艾德勒 - 《如何阅读一本书》推荐书单¶

来自莫提默·J·艾德勒（Mortimer Jerome Adler）《如何阅读一本书》How to Read a Book

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建议阅读书目¶

下面所列举的书单，都是值得你花时间一读的书。我们说“值得你花时间”是很认真的。虽然这些书并不全都是一般人所认为的那种“伟大”，但只要你肯花时间努力，你就能得到回馈。所有这些书都超越了大多数的水平一一超出许多。因而这些书会强迫大部分读者作心智上的成长，以了解并欣赏这样的书。当然，如果你想要增进自己的阅读技巧，这样的书就是你该找的书，同时你也会发现在我们文化传统中有过，哪些伟大的思想与说法。

就我们在上一章所谈的特殊意义而言有些书特别了不起。每次你重读，都会发现许多新的想法。这些书是可以一读再读，永不会厌倦的。换句话说，这些书一一我们不会正确地指出有多少这样的书，也不会指出是哪些书，因为这是由个人判断的一一超越过所有读者的水平，就算最有技巧的读者也不能超越这样的书。我们在上一章说过，这些作品就是每个人都该特别努力去研读的书。这些书是真正的伟大作品，任何一个人要去荒岛，都该带着这些书一起去。

这个书单很长，看起来有点难以消受。我们鼓励你不要因为这个书单而觉得为难。一开始，你可能会先要辨识大部分的作者是谁。这里面没什么是一般人难以了解，因而就该冷僻的道理。最重要的是，我们要提醒你，不论基于什么理由，最聪明的做法都是从你最感兴趣的书开始读。我们已经说过许多次，主要的目标是要读得好，而不是要读得广。如果一年当中你读不了几本书，其实不必觉得失望。书单上的书并不是要你在特定时间里读完的。这也不是非要读完所有的书才算完成的挑战。相反，这是一个你可以从容接受的邀请，只要你觉得很自在，任何时候都可以开始。

作者名单是按时间前后顺序排出来的，以他们确实或大约的出生时期为准。一位作者有很多本书时，也是尽可能按作品时间顺序排列的。学者们对每一本书的最早出版时间可能不见得有一致的看法，但这对你来说没什么影响。要记得的重点是:这个书单就像是一个时代的演进表，当然，你用不着依时间先后的顺序来读。你甚至可以从最近出版的一本书来读，再回溯到荷马及《旧约》。

我们并没有把每一位作者所有的书都列出来。通常我们都只挑选比较重要的作品，以论说性作品而言，我们挑选的根据是尽可能表现一位作者在不同学习领域里作了哪些贡献。在另外一些例子中，我们会列举一位作者的几部作品，然后把其中特别重要又有用的书用括号标示出来。

要拟这份书单，最困难的总是跟当代作品有关的部分。作者越接近我们的年代，越难作很公正的评断。时间能证明一切是句好话，但我们不想等那么久。因此对现代的作者或作品，我们预留了一些不同观点的空间，因此在我们书单比较后面部分的书，我们不敢说前面那些书公认的地位。

对前面部分的书，可能也有人有些不同的观点，因为我们没有列入某些作品，可能会认为我们在挑选时有偏见。在某些例子中，我们承认自己是有些偏见。这是我们开的书单，自然会跟别人开的书单有点不同。不过如果任何人想要认真地研拟一份值得一生阅读的好书书单，以增进阅读能力的话，其间的差别应该不会太大才对。当然，最后你还是要自己拟出一份书单，然后全力以赴。无论如何，在你列出自己的书单之前，先看一份被一致公认为好书的书单，是很聪明的做法。这份书单是一个可以开始的地方。

我们还要提出一个疏漏之处，这可能会让一些不幸的读者觉得很受打击。这份书单只列出了西方的作品，不包括中国、日本或印度的作品。我们这么做有几个理由。其中一个是我们对西方传统文化以外的文化并不十分在行，我们建议的书单也不会有什么分量。另一个原因是东方并不像西方这样是单一的传统，我们必须要明白所有的东方文化传统之后，才能将这份书单拟好。而很少有学者能对所有的东方文化都有深刻的了解。第三，在你想要了解其他世界的文化之前，应该要先了解自己的文化。现代有许多人试着要读《易经》或《薄伽梵歌》（Bhagavad-Gita )，都觉得很困难，不只是因为这样的书本身就很难懂，也因为他们并没有先利用自己文化中比较容易理解的书—他们比较容易接近的书一一把阅读技巧练习好。

还有另外一个疏忽之处要提提。虽然是一份书单，其中主要以抒情诗诗人为人熟知的作者却没几位。当然，书单中另外有些作者也写抒情诗，但他们较为人知的是一些较长的其他著作。这方面不该当作是我们对抒情诗有偏见。读诗，我们认为从一本好的合选集开始阅读，会比从某一位作者的个人选集开始要好得多。帕尔格雷夫(Palgrave)编辑的《英诗金库》(The Golden Treasury )及《牛津英诗选)(The Oxford Book of English Verse)是最好的入门书。这些老的诗选应该要有现代人做增补的工作——像塞尔登·罗德曼( Selden Rodman)的《现代诗一百首》(Qrte Hundred Modern Poems)，这本书用很有趣的概念，广泛收集了当代随手可得的英诗。因为阅读抒情诗需要特殊的技巧，我们也介绍了其他相关的指导书籍——像马克·范多伦的《诗歌入门》( Introduction to Poetry，是一本合选集，同时也包含了一些短论，谈到如何阅读许多有名的抒情诗。

