Steven Pinker是怎么赏析这段英文的

趁着Amazon上有活动, 买了几本书，其中有Steven Pinker的这本The Sense of Style -- 很早之前就看过《纽约客》对这本书的书评: 语法要革命?

在第一张开篇Pinker引用了Oscar Wilde的一句名言:

Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that's worth knowing can be taught.

那么写作呢? 一个人写作的风格从何而来?

That somewhere is the writing of other writers. Good writers are avid readers.

Steven Pinker说:

I would not have written this book if I did not believe, contra Wilde, that many principles of style really can be taught.

那么我们如何培养自己的写作呢？

...the starting point for becoming a good writer is to be a good reader. Writers acquire their technique by spotting, savoring, and reverse-engineering examples of good prose.

简单来说就是：写出好文章的第一步是我们需要知道什么是好文章。如果我们能"spot"好文章，"savor"它们，然后再反向工程的“山寨”它们就好了。葛传椝在他的《向学习英文者讲话》中也提到要读受过教育的native speakers的文章，然后拿来就用就好了: 确保你写的每一句话都是你曾经读到过的。我们之所以没有自信说到底就是读的少，就有了“自以为是” “闭门造车”的现象。

On Writing Well的作者William Zinsser也提到:

Writing is learned by imitation. If anyone asked me how I learned to write, I'd say I learned by reading the men and women who were doing the kind of writing I wanted to do and trying to figure out how they did it.

Zinsser也说，要模仿咱就模仿最好的，别以为只要是native speakers写的就是好 -- 看起来这个要求比葛老的要高一些，要注意的是葛老说话的对象是“二语习得者”，而Zinsser的对象是“用英语写作者”。

But cultivate the best models. Don't assume that because an article is in a newspaper or a magazine it must be good. Sloppy editing is common in newspapers, often for lack of time, and writers who use clichés often work for editors who have seen so many clichés that they no longer even recognize them.

读《经济学人》就是“习上乘写作”的一种方法，我的好朋友Justin写过一篇文章值得一看:英文写作“字词句段篇章”之“句”

说了这么多，其实只是说：我们要学会赏析写作。只有我们体会到了什么是美文，我们才有努力的念想。"Savoring good prose is not just a more effective way to develop a writerly ear than obeying a set of commandments; it's a more inviting one."

Perfecting the craft is a lifelong calling, and mistakes are part of the game. Though the quest for improvement may be informed by lessons and honed by practice, it must first be kindled by a delight in the best work of the masters and a desire to apporach their excellence.

Steven亲自示范了如何赏析四篇文章，这里和大家分享其中的一篇。下面这段文字是来自Richard Dawkins的Unweaving the Rainbow. 一句话介绍Richard Dawkins的话就是:他是当代最著名、最直言不讳的无神论者和演化论拥护者之一。

"We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively outnumbers the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here."

https://v.qq.com/txp/iframe/player.html?vid=s0178y3cit4&width=500&height=375&auto=0

以下为Pinker的赏析:

We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Good writing start strong. Not with a cliché ("Since the dawn of time"), not with a banality ("Recently, scholars have been increasingly concerned with the question of ..."), but with a contentful observation that provokes curiosity. The reader of Unweaving the Rainbow opens the book and is walloped with a reminder of the most dreadful fact we know, and on its heels a paradoxical elaboration. We're lucky because we'll die? Who wouldn't want to find out how this mystery will be solved? The starkness of the paradox is reinforced by the diction and meter: short, simple words, a stressed monosyllable followed by six iambic feet.

有没有让你想到的所谓的“模版作文”，第一句: "As the rapid development of modern society...."

Most people are never going to die. The resolution to the paradox -- that a bad thing, dying, implies a good thing, having lived -- is explained with parallel constructions: never going to die... never going to be born. The next sentence restates the contrast, also in parallel language, but avoids the tedium of repeating words yet again by juxtaposing familiar idioms that have the same ryhthm: been here in my place ... see the light of day.

the sand grains of Arabia. A touch of the poetic, better suited to the grandeur that Dawkins seeks to invoke than a colorless adjective like massive or enormous. The expression is snatched from the brink of cliché by its variant wording (sand grains rather than sands) and by its vaguely exotic feel. The phrase sands of Arabia, though common in the early nineteenth century, has plunged in popularity ever since, and there is no longer even a place that is commonly called Arabia; we refer to it as Saudi Arabia or the Arabian Peninsula.

unborn ghosts. A vivid image to convey the abstract notion of a mathematically possible combination of genes, and a wily repurposing of a supernatural concept to advance a naturalistic argument.

greater poets than Keats, scientist greater than Newton. Parallel wording is a powerful trope, but after dying and being born, being here in my place and seeing the light of day, enough is enough. To avoid monotony Dawkins inverts the lines in this couplet. The phrase subtly alludes to another meditationon unrealized genius, "Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest," from Thomas Gray's "Elegy Written in a COuntry Churchyard."

In the teeth of these stupefying odds. The idiom bring s to mind the menacinggape of a predator, reinforcing our gratitude for being alive: to come into existence we narrowly escaped a mortal threat, namely the high odds against it. How high? Every writer faces the challenge of finding a superlative in the English word-hoard that has not been inflated by hyperbole and overuse. In the teeth of these incredible odds? In the teeth of these awesome odds? Meh. Dawkins has found a superlative -- to render into a stupor, to make stupid-- that still has the power to impress.

最后他说:

Good writing can flip the way the world is perceived, like the silhouette in psychology textbooks which oscillates between a goblet and two faces. In six sentences Dawkins has flipped the way we think of death, and has stated a rationalist's case for an appreciation of life in words so stirring that many humanists I know have asked that it be read at their funerals.

Nightwish有一首长达23分钟的音乐: The Greatest Show on Earth, 灵感来自于达尔文的《物种起源》，音乐分为五个章节，其中的第四章(The Understanding)就引用了这段文字。推荐你去听一下，震撼人心。

https://v.qq.com/txp/iframe/player.html?vid=o0178gpfmvk&width=500&height=375&auto=0

In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here.

We privileged few, who won the lottery of birth against all odds, how dare we whine at our inevitable return to that prior state from which the vast majority have never stirred?"