閱讀時間：7分鐘
原文鏈接：
www.farnamstreetblog.com/2016/03/relationship-between-reading-and-writing/
翻譯：cyalice
閱讀更多的書能使我們成為一位更好的作家嗎校焦？答案是肯定的聚谁。閱讀和寫作是同一枚硬幣的兩面段誊。正如安妮·拉莫特所說获印，“反之亦然 ——寫作使你成為更好的讀者⊥拭停”
當(dāng)一個人更深刻的敬佩和專注閱讀一本書時赌结，就能知道寫作有多么難，特別是還要使寫作看起來很輕松就難上加難了吠撮。你開始以作家的眼光去閱讀尊惰。你找到了一種全新的方式去探索一位作家是如何用新穎，大膽和原創(chuàng)的方式描繪他或她的觀點泥兰。
史蒂芬·金弄屡，歐內(nèi)斯特·海明威和大衛(wèi)·福斯特·華萊士以他們充滿智慧的經(jīng)驗和我們分享了閱讀和寫作關(guān)系的看法。
為什么要閱讀
在「寫作：工藝回憶錄」中鞋诗，斯蒂芬·金解釋了為什么閱讀對于想寫作的人來說是如此重要膀捷。
如果你想成為一名作家，你必須做兩件事情削彬，比其他人更多地閱讀和寫作担孔。沒有任何捷徑和方法繞過我所知道的這兩件事情。
我看書很慢吃警，但我通常每年都會讀七十八本書糕篇，其中的大部分是小說。我不是為了學(xué)習(xí)寫作而讀書酌心，我讀書只是因為我喜歡閱讀拌消。這是我晚上做的，踢在我的藍(lán)色椅子上安券。同樣墩崩，我也沒有看小說學(xué)習(xí)小說的藝術(shù)，只是因為我喜歡故事侯勉。然而鹦筹，還有一個學(xué)習(xí)過程。
閱讀的真正重要性在于它與寫作過程形成了輕松和親密的關(guān)系;憑著作家的作品我們可以來到這位作家的寫作國度址貌。不斷閱讀會把你帶到一個你無意識情況下渴望寫作的國度（或者是心靈模式——如果你更喜歡這個詞的話）铐拐。閱讀還能不斷給你提供不斷增長的知識，包括已知的练对、未知的遍蟋、真實的、新鮮的螟凭、有用的或者是正在消逝的虚青、已經(jīng)消逝的。當(dāng)你閱讀得越多螺男，就越不可能用你的筆或文檔來愚弄自己棒厘。
要讀什么
叔本華說：??“一個人永遠(yuǎn)不會讀過太少的壞書纵穿，或是太多好書。壞書是智力毒藥奢人，他們摧毀心靈谓媒。”
雖然這可能是眾所周知的規(guī)則达传，但King卻說不好的書在教他如何寫作上起了重要的作用。
「小行星礦工」（這不是標(biāo)題迫筑，但足夠接近）是我人生中重要的一本書宪赶。大多數(shù)作家可以記住開啟他/她思想的第一本書：我可以做得比這更好。天啊脯燃，我真的可以做得比這更好搂妻！對于正在奮斗的作家而言，還有什么比意識到自己所寫的文章毫無疑問地比另一些人被付費所寫的文章好更讓作家們感到振奮和鼓舞呢辕棚？
閱讀糟糕的散文能讓一個人知道寫作過程中不能做什么像小行星礦工（或??娃娃谷欲主，??鮮花的閣樓，和??廊橋遺夢逝嚎，僅舉幾例）是值得用一學(xué)期去學(xué)習(xí)的扁瓢。
另一方面，良好的寫作教導(dǎo)一位正在學(xué)習(xí)的作者關(guān)于寫作的風(fēng)格补君，優(yōu)雅地敘述引几，情節(jié)發(fā)展，創(chuàng)造美麗的人物和真實的講故事挽铁。像「憤怒的葡萄 」這樣的小說???可能會讓一個新的作家感到絕望和嫉妒 -——“我永遠(yuǎn)無法寫出任何好的東西伟桅，除非我活到1000歲” - 但這樣的感覺也可以作為一種刺激，使作家更努力地工作叽掘，設(shè)立更高的目標(biāo)楣铁。被偉大的故事和偉大的寫作相結(jié)合的作品打擊其實是每一個作家寫作過程中必不可少的一部分。直到你完成寫作更扁，否則你不能奢望在寫作過程中不會被其他作家所影響盖腕。
誰讀
1935年，在海明威寫給Esquire的文章中浓镜，他回憶了當(dāng)時他給一個知名作家的建議赊堪。這個有趣的故事出現(xiàn)在海明威寫作上。
