weerabbit

作者: Helene Hanff
(查令十字路84號, 陳建銘譯)

第一次去倫敦時，因疑似有人在地鐵站放炸彈，
在地鐵站竄上竄下的，始終無法抵達Charing Corss Station,
我相信，無意間，我經過了84 Charing Cross Road.

今天去市圖，順便重辦借書證。
流連在書架行間，看到這本中譯本，
知道這本書，是高中同學兼知心好友ＳＪ介紹的，
雖然被她取笑住在英國多年，卻未曾閱讀此書，
但用心詢問這本書的英文版。

我，不能說譯者譯的不好，
只是，自從驕傲地認為英文不錯之後，
實在不願意讀中譯本，
總有種隔靴騷癢的感覺，看不慣～

日前，誠品幫我調到原文書，要價太高，只好說：謝謝再考慮。
今天有緣與此書相遇，二話不說，簽下借據，帶它出場～

走出圖書館，回到新生南路的丹堤咖啡，
點了一杯＂免費＂的丹堤咖啡（為了三百元飲料點券，辦了一張日盛信用卡），
捧著這本小書，喝著咖啡，在慵懶的JAZZ音樂中，
氣氛正好是閱讀的心情。

我喜歡這本書，Sweet but bitter, I have to say so.
看到最後，我掉下感動的淚，
If you happen to pass by 84 Charing Cross Road, please kiss it for me? I owe it too much.
為他們２人始終無法會晤而感傷，
但這或許也是這段情誼最美的遺憾。

閱讀中，我不斷地想把中文譯本還原成英文，
想像著：
Helene Hanff 用美國佬的詼諧去信，Frand Doel 以英國佬的紳士回應，
更讓我想要一睹原文風貌。

另外，也讓我想讀讀書中所提到的書，包括Helene提到Virginia Woolf的書。

前幾天，朋友ＪＨ去美國出差，他已經在幫我找買２本原文書，
都是ＳＪ介紹的，84 Charing Cross Road 及 A Room of One's Own (by Virginia Woolf)，
如果，他沒幫我找到這２本書，
我想，我捨得花錢買下這本薄薄的卻有著厚厚情誼的書～


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http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/alabaster/A710056
Helene Hanff - Author 
 
Having spent nearly 40 years writing plays that never reached the stage, unsuccessful New York writer Helene Hanff (pronounced 'Hellayne') finally became a celebrated author thanks to the collected letters she wrote to, and received from, Marks & Co1, a bookshop found at 84 Charing Cross Road2, London, UK.

Underfoot in Showbusiness

Helene Hanff was born in Philadelphia, USA, on 16 September, 1916. Her parents, Arthur and Miriam Levy-Hanff, were poor but enthusiastic fans of the theatre and, from an early age, Helene knew she wanted to be a playwright. After being forced to leave college during the Depression due to lack of funding, she decided to continue her studies on her own and began scouring the library for a suitable guide to literature. It was there that Helene happened across a series of books by renowned English academic, Arthur Quiller-Couch (AKA 'Q'3) which provided her with a recommended reading list which she began wading through. Hanff moved to Manhattan, New York in the late 1930s after winning a Theatre Guild grant to attend a year-long playwriting seminar. From there, she got a job in the Guild's Press Office, where she remained for several years. Hanff eventually left the Guild and began writing summaries of plays and novels for Paramount Pictures while working on her own plays and continuing to collect books from Q's reading list.

84 Charing Cross Road

In 1949, Hanff found an advert in the New York Times for Marks & Co, a London bookshop based on Charing Cross Road4 that specialised in 'antiquarian' books. As she wrote at the time, she had an 'antiquarian taste in books' but not much money. She decided to reply to the ad to enquire about a selection of out-of-print books she'd so far been unable to track down in New York. Some time later, she received a reply from 'FPD' on behalf of the bookshop informing her that they had some of her request list in stock and the rest on order. Soon she was corresponding with the bookshop on a regular basis, first with letters headed 'Dear Sir' and 'Dear Madam' (which prompted her to jovially enquire if the word 'Madam' meant the same in London as it disrespectfully did in New York), but eventually she became comfortable to write on first-name terms with 'FPD', the bookshop's chief buyer, Frank Doel. When English neighbours of Helene's told her that the UK was still under the cloud of post-war rationing, she began sending food parcels for Marks & Co's employees. In return, the employees sent her gifts, such as a hand-made Irish embroidered tablecloth made by Frank Doel's elderly neighbour and first editions of books they hoped she'd like. Some members of staff even slipped thank-you cards into her orders while the bosses weren't looking.

In the 1950s, Helene's many purchases from Marks & Co were funded by writing screenplays for television shows such as The Adventures of Ellery Queen5 as well as penning a number of historical adaptations for children's television. But freelance writing was not a lucrative business, and Ms Hanff often found herself living from hand to mouth. In 1961, during a lull in her career, Hanff was encouraged to write a book about her time in the theatre. The resulting Underfoot in Showbusiness was published with little fanfare and went out of print a short while later.

By the late 1960s, Helene's writing career was at its lowest ebb; close to poverty she found herself writing less and less to her favourite bookshop. So it was all the more upsetting when, in January 1969, Helene received a letter from Marks & Co:

I have just come across the letter you wrote to Mr Doel on the 30th of September last, and it is with great regret that I have to tell you that he passed away on Sunday the 22nd of December, the funeral took place on Wednesday the 1st of January. The death has been a very great shock to Mr Cohen, especially after coming so soon after the death of Mr Marks...
Distraught, Helene opened up a box of the letters she had collected over the years6 and decided to write them up as a tribute to Frank. She contacted Frank's widow, Nora, and with her help she put together a book using almost all of the letters sent to and from Marks & Co over the space of 20 years. The book was eventually published in 1970 under the title 84 Charing Cross Road.

