2014年考研《经济学人》：六本好书 中英文对照

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　　根据历年真题研究发现考研的阅读理解的文章一般都是从国外的期刊上摘抄下来的，像The Economist 《经济学家》、Newsweek 《新闻周刊》、Times《时代周刊》、Now York Times 《纽约时报》等，下面太奇考研英语辅导老师整理了《经济学人》阅读周刊，希望能对同学们的阅读带来更大的视野。
        　　Six Good Books
        　　六本好书
        　　Six Good Books: Maggie Fergusson recommends—among others—a Dave Eggers tragicomedy, William Dalrymple conquering Afghanistan, and a short, sharp e-book
        　　六本好书：麦琪-弗格森(Maggie Fergusson)推荐的作品中有戴夫-艾格斯(Dave Eggers)的悲喜剧，有威廉-达尔林普(William Dalrymple)的阿富汗征服记，还有一本短小犀利的电子书。
        　　From INTELLIGENT LIFE magazine, March/April 2013
        　　FICTION
        　　长篇小说
        　　A Hologram for the King by Dave Eggers (Hamish Hamilton, hardback, out now). America is no longer a land of dreams but one of recession-fed dysfunction. This is the thesis behind Dave Eggers’s tragicomedy, and he explores it through 54-year-old Alan Clay, a middle-management Everyman past his professional sell-by date. In the baffling heat of Saudi Arabia, waiting to pitch a holographic teleconferencing system to King Abdullah—a 21st-century Godot who never materialises—Clay revisits his past in a series of flashbacks, racked by loneliness and large, unanswered questions. Despised by both his wife and his junior colleagues, he swings between extreme hypo-chondria and a longing for the curtains to come down on his life. Eggers’s prose is brisk and spare, and his sensitivity to human frailty unnerving. One moment you’re laughing at Clay’s neuroses, the next they feel horribly familiar.
        　　《国王的全息图》，戴夫-艾格斯著(汉密西-汉密尔顿出版社，精装版，现已上市)。戴夫-艾格斯的这部悲喜剧背后的主题是：美国如今已不再是一个梦想国度，其到处充斥着经济萧条所带来的机能失调。作者在书中借艾伦-克雷这个角色探索了该主题。54岁的克雷是一位普普通通的中层经理，已经过了可以转职再创事业的年龄。在沙特阿拉伯难熬的高温中，克雷等着向国王阿卜杜拉销售一套全息电话会议系统。这位国王就像是21世纪版的戈多，一直没有露面。在等待中，往事一幕幕地在克雷脑中闪过，这些回忆充满了孤独感以及悬而未决的巨大问题，让他备受煎熬。他被妻子和公司里的后辈所鄙视，在两种截然相反的心境中来回摇摆，时而极度偏执地怀疑自己的健康状况，时而却又渴望自己的生命降下帷幕。艾格斯的描述活泼轻快，简洁明了，而且他在把握人性脆弱上敏锐得令人不安。前一刻你还在因为克雷的神经质大笑，下一刻你就会发现书中的描述熟悉得可怕。
        　　SHORT STORY
        　　短篇小说
        　　Silently and Very Fast by Candia McWilliam (Amazon, e-book, out now). Kindle Singles, recently launched in Britain, are a stroke of genius—as long as you have a Kindle. To the writer, they give a royalty of 70% rather than the usual single figures. To the reader, for less than the price of an espresso, they deliver an invigorating shot—fiction or non-fiction, anything from 5,000 to 30,000 words—to carry you through a train journey, and keep your thoughts humming well beyond it. This one weaves an Edinburgh "Under Milk Wood" into the Greek legend of the Graiae, the three sisters who share one all-seeing eye. Opening on a freezing winter’s morning, it moves from a beauty salon to a betting shop, from a window cleaner to a lap dancer, all observed with a precise compassion. Like the snow that begins to fall at noon, everything in the story has both a bright and a murderous aspect. When, at dusk, the sisters gather in the wool shop, things turn very dark indeed.
                               