小孩：作家必須讀什么書竖哩？
YC [你的通訊員]：他應(yīng)該閱讀所有的書哭廉，以便他知道他要擊敗什么。
小孩：他沒有精力閱讀所有的書相叁。
YC：我沒有說他能做到遵绰，我的是他應(yīng)該做辽幌。當(dāng)然，他是做不到的椿访。
小孩：那什么書是必須讀的呢乌企？
YC：他應(yīng)該讀托爾斯泰的??戰(zhàn)爭與和平??和??安娜·卡列尼娜，由成玫，??福樓拜的包法利夫人?～（此處省略）等30多本書加酵。
小孩：太快了，我記不下來了哭当。還有多少本猪腕？
YC：我會再給你一天的時間記下來。大約還有三倍那么多钦勘。
小孩：一位作家應(yīng)該閱讀這么多書陋葡？
YC：所有這些，還有更多彻采。否則他不知道他要擊敗什么腐缤。
小孩：你所說的“必須打敗”是什么意思呢？
YC：寫以前被人寫過的沒有什么用肛响，除非你可以寫得更好岭粤。當(dāng)今時代的作家必須寫前人未寫過的或者寫出比前人寫過更好的書。讓作家知道他寫得如何的唯一方式就是和已故的作家做對比特笋，而這是當(dāng)代已存在的作家所不能提供的绍在。因為他們的名聲是由批評家創(chuàng)造的。批評家們總是需要一個季度里被擁護(hù)為天才的人雹有，一個他們完全理解的人偿渡，并且能在贊美中得到安全感。但是當(dāng)天才的作家逝世時霸奕，批評家們就不復(fù)存在了溜宽。?一個認(rèn)真的作家所競爭的應(yīng)該是他所知道的已逝的最好作家。?它就像與時間的小小競跑质帅，而不是常識去打敗跟他同個跑道的人适揉。除非他與時間賽跑，否則他永遠(yuǎn)不會知道他能夠?qū)崿F(xiàn)什么煤惩。
小孩：但閱讀所有好的作家可能會讓你感到挫敗嫉嘀。
YC：那就感到挫敗吧。
如果您一直想閱讀經(jīng)典書魄揉，卻一直做不到剪侮，請嘗試將任務(wù)分解成可管理的塊。
何時何地閱讀
史蒂芬·金建議有志的作家在任何可能的地方閱讀洛退。
閱讀是作家生活的創(chuàng)作中心瓣俯。我隨身帶著一本書杰标，找到了各種各樣的機會沉下心去閱讀。訣竅就是在囫圇吞棗中盡可能細(xì)地去閱讀彩匕。在等候室里都是書腔剂。演出開始前的戲劇大廳，漫長而無聊的結(jié)賬等候線驼仪，甚至可以在開車時進(jìn)行閱讀掸犬。感謝有聲讀物革命。在我每年讀的書中绪爸，有六到十幾本是通過磁帶朗讀進(jìn)行閱讀的湾碎。
無論您是用“小啜飲”的方式閱讀還是如一團(tuán)熊熊火焰般閱讀，如果你想成為一名作家就要更多地找時間進(jìn)行閱讀毡泻。
你必須廣泛閱讀胜茧，不斷改進(jìn)（和重新定義）你的作品粘优。我很難相信一個閱讀很少的人能期望人們喜歡他們寫的內(nèi)容仇味。但這種情況是真實存在的。如果每當(dāng)一個人告訴我他/她想成為一名作家雹顺，但沒有時間閱讀時我就能獲得一個硬幣丹墨，那我現(xiàn)在都可以買一個相當(dāng)不錯的牛排晚餐。更簡單直白的說嬉愧，如果你沒有時間閱讀贩挣，你也沒有時間寫作。
如何閱讀
作家會使用不同的閱讀技巧没酣？大衛(wèi)·福斯特·華萊士（Foster Wallace）提出了費曼原則來教你如何寫得更好王财。他說，學(xué)習(xí)寫作需要“以不同的方式使用注意力”裕便。
不僅要閱讀了很多绒净，而且要注意句子放在一起的方式，所加入的條款偿衰，句子組成一個段落的方式挂疆。當(dāng)你拿起一本你真正喜歡的書，把自己當(dāng)成一個傻子去做練習(xí)下翎。讀一頁書三遍缤言、四遍，放下它视事，然后嘗試去模仿它的用詞胆萧，直到你的肌肉已經(jīng)形成了你所喜歡的文字表達(dá)方式的思維模式。如果你跟我一樣俐东，那么你會發(fā)現(xiàn)其實你是無法復(fù)制它的鸳碧。
...
