2024年4月16日发(作者：)

One Writer's Beginnings

1 I learned from the age of two or three that any room in our house, at any time of day,

was there to read in, or to be read to. My mother read to me. She'd read to me in the big

bedroom in the mornings, when we were in her rocker together, which ticked in rhythm as

we rocked, as though we had a cricket accompanying the story. She'd read to me in the

dining room on winter afternoons in front of the coal fire, with our cuckoo clock ending

the story with "Cuckoo", and at night when I'd got in my own bed. I must have given her

no peace. Sometimes she read to me in the kitchen while she sat churning, and the

churning sobbed along with any story. It was my ambition to have her read to me while I

churned; once she granted my wish, but she read off my story before I brought her butter.

She was an expressive reader. When she was reading "Puss in Boots," for instance, it was

impossible not to know that she distrusted all cats.

作家起步时

我从两三岁起就知道，家中随便在哪个房间里，白天无论在什么时间，都可以念书或听人念

书。母亲念书给我听。上午她都在那间大卧室里给我念，两人一起坐在她那把摇椅里，我们摇晃时，

椅子发出有节奏的滴答声，好像有只唧唧鸣叫的蟋蟀在伴着读故事。冬日午后，她常在餐厅里烧着

煤炭的炉火前给我念，布谷鸟自鸣钟发出“咕咕”声时，故事便结束了；晚上我在自己床上睡下后

她也给我念。想必我是不让她有一刻清静。有时她在厨房里一边坐着搅制黄油一边给我念，故事情

节就随着搅制黄油发出的抽抽搭搭的声响不断展开。我的奢望是她念我来搅拌；有一次她满足了我

的愿望，可是我要听的故事她念完了，她要的黄油我却还没弄好。她念起故事来富有表情。比如，

她念《穿靴子的猫》时，你就没法不相信她对猫一概怀疑。

2 It had been startling and disappointing to me to find out that story books had been

written by people, that books were not natural wonders, coming up of themselves like

grass. Yet regardless of where they came from, I cannot remember a time when I was not

in love with them — with the books themselves, cover and binding and the paper they

were printed on, with their smell and their weight and with their possession in my arms,

captured and carried off to myself. Still illiterate, I was ready for them, committed to all the

reading I could give them.

当我得知故事书原来是人写出来的，书本原来不是什么大自然的奇迹，不像草那样自生自

长时，真是又震惊又失望。不过，姑且不论书本从何而来，我不记得自己有什么时候不爱书—— 书

本本身、封面、装订、印着文字的书页，还有油墨味、那种沉甸甸的感觉，以及把书抱在怀里时那

种将我征服、令我陶醉的感觉。还没识字，我就想读书了，一心想读所有的书。

3 Neither of my parents had come from homes that could afford to buy many books,

but though it must have been something of a strain on his salary, as the youngest officer

in a young insurance company, my father was all the while carefully selecting and ordering

away for what he and Mother thought we children should grow up with. They bought

first for the future .

我的父母都不是来自那种买得起许多书的家庭。然而，虽然买书准得花去他不少薪金，作

为一家成立不久的保险公司最年轻的职员，父亲一直在精心挑选、不断订购他和母亲认为儿童成长

应读的书。他们购书首先是为了我们的前程。

4 Besides the bookcase in the living room, which was always called "the library", there

were the encyclopedia tables and dictionary stand under windows in our dining room.

Here to help us grow up arguing around the dining room table were the Unabridged

Webster, the Columbia Encyclopedia, Compton's Pictured Encyclopedia, the Lincoln