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Books and Arts; Book Review;Political philosophy; Mightier than the sword;
The collected thoughts on this, that and the other of two clever men;
When writers are grand enough, they can produce books by recycling their journalism, lectures, academic papers and other jottings. Sometimes that can seem dated and lazy. Sometimes it is a treat: the assorted pieces come together to create a great mosaic. Neither “Facts are Subversive” by Timothy Garton Ash, an Oxford-based writer and academic, nor “Gray's Anatomy” by John Gray, a political philosopher, fall into the first trap (or at least very rarely). They are both good reads. But neither quite reaches the goal of the whole being more interesting than the parts.
當作者之聲名足夠顯赫時，他們只需將其新聞稿件、講演錄、學術論文以及其他只言片語回爐再加工一番，新書便告完成。有時，這種做法似乎是在偷工減料地翻炒冷飯；有時，它卻為讀者奉上一場新的盛宴：混雜的碎片化零為整，一幅偉大的鑲嵌作品從中誕生。無論是由身處牛津的作家與學者——提摩西·加頓·阿什所著之《事實方具顛覆性》，還是政治哲學家約翰·格雷的作品——《格雷剖析錄》，都未陷入前一種窘境（至少基本上如此），兩者皆為優秀的讀物；不過，它們也未完全實現令整體勝于部分的目標。
Mr Garton Ash is incapable of writing a dull article. Unlike some famous-name writers, he is proud to be a reporter: whatever the subject, he digs diligently. He observes sharply and with a dry donnish wit that deserves greater play. A remarkable wordsmith, at his best he has an echo of one of his great heroes, George Orwell. The pieces range from his first stamping-grounds of Germany and central Europe to the bigger themes he took on later (such as Britain's neurotic “don't know, don't trust, don't care” relationship with Europe) and to more exotic places, including Brazil, Iran and Myanmar.
加頓·阿什不會撰寫那些干澀無趣的文章，與某些知名作家不同，他為身為記者而自豪：無論面對何種主題，他都會勤奮挖掘素材。其評論一針見血，字里行間所透出之學究式的冷冷嘲諷，讓人讀來不禁有大材小用之嘆。這位非凡的語言大師在其巔峰時期，甚至能在筆下中重現喬治·奧威爾當年的風采，而后者正是加頓·阿什心目中的偉大英雄人物之一。本書收錄的零散作品，其范圍從他最初頻繁涉足的德國與中歐，延伸到他于日后挑戰的更大主題（英國與歐洲之間神經質一般的“不知、不信、不顧”關系便為一例），并一直遠達更富異域情調的地區，其中包括巴西、伊朗和緬甸。
His aim is to chronicle the history of the “nameless decade”, the period that began with the terrorist attacks on America in September 2001 and ended with the election of Barack Obama last year. The subjects encompassed in that time include authoritarian governments, the challenge to liberalism raised by Islam and the corrosive combination of the Bush administration's bungled foreign policy and Europe's unthinking anti-Americanism.
加頓·阿什旨在為“無名年代”修史，這一時期始于2001年九月美國所受之恐怖襲擊，止于去年巴拉克·奧巴馬當選。其間所含的主題包括威權主義政府、伊斯蘭教向自由主義發起的挑戰，以及由布什政府的外交失策與歐洲輕率的反美思潮所構成之惡性結合。
But Mr Garton Ash's silver nib wiggles past those constraints. The best essays in the book are timeless. One is a nuanced and convincing piece, both sympathetic and devastating, about Günter Grass, the German novelist, who revealed in his memoirs that he had briefly been in the Waffen SS. Did that taint Mr Grass's books, or his role in public life, or both or neither? Was it the wartime service that was shameful, or its concealment over decades? Mr Garton Ash brings the reader sure-footedly through the thickets of Germany's post-war history and through the marshy ground of moral relativism. He points to the real scandal: that Mr Grass was himself so casually splenetic over so many years about other people's shortcomings, while concealing his own.
不過加頓·阿什的妙筆卻如行云流水一般無拘無束，書中最佳的作品并不為時代背景所累。其中，關于德國小說家君特·格拉斯的一篇文章細致入微、令人信服，字詞間既存有惻隱，又不留情面；這位德國作家在其回憶錄中透露，當年曾短暫效力于納粹黨衛軍。這段歷史是令其著作黯然失色？還是使他在公共生活中所扮演的角色沾上污點？或者說兩者都未能幸免，抑或皆不受其影響？究竟是戰時服役一事令其蒙羞，還是日后數十年之隱瞞為人不齒？在加頓·阿什的帶領下，讀者們步履穩健地穿過了德國戰后歷史的迷宮，走出了道德相對主義的泥潭，真正的丑行被他指出：這么多年以來，格拉斯在給自己遮羞的同時，卻對他人的短處如此隨意地表現出義憤填膺之狀。
Another excellent piece touches on a comparable issue: the list of suspected communist sympathisers that Orwell supplied to the British authorities in 1949. Again, Mr Garton Ash is scrupulously fair, highlighting Orwell's sincere (and justifiable) fear of communist infiltration, as well as his fumbling feelings for Celia Kirwan, the British official involved.
