“逝实”的乐趣

The Joy of (Outdated) Facts

“逝实”的乐趣

Geoff Nicholson

杰夫.尼科尔森

作者简介

杰夫•尼科尔森（Geoff Nicholson，1953—），英国作家，文学期刊《界限》（Ambit）编辑。其作品继承了伊弗林.沃（Evelyn Waugh）的讽刺风格，以黑色幽默再现社会习俗。

尼科尔森的代表作《猎人与收集者》（Hunters and Gatherers）、《食物链》（The Food Chain）、《流血的伦敦》（Bleeding London）都曾入围惠特布莱德奖（Whitbread Prize）。部分评论家甚至将其与《万有引力之虹》（Gravity’s Rainbow）的作者托马斯.品钦（Thomas Pynchon）相提并论。

本文发表于2010年5月的《纽约时报》（The New York Times），从《吉尼斯世界纪录》（Guinness Book of Records）谈起，一直说到百科全书乃至网络搜索引擎。作者凭借诙谐幽默的语言，说明了所谓的“事实”是多么不可靠。但读罢此文，你会意识到，离谱的“事实”能带给人无限乐趣。

The other day I realized I absolutely had to own a copy of the recently published facsimile of the first Guinness Book of Records from 1955 (limited edition of 5,000, mine is No. 177). It’s a fine book, and it gave me just want I wanted. Since I bought it, I’ve been regaling people with stories of Jacko, a dog owned by one Mr. J. Shaw of London that killed 1,000 rats in an hour and 40 minutes in May 1862; Mrs. Theresa Vaughan of Sheffield, who had had 61 bigamous marriages by the age of 24; and Dionsio Sanchez of Spain, who once drank 40 pints of wine in 59 minutes. It was a different world.

A world in which, if the book’s preface is to be believed, men went into bars and argued about facts. Dreamed up by Sir Hugh Beaver, the chairman of the Guinness Brewery, the Guinness Book of Records was to be kept behind the bar and pulled out to settle disputes, like, apparently, those over how many entrechats Nijinsky could perform in a single elevation. (Ten, since you ask.)

某天，我意识到自己必须拥有一本最新出版的1955年版《吉尼斯世界纪录》复制本。此书限量发售5000本，我这本编号177。这是本好书，里面正好有我想要的东西。买了这本书之后，我总是拿以下趣事逗朋友开心：伦敦肖先生的小狗杰科，1862年5月在1小时40分钟里杀了1000只老鼠；谢菲尔德的特蕾莎•沃恩女士，24岁时就已犯过61次重婚罪；西班牙的迪恩西奥•桑切斯，在59分钟里喝了40品脱葡萄酒。这真是另一个世界。

如果此书序言可信的话，在这个世界里，男人们去酒吧争论事实。在吉尼斯啤酒厂老总休•比弗的想象中，人们可以把《吉尼斯世界纪录》放在酒吧里，拿它来平息争论，比如尼金斯基[1]跃起一次双脚能互击多少次？（如果你要问，答案是10次。）[2]

It took a while for me to understand why my need for the book had been so great, and then I realized, with a bit of a slap to the head, that for much of my life I’ve been accumulating “books of facts,” single volumes as well as multivolume sets. I also have eight random volumes of the 1969 World Book Encyclopedia, which I found on the street. Since I have the L volume, I can give you an idea of how the World Book editors thought things stood in London, Los Angeles and Luxembourg at that time, and what the prospects were for the lumber industry and for literature for children: Miriam Gurko’s Restless Spirit: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay, for example, comes highly recommended for “older boys and girls.” But don’t ask me about anything from D to K.

As for why I’ve acquired these books, no doubt childhood trauma comes into it. While I grew up in an unbookish household, we did own (and I still have) a copy of Everybody’s Pocket Companion: A Handy Reference Book of Astronomical, Biblical, Chemical, Geographical, Geometrical, Historical, Mathematical, Physical, Remedial, and Scientific Facts, Dates Worth Knowing, World Sports and Speeds Records, Mythological, Physiological, Monetary, Postal and General Information. It’s undated but seems to be from the early 1950s. Within its small pages, you could learn the capitals of all the French colonies, “various trigonometrical formulae,” and how to remove a wet ink stain. (Steep it in milk.)

我想了半天，想弄清自己为什么如此需要这本书。然后我猛然发现，自己大半辈子都在收集“记录事实的书”，无论它们是单卷还是成套。我甚至在街边淘到了1969年版《世界图书百科全书》里面的8本。我有首字母L的那卷，所以我能告诉你《世界图书百科全书》编辑如何看待当时发生在伦敦、洛杉矶、卢森堡的事，如何看待木材工业和儿童文学的前景[3]。例如，他们向“年纪较大的男孩女孩”强烈推荐米丽娅姆•古尔科的《不息的精神：埃德娜•圣文森特•米莱的一生》。但别问我首字母从D到K的事。

