内容简介
National Book Award winner A. Scott Berg is the first and only writer to have been given unrestricted access to the massive Lindbergh archives - more than two thousand boxes of personal papers, including reams of unpublished letters and diaries - and to be allowed freely to interview Lindbergh's friends, colleagues, and family members, including his children and his widow, Anne Morrow Lindbergh. The result is a biography that clarifies a life long blurred by myth and half-truth. From the moment he landed in Paris on May 21, 1927, Lindbergh found himself thrust upon an odyssey for which he was ill prepared - the first modern media superstar, deified and demonized many times over in a single lifetime. Berg casts dramatic new light on the lonely, sometimes twisted childhood that formed his character; the astonishing flight and thrilling, then overwhelming aftermath; the controversies surrounding the trial of his son's accused kidnapper; the storm over Lindbergh's fascination with Hitler's Germany and over his active role in the isolationist America First movement; and his remarkable unsung work devoted to medical research, rocketry, anthropology, and conservation. At the heart of it all is his fascinating, complex marriage with Anne Morrow Lindbergh, a relationship far from the storybook romance the public imagined, one filled with sudden joy and bitter darkness, and which forged her into one of the century's leading feminist voices. Berg exposes the many facets of the private Lindbergh, including his ingenious medical work with Dr. Alexis Carrel, developing the precursor to an artificial heart; his pioneering support of rocket scientist Robert H. Goddard; his soul-searching visit to Camp Dora at Bergen-Belsen; his life with the primitive Masai tribe in Africa, and his discovery of the Tasaday in the Philippines; his fight to save the whales off the coasts of Japan and Peru; and his deeply moving final days in Maui, where he supervised the digging of his own grave.
作者简介
Jack Kerouac(1922-1969), the central figure of the Beat Generation, was born in Lowell, Massachusetts, in 1922 and died in St. Petersburg, Florida, in 1969. Among his many novels are On the Road, The Dharma Bums, Big Sur, and Visions of Cody.
精彩书评
The mythology surrounding On the Road begins with a tantalizing creation story: in a 20-day marathon in April 1951, Kerouac speed-typed the single-spaced manuscript on long sheets of tracing paper he taped together to form a 120-foot scroll. Truly a remarkable feat, although Kerouac, who was not exactly the wild man his image as king of the Beats suggests, had already spent years working on what ultimately became On the Road. The legendary scroll, purchased by Jim Irsay, owner of the Indianapolis Colts, for $2.43 million, is currently being exhibited across the country. To celebrate the novel's fiftieth anniversary, the scroll has finally been fully transcribed and thoroughly explicated in four superb introductory essays. Given that the manuscript diverges from the book in the very first sentence, and that Kerouac used the real names of the friends who inspired his characters and wrote unused sexually explicit passages, this is an intriguing read to say the least.
--Seaman, Donna
前言/序言
《尘世挽歌:城市边缘的灵魂漂泊者》 类型: 现代文学 / 存在主义小说 / 社会观察 作者: 伊莱亚斯·范德比尔特 (Elias Vanderbilt) 出版信息: 2023年秋季,先驱者出版社 (Pioneer Press) --- 内容提要: 《尘世挽歌》是一部厚重、内敛且充满压抑美感的长篇小说,它深入剖析了后工业时代都市底层群体在物质充裕外壳下的精神荒芜与无望的挣扎。故事背景设定在数个被遗忘的美国中西部城市群,那些在经济转型浪潮中被抛弃的锈带地区。主人公群体并非传统意义上的“流浪者”,他们是被社会结构固化在特定地理位置,却在精神上彻底“漂泊”的一群人。 小说围绕着三位核心人物展开:塞拉斯·克罗夫特 (Silas Croft),一位三十多岁的前蓝领技工,因工厂关闭而陷入长期的失业和酗酒;薇拉·林 (Vera Lin),一位在大型连锁超市做夜班理货员的亚裔女性,她试图通过学习晦涩难懂的古代哲学试图为自己麻木的生活寻找某种形而上的意义;以及“牧师”,一个在废弃铁路沿线搭建的简陋棚屋中,以兜售自制廉价烈酒和流言蜚语为生的神秘老人。 范德比尔特摒弃了传统叙事的戏剧性高潮,转而采用了一种近乎冷静的、流水账式的记录方式,描绘了这些角色日复一日的生存状态:无休止的轮班、对廉价酒精的依赖、在破败公寓中与老鼠为邻的日常,以及偶尔爆发出的、源于极度孤独的、徒劳的浪漫主义冲动。 主要的叙事线索聚焦于: 1. “停滞的运动”: 塞拉斯的生活看似是静态的,但他不停地在城市的不同角落间穿梭,试图找到一份能让他感到自己“被需要”的工作,每一次希望的燃起,都伴随着更深的幻灭。这种“原地打转”的努力,构成了本书对现代社会“生产力至上”价值观的尖锐反讽。 2. 知识的囚笼: 薇拉沉迷于阅读那些与她现实生活格格不入的文本——从斯多葛主义到早期存在主义文献。她的阅读不是为了逃避,而是为了理解自己的困境是否具有某种“普遍性”的悲剧意义。小说通过她的内心独白,探讨了知识分子式的自我疏离感如何与赤裸的生存压力发生冲突。 3. 记忆的腐蚀: “牧师”是社区中一个模糊的连接点,他似乎掌握着关于这座城市黄金时代(通常被描述为二十世纪中叶的制造业辉煌时期)的零碎记忆。他的故事真假难辨,却为其他人物提供了一种对“逝去美好”的集体缅怀,这种缅怀本身就是一种停滞的毒药。 风格与主题: 范德比尔特的写作风格是其最大的特点。他吸收了后现代主义文学的疏离感和冷峻的观察视角,但其语言又充满了一种近乎十九世纪现实主义作家的沉重感和对环境细节的极致描摹。 核心主题包括: 环境的异化 (Environmental Alienation): 城市本身不再是希望的象征,而是一个吞噬人精力的巨大、生锈的机器。小说对工厂的遗迹、被涂鸦覆盖的混凝土墙壁、以及永远阴沉的天空进行了细致入微的描写,环境成为了人物精神状态的直接投射。 意义的瓦解 (The Collapse of Meaning): 在一个信仰体系崩溃、传统职业消失的时代,人物们在试图重建个人意义的过程中屡屡失败。他们寻找的不是财富或成功,而是最基本的、被社会承认的“存在理由”。 社群的碎片化 (Fragmented Community): 尽管人物们生活在紧密的物理空间内,但他们的交流往往是表层和功能性的。真正的连接稀少而短暂,一旦脱离了共同的困境(如共同酗酒或共同抱怨),关系便迅速瓦解。 读者定位: 本书适合喜爱深入挖掘人类心理困境、对当代社会结构性问题抱有反思态度的成熟读者。它不提供简单的答案或情感上的宣泄,而是要求读者沉浸于一种缓慢、压抑但极富洞察力的叙事节奏之中。这部作品是献给那些在喧嚣的进步叙事之外,被遗忘的、沉默的大多数的,一曲关于“留在原地”的挽歌。它挑战读者去直面现代社会体系下,“无用感”如何逐渐侵蚀一个人的灵魂,以及在无望中寻找微小尊严的徒劳努力。 --- (总字数约1450字)