曾为卡波特立传的作家杰拉尔德·克拉克尝言,“最好的传记作家向小说求教。”沿着这个逻辑推想,似乎小说家的自传就一定比别人更耐读。即便承认这个假设,当翻开英国作家詹姆斯·格雷厄姆·巴拉德(J.G.　Ballard)的晚年自传《生活的奇迹》(Miracles　of　Life:Shanghai　to　Shepperton)时,读者心中还是难免嘀咕,巴拉德还能带给我们什么新意?
当然,对于之前从未读过巴拉德的读者来讲,这并不是一个问题。传记在内容上不乏吸引眼球之处。问题在于,由于作者在1984年出版的自传体小说《太阳帝国》(Empire　of　the　Sun)和斯皮尔伯格改编的同名电影,巴拉德已经被中国的读者理所当然地与反战作家联系起来,作者的真实生活反而因此受到了某种“遮蔽”——虽然上海龙华集中营的生活与电影中吉姆的遭遇几无二致:拥挤的牢房、疟疾、永远都缺乏的食品与水；同时,集中营也给一个12岁的男孩带来了另一种意义的自由。
“1930年11月15日,我出生于上海综合医院。多年后,母亲常对我说,由于她身材苗条,而我的头太大,以致在分娩时受挤压变形。”自传是以玩笑的方式开始的,巴拉德对他在上海最初的生活,似乎都带着几分戏谑的、漫不经心的描述。他回忆自己在新华路(Amherst　Avenue)31号的洋房中,听见“收音机里嗡嗡响着蒋介石的抗战讲话,内容却不时被日本啤酒的广告打断”。尽管当时连侨民出行都须接受日本军队哨卡的检查,但1930年代上海的公共租界依旧充斥着没完没了的聚会、典礼、歌舞、电影,来自英国和美国的水兵们每天依旧在酒吧厮混。
珍珠港事件后,美日正式宣战。巴拉德全家也在1942年被强行遣送,羁押在龙华集中营。与小说相反,现实中他并没有像吉姆那样被迫与父母分开。他写道:“被关押的最大一个好处就是你有更多的时间与父母相处。在我的生命中,我第一次与父母在一间屋子里同吃同睡。”巴拉德的父亲早年在上海经商,家境优裕,但也遵守着传统的英国家庭习俗,家规尤严。而在难民营中,当看到父母被战争吓得胆战心惊,成年人的世界丧失了权威,他认为这是人生重要的一课,只是“代价过于残忍”。
在一个未曾涉世的男孩眼里,三四十年代中国的极度赤贫以及对于混乱与无序的体验,自然会直接影响到巴拉德今后的创作。他小说中的反乌托邦情节,很大程度上来自于解放前的旧上海。当《太阳帝国》刚发表的时候,“熟悉我早期的作品和短篇小说的读者发现那本书里满是在旧作中出现过的意象……干涸的游泳池、废弃的旅店和夜总会、荒芜的飞机跑道和洪水四溢的河流。”小说《可卡因之夜》(Cocaine　Nights)和《撞车》(Crash)算是此类作品的代表。尤其是后者,后现代理论家波德里亚曾以之为例,说明后现代社会中的暴力对道德维度的超越。
巴拉德并不同意波德里亚对自己作品的解读,他认为自己所关注的恰恰是道德视域。他相信,“人类的情感正在堕落,而我想要揭示这种堕落指向何方。我悲哀地发现,那些从未经历过暴力的人们沉迷于把它当作娱乐。或许娱乐化的暴力能够满足人类对于残酷的深层需要,这种本能只有当人类永久地处于战争之中时,才算得上是一项优点。”与狱友鲍比从仓库偷煤渣的场景始终在巴拉德的脑海中萦绕不散:“鲍比用一把废弃的刺刀从仓库墙角凿一个洞,伸手进去掏出几捧煤渣。”好不容易得手之后,巴拉德准备将“脏物”带回宿舍生火煮饭,但鲍比却用自己的那份煤渣在池塘边玩起了打水漂。这一幕使巴拉德体会到战争和长期的羁押对人心灵的扭曲,尽管“很难判断处于战争时期的道德行为”,但“对于鲍比这样的战争孤儿来说,我相信他生命中的某些部分已经死亡。”
在年初接受《泰晤士报》的访问时,巴拉德说,当他在剑桥求学的时候,同舍有一位男生是奥斯威辛的幸存者。巴拉德从不在他面前提自己在集中营的经历,因为与他相比,自己在龙华难民营“养尊处优”的生活实在“微不足道”。对于巴拉德,集中营生活意味着一场战争游戏,而自由就是他的战利品。他的最大乐趣是跑到美国人营区与水手们下棋。作为酬谢,水手们会送给他诸如《生活》之类的过期杂志,巴拉德最初的文学根底,就是靠集中营的舶来杂志所培养的。
巴拉德的所有作品都在昭示着一个复调主题,“回归”。从早期的新浪潮科幻小说,到随后的《太阳帝国》及其姊妹篇《女性的仁慈》,再到《生活的奇迹》,我们可以清晰地看到作者多年来一直试图寻迹自己童年的路径。在他的科幻小说《微缩城市》里,小男孩乘坐火车环游世界,为了寻找一片能够放风筝的天空。但是他不小心走得太远,以至于从地球的另一端回到了起点。巴拉德在1991年曾短暂回到上海,却再也找不到自己50年前在静安寺路(Bubbling　Well　Road)骑自行车的影子了,那座以几何级数变化的城市早已不是他当初的起点。“我走向一个幻象,并在沿途中想象它是真实的,最后却穿越了它。”他如是说。
——《南方都市报》2008年05月18日·B26版·阅读周刊·《回归童年,上海龙华难民营》by孙骁骥(http://www.nanfangdaily.com.cn/epaper/nfds/content/20080518/ArticelB26002FM.htm)

