說故事：為何朗讀又重回時尚

Storytelling: how reading aloud is back in fashion
At a weekly book club, Elizabeth Day has found that even in an age of social networking, the direct, oral tradition can still reach out to a new audience

伊麗莎白黛在每週例行的讀書俱樂部發現即使是在社交網絡的時代，傳統的口語文化仍然可以擁有新的觀眾

• Which books do you think are the best ones to be read aloud? Share your favourites in the comment thread

哪些書你認為是最適合朗讀？請評論跟帖分享您的收藏夾
· Source: Guardian Elizabeth Day The Observer, Sunday 6 January 2013



Elizabeth Day Reading at the Simon Oldfield gallery in London's Mayfair. Photograph: Antonio Zazueta Olmos for the Observer

伊麗莎白黛 在倫敦上流住宅區的西蒙·奧德菲爾德畫廊朗讀。攝影：安東尼奧·奧爾莫斯(Antonio Zazueta Olmos)

The last time someone told Thomas Yeomans a story, he was a child. Last week he wandered into a storytelling session for adults without quite knowing what lay in store. "For me, reading has become more formal over the years; it's something I do on my own," explained Yeomans, a 26-year-old artist. "So I swept into this at the last minute, not knowing what to expect."

托馬斯·約曼斯距上次聽故事時，他還是個小孩子。上週，他想參加一個成人朗讀班不需要特別知道商店裡準備什麼的。 “對我來說，閱讀多年來已經成為正式的社交活動，”這是我為自己所做的事情，這位26歲的藝術家解釋說：。“所以我在截止前參加，不需特意知道期待發生什麼。”

Yeomans happened to find himself in one of the weekly storytelling sessions that I have been running over the past month in an art gallery in central London. When I developed the idea with gallerist Simon Oldfield, the premise was simple: we both felt that the tradition of reading aloud and sharing stories with each other was something that had been lost in modern times. In an era of social networking and electronic gadgetry, when friendships are conducted via computer screen and culture is increasingly savoured in isolation through a pair of noise-reducing headphones, we have neglected the pleasures of direct experience.

約曼斯偶然發現的這個每週說故事時間，是我過去一個月中在倫敦市中心的一個藝術畫廊一直在運行的活動。當我與西蒙·奧德菲爾德畫廊開發的這樣的思維，前提很簡單：我們都認為，傳統的朗讀和分享彼此的故事是近代已失去的東西。在這個社交網絡和電子小玩意充斥的時代，友誼通過電腦屏幕建立，文化越來越被減低噪音的耳機隔離而被回味’，我們已忽略了直接經驗的樂趣。

Many of us used to be told stories as children. But as we grow older, we seem to lose the knack. Yet there is undoubtedly an appetite for it: revenue from downloaded audiobooks has risen by 32.7% since last year, while The Reader Organisation, a charity that aims to engage people through the shared reading of great literature, now has 350 weekly shared reading groups across the country.

我們許多人在小孩子時聽人們對我們講故事。但是，隨著年齡的增長，我們似乎失去了這些本領。然而，自去年以來，下載有聲讀物的收益上升了32.7％， 讀者組織，一個慈善機構，旨在吸引人們通過分享閱讀偉大的文學作品，而現在全國各地每週有350個群體分享閱讀。

"What happens with shared reading is that people experience a very intense thing together, but everybody has their own personal, private, inner response to it," says Jane Davis, founder of The Reader Organisation. "A lot of people don't understand how poor literacy is in our country. For many, reading aloud gives you access to things you would simply never read otherwise."

“分享閱讀是會發生人們一起經歷了非常激烈的事情，但每個人都有自己個人的，私密的，內在的響應”簡·戴維斯，讀者組織的創始人說​​。“很多人不理解在我國辨別能力有多貧瘠，對於許多人來說，對你朗讀會給你用不同方式接受你根本不會讀的東西。”

Like Davis, it struck me that, while there had been a welcome resurgence of book groups and literary festivals over the past decade, there was little chance for adults to engage in group reading without some sort of self-improving literary discussion at the end of it, or a nagging sense that one should really be buying the author's newest work as part of an unspoken commercial transaction. Which is how I came to be reading Anne Enright's short story, Here's To Love, in the week before Christmas when Yeomans wandered through the door. "What I liked about it was that this was an informal setting and a gentle, welcoming environment where my defences were down," Yeomans said after the session. "It really pulled at my heart strings. I felt like a defenceless child again."

