在澳大利亞做文學(xué)出版商

正如英國(guó)小說(shuō)家勞倫斯·斯特恩所說(shuō)，“每個(gè)人都會(huì)談及市場(chǎng)是因?yàn)樗约旱馁I賣存乎其中”，就我而言，我作為獨(dú)立的文學(xué)出版商，總是和世界范圍內(nèi)其他出版商及其商業(yè)動(dòng)機(jī)存在分歧。我不知道在中國(guó)情況如何，但在澳大利亞，通常一個(gè)作品的文學(xué)價(jià)值與商業(yè)價(jià)值之間存在著反比關(guān)系。也就是說(shuō)，一本書越具文學(xué)性，那么其銷量就會(huì)越少。當(dāng)然有例外，但這種例外并不多見。吉拉蒙多出版社的詩(shī)人沒法僅僅靠出書存活；大多數(shù)的散文作家也是如此——他們不得不另謀出路以維繼寫作生涯。

如果文學(xué)作家難以生存，那么文學(xué)出版商也難以為繼。一套備受推崇的詩(shī)集可能會(huì)賣出500本；即便是一部拍案叫絕的文學(xué)小說(shuō)甚至也只能賣出2000本。我出版過(guò)一位獲得諾貝爾獎(jiǎng)的作家的書，最多也只賣出了1500多本。在這種情況下，一個(gè)出版商的存在是在踐行一種似乎不可能實(shí)現(xiàn)的藝術(shù)價(jià)值--我應(yīng)該說(shuō)完全不可能，因?yàn)樯虡I(yè)性出版的正常預(yù)期是得到利潤(rùn)回報(bào)。在我國(guó)，這往往意味著獲得利潤(rùn)回報(bào)的是在其他國(guó)家的母公司。

在我成為出版商之前，我是澳大利亞文學(xué)界的學(xué)者和評(píng)論家。現(xiàn)在我依然如此，可以看到我的評(píng)論和出版活動(dòng)之間存在一種連貫性。，對(duì)我而言，出版的確是一種評(píng)論行為。正常情況下，在一本書出版之后，評(píng)論才會(huì)出現(xiàn)，有時(shí)需要等待多年。。但我認(rèn)為出版作為一種評(píng)論行為，應(yīng)該存在于既成事實(shí)之前，即某一本書出版之前，并伴隨著整個(gè)出書過(guò)程。我認(rèn)為，從這一意義上講，評(píng)論包含了從一開始的選作到出版整個(gè)過(guò)程中與作者合作完成的所有活動(dòng)，目的是確保實(shí)現(xiàn)作品的文學(xué)價(jià)值，當(dāng)然也包括了對(duì)作品進(jìn)行編輯。事實(shí)上，作為出版商，我面臨的最艱巨的任務(wù)之一就是在書的封底寫上150個(gè)字的描述。這就是英語(yǔ)所謂的“薦書評(píng)論”，因?yàn)樗鼤?huì)對(duì)該書大肆宣揚(yáng)，卻對(duì)其意義只字不提。我努力避免夸張并提供對(duì)書的解讀，強(qiáng)調(diào)其對(duì)澳大利亞文學(xué)寫作的貢獻(xiàn)。用150個(gè)字來(lái)實(shí)現(xiàn)對(duì)一本書意味深長(zhǎng)的解讀是相當(dāng)困難的，這甚至少于如今在澳大利亞報(bào)紙上發(fā)表評(píng)論所允許的字?jǐn)?shù)上限——800個(gè)單詞。

我認(rèn)為自己是一個(gè)“概念性”的出版商，而不是商業(yè)出版商。這是因?yàn)椋?dāng)我出版一本書時(shí)，我所關(guān)注的概念總是超過(guò)這本書或作者，即關(guān)注澳大利亞文學(xué)的概念；或更籠統(tǒng)的，關(guān)注整個(gè)文學(xué)的概念，甚至更理想化的，關(guān)注我們的子孫后代。幸運(yùn)的是，確實(shí)有機(jī)構(gòu)——澳大利亞藝術(shù)委員會(huì)、版權(quán)代理有限公司、州政府的藝術(shù)部門以及大學(xué)等支持這些寬泛的工作理念，并為此提供資金支持，或是直接資助，或是將我們的書列入課程教材。澳大利亞也有很多文學(xué)獎(jiǎng)，支持了文學(xué)出版商從概念上而非商業(yè)上去思考問題。