至于我为什么收集这些书，无疑与童年创伤有关。我在一个不爱读书的家庭长大，我们只有一本《所有人的口袋书：关于天文学、圣经、化学、地理、几何、历史、数学、物理、医疗和科学常识、约会须知、世界体育与速度记录、神话、生理、金融、邮政与常识的便携参考手册》，我今天还保存着这本书。书上没印日期，但看上去像是20世纪50年早期的书。在它小小的书页里，你能了解到所有法国殖民地的首都、“各种三角公式”，还有如何去除未干的墨迹（浸在牛奶里）。

Most of us, I suppose, like to think we have a good general knowledge. But knowledge is rarely “general” at all. It’s usually extremely specific. As an Englishman who’s been in the United States for well over a decade, I still find many of the questions on “Jeopardy!” distinctly parochial. You may know what American city has Chocolate Avenue running through it (Hershey, Pa.). But why would I? An American watching English quiz shows would feel equally adrift.

Similarly, books of facts always display localized preferences, cultural values, sometimes straightforward prejudices. My New American Cyclopaedia (1872) tells me that in 1855 there were 25,858 people in New York who could neither read nor write, and 21,378 of them were Irish. This may well have been true, but why exactly did it need to be emphasized? Well, I think we might hazard a guess.

我猜想，我们大多数人都自认为很有常识。但知识不只是“常识”，它往往非常确切。作为在美国生活了10多年的英国人，我至今仍觉得“危险边缘”[4]里许多问题带有明显的地域性。你或许知道巧克力大街横穿哪个美国城市（宾夕法尼亚州的赫尔希镇），但我为什么要知道？一个美国人看英国知识竞猜节目，也会同样觉得自己孤陋寡闻。

同样，记录事实的书总是带有地域倾向、文化价值观，有时还有赤裸裸的偏见。我的1872年版《新美国百科全书》告诉我，1855年纽约共有25858人没有读写能力，其中21378人是爱尔兰人。这可能是真事，但为什么要强调爱尔兰人？我们可以大胆猜测一下。[5]

With hindsight, we can always see through the dubious “authority” of such historical sources. Few things look as unstable as the rock-solid certainties of previous ages. Since encyclopedias are supposed to be balanced and disinterested, the bias often seems even more naked. Sometimes I wonder if the editors of my 1952 Encyclopaedia Britannica ever regretted their assessment of William Faulkner: “It is naturalism run to seed, for it means nothing...In the hands of Faulkner brute fact leads to little but folly and despair.” Certainly the current editors of the Britannica reckoned some serious updating was required. In the online edition, we now read, “Some critics...have found his work extravagantly rhetorical and unduly violent, and there have been strong objections, especially late in the 20th century, to the perceived insensitivity of his portrayals of women and black Americans.” Note, however, that instead of a lofty judgment, we’re now given the opinion of these shadowy “some critics.”

作为事后诸葛亮，我们总能看透这类历史资料不可靠的“权威性”。过去发生的事看似稳如磐石，但很少有东西像它一样易变。百科全书通常被认为是公正客观的，所以书中的偏见往往显得更加赤裸裸。有时我想，我的1952年版《大英百科全书》的编辑们，是否会后悔自己对威廉•福克纳作的评价：“他走下坡路是自然的，因为他的作品毫无意义……在福克纳的笔下，残酷的事实只会导致愚蠢与绝望。”当然，《大英百科全书》如今的编辑认为内容要大幅更新。在百科全书网络版上，我们现在能读到：“一些批评家……认为他的作品辞藻过于华丽、内容过于极端。他对女性和黑人麻木不仁的描写引起了强烈抗议，特别是在20世纪晚期。”但请注意，我们现在读到的观点来自含糊其辞的“一些批评家”，而非编辑傲慢的评判。

The preface to the 1952 Britannica says “experience indicates” that 75 percent of its material needs updating “only at long intervals” while the other 25 percent “requires constant revision.” Now there are online changes every day, with markers in the database to denote the comparative “volatility” of the entries, the executive editor, Michael Levy, told me.

However, changes are evidently still not to be undertaken lightly. According to the “article history,” the entry for Faulkner has been amended just four times since 2006, three of them the addition of Web site links. Wikipedia, where anyone can make changes, has a much more freewheeling attitude: 30 revisions for Faulkner in April 2010 alone, although some of them, of course, are simply undoing other people’s revisions.

Keen scholars can use these histories to track how our knowledge about the world and everything in it changes over time, but the rest of us use Wikipedia and similar repositories of facts mainly as a quick and very blunt research tool. This has its pitfalls. A school librarian friend who teaches research skills tells me (with despair) that her greatest struggle is getting students to do more than tap into Google. The corollary is that kids have also told her with complete confidence that the moon landings were fake and that 9/11 was an inside job. Their proof: It says so online.

