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The Call Of The Wild is the story of Buck, a dog stolen from his home and thrust into the merciless life of the Arctic north to endure hardship, bitter cold, and the savage lawlessness of man and beast. White Fang is the adventure of an animal -- part dog, part wolf --turned vicious by cruel abuse, then transformed by the patience and affection of one man.
Jack London's superb ability as a storyteller and his uncanny understanding of animal and human natures give these tales a striking vitality and power, and have earned him a reputation as a distinguished American writer.
内容简介
The Call Of The Wild is the story of Buck, a dog stolen from his home and thrust into the merciless life of the Arctic north to endure hardship, bitter cold, and the savage lawlessness of man and beast. White Fang is the adventure of an animal -- part dog, part wolf --turned vicious by cruel abuse, then transformed by the patience and affection of one man.
Jack London's superb ability as a storyteller and his uncanny understanding of animal and human natures give these tales a striking vitality and power, and have earned him a reputation as a distinguished American writer.
《野性的呼唤》主要讲述一条家狗变成一只野狼的故事。小说的主人公是一条名叫“巴克”的狗,在被拐卖前,它是法官米勒家中一条养尊处优的驯养犬,过着无忧无虑的生活;然而,在被拐卖到严酷的北方之后,它不得不面对一个完全不同的世界。在极其恶劣的现实环境中,它显示出了强烈的生存欲望,并由这种欲望主宰,设法克服一切难以想象的困难,成为一只适应荒野生存规律和竞争规律的雪橇狗,最终还响应荒野的召唤,回归了自然。
《白牙》的故事则截然相反,讲述的是一只名叫“白牙”的小灰狼最终变为斯科特家中一条驯养犬的故事。它原本是荒野中的一只狼,在与人交往的过程中,历经种种磨难和曲折,最后遇到了慈爱的主人斯科特,并在斯科特爱的感化下,最终走出了荒野,过上了驯养的生活。这两部小说体现了自然主义创作手法。本文通过从遗传和环境两个角度,揭示了作者自然主义的写作风格,阐述了遗传和环境因素对动物生存的双重影响,及作者对人类社会生存现状的认识。
作者简介
Jack London was born in San Francisco in 1876, the son of an unmarried spiritualist, Flora Wellmann, who later wed John London, a Civil War veteran. Much of Jack's childhood was spent in delinquency, and after several temporary itinerant jobs, he took part in the Klondike Gold Rush in 1897. Even though the trip was not a success, he drew on his experiences to write powerful stories. One of these, The Call of the Wild, brought him fame as an author, although he remained financially insecure for the rest of his life. He died in 1916 leaving behind an array of books on an astonishing range of subjects.
杰克·伦敦1876年生于旧金山,死于1916年。他出身穷苦,在他短暂的一生中他有丰富的经历——海员、工人、育空河的淘金人、旅行家、记者和作家。他写了很多书,但是其中以《野性的呼唤》和另一本写狗的书《白牙》,最广为流传。
精彩书评
"One hundred and one years after its publication, it is still enthralling. The opening chapters are haunting, their depiction of the wilderness of snow, ice and forest faced by gold prospectors exquisite and terrifying. The menace of ever-present death, for man, dog and wolf alike, in a setting of remorseless beauty, is bracing and humbling."
--Herald
"Raw narratives of visceral appeal whose cinematic energy cry out for film adaptation."
-- Robert McCrum, Observer
"A searing book about man and animals and the inherent wildness in the nature of the dog. It's a very stark book in some ways but it really conjures up the atmosphere of Gold Rush-era Yukon."
-- Daily Express
前言/序言
From Tina Gianquitto's Introduction to The Call of the Wild and White Fang
By the time London boarded the steamer for his trip from San Francisco to Alaska, he had already led a colorful and dramatic life. He was a sloop owner and oyster poacher on San Francisco Bay and a deputy for the Fish Patrol at fifteen, a sailor traveling through the North and South Pacific hunting seals at seventeen, a coal-shoveler in a power plant, a Socialist, and a tramp at eighteen. By nineteen, a weary London saw himself, with others of the working classes, near "the bottom of the [Social] Pit . . . myself above them, not far, and hanging on to the slippery wall by main strength and sweat" (London, War of the Classes, pp. 274-275; see "For Further Reading"). Although London was far from relinquishing his love of the active life, he feared being ruled by it. London fought in these early years to educate himself, and by that education to get himself out of the hard-laboring classes. As his hero informs his readers in the semi-autobiographical novel Martin Eden, writing offered a way to stoke the fires of both the body and the imagination, and so with characteristic determination, London set himself to the task of becoming a professional writer. By 1896, however, he realized that writing alone could not support a hungry family. The following year, London and his brother-in-law Captain James H. Shepard decided to try their luck panning for gold in the recently discovered strikes along the Yukon River in the Klondike.
