Wednesday, January 24, 2007

Notes of a Desolate Man


Notes of a Desolate Man
朱天文《荒人手記》英文本
初版1999年6月,50美刀
再版2000年11月,22.5美刀
哥倫比亞大學出版社

譯者是美國科羅拉多大學東亞語言與文明系教授葛浩文(Howard Goldblatt)和他的同事兼妻子林麗君(Sylvia Li-chun Lin )。葛在臺灣學習中文,曾在香港及內地呆過。被夏志清評為“公認的中國現代、當代文學之首席翻譯家”。《荒人手記》英文本Notes of a Desolate Man銷量很好,出版一年時間內就達到1萬冊,該書也獲得美國2000年度National Translation Award。葛本人翻譯了大量中國現、當代文學及港臺當代文學作品。

以下為出版社書介:
Awarded the China Times Prize in 1994; Best Book: Los Angeles Times Book Review; Notable Book: New York Times Book Review; Best Fiction of the Year, Los Angeles Times Book Review

"Superb. . . . A strong and perceptive voice now arises from Taiwan. . . . Notes of a Desolate Man is a novel of questions and imponderables, not so much a cry of pain as the lively, sharp-witted record of it."
—Peter Kurth, New York Times Book Review

"The novel in poetic translation is in itself a joy to read, writing that inspires awe for its intellectual scope and its sensitive portrayal of gay men and their lives—and deaths."
—Charles-Gene McDaniel, Libido

"A fascinating glimpse into one man's experience of Taiwanese gay life."
—Susan Vreeland, San Francisco Chronicle

"A stylish meditation on marginalization, radicalization and decay."
—Susan Salter Reynolds, Los Angeles Times

"Ambitious, intelligent, and intense."—Booklist

"A poetic, philosophical account of a friendship between two gay men."
—Publishers Weekly

Winner of the coveted China Times Novel Prize, this postmodern, first-person tale of a contemporary Taiwanese gay man reflecting on his life, loves, and intellectual influences is among the most important recent novels in Taiwan.

The narrator, Xiao Shao, recollects a series of friends and lovers, as he watches his childhood friend, Ah Yao, succumb to complications from AIDS. The brute fact of Ah Yao's death focuses Shao's simultaneously erudite and erotic reflections magnetically on the core theme of mortality. By turns humorous and despondent, the narrator struggles to come to terms with Ah Yao's risky lifestyle, radical political activism, and eventual death; the fragility of romantic love; the awesome power of eros; the solace of writing; the cold ennui of a younger generation enthralled only by video games; and life on the edge of mainstream Taiwanese society. His feverish journey through forests of metaphor and allusion—from Fellini and Lévi-Strauss to classical Chinese poetry—serves as a litany protecting him from the ravages of time and finitude.
Impressive in scope and detail, Notes of a Desolate Man employs the motif of its characters' marginalized sexuality to highlight Taiwan's vivid and fragile existence on the periphery of mainland China. Howard Goldblatt and Sylvia Li-chun Lin's masterful translation brings Chu T'ien-wen's lyrical and inventive pastiche of political, poetic, and sexual desire to the English-speaking world.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

看不懂
中文都勉强了.

Anonymous said...

E文看到俺头大

Anonymous said...

大半夜地假装不在实在令人发指

Anonymous said...

这么长,你都看了?

下次翻译过来!