在條件有限的情況下，為了能在概念性的出版或理想化的出版中留有一線生機(jī)，就必須進(jìn)行戰(zhàn)略性思考。在一定程度是因?yàn)橐f(shuō)服投資者一如既往地資助你，那么你必須滿足他們的目標(biāo)和關(guān)注重點(diǎn)以及管理方面的要求。但是，你所服務(wù)的對(duì)象，即文學(xué)思想或概念也要求你要進(jìn)行戰(zhàn)略性思考，因?yàn)槲膶W(xué)思想或概念總是不斷變化，不會(huì)始終靜止，很有可能某種程度上由于你自己的貢獻(xiàn)而在發(fā)生變化。

關(guān)于這一點(diǎn)，我想舉兩個(gè)例子，談?wù)勎易罱诩啥喑霭嫔缫恢痹诓扇〉膽?zhàn)略。我希望能夠更清楚地解釋概念性出版的含義，即時(shí)刻銘記文學(xué)的大概念。首先關(guān)注澳大利亞新一代的新興作家，他們現(xiàn)在30多或40歲剛出頭，大多數(shù)在學(xué)校或大學(xué)學(xué)習(xí)過(guò)古典文學(xué)課程，而這些課程都被現(xiàn)代其他“文本”形式替代：電影、電視劇、流行音樂歌詞、藝術(shù)品、高雅作品和流行文化作品。與此同時(shí)，由于互聯(lián)網(wǎng)包羅萬(wàn)象，可以滿足人們各式各樣的好奇心，日新月異的數(shù)字技術(shù)，例如博客、電子雜志以及其他自媒體手段，為年輕的準(zhǔn)作家們提供了史無(wú)前例地迅速發(fā)表和分享作品的機(jī)會(huì)，

在這種背景下，閱讀和寫作的價(jià)值不降反增，盡管大部分人起初不這么認(rèn)為。與之相反的是閱讀的習(xí)慣則發(fā)生了改變，讀書被日常生活中的碎片閱讀所替代，包括博客和電子雜志的內(nèi)容，再到詩(shī)歌、腳本、習(xí)俗，甚至是密切審視人際關(guān)系。癡迷的力量是文學(xué)創(chuàng)作的源泉，且不容小覷——新的數(shù)字環(huán)境完全適合于培養(yǎng)癡迷的態(tài)度。此外，新技術(shù)也使寫作的影響范圍空前擴(kuò)大。年輕的這一代作家中的佼佼者在為新書發(fā)表做準(zhǔn)備的過(guò)程中，不分晝夜，奮筆疾書，年復(fù)一年。而這種寫作的目的就是為了流通，不管其讀者群大小，一旦完成寫作，即刻進(jìn)行發(fā)表的狀態(tài)當(dāng)中。

這種過(guò)于數(shù)字化的寫作有其優(yōu)缺點(diǎn)。文學(xué)出版商不僅僅面臨一種偏見：如何將這種新型寫作的優(yōu)勢(shì)與文學(xué)傳統(tǒng)聯(lián)系起來(lái)，即使作者可能不會(huì)直接認(rèn)識(shí)到這種聯(lián)系，也可能不會(huì)將這些傳統(tǒng)界定的重要作家及作品列入?yún)⒖嘉墨I(xiàn)。誠(chéng)然，這是評(píng)論和解讀的主要任務(wù)。采取借用、取樣、引用、例證和其他自己可用的美學(xué)技巧，對(duì)已有的體裁加以無(wú)拘無(wú)束的組合：自傳和小說(shuō)、詩(shī)歌和散文、敘事和紀(jì)實(shí)。這種寫作中的“聲音”非常強(qiáng)大，正如人們所期待的一樣，使得我們很難分清作者、敘事者和作品中的人物。而這種區(qū)分恰恰是現(xiàn)代文學(xué)評(píng)論的基礎(chǔ)，至少英語(yǔ)國(guó)家如此。在我看來(lái)，小說(shuō)這種文學(xué)形式面臨的危險(xiǎn)最大，因?yàn)檫@種新型的數(shù)字文學(xué)偏好碎片化、插圖、散文，以及篇幅更短、更龐雜、更具漫談風(fēng)格的寫作形式，而不喜歡那種依賴大段情節(jié)與敘事發(fā)展的寫作風(fēng)格。