After disembarking in Juneau, Alaska, London, Shepard and their companions made their way to Dyea, the principle departure point for the gold fields of the Yukon and the Klondike. Buck travels the same trails that London covered-leaving Dyea, making the arduous climb over Chilcoot Pass, and pushing on to Lakes Linderman and Bennett before making the waters of the Yukon River. From here, the party traveled downstream, toward Dawson City, where they navigated the dangerous White Horse and Five Finger Rapids before reaching the relative safety of Split-Up Island, 80 miles from Dawson between the Stewart River and Henderson Creek. London staked a claim near here and made a brief visit to Dawson City to record the claim. He returned to the island, where the group passed the winter in an old miner's cabin. These long five months proved difficult for London, who contracted scurvy by the spring from poor diet and lack of exercise.
Upon his return to San Francisco in 1898, London began his writing career in earnest. Clearly, the Klondike turned London into a writer of note, not only because he was able to tap into a ready market for all things Gold Rush, but more important, because the landscape offered London a barren theater for his characters to work out their paths in life. If, as London believed, environment determined the course of an individual's life, then the austere and brutal, yet ultimately simple environment of the North tested the capacities of the individual (and by extension, the species) to adapt to the environment.
London's intellectual experiences during the winter spent on Split-Up Island are as important as his physical ones; he spent his time reading, rereading, and sharing with his friends the two books he carried with him to the wilderness: Milton's Paradise Lost and Darwin's On the Origin of Species. Less than a year after his return to San Francisco, London summed up his understanding of Darwin in a letter to his friend Cloudesley Johns: "Natural selection, undeviating, pitiless, careless alike of the individual or the species, destroyed or allowed to perpetuate, as the case might be, such breeds as were unfittest or fittest to survive" (Labor, p. 101). Such struggle characterizes human and animal life in The Call of the Wild and White Fang.