Objects of Desire looks at the appearance of consumer goods in the 200 years since the introduction of mechanized production, whether in Josiah Wedgewood's use of neo-classicism for his industrially manufactured pottery or the development of appropriate forms for wirelesses. The argument is illustrated with examples ranging from penknives to computers and from sewing machines to railway carriages.
In opening up new ways of appraising the man-made world around us, Objects of Desire is required reading for anyone who has any involvement with design and a revealing document about our society.

How do we see the world around us? "The Penguin on Design" series includes the works of creative thinkers whose writings on art, design and the media have changed our vision forever. Susan Sontag's groundbreaking critique of photography asks forceful questions about the moral and aesthetic issues surrounding this art form. Photographs are everywhere. They have the power to shock, idealize or seduce, they create a sense of nostalgia and act as a memorial, and they can be used as evidence against us or to identify us. In six incisive essays, Sontag examines the ways in which we use these omnipresent images to manufacture a sense of reality and authority in our lives.

"You belong to me and all Paris belongs to me and I belong to this notebook and this pencil."
Begun in the autumn of 1957 and published posthumously in 1964, Ernest Hemingway's A Moveable Feast captures what it meant to be young and poor and writing in Paris during the 1920s. A correspondent for the Toronto Star, Hemingway arrived in Paris in 1921, three years after the trauma of the Great War and at the beginning of the transformation of Europe's cultural landscape: Braque and Picasso were experimenting with cubist forms; James Joyce, long living in self-imposed exile from his native Dublin, had just completed Ulysses; Gertude Stein held court at 27 rue de Fleurus, and deemed young Ernest a member of rue génération perdue; and T. S. Eliot was a bank clerk in London. It was during these years that the as-of-yet unpublished young writer gathered the material for his first novel, The Sun Also Rises, and the subsequent masterpieces that followed.
Among these small, reflective sketches are unforgettable encounters with the members of Hemingway's slightly rag-tag circle of artists and writers, some also fated to achieve fame and glory, others to fall into obscurity. Here, too, is an evocation of the Paris that Hemingway knew as a young man -- a map drawn in his distinct prose of the streets and cafés and bookshops that comprised the city in which he, as a young writer, sometimes struggling against the cold and hunger of near poverty, honed the skills of his craft.
A Moveable Feast is at once an elegy to the remarkable group of expatriates that gathered in Paris during the twenties and a testament to the risks and rewards of the writerly life.

A brand new edition of Arthur Koestler's gripping tale of arrest, imprisonment, and subsequent escape to London from Nazi-occupied France. Arthur Koestler is now an essential part of the English literary landscape both as political activist, controversialist and the author of Darkness at Noon. He stands beside George Orwell as one of the key writers of the twentieth century who embraced communism but would later turn against the "party"and denounce the tragic distortions and abuses that had betrayed the great vision.