這是文學(xué)出版商同時(shí)需要概念性思維和戰(zhàn)略思維的一個(gè)例子。在澳大利亞出版和銷售書籍需要將不同的體裁分開，劃清界限；值得一說(shuō)的是，出版商依賴小說(shuō)，因?yàn)樗俏ㄒ痪哂猩虡I(yè)成功前景的文學(xué)形式。而新生的文學(xué)形式公然挑戰(zhàn)已有的期許，必然要求我們進(jìn)行戰(zhàn)略性管理，因?yàn)樗魬?zhàn)的是長(zhǎng)期以來(lái)建立起來(lái)的的商業(yè)習(xí)慣。

第二個(gè)例子涉及出版外國(guó)及本國(guó)（即澳大利亞）作家作品時(shí)所采取的策略。我們很難知道哪些國(guó)外作品在本國(guó)出版效果會(huì)好，因此，出版商一般依賴于一些明顯的成功標(biāo)志，即選擇原市場(chǎng)中的暢銷書或獲獎(jiǎng)作品的譯本。我的觀點(diǎn)從本質(zhì)上講又是從概念出發(fā)。我更喜歡出版能為澳大利亞作家和讀者提供廣泛文學(xué)資源的外國(guó)作品，這些作品帶來(lái)的觀點(diǎn)能與他們的思維形成共鳴。同樣，我希望，和我打交道的國(guó)外出版商們也能這么做，以相似的理由出版我國(guó)書目。

在吉拉蒙多出版社，我一直負(fù)責(zé)開發(fā)“南方文學(xué)”系列叢書，致力于開發(fā)南半球作家的作品。在某種程度上這是一種政治姿態(tài)。澳大利亞文化習(xí)慣向北延伸，走出亞洲，到達(dá)英國(guó)、美國(guó)、歐洲——這是認(rèn)為我們自己的文化劣于殖民者文化的一種態(tài)度。但在南半球，有一些文化也跟我們一樣盡力了殖民化過(guò)程；他們以自己特有的方式使用著殖民者的語(yǔ)言和傳統(tǒng)；有大規(guī)模的外來(lái)移民；土著居民從壓迫和剝奪的生活中恢復(fù)過(guò)來(lái)；我們擁有相同的季節(jié)，一樣的夜空。這些歷史和地理上的相似之處必然影響了南半球作家的想象力。我特別欣賞南美作家老練的寫作風(fēng)格，運(yùn)用民間素材與他們偏好的短篇形式：故事、散文和短篇小說(shuō)。同樣還有其他因素：我們都曾遠(yuǎn)離文明，在我看來(lái)這是創(chuàng)造力，而非局限性。

因其地理位置特點(diǎn)，澳大利亞作為一個(gè)島國(guó)，就像是世界的邊遠(yuǎn)的小村落。相比之下，中國(guó)是如此之大，如同一個(gè)由無(wú)數(shù)村落組成的大世界。作為出版商，我正和兩個(gè)發(fā)展中國(guó)家建立文學(xué)紐帶關(guān)系。在于印度文化交往中，我們的共同點(diǎn)在于澳大利亞的土著作家與印度達(dá)利特或“印度種姓制度最底層的賤民”作家處境相似。近幾年來(lái)，我們與中國(guó)開始文學(xué)交往。當(dāng)時(shí)激動(dòng)人心的場(chǎng)景仍歷歷在目，我還是《熱度》雜志社編輯和出版商，于90年代末出版了西川的詩(shī)歌，2003年出版了阿來(lái)的小說(shuō)《魚》，以及其他當(dāng)代中國(guó)作家的作品。我被這些新的美學(xué)藝術(shù)當(dāng)中的自由與力量震撼到，它們向我展現(xiàn)了一個(gè)全新的世界，無(wú)論它們揭示多么深刻的主題，或者多么黑暗的現(xiàn)實(shí)，總會(huì)以幽默或譏諷的方式表現(xiàn)。代表澳大利亞作品參加此次論壇我深感自豪，論壇在中國(guó)廣州舉辦，不禁讓我聯(lián)想到世界分南北半球，國(guó)家分南北，而廣州這座中國(guó)南部城市，是19世紀(jì)中國(guó)移民通往澳大利亞南部的通道，這是否為我們的合作提供了基礎(chǔ)呢？我想答案是肯定的。