探索人类文明的边界与自然法则的颂歌:一部关于生存、忠诚与救赎的史诗 书名: 猎风者的挽歌 (The Hunter's Elegy) 作者: 伊莱亚斯·凡恩 (Elias Vance) 页数: 约 680 页 装帧: 精装 --- 内容简介: 《猎风者的挽歌》是一部跨越两个世纪,以北美西北部蛮荒之地为背景的宏大叙事。它并非简单的冒险故事,而是一部深刻探讨人类文明的脆弱性、个体在极限环境下的道德抉择,以及在广袤无垠的自然界中,生命如何重新定义其存在的意义的哲学史诗。 故事的主线围绕着三代人与落基山脉深处一片被称为“寂静之喉”的未开发区域产生的复杂纠葛展开。这里的环境严酷到足以磨碎任何自诩为“文明”的虚饰,迫使角色直面最原始的生存本能和最深层的精神渴望。 第一部:黄金的诱惑与失落的家园 (The Lure of Gold and the Lost Hearth) 故事始于 1880 年代末,正值淘金热的尾声,但对于那些不甘心的人来说,希望的余烬仍未熄灭。年轻的探险家兼地质学家,亚瑟·布莱克伍德,带着他受过良好教育的妻子伊莎贝尔和尚在襁褓中的儿子,怀揣着对发现“最后一片未被触碰的矿脉”的执念,深入了育空河的上游。 亚瑟并非鲁莽之辈,他受过严谨的科学训练,深信知识的力量可以征服自然。然而,当他们遭遇一场突如其来的、史无前例的冬季风暴时,科学的地图和计算变得一文不值。小说细致入微地描绘了他们如何在饥饿、极寒和日益增长的偏执中,一步步放弃文明的规范。伊莎贝尔,一位受过素描和音乐教育的女性,被迫学习辨认可食用的苔藓,并在冰雪覆盖的荒野中,用仅存的工具制作陷阱。 这一部分是对人类适应力的残酷考验。亚瑟的理想主义在生存的铁律面前崩塌,他开始依赖当地一位神秘的、几乎隐居的毛皮商人——“影子”洛根。洛根代表着一种与自然和谐共处的古老智慧,他既是救赎者,也是一个潜在的威胁。读者将跟随亚瑟的视角,体验到城市生活的舒适是如何像薄冰一样,在真正的野性面前瞬间瓦解。我们看到的不是英雄的胜利,而是对文明界限的不断试探。 第二部:继承者的困境与土地的低语 (The Heir's Dilemma and the Land's Whisper) 时间快进至 1940 年代,二战的阴影笼罩全球。亚瑟的儿子,年仅二十岁的詹姆斯·布莱克伍德,继承了一笔微薄的遗产和一卷模糊不清的手绘地图,那是他父亲在失踪前留下的唯一线索。詹姆斯从小生活在波士顿的学术氛围中,他痛恨父亲所选择的、牺牲家庭幸福去追逐虚妄的“伟大发现”的生活方式。 然而,一场突如其来的健康危机让他不得不离开高压的都市生活,他选择前往父亲最后出现过的地方——“寂静之喉”。詹姆斯的目的不再是黄金,而是寻求一种答案:父亲为何宁愿选择在荒野中受苦,也不愿回家? 詹姆斯抵达的这片土地,已经被时间和自然的力量重塑。他发现“寂静之喉”已经成为一个非官方的庇护所,居住着一群逃避战争、税收或社会压力的边缘人物:一位失去记忆的德国工程师、一位拒绝回归印第安保留地的部落长者,以及一位坚信未来依赖可持续农业的年轻女医生。 詹姆斯试图用现代的组织和管理方法来规范这个松散的群体,但他的努力屡屡碰壁。他必须学习如何尊重土地的节奏,如何区分植物的药用价值和毒性,如何理解部落长者眼中“土地的低语”。在这里,他不再是布莱克伍德家族的继承人,而是一个学徒。小说深入探讨了知识与经验之间的鸿沟,以及詹姆斯如何在一个完全没有既定规则的社会结构中,重塑他对自己“家”的定义。 第三部:回声与未来之约 (The Echo and the Covenant of Tomorrow) 第三部分聚焦于冷战初期,气候变化和资源开发的威胁开始侵蚀“寂静之喉”的宁静。詹姆斯的女儿,艾琳娜,一位坚定的环保主义者和野生动物摄影师,接到了一个意想不到的召唤:一个大型能源公司计划在“寂静之喉”的核心地带修建一条输油管道,这条路线将穿过她祖父和父亲为之奋斗、甚至牺牲了部分人性的那片净土。 艾琳娜拥有她祖父的韧性,以及她父亲在困境中学到的务实精神。她面对的敌人不再是饥饿或严寒,而是庞大、无形且由法律和资本构筑的体系。她必须利用自己掌握的现代工具——无人机、卫星图像和媒体宣传——来对抗那些声称拥有“开发权利”的势力。 艾琳娜在寻找反击证据的过程中,重新发现了家族的历史。她找到了祖母伊莎贝尔在风暴中留下的日记残页,记录了在绝境中,人类如何以最朴素的方式相互支持。这些文字不仅是历史的见证,更是对她当前斗争的精神鼓舞。 小说的核心冲突在于:人类是否能从过去的错误中吸取教训,学会与自然共存,而不是征服自然? 艾琳娜能否在保护这片土地的同时,避免重蹈祖辈那种极端的、被自然吞噬的命运? 主题与深度: 《猎风者的挽歌》不仅仅是一部关于地域的史诗,它更是一部关于“身份的迁徙”的探讨。 1. 文明的幻象: 小说挑战了读者对“文明”的固有认知。在舒适的城市里,道德感是廉价的;只有在生死存亡的边缘,一个人的真正品格才会暴露无遗。 2. 时间的层次性: 通过三代人的叙事,小说展示了时间如何在一个固定的地理空间中留下印记。每一代人都继承了上一代的“遗产”,这个遗产既是宝贵的经验,也是沉重的包袱。 3. 非人类的视角: 叙事中穿插了对当地野生动物群落(尤其是狼群和灰熊)行为的细致观察,并非拟人化,而是作为一种衡量环境健康与人类行为后果的自然参照系。土地本身,成为了一个沉默但具有决定性影响力的角色。 4. 救赎的代价: 故事探讨了救赎是否可能。对于亚瑟来说,救赎是精神上的回归,即使这意味着肉体的消亡;对于詹姆斯来说,救赎是重建家庭的纽带;而对于艾琳娜来说,救赎是保护尚未被破坏的未来。 阅读体验: 凡恩的笔触冷峻而富有诗意,充满了对北境风光的精准描绘。他擅长运用冗长而富有节奏感的句子,营造出一种广阔、寂静且略带压抑的氛围。读者在阅读过程中,仿佛能感受到刺骨的寒风、泥土的芬芳和松木燃烧时的噼啪声。这部作品要求读者投入时间去感受角色内心的挣扎,而非仅仅追逐情节的转折。它适合那些喜爱严肃文学、历史小说以及探讨人与环境复杂关系的读者。 --- 本书收录了详尽的育空地区历史年表、主要植物及动物的图谱,以及三代人使用的关键地理坐标手稿的复印件,增强了阅读的沉浸感和真实性。