America’s Favorite Novel: To Kill a Mockingbird美国最受欢迎的小说《杀死一只知更鸟》
作者：罗伯特·麦克拉姆
来源：《英语世界》2019年第08期
        Her second novel has arrived2， but Harper Lee’s first did enough alone to secure her lasting fame， and remains a truly popular classic.
        In the 19th century， much of the phenomenal popularity of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin （1852） derived from its timely advocacy of abolition in the run-up3 to the American civil war. Similarly， To Kill a Mockingbird owed some of its success to extra-literary circumstances： it was published in the year JFK went to the White House4， then caught the mood of the civil rights movement， sold tens of millions of copies， and inspired a movie5 classic starring Gregory Peck. But， where Uncle Tom’s Cabin is a simple tale with an explicit moral， intended to change hearts and minds， Harper Lee’s only published book to date is a complex and subtle work of literature that has inspired and influenced generations of schoolchildren in the US and， most especially， in the UK. It’s that rare thing： a truly popular classic.
        Narrated by Jean Louise “Scout” Finch， at the outset the six-year-old tomboy daughter of widowed small-town lawyer Atticus Finch， To Kill a Mockingbird is ostensibly about race prejudice in the American south. At the core of its main plot is the trial of Tom Robinson， an African-American accused of raping a white girl. When Atticus Finch is instructed to conduct Robinson’s defence， his fortune-cookie6 declaration that “You never really understand a person until ... you climb inside his skin” becomes the rhetorical heart of a novel based on Nelle Harper Lee’s formative years in the Alabama of the 1930s. Scout’s coming of age， another major strand in the story， will involve her realisation that “Boo” Radley is a benign mystery in her life and that many childhood terrors have mature meaning.
        For all Atticus Finch’s noble defence， Robinson is convicted by an all-white jury， condemned to death， and shot dead while attempting a jailbreak. The death of an innocent man is linked to the dominant metaphor expressed in the novel’s title. The mockingbird7 （Mimus polyglottos）， a thrush-like bird with a long tail， creamy grey breast and white flashes， is a popular creature in American folklore. For Harper Lee it is th
e quintessence of innocence and the goodness of the natural world. Mockingbirds， says one character8， “don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird”.
        A note on the text
        To Kill a Mockingbird was published by J. B. Lippincott on 11 July 1960. It was initially titled Atticus but Lee renamed it to represent a novel that went far beyond a character study. Her editor at Lippincott warned Lee to anticipate a modest sale of a few thousand copies. She herself once said， “I never expected any sort of success”， and claimed that she was “hoping for a quick and merciful death at the hands of the reviewers”. This is disingenuous9. She also remarked that “at the same time， I sort of hoped someone would like it enough to give me encouragement. I hoped for a little， but I got rather a whole lot， and in some ways this was just about as frightening as the quick， merciful death I’d expected.” Instead of a “quick and merciful death”， a Reader’s Digest reprint gave the novel an immediate audience， with sales eventually topping 40m worldwide （and counti
ng）. Despite her publisher’s warnings， the book soon brought acclaim to Lee in her hometown of Monroeville， and throughout Alabama.
        Critical reactions varied. To The New Yorker it was “skilled， unpretentious and totally ingenious”. Time magazine declared that the novel “teaches the reader an astonishing number of useful truths about little girls and about Southern life”. Some reviewers lamented the use of poor white southerners， and one-dimensional black victims. The great southern writer， Flannery O’Connor10， said： “I think for a child’s book it does all right. It’s interesting that all the folks that are buying it don’t know they’re reading a child’s book. Somebody ought to say what it is.”
        Within a year of its publication To Kill a Mockingbird had been translated into 10 languages. In the years since then it has been translated into more than 40， has never been out of print in hardcover or paperback， and has become part of the standard school curriculum. A 1991 survey by the Book of the Month Club11 found that To Kill a Mockingbird was rated behind only the Bible in books that are “most often cited as making a difference”.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie12， writing in the Guardian， stated that Lee writes with “a fiercely progressive ink， in which there is nothing inevitable about racism and its very foundation is open to question”， and compared her to Faulkner13， who wrote about racism as an inevitability.
        哈珀·李的第二本小說已问世，而她的第一本小说已经足以确保其经久不衰的声名，至今仍是一部真正意义上受欢迎的经典作品。
        哈丽雅特·比彻·斯托的《汤姆叔叔的小屋》成为19mockingbird是知更鸟吗世纪现象级流行小说，主要原因是它在美国内战前期及时地为废除奴隶制发声。同样地，《杀死一只知更鸟》的成功部分来自文学外部环境：该书于肯尼迪入主白宫当年出版，恰逢美国民权运动情绪高涨，出版后售出数千万册，由格利高里·派克主演的同名电影成为了电影史上的经典之作。然而，两书相较而言，前者故事简单，寓意明显，目的是改变人心、启蒙思想;后者作为哈珀·李迄今为止唯一出版的小说，是一部复杂而精巧的文学作品，激励并影响了美国一代又一代的学龄儿童，对英国儿童的影响尤为深远。这就是那种罕见的、真正意义上广受欢迎的经典作品。
        小说的叙述者为小镇律师、鳏夫阿蒂克斯·芬奇的假小子女儿琼·路易丝·“斯考特”·芬奇，
作家以故事开始时才六岁的孩子的视角展开叙述，揭示了美国南方的种族歧视问题。故事的核心情节为对非裔美国人汤姆·罗宾逊的审判，他被控，受害者为一白人女孩。阿蒂克斯·芬奇被指派为罗宾逊辩护，他的格言“除非穿过表面进入内心，否则你永远都不能真正了解一个人”成为了这本小说修辞结构的核心。20世纪30年代，内尔·哈珀·李在阿拉巴马度过了成长阶段，小说便是基于那几年的经历。故事的另一条主线是斯考特的成熟，她长大后才明白，“布”·拉德利是出现在她人生中的一个善良的神秘人物，而童年时的许多恐怖经历在人成年后才会显现出其深刻影响。
        尽管阿蒂克斯·芬奇尽全力做出了精彩的辩护，罗宾逊还是被一个清一白人陪审团宣判死刑，之后在试图越狱时被射杀。无辜之人的死亡跟小说标题的中心隐喻紧密相关。反舌鸟（拉丁文Mimus polyglottos），一种长着长尾巴、胸口奶灰、身披白鲜亮羽毛的鸟，常常出现在美洲民间传说中。而对于哈珀·李来说，反舌鸟是自然界纯真善良的典范。小说中一个人物说：“反舌鸟什么都不做，只是用心为我们歌唱。那就是为什么杀死一只反舌鸟是罪过。”

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