On Being a Literary Publisher in Australia

Ivor Indyk

As the English novelist Laurence Sterne noted, ‘every man will speak of the fair as his own market has gone in it’ - and since my own perspective is that of an independent literary publisher, I often find myself at odds with the larger world of publishing, and its commercial motives. I don’t know how it is in China, but in Australia there is usually an inverse relation between the literary value of a work, and its commercial value. That is to say, the more literary a book is, the less copies it will sell. There are exceptions of course, but not many. None of Giramondo’s poets earn enough money from their books to live on; and this applies to most of our prose writers too - they all have to find other work to support their writing.

If it is difficult for literary writers to survive, it is difficult also for literary publishers. A highly-regarded poetry book may sell 500 copies; even a highly- regarded work of literary fiction may sell only 2,000 copies. I publish an author who is often mentioned as a Nobel-Prize winner, but whose books struggle to sell more than 1500 copies. In this context, to survive as a publisher is to practise the art of the seemingly impossible - impossible I should say, in relation to the normal expectations of commercial publishing, which depends on returning profit. In our country, that often means returning profit to a parent company in another country.

I was an academic and a critic of Australian literature, before I became a publisher. I am still an academic and a critic of Australian literature, and I see a continuity between my critical and my publishing activities. Indeed, for me, publishing is an act of criticism. Normally criticism is published after the fact - after the publication of the book that is being discussed, sometimes many years after. But I think of publishing as criticism before the fact, before the book is made, and accompanying the process of its making. Criticism in this sense includes for me all those activities that are undertaken in collaboration with the author to ensure that the work achieves its literary potential - editing of course, but also the selection of the work to begin with, all the way through to its presentation to the public at the end of the process. In fact, one of the most difficult critical tasks for me as a publisher is the writing of the 150-word description on the back cover of the book. This is often called, in English, ‘the blurb’, because it heaps praise on the book, but doesn’t really say anything about its significance. I try to avoid hyperbole, and to offer an interpretation of the book that highlights its contribution to Australian writing. It is extremely difficult to offer a meaningful interpretation of a book in 150 words - that is even less than the 800 words that is allowed these days to newspaper reviewers in our country.

I think of myself as a ‘conceptual’ publisher rather than as a commercial publisher. This is because, when I publish a book, I always have my eye on a concept larger than the book or its author - the concept of Australian literature; or more generally, literature; or even more idealistically, posterity. Fortunately, there are agencies which support this larger concept of the work, and provide funding for it - the Australia Council for the Arts, the Copyright Agency Limited, the arts ministries of our state governments, and the universities - either directly, or by listing our books on their courses. There are also a lot of literary prizes in our country. It is this support which allows a literary publisher to think conceptually rather than commercially.

In order to survive by publishing conceptually, or idealistically, with limited means, it is essential to think strategically. This is partly because of the effort required to convince your funding sources to remain committed to you - you have to fall in with their aims and priorities, and satisfy their administrative requirements. But the need to think strategically is also required by the larger idea or concept of literature you are serving, because this never remains static, and is constantly evolving, hopefully in some part because of your own contribution to it.

I would like to give two examples, at this point, of strategies which I have been pursuing recently at Giramondo, in the hope of giving a clearer sense of what I mean by conceptual publishing, that is to say, publishing with the larger idea of literature in mind. The first concerns the new generation of so-called emerging writers in Australia, those who are now in their thirties or early forties. Many of them were educated, at school and at university, in courses which had previously been devoted to literary classics, but which were now open to ‘texts’ of all kinds, films, television series, pop music lyrics, art installations, works of high culture and works of popular culture. At the same time as the internet provided access to an encyclopaedic range of sources to feed this wider curiosity, the new digital technologies gave young would-be authors the means to publish and distribute their writing through blogs and zines and other ‘do- it-yourself’ media, with an immediacy which had no real historical precedent.