聽起來真的很愚蠢盾鳞，但實際上你可以看一頁文字，對吧瞻离？而且“哦腾仅，那真是太好了”，但是在你開始嘗試復(fù)制它們之前套利，你并沒有感覺到在這段文字中之前所帶給你的感覺推励。
原文：
During the Q&A for How to Read a Book, someone asked whether reading a lot makes us better writers. The short answer is yes. Reading and writing are two sides of the same coin. As Anne Lamott points out, the converse is also true – writing makes you a better reader.
One reads with a deeper appreciation and concentration, knowing now how hard writing is, especially how hard it is to make it look effortless. You begin to read with a writer’s eyes. You focus in a new way. You study how someone portrays his or her version of things in a way that is new and bold and original.
Speaking with the wisdom of experience, Stephen King, Ernest Hemingway and David Foster Wallace share their thoughts on the relationship between reading and writing.
Why to Read
In On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, Stephen King explains why reading is so important for those who want to write.
If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot. There’s no way around those two things that I’m aware of, no shortcut.
I’m a slow reader, but I usually get through seventy or eighty books a year, mostly fiction. I don’t read in order to study the craft; I read because I like to read. It’s what I do at night, kicked back in my blue chair. Similarly, I don’t read fiction to study the art of fiction, but simply because I like stories. Yet there is a learning process going on.
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The real importance of reading is that it creates an ease and intimacy with the process of writing; one comes to the country of the writer with one’s papers and identification pretty much in order. Constant reading will pull you into a place (a mind-set if you like the phrase) where you can write eagerly and without self-consciousness. It also offers you a constantly growing knowledge of what has been done and what hasn’t, what is trite and what is fresh, what works and what just lies there dying (or dead) on the page. The more you read, the less apt you are to make a fool of yourself with your pen or word processor.
What to Read
Schopenhauer said “one can never read too little of bad, or too much of good books: bad books are intellectual poison; they destroy the mind.”
While that may be true as a general rule, King talks about the role badly-written books played in teaching him to write.
Asteroid Miners (which wasn’t the title, but that’s close enough) was an important book in my life as a reader. Almost everyone can remember losing his or her virginity, and most writers can remember the first book he/she put down thinking: I can do better than this. Hell, I am doing better than this! What could be more encouraging to the struggling writer than to realize his/her work is unquestionably better than that of someone who actually got paid for his/her stuff?
One learns most clearly what not to do by reading bad prose – one novel like Asteroid Miners (or Valley of the Dolls, Flowers in the Attic, and The Bridges of Madison County, to name just a few) is worth a semester at a good writing school, even with the superstar guest lectures thrown in.
Good writing, on the other hand, teaches the learning writer about style, graceful narration, plot development, the creation of beautiful characters, and truth-telling. A novel like The Grapes of Wrath may fill a new writer with feelings of despair and good old-fashioned jealousy – “I’ll never be able to write anything that good, not if I live to be a thousand” – but such feelings can also serve as a spur, goading the writer to work harder and aim higher. Being swept away by a combination of great story and great writing – of being flattened, in fact – is part of every writer’s necessary formation. You cannot hope to sweep someone else away by the force of your writing until it has been done to you.
Who to Read
In an article Hemingway wrote for Esquire in 1935, he recounts the advice he gave an aspiring writer known as Maestro, Mice for short. This entertaining excerpt appears in Hemingway on Writing.