我们依照作者及书名将书单列出来，却没有列出出版者及特殊的版本。书单上几乎所有的书都可以在书店中找到，有许多出了不同的版本，平装或精装都有。不过，如果哪位作者或哪本作品已经收录进我们自己所编辑的两套书，那就会特别标示出来。其中出现在《西方世界的经典名著》(Great Books of the Western World)中的，打一个星号；出现在《名著入门》(Gateway to the Great Books)中的，打两个星号。

A RECOMMENDED READING LIST¶

On the following pages appears a list of books that it would be worth your while to read. We mean the phrase “worth your while” quite seriously. Although not all of the books listed are “great” in any of the commonly accepted meanings of the term, all of them will reward you for the effort you make to read them. All of these books are over most people’s heads—sufficiently so, at any rate, to force most readers to stretch their minds to understand and appreciate them. And that, of course, is the kind of book you should seek out if you want to improve your reading skills, and at the same time discover the best that has been thought and said in our literary tradition.

Some of the books are great in the special sense of the term that we employed in the last chapter. On returning to them, you will always find something new, often many things. They are endlessly re-readable. Another way to say this is that some of the books—we will not say exactly how many, nor will we try to identify them, since to some extent this is an individual judgment—are over the heads of all readers, no matter how skillful. As we observed in the last chapter, these are the works that everyone should make a special effort to seek out. They are the truly great books; they are the books that anyone should choose to take with him to his own desert island.

The list is long, and it may seem a little overwhelming. We urge you not to allow yourself to be abashed by it. In the first place, you are likely to recognize the names of most of the authors. There is nothing here that is so recondite as to be esoteric. More important, we want to remind you that it is wise to begin with those books that interest you most, for whatever reason. As we have pointed out several times, the primary aim is to read well, not widely. You should not be disappointed if you read no more than a handful of the books in a year. The list is not something to be gotten through in any amount of time. It is not a challenge that you can meet only by finishing every item on it. Instead, it is an invitation that you can accept graciously by beginning wherever you feel at home.

The authors are listed chronologically, according to the known or supposed date of their birth. When several works of an author are listed, these too are arranged chronologically, where that is possible. Scholars do not always agree about the first publication of a book, but this need not concern you. The point to remember is that the list as a whole moves forward through time. That does not necessarily mean that you should read it chronologically, of course. You might even start with the end of the list and read backward to Homer and the Old Testament.

We have not listed all the works of every author. We have usually cited only the more important titles, selecting them, in the case of expository books, to show the diversity of an author’s contribution to different fields of learning. In some instances, we have listed an author’s works and specified, in brackets, those titles that are especially important or useful.

In drawing up a list of this kind, the greatest difficulty always arises with respect to the relatively contemporary items. The closer an author is to our own time, the harder it is to exercise a detached judgment about him. It is all very well to say that time will tell, but we may not want to wait. Thus, with regard to the more recent writers and books, there is much room for differences of opinion, and we would not claim for the later items on our list the degree of authority that we can claim for the earlier ones.

There may be differences of opinion about some of the earlier items too, and we may be charged with being prejudiced against some authors that we have not listed at all. We are willing to admit that this may be true, in some cases. This is our list, and it may differ in some respects from lists drawn up by others. But it will not differ very significantly if everyone concurs seriously in the aim of making up a reading program that is worth spending a lifetime on. Ultimately, of course, you should make up your own list, and then go to work on it. It is wise, however, to read a fair number of the books that have been unanimously acclaimed before you branch off on your own. This list is a place to begin.

We want to mention one omission that may strike some readers as unfortunate. The list contains only Western authors and books; there are no Chinese, Japanese, or Indian works. There are several reasons for this. One is that we are not particularly knowledgeable outside of the Western literary tradition, and our recommendations would carry little weight. Another is that there is in the East no single tradition, as there is in the West, and we would have to be learned in all Eastern traditions in order to do the job well. There are very few scholars who have this kind of acquaintance with all the works of the East. Third, there is something to be said for knowing your own tradition before trying to understand that of other parts of the world. Many persons who today attempt to read such books as the I Ching or the Bhagavad-Gita are baffled, not only because of the inherent difficulty of such works, but also because they have not learned to read well by practicing on the more accessible works—more accessible to them—of their own culture. And finally, the list is long enough as it is.

One other omission requires comment. The list, being one of books, includes the names of few persons known primarily as lyric poets. Some of the writers on the list wrote lyric poems, of course, but they are best known for other, longer works. This fact is not to be taken as reflecting a prejudice on our part against lyric poetry. But we would recommend starting with a good anthology of poetry rather than with the collected works of a single author. Palgrave’s The Golden Treasury and The Oxford Book of English Verse are excellent places to start. These older anthologies should be supplemented by more modern ones—for example, Selden Rodman’s One Hundred Modern Poems, a collection widely available in paperback that extends the notion of a lyric poem in interesting ways. Since reading lyric poetry requires special skill, we would also recommend any of several available handbooks on the subject—for example, Mark Van Doren’s Introduction to Poetry, an anthology that also contains short discussions of how to read many famous lyrics.

We have listed the books by author and title, but we have not attempted to indicate a publisher or a particular edition. Almost every work on the list is available in some form, and many are available in several editions, both paperback and hard cover. However, we have indicated which authors and titles are included in two sets that we ourselves have edited. Titles included in Great Books of the Western World are identified by a single asterisk; authors represented in Gateway to the Great Books are identified by a double asterisk.

书单¶