【寒假最强书单】《麦田里的守望者》：少年的烦恼
经常有人问：怎样才能成为一枚有追求、有文化、有知识、有B格的四有骚年？世纪君答：诸君，去读书吧！是的，假日属于书，那些跃动着的文字，让你如沐春风。这个假日，世纪君就奉上一份“寒假最强书单”。为何“最强”？因为世纪君：综合了英国教育部考试委员会、作家JK Rowling、Philip Pullman以及英国《卫报》、美国《纽约时报》等多家国际媒体开出的青少年书单；参考了香港教育图书公司、《澳门日报》、台湾国立图书馆所列的青少年必读书目；邀请了曾在北外任教、与世纪君共事多年的英国文学博士Paul Brennan先生，一起精选出这十本书。每日一读，如抱暖阳。
《麦田里的守望者》于1951年首次出版。六十年过去了，这本小说依然受到各个年龄层读者们的欢迎。这本小说的主人公是一个16岁的男孩，然而这并不意味着作品就是一个典型的“青少年小说”。大部分的青少年小说里，主人公会从自身的经历中有所收获，而《麦田里的守望者》中的主人公——霍尔顿·考尔菲德自始至终都懵懂困惑。有人说其实满世界都是霍尔顿。16岁的霍尔顿，30岁的霍尔顿，60岁的霍尔顿……他们看透了世界的平庸，但又无力超越这平庸。他们无力成为“我”，但又不屑于成为“他”。今天，让我们翻开《麦田里的守望者》，感受青春年少时的困惑与焦虑。
Over the 63 years since its publication in 1951, The Catcher in the Rye has sold hundreds of millions of copies. It’s also been translated into most of the languages on the planet. The majority of the book’s readers have no doubt been teenagers, but they have been teenagers who have tended to keep the book with them, making it a favorite among all age groups.
And yet, despite the fact that its hero is a teenager (Holden Caulfield, the narrator) and Holden has problems that seem like typical teenage problems, it’s not really a “teen” novel. In most teen novels, the character learns something over the course of the story. Not Holden, whose narrative ends in as confused a manner as the one in which it begins.
小说以霍尔顿的自述展开，生动细致地描绘了他从被学校开除到纽约游荡的三天里的所见所闻和苦闷仿徨、挣扎纠结的内心世界，尖锐地批判了成人社会的虚伪和做作。霍尔顿很孤独，抱怨憎恨着他生活的社会，找不到真正理解他的人。他最记挂的是妹妹菲比。他跟妹妹感情很好，总想着保护这个天真无邪的女孩。
During the novel he’s thrown out of school, and, after taking off to New York for the weekend, is beaten up and gets drunk. Nothing is learned from these experiences. We get no sense that Holden will try to avoid similar mistakes in future.
Holden tries to connect with people, but fails. The only exception is his younger sister, Phoebe. After a while on his own among the adults of New York, he returns home to see her. They get along well. She looks up to Holden, and Holden obviously feels very protective toward her.
这种保护欲正是霍尔顿性格的标识。他爱护菲比，不仅仅因为她是自己唯一的妹妹，更因为他知道长大后的成人世界多么可怕。菲比问他将来长大了想做什么，霍尔顿说：“我老是在想象，有那么一群小孩子在一大块麦田里做游戏。几千几万个小孩子，附近没有一个人——没有一个大人，我是说——除了我。我呢，就站在那悬崖边。我的职务是在那儿守望，要是有哪个孩子往悬崖边奔来，我就把他捉住——我是说孩子们都在狂奔，也不知道自己是在往哪儿跑，我得从什么地方出来，把他们捉住。我整天就干这样的事。我只想当个麦田里的守望者”。
This protectiveness is a hallmark of Holden’s character. He may be immature, often make mistakes and unreliable, but he has empathy with others. Before he leaves Pencey Prep, the school he’s expelled from, he even writes a history paper saying that he knows his teacher will have to fail him. “Don’t feel too bad about it,” he says.
But this care for others is most clear in his relationship with Phoebe. In part this is because, as we learn, Holden’s older brother Allie died, and she is his only remaining sibling. But more deeply, it’s because he knows himself what a challenge life can be, and he has a special concern for his kid sister, and perhaps for children generally.
小说作者杰罗姆·大卫·塞林格生动细致地描绘了青少年时期人们的不安和焦虑，而霍尔顿这个叛逆少年的形象也成为一代文学经典。当你读这本小说时，你会被霍尔顿的品质打动，进而更加钦佩他，或许爱上他。
By describing teenagers’ very real insecurities and their struggle for self-definition, Salinger helped to invent the notion of teenage angst and shaped popular culture. “Along with Elvis Presley’s music and James Dean’s Rebel Without a Cause movie persona, it was Salinger’s Caulfield who best dramatized the emergence of a defiant youth identity in 1950s America”, writes Ben Hoyle, a journalist for the Times.
So although Holden is not a character who “grows up” in any way, he shows qualities throughout the novel which the reader admires, and perhaps comes to loves him for, however exasperating he is in other ways.
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