正文
The thirty-two chapters of a novel — if we consider how to read a novel first — are an attempt to make something as formed and controlled as a building: but words are more impalpable than bricks; reading is a longer and more complicated process than seeing. Perhaps the quickest way to understand the elements of what a novelist is doing is not to read, but to write; to make your own experiment with the dangers and difficulties of words.
一本有32章的小说，如果我们能首先去思考如何读一本小说——就像尝试如何将盖一栋有模有样的房子，不过比起砖头，文字是无形的，阅读比看更加漫长和复杂，
可能了解小说家在说什么最快的办法不是去读，而是去写，让你自己去体验书中那些危险和晦涩的文字。
Recall, then, some event that has left a distinct impression on you — how at the corner of the street, perhaps, you passed two people talking. A tree shook; an electric light danced; the tone of the talk was comic, but also tragic; a whole vision, an entire conception, seemed contained in that moment.
回想那些给你留下深刻印象的事情——当时在街角的哪个角落，可能你经过了两个正在谈话的人，树在摇晃，电光火石，说话的语气非常滑稽且悲伤，那一刻似乎包含了整个画面和故事框架。
But when you attempt to reconstruct it in words, you will find that it breaks into a thousand conflicting impressions. Some must be subdued; others emphasized; in the process you will lose, probably all grasp upon the emotion itself.
不过当你尝试再次组织语言的时候，你就会发现那里面有上千个冲突的印象，有些必须删减，有些要强调，在这个过程中你可能会失去所有之前抓住的情感。
Then turn from your blurred and littered pages to the opening pages of some great novelist — Defoe, Jane Austen, Hardy. Now you will be better able to appreciate their mastery. It is not merely that we are in the presence of a different person — Defoe, Jane Austen, or Thomas Hardy — but that we are living in a different world.
从你那乱七八糟的稿纸转向名家写的小说那看一看——Defoe, Jane Austen, Hardy，你将由衷赞叹他们的文字功底了。我们不仅面对一个不同的人，而且我们还生活在一个不同的世界里。
Here, in Robinson Crusoe, we are trudging a plain high road; one thing happens after another; the fact and the order of the fact is enough. But if the open air and adventure mean everything to Defoe they mean nothing to Jane Austen. Hers is the drawing-room, and people talking, and by the many mirrors of their talk revealing their characters. And if, when we have accustomed ourselves to the drawing-room and its reflections, we turn to hardy, we are once more spun around.
在《鲁滨孙漂流记》里，我们跋涉过一条平坦的道路，事情一件接着一件发生，事情和事情发生的顺序都足够好，如果说野外和冒险对迪福来说就是一切的话，那对Jane Austen就毫无意义。有一个客厅，里面的人们在谈话，当他们谈话时会呈现非常多不同的特点，如果我们过于习惯了我们自己在客厅时谈话的状态，就会很难反应过来，被弄得晕头转向。