1952年版《大英百科全书》的序言说，“经验表明”75%的资料“过很长时间才需要更新”，剩下25%的资料“需要不断修订”。执行编辑迈克尔•利维告诉我，现在《大英百科全书》的网络版每天都有变化，因为撰写词条的人会时不时调整内容。

然而，变化显然让人难以接受。根据“词条历史”，“福克纳”这个词条自2006年以来修改了4次，其中3次是增加网站链接。任何人都能修改的维基百科，态度更加随心所欲：“福克纳”词条仅在2010年4月就有30次修改，尽管其中一些只是把别人修订的地方改回来。

敏锐的学者会利用这些词条历史，追踪我们对世界和万物的知识如何随着时间而变化，其他人则主要把维基百科和类似的知识库作为快速而笨拙的检索工具。这存在隐患。我有个朋友在学校图书馆工作，教授研究技巧。她曾绝望地告诉我，她最头疼的事是让学生不要只用谷歌搜索资料。只用谷歌搜索资料的必然结果是，孩子们言之凿凿地告诉她，登月是场骗局，9 •11事件其实是监守自盗。他们的证据是：网上是这么说的。

It’s sometimes tempting to see the Internet as a free-for-all where facts, conspiracy theories and downright lies are created equal, but hierarchies of one kind or another still operate. The last time I looked, a Google search yielded about 350,000 results for Edna St. Vincent Millay and 1.5 million for William Faulkner—pretty good numbers, until you see that Lady Gaga gets over 70 million.The name Dionsio Sanchez (probably a misprint of the suspiciously appropriate Dionisio) yields just 9 results, not all of them for the record-breaking wine drinker. As a matter of fact, Sanchez no longer appears in Guinness World Records either. As the current editor in chief, Craig Glenday, has said: “We’re not going to encourage that sort of thing today. That’s how people get hurt.”

Of course, ideas of what’s worth knowing, and even what’s interesting, are constantly changing: The fascination with trigonometrically formulas certainly seems to have receded. But in a world where ever fewer people care about, or even understand the nature of, fiction, where readers and viewers demand facts and reality, outdated books of supposedly impartial information can be a useful reminder of just how slippery facts are—as unreliable as the most unreliable narrator.

将互联网视为对所有人免费开放的平台，事实、阴谋论和彻底的谎言在网上平等存在，有时这么想很诱人，但这样那样的等级制度仍然存在。上次我看的时候，谷歌搜出了35万条关于埃德娜•圣文森特•米莱和150万条关于威廉•福克纳的结果——这是够多的，但你看到Lady Gaga的搜索结果有7000多万条之后，就会觉得它不值一提了。不过，迪恩西奥•桑切斯（或许印错了，怀疑是迪奥尼西奥）只有9个搜索结果，还不都是那个破纪录的酒徒。事实上，桑切斯已经不在《吉尼斯世界纪录》上了。《吉尼斯世界纪录》的现任主编克雷格•格伦迪说过：“现在我们不鼓励人们去做那种事，因为人们会受伤害。”

当然，值得了解或有趣的事情总在变化——看上去三角公式的魅力是衰退了。关注虚构的人越来越少，更别说理解虚构的本质了；读者和观察者都在追求事实和真相。不过，在这样一个世界上，被认为是公正记录信息的“逝实之书”的确很有用，它能提醒你，所谓的“事实”是多么不可靠——就像说话最不可信的人一样靠不住。

Douglas Adams once told me that shortly before he wrote The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy he was working on a screenplay with the premise that all human civilization had been obliterated, except for a single copy of the Guinness book. Aliens from another planet tried to use it to reconstruct what life on Earth had been like: people sitting atop poles for 152 days at a time, eating 77 hamburgers at a sitting, talking nonstop for 127 hours.

The movie was never made, which I think was a great shame. The poster could have been emblazoned with the words “based on a true story.” All the facts were right there in the book, and you can’t argue with facts, can you?

道格拉斯•亚当斯曾经告诉我，写《银河系漫游指南》之前不久，他在写一个电影剧本。背景设定是：人类文明已经毁灭，只剩下一本《吉尼斯世界纪录》。来自另一个星球的人试图按这本书重造地球上原有的生命——人们能在柱子顶上静坐152天，一口气吃77个汉堡包，连续说话127小时。

这部电影始终未能拍成，我觉得很遗憾。“根据真实故事改编”本可为电影海报锦上添花。毕竟，事实都在书里写着呢，你总不能否认事实吧？

“逝实之书”的确能提醒你，所谓的“事实”是多么不可靠——就像说话最不可信的人一样靠不住。

Geoff Nicholson 杰夫•尼科尔森

[1] 瓦斯拉夫.尼金斯基（Vaslav Nijinsky，1890—1950），震撼世界芭蕾舞坛的俄罗斯奇才。

[2] 原文如此，事实上尼金斯基跳跃一次能在空中做12次这个动作。

[3] 伦敦（London）、洛杉矶（Los Angeles）、卢森堡（Luxembourg）、木材工业（lumber industry）、儿童文学（literature for children）的英文名称都以“L”开头。

[4] “危险边缘”，美国最著名的智力竞猜节目。

[5] 当时的美国人歧视爱尔兰人，因为绝大多数爱尔兰移民没有受过良好的教育。

第三章 书香·杂趣