着武器
Fun though such excesses are, the most lethal reviews tend to be more delicate. The best bad reviews are not hatchet jobs but scalpel jobs, observes the British critic Adam Mars-Jones, “because if it’s not precise, it’s not going to work.” The Victorians brandished scalpels too. One of the finest was wielded by George Eliot on Charlotte Brontë’s“Jane Eyre”. “I wish”, Eliot wrote, “the characters would talk a little less like the heroes and heroines of police reports.”
这些过甚其辞虽显嬉戏，然而最致命的评论更加细致入微。最好的差评不是像挥舞着小斧头般恶毒抨击，而是手握手术刀般刀刀见骨。正如英国文学批评家亚当·马斯-琼斯（Adam Mars-Jones）所言：“如果评论不精准，没人会吃你这一套。”维多利亚时期的文学评论家们也都握着手术刀。最精准的例证之一便是乔治·艾略特（George Eliot）对夏洛蒂·勃朗特（Charlotte Brontë）的《简·爱》的评论：“我真希望书里的人物言谈中少点警察报告式的男女英雄调调。”
Modern reviewers rarely achieve such lethal beauty. All too often reviews are replete withfiller words: “darkly funny”, “searing”, “profound meditation”. Many of these—reader, be warned—are euphemisms for the word “boring”, which is in effect forbidden on literary pages. So there is “detailed” (“boring”); “exhaustive” (“really boring”); “magisterial” (“boring but by a professor, and I did not finish it so cannot criticise it”). And so on.
少有现代评论家能够写出这般美妙但极具杀伤力的评论了。评论常常充斥着不痛不痒的填充词：“黑色幽默”、“尖刻”、“深刻冥想”等。读者们该小心了，很多这些词其实就是“索然无味”的委婉表达方式，而“索然无味”这个词实际上已经成为了文学版面的禁语。因此，版面上会出现“细致的”（索然无味）、“详尽的”（非常索然无味）、“权威的”（“索然无味，但是出自教授之手，但我也没有读完，因而不能妄加批评”）等等词汇。
The internet is one reason for this softening. It has altered both the economics of criticism (shrunken newspapers have fewer books pages, so editors tend to fill them with the books you should read, not the ones you should not) and the advisability of it (insults that seemed amusing blurted out in the moment pall when they echo online for eternity). The tendency to recruit specialist reviewers has not helped. If you are one of the world’s two experts in early Sumerian cuneiform and you give a bad review to the other one, it might be fun for 20 minutes—and regrettable for 20 years.
言辞不再犀利的原因之一在于互联网。它既改变了评论的经济性（报纸精简化压缩了书籍版块的版面，因此编辑们往往倾向将精力专注在推荐书籍上，而非开版面帮读者避坑），又拉低了评论的明智性（当下脱口而出且逗人发笑的一番侮辱，如果放在互联网上无止尽地得到附和就会逐渐使人发腻）。倾向于雇用专业评论家对改变这种状况毫无用处。假设你是世界上研究早期苏美尔楔形文字的两位专家之一，给对方一个差评，可能有趣就二十分钟——但却可能因此抱憾20年。
注释：
Sumerian cuneiform： 楔形文本是源于底格里斯河和幼发拉底河流域的古老文本，这种文本是由约公元前3200年左右苏美尔人所发明，是世界上最早的文本之一。在其约3000年的历史中，楔形文本由最初的象形文本系统，字形结构逐渐简化和抽象化，文本数目由青铜时代早期的约1000个，减至青铜时代后期约400个。已被发现的楔形文本多写于泥板上，少数写于石头、金属或蜡板上。书吏使用削尖的芦苇杆或木棒在软泥板上刻写，软泥板经过晒或烤后变得坚硬，不易变形。
The internet has also helped decrease anonymity. Once, most reviews were unbylined, offering reviewers the facelessness of an obscure Twitter troll. Today, most reviewers are not only named but easily searchable—and insultable in return. Whereas 30 years ago, critics were “tacitly encouraged to really have a go at people”, now people are “terrified of giving offence” lest a Twitter pile-on follow, says D.J. Taylor, a writer and critic.
互联网也让评论更加透明化。曾经，大多数评论都采用匿名形式，评论家们真人不露相，得以做个无名的推特喷子。如今，大部分评论家们不仅有名有姓，还容易被找到——且会被回喷。作家兼评论家大卫·约翰·泰勒（David John Taylor）称，在30年前，评论家们被默许鼓励去评判他人，而如今人们却都害怕冒犯他人，唯恐之后在推特上被追着骂。
There have been attempts to revive sharp criticism. In 2012 an award called the “Hatchet Job of the Year” was launched by two critics (including one who now works atThe Economist) as a “crusade against dullness, deference and lazy thinking”. It ran for three years. Fleur Macdonald, one of its co-founders, thinks that “the literary scene probably needs it more than ever now,” but that it would struggle to revive and get sponsorship since “bad book reviews are controversial.”
曾有人试图恢复锐评的昔日荣光。2012年，两名评论家（其中一位如今就职于《经济学人》）发起一项“年度最佳锐评”奖，以此“反抗沉闷、顺从和思维惰性”。该奖项开展了三年。其联合发起人弗勒·麦克唐纳德（Fleur Macdonald）认为，“如今的文学界可能比以往任何时候都更加需要锐评”，但由于“烂书评论多争议”，锐评获赞助且重振之旅将道阻且长。
The hatchets do still come out occasionally, not for first books or those by unknown authors (it is considered pointless and cruel) but for writers famous enough to attack. Prince Harry’s “Spare” was almost universally panned. This can be agonising for writers. Anthony Powell, a novelist, believed people were either “fans” or “shits”, while one of the most famous poems of the Roman writer Catullus is a riposte to critics who accused him of being effeminate. “Pedicabo ego vos et irrumabo,” he wrote, which means (broadly speaking): “I will sodomise and face-fuck you.” Not the sort of thing you see in the Times Literary Supplement these days.
尖锐批评依旧时有出现，但并非针对文坛新手或籍籍无名之辈（那样未免无意义，也太残酷），而是冲着声名赫赫的作者开火。哈里王子的《备胎》（Spare）一书几乎受到举世抨击。这无疑会让作者痛苦不堪。小说家安东尼·鲍威尔（Anthony Powell）认为人只有两种，不是“粉丝”就是“垃圾”，古罗马作家卡图卢斯（Catullus）最著名的一首诗也尖锐还击了那些指责他不像男人的批评家。原句是：“Pedicabo ego vos et irrumabo”。其言辞之污秽，激烈之程度，即便如今《泰晤士报文学增刊》（Times Literary Supplement）上的评论只能算是小巫见大巫。
And so the blades glint less. But they should still glint occasionally. What can be forgotten is that the real market for reviews is not the critic or the author. It is the reader. And they still want to know, says Mr Taylor, “whether they ought to spend £15.99 on a book.” The critic has “a duty” to tell the truth. Besides, if the writer doesn’t like it, they are, after all, a writer. They can, as Catullus did, respond. Though they might decide to go light on the profanity if they want to get published in BuzzFeed.
批评之锋芒因此收敛暗淡。但有时仍需利刃出击。人们可能忘了书评真正的受众不是批评家或作者，而是读者。就像泰勒先生所言，人们还是想知道“他们是否应该花15.99镑买一本书”。批评家有“义务”讲真话。况且，如果作者不认同批评家所谓的真相，他们依然还是作者，还可以像卡图卢斯一样回应。只是，如果他们想在BuzzFeed上发布的话，就要斟酌反击的言语，不可那般下流。
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