戴維斯讓我吃驚的是讀書預訂團體和文學節在過去的十年中，出現了一個可喜的復甦。即使與會結束後沒有某種形式的自我提升的文學討論或應該購買作者的最新作品作為潛在商業交易的一部分的促銷行為。在聖誕節前一周，當約曼斯通過門徘徊時 我在這裡讀安妮·恩萊特的短篇小說，“這裡為愛”。“我喜歡它的原因是，這是一個非正式的聚會旦充滿溫和，溫馨的環境讓我卸下防禦”約曼斯說，在會議結束後。“這真的振奮我的心。我覺得自己又像不需防備的孩子。”

Helen Ervin, a 38-year-old marketing executive from New York, agreed: "There's an intimacy that happens when you get a whole bunch of people together… There was a moment in today's story where I thought I might cry. There's an emotion brought to the surface when you're reading aloud because it's being performed."

海倫·歐文，一個從紐約來的營銷執行長也同意說：“當一群人聚集一起時感覺是很親密的，在今天的故事有一個時刻我以為我會哭泣。當你朗讀有一些情感會浮出表面，因為它正在執行。“

Another attendee said he had come because "the idea of reading is hard work to me. I'm dyslexic, so I prefer to listen to radio plays and things like that. I was completely sucked in today. It was really engaging."
另一位與會者說，他來是因為“閱讀這樣的想法對我來說是艱苦的工作。因我誦讀很困難，所以我更喜歡聽廣播劇之類的東西。我今天完全被吸引天，這是真的讓我有參與感。”

For Doris Julian, 70, the experience "took me right back to being a child and being read to in the library. I like to listen to le Carré audiobooks and things like that, but there's nothing better than the real version. It's very descriptive and I love it. I can't think of a nicer way to spend an afternoon."

多麗絲·朱利安，70歲的長者 也分享他的參與經驗說“這讓我像回到孩提時代也像讀取到書庫中的知識。我喜歡聽樂卡雷有聲讀物和類似的東西，但有什麼比真實版更好?。這非常具體描述且我喜歡它，我想不到一個比這更好的方式來度過一個下午。“

By this time I'd been running the storytelling sessions for a month and had been bowled over by the response. More and more people came in each week to listen to short stories by authors as diverse as Dorothy Whipple and Jon McGregor in a room hung with striking works of contemporary art. Local businesses were keen to get involved: Majestic gave us free wine to serve and a rug company, Bazaar Velvet, loaned us a beautiful Anatolian carpet for everyone to sit on, engendering a real community feel and invoking the true childhood spirit of Jackanory.

此時，我已經運行朗讀故事的聚會一個月，並已有具體的響應。越來越多的人每星期來聽作者的短篇小說，多蘿西·惠普爾和喬恩·麥格雷戈在一個房間裡掛滿了引人注目的當代藝術作品。當地企業也熱衷涉足：榮威給我們供應免費的葡萄酒服務以及地毯公司，大巴扎天鵝絨，借給我們一個美麗的安那托利亞地毯，讓大家坐下，促成真正社區的感覺並喚起真實的童年Jackanory精神。

Ps: Jackanory是一個長期運行的BBC 兒童的電視系列節目，目的是要激發閱讀的興趣。

A handful of regulars came to every session. It seemed to tap into something – a kind of long-forgotten tradition that we still felt in our bones. Reading aloud has a noble history. Before the invention of the movable-type printing press in the 1430s, oral storytelling was a means of cementing community bonds and passing folk narratives on to the next generation. In medieval times, storytellers were honoured members of royal courts. From 1500 storytelling continued to be popular in an era of widespread illiteracy, when books were still too expensive for the common man.

少數的常客每個聚會都到。這裡似乎是能挖掘到些東西 - 一種我們仍能在我們的骨子裡被感覺但卻長期遺忘的傳統。大聲朗讀頗有一高貴的歷史。1430s年代發明活字印刷機前，口頭講述故事就是一種手段，用以鞏固社區凝聚力，並通過民間敘事將傳統延續下一代。在中世紀時期，說書者對成為皇室的成員感到很榮幸。在1500年普遍文盲的時代，書籍仍然過於昂貴，對一般人民講故事仍然是受歡迎的。

"Often a neighbour would have a Bible and would read aloud from it," says Jennifer Richards, a professor of early modern literature and culture at Newcastle University. "Or there would be rhetorical training for boys at grammar school, [but] the appeal of reading aloud is not about education; it's about being social, part of a community."

在英國紐卡斯爾大教導早期現代文學和文化學的教授珍妮弗·理查茲說，“通常情況下，比鄰者朗讀”聖經“。或者文法學校為男孩修辭培訓，但呼籲朗讀非關教育，而是關於社會，社區的一部分。”

In the 18th and 19th centuries, reading aloud continued to be a form of entertainment. "People didn't have recorded music or films or television, so books had to be everything; they needed to be dramatic, entertaining, comic and sentimental," explains Dr Abigail Williams, a lecturer in English at Oxford University. "One of the things about reading aloud is that you have to do it in small bits. You can't just do it for hours on end, so that brings out qualities in the text you might otherwise miss. People become the characters in a way they don't if you are reading flatly for yourself. You get more of the comedy and the dialogue works differently because it becomes the spoken voice, rather than a transcription of the spoken voice."