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        　　《宁静迅疾》，坎蒂娅-迈克威廉(Candia McWilliam)著(亚马逊出版，电子书，现已上市)。“金读短篇”(Kindle Single)最近在英国上市。这种新形体裁的发明简直可谓是神来之笔，当然前提是你得有一部金读。对于作者来说，他们可以从这些短篇书上拿到的版税比例高达70%，而不是通常情况下的个位数。对读者来说，花上一杯咖啡的钱就可以品味到一卷令人精神为之一振的好书。这样的书可以是小说，也可以是纪实，长度介于五千到三万词之间，恰好可伴随你度过一趟火车之旅，并在之后很长时间内启发你的思潮。这本《宁静迅疾》将爱丁堡版的《牛奶树下》和古希腊共用一只全知之眼的格赖埃三姐妹神话编织在一起。全书开篇是在一个寒冷刺骨的冬季早晨，故事先是发生在一间美容院里，之后地点又转到了一间投注站内，书中的人物也同样从一位清洁工寡妇转到了另一位膝上舞女身上。作者带着一种精确的同情心观察着所有这些人与事。如同正午开始落下的飘雪一般，书中的所有事物都同时具有明亮和险恶的特质。当三姐妹于黄昏齐聚在毛线店里时，故事的风格也确确实实地开始变得极为黑暗，
        　　REPORTAGE
        　　报告文学
        　　The Last Days of Detroit by Mark Binelli (Bodley Head, hardback, out now). Detroit is the Ozymandias of cities: once mighty (home to Ford Motors and Motown records), then the victim of capitalist hubris, romantic in its ravaged decline. Mark Binelli, a Rolling Stone feature writer, returns to his childhood home and sends a series of punchy, acutely observed dispatches from a world turned upside-down. Mayors fight elections on a promise to demolish buildings; the gruesome dismemberment of a murdered youth doesn’t produce a single media report; wild pheasants fly through abandoned factories picked clean by thieves. Binelli is not a sucker for the "ruin porn" that has brought photographers flocking to Detroit, nor for easy "comeback narratives", but he writes with tenacious optimism. Artists are moving in; lawlessness inspires creative living—beekeeping, voluntary crime-fighting, impromptu blues concerts. Despite everything, he argues, this might yet become the first great post-industrial city of the 21st century.
        　　《底特律的末日》，马克-比奈里(Mark Binelli)著(博德利头像出版社，精装版，现已上市)。底特律就像是城市中的奥兹曼迪亚斯(Ozymandias)法老王一样，它曾经那么的强大，是福特汽车和摩城唱片的总部所在地，但之后却受资本主义傲慢之害逐渐沉沦，而且其饱受劫难的没落过程本身也充满着浪漫色彩。马克-比奈里是《滚石》杂志的特写撰稿人。他回到了自己童年时呆过的城市，并在这一片狼藉的世界里写出了一系列简短有力、一针见血的散文。市长们用承诺拆除楼房来进行选战。一位年轻人被残忍地杀害分尸，却没有一篇媒体报道提及此事。野雉飞过废弃的工厂，厂内已被小偷搬抢一空。比奈里并不受那吸引大量摄影师蜂拥到底特律的所谓“废墟视觉效果”所动，他也不相信那些站着说话不腰疼的“复苏‘神话’”，但他的文章还是带着一种坚韧不拔的乐观感觉。很多艺术家开始搬到底特律居住，漫无法纪的环境能刺激民众在日常生活中的一些创意活动：像是养蜂，民众自发组织打击犯罪行动，即兴的蓝调演奏会。他认为：尽管一切不如人意，底特律还是有可能会成为 21世纪第一个伟大的后工业化时代城市。
        　　HISTORY
        　　历史
        　　Return of a King by William Dalrymple (Bloomsbury, hardback, out now). In the spring of 1839 British troops poured into Afghanistan, on the slimmest of pretexts, and installed a puppet king. Three years later, they were forced into a bloody and humiliating retreat through the freezing midwinter passes. What happened between is a great cavalcade of a story that might, in unskilled hands, have left readers drowning in a quagmire of diplomatic and tribal complexity. William Dalrymple’s phenomenal achievement is to combine a steady overview of his broad canvas with a magpie’s eye for detail and a film-maker’s sense of when to shift the mood and focus. His writing is ebullient, but his conclusion is timely and grave. Any attempt to subjugate Afghanistan must, as one witness of that first invasion noted, be "temporary and transient and terminate in catastrophe".
                               