In this milieu, neither reading nor writing became a devalued activity, though many people thought it would be. On the contrary, the habit of reading was transferred, from books, to the minutiae of daily life, so often the subject of blogs and zines, to lyrics and scripts and customs, and to an intense scrutiny of personal relationships. The power of obsession, as a source of literary creativity, should not be underestimated - and the new digital environment is perfectly suited to the cultivation of obsession. Moreover the scope for the practice of writing that the new technologies afforded was extraordinary. The best writers from this younger generation, by the time they are ready for book publication, will have been writing endlessly, day and night, for decades - and engaged in a kind of writing which is designed for circulation, no matter how small the readership, within moments of its completion.

This kind of digitally-enhanced writing has its strengths and its weaknesses. The challenge for a literary publisher is not simply one of discrimination: the question is how to relate the strengths of this new writing to the traditions of literature, even though the writer may appear not to know them directly, and may not include in their writing any references to the landmark authors and works by which these traditions are defined. This is, of course, primarily a task of criticism and interpretation. The genres are there, but they coalesce in an uninhibited fashion, merging autobiography and fiction, poetry and prose, narrative and documentary, and making use of appropriation, sampling, quotation, illustration and other acquisitive techniques drawn from the DIY (‘do-it-yourself’) aesthetic. The ‘voice’ in this writing is very strong, as one might expect, and disallows any easy distinction between author, narrator and character, distinctions which modern literary criticism has been based on, at least in English?speaking countries. And it seems to me that it is the form of the novel that is most at risk, since this new digitally-enabled literature favours the fragment, the vignette, the essay, the shorter and more miscellaneous or digressive forms of writing, over those governed by the larger unities of plot and narrative development.

This is one example of the literary publisher’s need to be conceptual and strategic at the same time. Publishing and selling books in Australia requires the genres to be kept separate and distinct; above all, it is dependent on the novel, as the only literary form which has any prospect of commercial success. An emerging literature which defies these expectations necessarily requires strategic management, as it challenges long-established commercial practices.

My second example concerns the strategies involved in publishing international authors alongside the writers of one's own country, in my case Australia. It is very difficult to know which books to publish from another country, and this is why publishers generally rely on obvious markers of success - choosing books for translation which are already bestsellers and prize-winners in their original markets. My view is, again, essentially a conceptual one. My preference is to publish overseas books that will expand the literary resources available to Australian writers and readers, and open up perspectives that resonate in some way with their own experiences. And I hope that, in return, the overseas publishers I am dealing with will be encouraged to reciprocate, and publish our titles for similar reasons.

At Giramondo, I have been developing a series called ‘Literature of the South’, which is devoted to writers from the southern hemisphere. In part this is a political gesture. It is a habitual reflex in Australian culture to look north for inspiration, beyond Asia, to England, America and Europe - an attitude which perpetuates our cultural deference to the powers that have colonised us. But in the south, there are cultures with similar experiences of colonisation to our own; their own distinctive use of the coloniser’s language and traditions; large-scale immigration; indigenous populations recovering from oppression and dispossession; the same seasons, the same southern skies at night. These historical and geographical similarities must have formative influences on the imagination of southern writers. I particularly admire the formal sophistication of the South American writers, their use of folk material, and their liking for the short form: the story, the essay and the novella. But there is also something else: our mutual experience of being provincial, which I see as a creative strength, not a disadvantage.

Because of its location, as an island, Australia is like a provincial outpost of the world. China, by contrast, is so large, as to be a world composed of provinces. As a publisher, I have been involved in two other developing literary relationships between countries, with India, where the common ground was provided by the similarity in situation between our Aboriginal writers and the Indian Dalit or ‘untouchable’ writers; and for some years now, with China. I remember the excitement when, as the editor and publisher of HEAT magazine, I published poems by Xi Chuan in the late 1990s, and Ah Lai’s story ‘Fish!’ in 2003, along with many other contemporary Chinese writers. I was struck by the freedom and energy of what I took to be a new aesthetic, which opened new worlds to me, and which, however serious its underlying intent, however dark, was always accompanied by a sense of humour and irony. There was also a certain pride in being from the provinces which I wanted to claim for Australian writing too. Since this forum is taking place in Guangzhou, I am reminded that countries have their ‘south’ as much as the world does its hemispheres, and that in Guangzhou itself, this southern orientation is all the greater for its being the gateway for the Chinese migration to the south land of Australia in the nineteenth-century. Does this provide common ground for our collaboration? And if not this, what then?