另一篇杰作則涉及到一個與前例有可比性的話題：奧威爾于1949年向英國當局提交的那份共產主義疑似同情者的名單。加頓·阿什再一次地表現出了一絲不茍的公正態度，在文中強調了奧威爾對共產主義滲透行為的真切恐懼（這種恐懼也非杞人憂天），以及他對希蓮·柯雯（涉及此事的英國官員）所抱有的為愛所醉之情。
Some of the reworked articles are commendable journalism, but do not quite stand the test of time. Mr Garton Ash's observations from his trip to Iran in 2005 seem a bit whiskery now. It is nostalgic to read about the fall of crony capitalism in Ukraine five years ago. But the reader is left hankering to know what Mr Garton Ash thinks about the mess that has succeeded it. A fiercer editor might have left out such pieces, and pruned the author's occasional lapses into self-indulgence (using “proleptic” once is fine, twice is tiresome). That may not matter in individual newspaper columns. It jars when collected in a book.
在經過重新修訂的文章中，有一些是可圈可點的新聞稿件，不過它們并不能完全經受住時間的考驗。加頓·阿什從其2005年伊朗之行中得出的觀察結論在今天看來已有幾分過時；他關于五年前權貴資本主義在烏克蘭垮臺的文章，如今讀來確實令人懷念往昔；但讀者們想了解加頓·阿什對于政權更迭之后的亂局有何見解的渴望卻未得到滿足。換做一位下手更狠的編輯，此類文章大概會被略去，而作者偶然的敗筆也會被修剪成隨性之舉的模樣（比如，“預期中”一詞若只用一次頗為出彩，但再用一次便會令人審美疲勞）。對于個別的報紙專欄而言，出現這一問題可能無傷大雅；但匯集成書后，它便顯得甚為刺眼。
Mr Gray's book is darker, grittier and more ambitious. Mr Garton Ash is happy to lambast the West's specific shortcomings but Mr Gray sets out to unpick the shallow philosophical foundations of the whole edifice, in particular the modern myths about progress and perfectibility. He demolishes the theory that we have reached the “end of history”, the dogmas of secular liberalism, the weaknesses of financial casino capitalism and the limits of energy-intensive economic growth. Such targets deserve his scrutiny and Mr Gray's criticisms are cogent. But he tends to overdo it. Again and again (and again) he attacks the people he calls “neoliberals” without pinning down whom (apart from Tony Blair) he is attacking. The reader is left feeling a straw man has been dissected.
格雷的著作則更富陰郁而強硬的氣息，其創作野心也更為遠大。加頓·阿什樂于抨擊西方存在的具體缺陷，但格雷卻著手拆解整個體系的淺薄哲學根基，尤其是關于進步和完美性的現代神話。在他的筆下，人類已達到“歷史的終結”之理論，世俗自由主義的教義、金融賭場資本主義（的種種缺陷）以及能源密集型經濟增長（的極限）被一一推翻。由格雷對此類問題加以縝密研究，實非牛刀殺雞之舉，而其批判也頗為中肯；不過他卻往往走得太遠，一次一次（又一次）地，格雷對他所稱的“新自由主義者”加以口誅筆伐，然而卻幾乎從不指明其具體的抨擊對象（托尼·布萊爾是一個例外）。這讓讀者們不禁感到，格雷所剖開的只是一個稻草人而已。
The finest pieces in Mr Gray's book are satire. One is a Swiftian essay in favour of torture (which some serious-minded lefties took at face value). Even better is a devastating parody of the Marxist approach to linguistics, involving a (fictional) visit by Ludwig Wittgenstein to the Soviet Union, and his relationship with an (invented) Hungarian academic, L. Revai, who idealises the grunts of slave labourers as a proletarian Ursprache.
此書中最好的作品當屬諷刺文學。一篇支持酷刑（某些一本正經的左翼人士便未能辨出其弦外之音）的斯威夫特式隨筆可算在其中；而另一篇極佳的戲仿之作更令人叫絕，此文模仿了語言學的馬克思主義研究模式，其情節包括路德維希·維特根斯坦對蘇聯的一次（虛構的）訪問，以及他與（作者創造出的）匈牙利學者L·列瓦伊的交往，這位匈牙利學者將奴工的咕噥聲理想化，將之提升至無產階級原始語的高度。
In Mr Gray's most substantial essay, “An agenda for Green conservatism”, he attempts to rescue conservatism from the ideological excesses of the 1980s. This is a thought-provoking enterprise, deserving a book on its own. But if it became a book, the author's views on such things as the failings of professional monopolies in education and health would benefit from more statistics and fewer assertions—calling, perhaps, for investment in a researcher.
而在其最有分量的文章“綠色保守主義之議程”中，格雷試圖將保守主義從二十世紀八十年代的意識形態泛濫中拯救出來。這一嘗試之舉引人深思，話題本身甚至值得以專著加以探討。但若果真成書，那么作者對諸如教育與健康領域職業壟斷的失敗等議題所持有的見解，便需從更多的統計數據中獲益，而憑空斷言在其中所起的作用則應減少——這可能需要在研究者方面的投入。
As Mr Garton Ash rightly points out, it is facts, ultimately, that are subversive.