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        　　《国王归来》，威廉-达尔林普著(布鲁姆斯伯里出版社，精装版，现已上市)。 1839年春英国以一些几乎站不住脚的借口出兵，英军涌入阿富汗并扶植了一位傀儡国王。三年之后，这批英军经历了既血腥又耻辱的大败，被迫在寒冬中沿着重重关卡撤退。这其间发生的故事可谓宏伟繁复。换上一个文笔不佳的作者，读者也许会被重重的外交及部落关系的复杂性搞得晕头转向。但威廉-达尔林普惊人的成就在于他赋予这一宽广的全景稳定的综观视角，同时却又能抓住精密的细节，并配以电影制片人所有的那种对于心情和焦点转换的敏感度。他的文笔热情奔放，而他得出的结论不但发人深省，而且放在今天恰合时宜。正如见证了那第一次入侵的一位当事人所说：任何试图让阿富汗臣服的努力最终都必然会是“转瞬即逝的，并将以灾难告终。”
        　　MEMOIRS
        　　回忆录
        　　Give Me Everything You Have by James Lasdun (Cape, hardback, out now). Written to keep its author the right side of mental collapse, this chilling tale is inspired by a dark muse. In 2003 James Lasdun assumed the role of "avuncular, rather eunuchy" mentor to a reticent-seeming student on his New York fiction course. "Nasreen" then morphed into a cyber-stalker, bombarding Lasdun with e-mails swinging from obsessive love to violent hatred. She blackened his Wikipedia entry, posted damning reviews of his work, and contacted his employers with allegations of plagiarism and rape. When he blocked her e-mails, she rose up, hydra-like, from new addresses. In contrast to his tormentor’s rabid outpourings, Lasdun writes with judicial clarity and control. I anticipated a dramatic denouement for Nasreen—arrest? imprisonment?—before realising, with a jolt, that the situation remains unresolved.
        　　《给我你的一切》，詹姆斯-拉斯顿(James Lasdun)著(开普出版社，精装版，现已上市)。詹姆斯写这本书是为了让自己不至于精神崩溃。这则令人不寒而栗的故事背后藏着一位黑暗缪斯。2003 年詹姆斯-拉斯顿在纽约讲授小说写作课，他有一位看上去沉默寡言的女学生，他在指导这位女学生的写作时担任得是个“完全不带性吸引力的慈祥长辈”角色。但是“娜斯林”(假名)之后却化身为一个网络骚扰者，不停地向拉斯顿发送电子邮件，邮件里传达的感情从一开始偏执的爱恋逐渐转变成暴戾的仇恨。她曾抹黑拉斯顿的维基百科页面，在网上发表对他作品的严厉批评，还联系拉斯顿的雇主提出剽窃和强奸等指控。当拉斯顿屏蔽了她的电子邮件后，她会像不死的九头蛇那样用新的邮箱重新再生。和这位折磨人的女子口吐的偏激言辞不同，拉斯顿的记叙始终保持着一种公正的清晰度和自制力。我在阅读时因为投入还一度期待会读到娜斯林最终戏剧性的结局，猜想故事会以娜斯林的逮捕或是监禁告终，然后才一震清醒过来，意识到书中的局面直到现在依然悬而未决。
        　　Bedsit Disco Queen by Tracey Thorn (Virago, hardback, out now). When Tracey Thorn was a teenager, growing up in a suburban semi in Hertfordshire, she was so shy that she would only sing hidden inside a wardrobe. And even when she went on to become a singer of international acclaim—one half of Everything But The Girl, bewitching audiences with her controlled but keening alto—she remained diffident about pop-stardom. Good on its highs, she is even better on its lows: the lonely deflation as the roadies pack up after a show; the stage fright and self-doubt; the "infantalising" effect of being controlled by managers and agents. None of it would have been bearable without Ben Watt, her musical partner, lover, father of her three children and now husband. He’s the still centre of this book, which is perhaps less a memoir than an intelligent, reflective, faintly wistful love letter.
                               

kyfive

                               
        　　《迪斯科女王的公寓》，特蕾西-索恩(Tracey Thorn)著(维拉格出版社，精装版，现已上市)。特蕾西-索恩的少女时代是在赫特福德郡的一间半独立屋里渡过的，当时的她性格非常腼腆，只有把自己关在壁橱里时才会放声歌唱。后来的她成为了双人组合“除了女孩”中的一员，以她那自制但又诚挚的女低音打动听众。但即使在作为歌手赢得国际赞誉之后，她依然对自己的流行乐歌星身份缺乏自信。在本书中，她出色地记叙了歌星生涯的各种高潮，但本书更为出彩的地方是她对低谷的记录。例如在异地演出结束后乐团开始准备离开时那股高亢之后特有的孤独感，或是舞台上的怯场以及对自我的怀疑，甚或被经理和经纪人所控制的那种“无力感”。如果没有本-华特(Ben Watt)，所有这些负面情绪都会是难以忍受的。本是特蕾西的音乐伙伴、爱人、她三个孩子的父亲，现在则是她的丈夫。他就如同本书不动的中心。与其说这是本回忆录，倒不如说这是一封精致灵巧，充满深思，还带着些微惆怅的情书。
        　　Maggie Fergusson is literary editor of Intelligent Life and director of the Royal Society of Literature
        　　笔者麦琪·弗格森是《Intelligent Life》杂志的文学编辑，英国皇家文学院理事，她为乔治·麦凯·布朗(George Mackay Brown)写过一本获奖传记。