出版与作家生涯2023nytimes.com
书写更黑暗美国的小说家科马克·麦卡锡去世，享年89岁
Cormac McCarthy, Novelist of a Darker America, Is Dead at 89
导读
科马克·麦卡锡（《血色子午线》《长路》《老无所依》）去世后，Hacker News 上的一组悼念讨论。读者回忆他的作品如何长久萦绕于心，并贴出他风格化的长句片段。对写作者来说，这是一次观察“语言密度”和“美与残酷并置”的极佳机会，另外还顺带提到他晚年做科学论文文字编辑的经历。
可以直接用的写作要点
- 01
把最沉重的主题（死亡、不可复原）落在具体可触的物象上，例如鳟鱼背上的花纹、被凿出的一个个洞，让抽象情感有承载物。
- 02
尝试写这种连续推进的长句：把动作、场景与哲思串成一条几乎不换气的链条，让句式本身制造压迫感和仪式感。
- 03
让内容与文体形成反差：用极度优美、克制的语言描写暴力与黑暗，比直接渲染更有力量。
- 04
句子精度可以靠改稿练出来：麦卡锡长期给科学论文做校对，说明逐字打磨他人文本是训练语言准确性的有效方式。
HN 评论精选
真正好的句子会长期留在读者脑中；麦卡锡的长句在写动作的同时，也写出了哲学与时间。
多年前我读过《长路》，但那时可能太年轻，没能真正读懂；最近几个月，我为了读书会读了《血色子午线》。很少有小说让我反复回想这么久（能想到的只有陀思妥耶夫斯基的《群魔》和梅尔维尔的《白鲸》）。麦卡锡是绝对的美国国宝。安息。他诗性的《血色子午线》尾声一直留在我心里：“黎明时分，有个人在原野上向前推进，靠的是他在土地上凿出的一个又一个洞。他拿着一件双柄的工具，砸进洞里，用钢一下一下点燃洞中的石头，把上帝留在岩石里的火击打出来。他身后的原野上是寻找骨头的人和不寻找的人，他们在光里走走停停，像被擒纵轮控制的机械……他们一个个走过那串洞，洞一直延伸到可见之地的边缘；这看起来不像在追求某种延续，更像是在验证一条原理、确认序列与因果——仿佛每个圆满完美的洞的存在，都归功于它前一个洞。他在洞里击出火，抽出钢钎。然后他们又继续向前。”
dvt查看英文原文
I read The Road years ago, but I was probably too young to fully understand it; more recently, I read Blood Meridian a few months ago for my book club. Few novels have had me think about them as much (Dostoevsky's Demons and Melville's Moby Dick come to mind). McCarthy was an absolute American treasure. Rest in peace. His poetic Blood Meridian epilogue really stuck with me: "In the dawn there is a man progressing over the plain by means of holes which he is making in the ground. He uses an implement with two handles and he chucks it into the hole and he enkindles the stone in the hole with his steel hole by hole striking the fire out of the rock which God has put there. On the plain behind him are the wanderers in search of bones and those who do not search and they move haltingly in the light like mechanisms whose movements are monitored with escapement and pallet so that they appear restrained by a prudence or reflectiveness which has no inner reality and they cross in their progress one by one that track of holes that runs to the rim of the visible ground and which seems less the pursuit of some continuance than the verification of a principle, a validation of sequence and causality as if each round and perfect hole owed its existence to the one before it there on that prairie upon which are the bones and the gatherers of bones and those who do not gather. He strikes fire in the hole and draws out his steel. Then they all move on again."
文学大师长期靠逐字校对他人稿件来保持语言敏感度。
关于麦卡锡有个有意思的事实：尽管他已经很有名，他（我想是就在不久前）还在圣塔菲研究所做科学论文的文字编辑，算是一种驻所身份。这里有一个讨论帖，谈的是《自然》杂志一篇关于他给科学写作者建议的文章。
tptacek查看英文原文
Interesting fact about McCarthy: he had a sort of residency, I think pretty recently, despite his fame! as a copyeditor for science papers at the Santa Fe Institute. Here's a thread about a Nature piece with his advice for science writers: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30611829 Edit Meant to link the HN thread, not the original source.
美与残酷并置是麦卡锡的核心手法：用最精确、最诗意的语言去呈现不可挽回的失落。
这消息让人难以承受。他有独一无二的能力：用最美的方式捕捉人类经验中最坏的部分。“曾经，山里的溪流中有鳟鱼。你可以看见它们立在琥珀色的水流里，鱼鳍的白色边缘在水流中轻轻抖动。握在手里，它们带着苔藓的气味。光滑、有力、带着螺旋的弧度。它们的背上有虫蛀般的花纹，那是世界生成之时留下的地图。地图，也是迷宫。属于一件再也放不回去、再也无法修正的事。在它们栖居的深谷里，万物都比人更古老，它们低鸣着神秘。”
voisin查看英文原文
Man, this is crushing news. He was uniquely capable of capturing the worst of the human experience in the most beautiful manner. "Once there were brook trouts in the streams in the mountains. You could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. They smelled of moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and torsional. On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put back. Not be made right again. In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery."
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