Mice: What books should a writer have to read?
Y.C. [Your Correspondent]: He should have read everything so that he knows what he has to beat.
Mice: He can?t read everything.
Y.C.: I don?t say what he can. I say what he should. Of course he can?t.
Mice: Well what books are necessary?
Y.C.: He should have read War and Peace and Anna Karenina, by Tolstoi, Midshipman Easy, Frank Mildamay and Peter Simple by Captain Marryat, Madame Bovary and L?Education Sentimentale by Flaubert, Buddenbrooks by Thomas Mann, Joyce?s Dubliners, Portrait of the Artist and Ulysses, Tom Jones and Joseph Andrews by Fielding, Le Rouge et le Noire and La Chartreuse de Parme by Stendhal, The Brothers Karamazov and any two other Dostoevskis, Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, The Open Boat and The Blue Hotel by Stephen Crane, Hail and Farewell by George Moore, Yeats Autobiographies, all the good De Maupassant, all the good Kipling, all of Turgenev, Far Away and Long Ago by W.H. Hudson, Henry James? short stories, especially Madame de Mauves and The Turn of the Screw, The Portrait of a Lady, The American-
Mice: I can?t write them down that fast. How many more are there?
Y.C.: I?ll give you the rest another day. There are about three times that many.
Mice: Should a writer have read all of those?
Y.C.: All of those and plenty more. Otherwise he doesn?t know what he has to beat.
Mice: What do you mean “has to beat”?
Y.C.: Listen. There is no use writing anything that has been written before unless you can beat it. What a writer in our time has to do is write what hasn?t been written before or beat dead men at what they have done. The only way he can tell how he is going is to compete with dead men. Most live writers do not exist. Their fame is created by critics who always need a genius of the season, someone they understand completely and feel safe in praising, but when these fabricated geniuses are dead they will not exist. The only people for a serious writer to compete with are the dead that he knows are good. It is like a miler running against the clock rather than simply trying to beat whoever is in the race with him. Unless he runs against time he will never know what he is capable of attaining.
Mice: But reading all the good writers might discourage you.
Y.C.: Then you ought to be discouraged.
If you've always wanted to read the classics but keep putting it off, try breaking the task into manageable chunks.
When & Where to Read
Stephen King suggests aspiring writers read wherever and whenever possible.
Reading is the creative center of a writer’s life. I take a book with me everywhere I go, and find there are all sorts of opportunities to dip in. The trick is to teach yourself to read in small sips as well as in long swallows. Waiting rooms were made for books – of course! But so are theater lobbies before the show, long and boring checkout lines, and everyone’s favorite, the john. You can even read while you’re driving, thanks to the audiobook revolution. Of the books I read each year, anywhere from six to a dozen are on tape. As for all the wonderful radio you will be missing, come on – how many times can you listen to Deep Purple sing “Highway Star”?
Whether you read in “small sips” or curled up by the fire with a glass of wine, the point is that you need to find the time to read if you want to be a writer.
You have to read widely, constantly refining (and redefining) your own work as you do so. It’s hard for me to believe that people who read very little (or not at all in some cases) should presume to write and expect people to like what they have written, but I know it’s true. If I had a nickel for every person who ever told me he/she wanted to become a writer but “didn’t have time to read,” I could buy myself a pretty good steak dinner.? Can I be blunt on this subject? If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.
How to Read
Should aspiring writers use a different technique when reading? David Foster Wallace suggests a variation on the Feynman technique to teach yourself to write better. Learning to write, he says, requires “l(fā)earning to pay attention in different ways”.
Not just reading a lot, but paying attention to the way the sentences are put together, the clauses are joined, the way the sentences go to make up a paragraph. Exercises as boneheaded as you take a book you really like, you read a page of it three, four times, put it down, and then try to imitate it word for word so that you can feel your own muscles trying to achieve some of the effects that the page of text you like did. If you’re like me, it will be in your failure to be able to duplicate it that you’ll actually learn what’s going on.
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It sounds really, really stupid, but in fact, you can read a page of text, right? And “Oh, that was pretty good…” but you don’t get any sense of the infinity of choices that were made in that text until you start trying to reproduce them.