Said is best known for describing and critiquing "Orientalism"; what he perceived as a constellation of false assumptions underlying Western attitudes toward the East.

In Orientalism (1978), Said decried the "subtle and persistent Eurocentric prejudice against Arabo-Islamic peoples and their culture". [1] He argued that a long tradition of false and romanticized images of Asia and the Middle East in Western culture had served as an implicit justification for Europe's and America's colonial and imperial ambitions.

Critiquing Said, Christopher Hitchens, who writes for Vanity Fair, wrote that he denied any possibility "that direct Western engagement in the region is legitimate" and that Said's analysis cast "every instance of European curiosity about the East [as] part of a grand design to exploit and remake what Westerners saw as a passive, rich, but ultimately contemptible 'Oriental' sphere". [2]

The British historian Bernard Lewis is another important critic who took issue with Said's work. The two authors exchanged a famous polemic in the pages of the New York Review of Books following the publication of Orientalism. Lewis' article, "The question of orientalism" was followed in the next issue by "Orientalism: an exchange".

At the heart of this 1930 novel is the Bundren family's bizarre journey to Jefferson to bury Addie, their wife and mother. Faulkner lets each family member--including Addie--and others along the way tell their private responses to Addie's life.

本书原名是To Kill A Mockingbird，后面省略了is a
sin。mockingbird译为反舌鸟，常见于美国南方；能效仿百鸟啁呜，逗人喜爱。在美国南方，伤害反舌鸟通常被看作是一种罪恶。作者如此命名此书，寓意深刻，耐人寻味。
本书是小主人公斯各特童年生活的回忆。故事发生在三十年代美国南部的一个小镇。全书围绕着她和她哥哥杰姆及小伙伴迪尔的生活铺展开来，逐渐编织进各种各样的人物形象，披露出生活的不同侧面。书中交替描写的一明一暗的两个冤案构成故事的主要情节。
第一个冤案的受害人是遁居者布·拉德利。由于种种诽
谤性的传说，斯各特和她的伙伴对他一直又恨又怕，把他视为恶魔。事实上，布·拉德利是一个温厚善良、热爱生活的好人，但在南方传统势力的桎梏下，他成了社会舆论的牺牲品。直到最后，他从凶残的尤厄尔的刀下救出斯各特的哥哥杰姆，他才为这几个小主人公所理解，这一冤案才真相大白。另一冤案是故事的明线：黑人汤姆·鲁宾逊出于好心，多次帮助白人姑娘梅耶拉·尤厄尔，却反被诬陷为强奸了她。尽管正直的白人律师阿迪克斯极力为汤姆辩护，并机智地将事实真相一层层揭示于法庭，但是，在美国那样的社会里，黑人有理也无处申诉，汤姆终究被判罪并惨遭枪杀。作品通过这一冤案，无情地揭露和抨击了种族歧视，有力地支持了六十年代美国兴起的黑人人权运动。
作品的魅力所在首推三个可爱的小主人公。作者把现实生活置于儿童眼光的观察下，置于透明心灵的折射里。读着他们的故事，我们时而为作者的细腻、贴切的儿童心理描写而拍案叫绝，时而因儿童的天真幼稚而掩卷大笑，时而又会勾起对自己童年生活的美好回忆。然而，兴奋、大笑之余，又会情不自禁地沉浸在严肃的思考之中，在童心的一片纯真中受到陶冶。
全书故事叙述质朴自然，笔调幽默明快，读来恬淡、清新，宇里行间洋溢着一个美国南方小镇的生活气息。书中人物塑造得实在、丰满，各有个性。三个小主人公天真无邪，聪明伶俐，不由得你不深深地喜爱他们，阿迪克斯胸怀宽广．正直无私，不由得你不衷心敬佩。

National Bestseller

On November 15, 1959, in the small town of Holcomb, Kansas, four members of the Clutter family were savagely murdered by blasts from a shotgun held a few inches from their faces. There was no apparent motive for the crime, and there were almost no clues. As Truman Capote reconstructs the murder and the investigation that led to the capture, trial, and execution of the killers, he generates both mesmerizing suspense and astonishing empathy. In Cold Blood is a work that transcends its moment, yielding poignant insights into the nature of American violence.