出版与作家生涯2018theparisreview.org编辑精选
论成为一位美国作家
On Becoming an American Writer
导读
这篇文章讨论在美国成为作家意味着什么：作者借奥登“诗不能使任何事发生”的著名论断，追问写作与生活、作家与社会价值的关系，并穿插个人经历。它值得写作者读，因为它逼人反思：我们写作是为了证明自己重要，还是为了说出真正有用的话。
可以直接用的写作要点
- 01
别把“作家”当成身份光环：先找到值得说的东西，再用有力的语言说出来。
- 02
警惕用“深刻”的腔调掩盖空洞；深刻往往来自简洁、可传达的洞见，而不是华丽辞藻。
- 03
作品没有影响时，先检查主题和读者是否对路，而不是把责任推给时代或读者。
- 04
个人经历可以动人，但写完要能回答：读者能从中带走什么？
HN 评论精选
批评文章用“深刻”外衣包装无依据的夸张，并追问读者到底能带走什么。
这篇文章得票很多，也许我是个没文化的乡巴佬，但在我看来，它透着一种膨胀的自我重要感。像“我这一代作家——如果你在读，也包括你——生活在奥登那句著名攻击的阴影下，他说‘诗不能使任何事发生’”“只有在美国，我们才要求作家相信他们不重要，并把这当作写作的条件”“我知道，作为这个时代的美国人，我的职业生涯会更短，寿命也会更短。而这是由我的国家设计的。这是有意为之”这类句子，读起来像用深刻的外衣掩盖缺乏支撑的夸张之辞。也许我太苛刻了……这只是一个人写了些他有热情、反映个人经历的东西。那些故事很动人，但要点是什么？是让人意识到作家和写作技艺正受到攻击？还是帮作家对自己的价值感觉好一点？我很好奇这篇文章哪里打动了其他读者。
Nelkins查看英文原文
This essay is getting plenty of votes so maybe I am an uncultured yokel, but to me this essay smacks of an inflated sense of self-importance. Lines like "My generation of writers—and yours, if you are reading this—lives in the shadow of Auden’s famous attack on the relevance of writing to life, when he wrote that 'poetry makes nothing happen'" and "Only in America do we ask our writers to believe they don’t matter as a condition of writing" and "I know I’ll have a shorter career for being American in this current age, and a shorter life also. And that is by my country’s design. It is the intention." It comes off as one of those essays that is trying to use a veneer of profundity to mask unsupported hyperbole. Maybe I am being too harsh here...this is just a person who has written something they feel passionate about and that reflects their personal experience. The stories were touching, but what is the takeaway here? Raising awareness that writers and their craft are under attack? Helping writers to feel better about their self-worth? I'm curious to know what about this piece resonated with other readers.
反对作家身份崇拜和故作深刻，主张找到有用洞见、清晰传达并对准读者。
呃，和往常一样，我的看法相反。第一步，别沉迷于“作家”这个理想。找到有用的话，然后有力地讲出来；或者干脆批量生产垃圾来付账单。没有别人会用和你一样的视角看你的作品。第二步，别哀叹读者可能不读你写的东西。只要你写出来，他们就会来——前提是你的营销团队做好本职工作。第三步，立刻把任何“深刻”的念头按在地上摩擦。深刻的东西往往以简洁形式出现，我们称之为数据。……别追求深刻，追求传达洞见。第四步，如果你担心自己作为作家没有影响世界，那你写错了东西，或者写给了错误的人。作者抱怨剑胜过笔，但这是逃避。剑只是笔的工作以另一种手段的延续。
cryoshon查看英文原文
meh, as usual my opinion is the opposite here. step one, don't become wrapped up in the ideal of being "a writer". find something useful to say, then say it forcefully. or just churn out garbage to pay the bills. nobody else is looking at your work with the same perspective as you do. step two, don't lament that readers might not read what you wrote. if you build it, they will come, so long as your marketing team does their job right. step three, open palm slam any notions of "profundity" into the ground, immediately. profound things come in concise packages, and we call them data. i guess if you're interested in making some kind of flowery Literature, you might think that you could get a free pass out of this step, but no, you can't. you can make things sound pretty and contain real information without falling into the forced affectation of "Literature". it doesn't matter if you're telling a story about fantastical characters or telling a story about how there are four nitrogenous bases in DNA. don't aim for profound, aim for communication of insight. step four, if you're concerned that you're not impacting the world as a writer, you're writing about the wrong stuff, or to the wrong people. the author complains that swords beat pens. but that's a cop out. swords are merely the continuation of the work of pens by other means. (shout out to clausewitz, a guy who understood this principle very well) finally -- and this is really something that cannot be said enough -- history is a story of those who lived with both their feet on the ground and whose focus was on putting one foot in front of the other. the more you fixate on "living in the shadow of X" or "if only america valued Y, I'd Z" or "They don't understand Us because We're Enlightened" or "Our Generation Of Writers" the more you get lost in a fantasy world of thoughts which are disconnected from the physical reality of your fingers smashing the keys of your keyboard, which is the primary mode of productivity for writers. does any of the above stuff prevent you from smashing those keys? no, if you are sitting here and reading this, it does not. think about stuff all the time, yeah. but don't talk yourself in circles when it comes to things that you can't relate back to the physical world at the moment. mental walls become real, but that doesn't mean that they bear any weight. live in the here and now, and manipulate information which you can prove or at least correlate to a physical phenomenon.
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