Though the sales were at the time considered 'modest', the book stirred something in its readers that created thousands of loyal and passionate fans across the world. They immediately fell in love with Helene's witty, brash correspondence which seemed so at odds with the generous humility and quintessential 'Britishness' of Frank Doel. A strange consequence of the book was that, as almost every page carried Helene's address at the top, fans were able to send letters to her gushing with praise. Soon, as her phone number was listed in the public directory, she began to receive phone calls from enthusiastic fans wanting to speak to their new 'friend'. Then copies of the book began to arrive with little notes asking her to sign the books and post them onto a relative or friend (and not all of the requests were accompanied by money for the postage!).

The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street

Having always adored England - and in particular, London, Helene had always seen her letters to Marks & Co as her lifeline to a country she always longed to go to but would never be able to afford to visit. With the publication of 84 Charing Cross Road in the UK, Helene was finally able to visit London, a year after the bookshop that had inspired her had closed down. There, she was treated like a celebrity and was able to finally meet old friends such as Nora, Frank's widow, and their daughters. She also met Leo Marks7, the son of the co-owner of Marks & Co. Leo and Helene became fast friends and on subsequent visits to the country, Helene would always stay as Leo's guest.

As a consequence of her London visit, Helene was able to write a follow-up to 84 Charing Cross Road in the form of The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street, which was published in 1973. Meanwhile, 84 Charing Cross Road became a successful stage play in London's West End, a considerably less-successful stage play off-Broadway in New York and an enchanting film, starring Anne Bancroft8 as Helene and Anthony Hopkins9 as Frank Doel.

Despite being one of the world's most well-known bibliophiles, Helene had a surprisingly practical attitude to books. As she once wrote to Frank Doel:

I houseclean my books every spring and throw out those I'm never going to read again like I throw out clothes I'm never going to wear again. It shocks everybody. My friends are peculiar about books. They read all the best sellers, they get through them as fast as possible, I think they skip a lot. And they NEVER read anything a second time so they don't remember a word of it a year later. But they are profoundly shocked to see me drop a book in the wastebasket or give it away. The way they look at it, you buy a book, you read it, you put it on the shelf, you never open it again for the rest of your life... but you don't throw it out! Not if it has a hard cover on it! Why not? I personally can't think of anything less sacrosanct than a bad book or even a mediocre book.
Still, there were some books she would never part with, the books that she'd bought from 84 Charing Cross Road, which she kept on a shelf alongside the old bookshop's sign which a devoted fan had 'acquired' for her some time after the bookshop closed for the last time.

Despite the fame and adoration that all of her books brought her, Helene was by no means a wealthy woman. Towards the end of her life, she was living off meagre royalties and accepting financial help for her medical bills. Helene Hanff died in 1997, aged 80. She is, fittingly, commemorated at the spot where Marks & Co once stood by a plaque which reads:

84 Charing Cross Road
The booksellers Marks & Co
Were on this site which became world renowned
Through the book by Helene Hanff.
Further Reading

Underfoot in Showbusiness (1961)
Terrible Thomas (1964)
Movers and Shakers (1969)
84 Charing Cross Road (1970)
The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street (1973)
Apple of my Eye (1977)
Q's Legacy (1986)
Letters from New York
Related BBC Links

Find out how the Internet is shaking up the dusty world of second hand book shops.

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1 Marks & Co was short for Marks and Cohen, a pair of Jewish businessmen.
2 84 Charing Cross Road was situated on the northern side of Cambridge Circus, facing Romilly Street and the Palace Theatre. The building still stands, but the shop has been incorporated with others into a branch of the All Bar One wine bar.
3 Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch (1863-1944), Professor of English Literature at Cambridge University, and known to his students as 'Q'. It was Q's book On the Art of Writing (a collection of his lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge, published by Cambridge University Press, 1916) that was Helene Hanff's guide through the labyrinth of English Literature. His simple English and sense of humour appealed to her immediately and his works became her constant companion.
4 Charing Cross Road runs from the intersection of Oxford Street and Tottenham Court Road to the north, crossing Shaftsbury Avenue - London's famous 'Theatre District' - down to Trafalgar Square to the south. It is famed for its many out-of-print and specialist bookshops, though in recent years, some of these have made way for bigger, international chainstores.
5 A crime-drama series inspired by the popular mystery novels written by Frederic Dannay and Manfred B Lee under the pseudonym 'Ellery Queen'. It was broadcast live from Hollywood from 1950-1952, first on the Dumond network before switching to NBC in 1951. It initially starred Richard Hart as Ellery Queen but, after Hart's untimely death, he was replaced by Lee Bowman. In the show, Ellery Queen was a mystery writer who assisted his father, a detective in the New York Police Department, in solving murders. Though Queen often appeared absent-minded, he nevertheless always managed to astound his father by solving the case through reasoning and deduction. The TV show was revived in 1958-9 starring George Nader and in 1975-6 starring Jim Dutton.
6 Helene began saving the letters purely on the advice of a tax accountant who wanted to know how much money she spent on books. Once he realised she spent too little for them to qualify for a tax concession, he lost interest, but she continued the habit of collecting every letter she received.
7 Leo Marks was one of Britain's most highly-regarded cryptographers having developed codes for the British Intelligence during World War II. He was also the writer of the controversial film Peeping Tom and provided the voice of Satan for Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ.
8 American actress best-known for playing Mrs Robinson in the film The Graduate.
9 Welsh actor who later won an Oscar for playing serial killer Dr Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs.