英语学习网站唐纳德·巴塞尔姆（1931年4月7日—1989年7月23日）是美国后现代主义小说家，代表作是《巴塞尔姆的白雪公主》。他一生写了大量的短篇小说，并曾从事新闻记者、杂志编辑等工作，并曾在纽约城市大学任教。1972年获得美国国家图书奖。
Donald Balsam (April 7, 1931 – July 23, 1989) was an American postmodernist novelist, whose masterpiece is “Balsam’s Snow White”. He wrote a large number of short stories throughout his life and worked as a journalist, magazine editor, and taught at the City University of New York. he received the National Book Award in 1972.
唐纳德·巴塞尔姆不仅被看成优秀的短篇小说作家，而且被视为改变文学方向的作家之一，他开始影响整个西方的年轻作家。如在《白雪公主》中，巴塞尔姆把童话中的白雪公主和七个矮人变成了现代社会的普通人，与现实生活中的真实人物拉近了距离。小说中的白雪公主依然保留着她的名字，而且外表依然充满魅力，但除了称呼和外貌，她的身份、个性、态度和命运等其他方面都变了，不再像她的名字那样纯洁可爱，也不再那么天真无辜。巴塞尔姆的小说不完全以白雪公主为中心，七个“矮人”以及他们之外的另一些人物都有一定的篇幅。有的人物只提及一次，短暂地出场，作者仅用一页左右的篇幅为其感情状况作一粗略的描述。作者故意抽去小说人物的血肉，让他们成为丧失了终极意义的后现代生活的象征。他的整部小说的叙述也与有始有终、有情节和道德内涵的童话故事形成强烈的反差，故事像简略而杂乱的提纲，故意散漫而不着边际，但充满嘲讽和调侃。
Donald Basselm is seen not only as an excellent short story writer, but also as one of the writers who changed the direction of literature and who began to influence young writers throughout the West. For example, in Snow White, Basselm turns the fairy tale Snow White and the seven dwarfs into ordinary people in modern society, bringing them closer to real people in real life. The Snow White in the novel still retains her name and is still charming in appearance, but apart from her name and appearance, other aspects of her identity, personality, attitude and fate have changed, and she is no longer as pure and lovely as her name, nor is she as innocent. The seven “dwarfs” and other characters beyond them are given some space in Basselme’s novel. Some characters are mentioned only once, in a brief appearance, and the author devotes only a page or so to a cursory description of their emotional state. The author deliberately removes the flesh and blood of the novel’s characters, making them symbols of a postmodern life that has lost its ultimate meaning. The narrative of his entire novel also contrasts sharply with that of a fairy tale that has a beginning, an end, a plot and a moral content.
I declare that tearing books is correct, especially the previous tearing is completely correct.
我宣布撕书是正确的，尤其是以前撕的完全正确。
The first thing the baby did wrong was to tear up her books. For this reason we made it a rule to close her door for every page she tore and leave her alone in the house for 4 hours. At first she tore only one page a day. Despite the annoying cries from the closed door, it worked, so we took it for granted that this was the price we had to pay, or part of it. But as the baby’s hand strength increased, she would tear out two pages of the book at a time, which would mean she was locked up and left alone for eight hours, and everyone’s annoyance doubled. But she wouldn’t stop. As time went on, when she tore out three or four pages of the book and was locked up for as long as 16 hours at a time, we had no peace for days, which both prevented her from being fed properly and made my wife worried. But I felt that since the rules were in place they had to be enforced – consistently, otherwise it would give the wrong idea. She was only 14 or 15 months old at the time, and often cried for an hour or so before falling asleep, which was oddly pathetic. She had a pretty nice house with a beautiful rocking horse, stuffed animals, and nearly a hundred other toys. If you use your time wisely, there are so many things you can do, such as playing quizzes and so on. Unfortunately, sometimes we open the door and find that during the time she was locked up she tore out more pages, whole pages, adding up to almost a book.
婴儿干的第一件错事就是撕她的书。为此我们规定，她每撕一页就将她的门关上，让她在屋里独自呆4个小时。起初她一天只撕一页。尽管从关着的门里传来的哭声令人烦躁，但这个办法还算奏效，因此我们理所当然地认为这是我们该付出的代价，或者说一部分代价。可随着婴儿手劲的增加，她一次会撕掉两页书，这将意味着她被关起来独自呆8个小时，大家的烦躁也翻了一番。可她不罢休。随着时间的推移，当她撕掉三四页书，一次被关16个小时之久时，我们几天不得安宁，既妨碍给她正常喂饭，又使我妻忧心忡忡。但我觉得既然有了规定就得执行———持之以恒地执行，否则就会给人一种错误的概念。当时她才十四五个月，常常哭一小时左右就睡着了，怪可怜的。她的房子挺不错，里面有漂亮的摇木马、填制的动物等近百种玩具。如果能聪明地利用时间，可干的事有好多，如玩智力测验等等。不幸的是，有时我们打开门，发现在被关期间她撕掉了更多的书页，整页整页的，加起来几乎是一本书。
The baby’s name is Boone Dansay. Our expressions of joy and sorrow, serious and earnest words do not help her.
婴儿的名字叫波恩·丹赛。我们喜怒哀乐的表情，严肃认真的言语对她无济于事。
I must admit she’s smart. Babies rarely come out to play on the floor, and even when they do occasionally, if you go to her, you will always find a book sitting next to her, open. If you glance at it, the book is intact, but if you look closely you will see that a small corner of a page has been torn off. In normal circumstances it would be easy to think of it as normal wear and tear and put it through. But I know exactly what she did, she tore off the corner of the book and swallowed it. I had to think very carefully about this, and it really made me rack my brain. My wife said we were being too hard on the kids and that they were losing weight. But I pointed out to her that children have a long way to go, they have to live with others, and the world with others has many commandments, and if you can’t learn to adapt to them, you will be left out and have no reputation, and everyone will ostracize you and avoid you. The longest we ever locked our child in was 88 hours, and my wife used a crowbar to pry the door off before we let her out, and she owed 12 hours because she spilled 25 pages of books. I later put the door back on and added a large lock that could only be opened by inserting a magnetic card into the lock hole, which I took.
我必须承认她聪明了。婴儿很少出来到地板上玩，即使偶尔来到地板上玩的时候，如果你到她跟前，总会发现她身旁放着书，打开着。若你瞥一眼，书完整无损，可你仔细一瞧就会发现有一页小小的书角被撕掉了。在平常情况下很容易被认为是正常磨损而放过去。但我清楚她干的事，她撕下书角吞下去了。如此下去可不得不慎重考虑，这事真让我绞尽了脑汁。我妻子说我们对小孩太苛刻了，孩子的体重也减了。但我向她指出，孩子往后的路还很长，得同别人一起生活，而同别人一起生活的世界有很多戒律，如果学不会适应这些戒律，你将会被冷落而毫无声望，大家都会排挤你，躲着你。我们将孩子关得最长的一次是88小时，我妻子用撬棍把门撬下来才把她放出来的，她还欠12小时，因为她撒掉了25页书。后来我又把门装上，并加了一把只有将磁卡插进锁孔才能打开的大锁，而磁卡我拿着。
But it didn’t get better, the child would quickly crawl out of her house and lunge at the nearest book like “Moon, Goodnight” and tear it up in a big way. 10 seconds later, including the cover, 34 pages of “Moon, Goodnight” were torn out and scattered on the floor. I began to worry a little that if you add up all the time she owed, even in 1992, she would still be out of the house, and she would have been bloodless and hadn’t been to the park for weeks. We were more or less facing a moral crisis.
可情况并未好转，孩子会迅速地从她的房子里爬出来，向离她最近的诸如《月亮，晚安》之类的书扑去大把大把地撕起来。10秒钟，包括封皮在内，《月亮，晚安》就被撕掉了34页，散在地上。我开始有点担心，如果将她欠着的时间加起来，即使到1992年，她还从房子里出不来，而她已经面无血色，好几周没有去公园了。我们或多或少面临着道义的危机。
Later, I declared that tearing up books was the right thing to do, especially since it used to be the exact right thing to do. As a parent, this is one of the ways to be relieved. One has to change one’s mind, and each change is as valuable as gold. So I sat side by side with my kids happily tearing up books on the floor. Sometimes just for fun, we even went out into the street and smashed windshields.
后来，我宣布撕书是正确的，尤其是以前撕的完全正确。做为父母，这也是解脱的办法之一。人总得转变观念，每次转变会贵若黄金。于是我同小孩高兴地并排坐在地上撕书。有时仅仅出于消遣，我们还到街道上去砸挡风玻璃。
译者：唐之林
文字来源：百度《婴儿的观念》，唐纳德·巴塞尔姆