在18世紀和19世紀，朗讀是一種娛樂形式。當時人們沒有錄製的音樂、電影或電視，所以書是一切，他們需要的是戲劇性的，有趣的，喜劇和多感的。“在牛津大學的英語講師阿比蓋爾·威廉斯博士解釋說。“關於朗讀有件是你必須要做的是做到這一點的部位。你不能只是做幾個小時就結束，所以，帶出你可能錯過的文本質地。如果你正單調的為你自己朗讀 ，人們無法用這種方式成為劇中角色。你必須具備更多的喜感和不同對話方式，因為它變成了聲音的表演形式，比錄製的聲音更具說服力。“

But none of this can entirely convey the intensity and intimacy of the experience. I was surprised by how many people who came to the storytelling sessions were visibly moved by the experience – I would glance up from the text and see someone's eyes gleaming, on the brink of tears. Others would look away, lost in their own private universe. One man came up to me afterwards and admitted that he thought a character in one of the stories was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder – a condition that he too had been diagnosed with.

但是，沒有一個可完全的表達強度和私密的經驗。我很驚訝有多少人來這聚會藉朗讀為之動容的經驗 - 我藉文字仰視 看別人的眼睛閃閃發光，差一點忍不住流下眼淚。其他人則看別處，迷失在自己的私人宇宙。一個人會後來到我這承認，他認為劇中一個角色患有創傷壓力症候群障礙- 一種症狀，他也曾被診斷出罹患此種疾病。

It is a sensation familiar to Davis, who runs reading groups for a cross-section of society – from young doctors without the time to read, to prisoners or groups of pensioners in economically deprived areas. "These little private bombs go off in your head, something strikes a chord [because] with the shared reading experience you are not an observer or discusser; you're going through the experience with everyone else," she says.

戴維斯也如此感覺熟悉，這位為橫截面的社會組織運作讀書會 - 從沒有時間閱讀的年輕醫生，到經濟貧困地區的囚犯或養老金領取者或團體。“她說，”這些小的私人炸彈在你的頭上響起，你不是觀察員或論述者但[因為]分享閱讀經驗觸動心弦，而體驗到其他人的經驗。

"There are a lot of people out there whose connection to the world is through TV and things like I'm A Celebrity. Lots of people don't have a chance to have a serious, intellectual, meaningful experience, and that's what humans are for. We need that… A book provides a wonderful anonymity for personal feelings and responses."

“現在有很多人通過電視和比如我是名人這樣的事情，在那裡連接世界，很多人沒有一個嚴肅的，智力的，有意義的經驗機會，但這卻是身為人類的我們需要的。一本書提供了一個極好的匿名個人的感受和反應。“

The Reader Organisation has case studies on its website that pay testament to the power of shared reading. A woman in her 60s from Birkenhead is quoted as saying: "For many years I have had a lot of pain in my body, but when I am in the group the reading and sharing of stories helps me to focus my mind away from the physical pain and forget about it for a couple of hours... It kind of lifts you out of the pain."

讀者組織在其網站上分享個案研究以提供分享經驗有力的證據。一個來自伯肯黑德的女人在她60歲被引述其說：“多年來，在我的身上有過很多的疼痛，但是當我組內閱讀和分享的故事可以幫助我集中我腦裡的思緒而遠離身體上的痛苦，忘掉它幾個小時......提振你的精神而遠離痛苦。“

A survey by the same charity of 214 people who had attended storytelling groups found that 96% enjoyed meeting people they wouldn't normally meet, while 80% left feeling "more positive" about life.

對出席了講故事組的慈善機構的214人進行的一項調查發現，96％人享受遇見一般不會遭遇的人們而得到滿足，而80％的人感覺“更積極”關注生命。

I can't speak for all those who came to our sessions, but I certainly left feeling more positive about lots of things – about the power of literature to engage, the special kind of intimacy gained from a communal experience and the ability to communicate with so many different people without any kind of ulterior motive.

我無法對所有來到我們會議的人演說，但我的確留下更積極待事的感覺 - 關於參與文學的力量，從這麼多不同的人一個共同的經驗中獲得一種特殊的親密和溝通能力，沒有任何一種不可告人的動機。

We weren't trying to sell anything. We weren't pretending to improve anyone's mind. All we wanted to do was to share a story. And in the end, it was not just about reading out loud, but also about reading ourselves.

我們並沒有打算出售任何東西。我們不是假意提高任何人的心智。我們想要做的是分享一個故事。而在最後，它是不只是大聲朗讀出，也是閱讀自己。