笔记
奈保尔非虚构作品至今已有10册左右（国内的三联出版过3本“印度三部曲”）。其中有几本游记，目前我已看过两本，而这两本游记与其说是“游记”，倒不如说是“社会考察笔记”，里面很少写到自然风光、历史遗迹等，更多是关于当地人的生活状况。我之前看过他的第一部游记《中途航道》，是他1962年在中南美洲几国游历考察的记录，这次又看了《A Turn in the South》，是他上世纪80年代末在美国南部游历的记录。比较而言，前书更好看。当时的奈保尔名气不大，回到祖国及别的各处游历，外力上主要是借助朋友，书里个人的叙述更多，不少地方颇有文学味。而到了他写这本美国南方游记时，他已是著名作家（他在1971年就获得了布克奖），部分是出于这个原因，这次他接触的人更广泛，有普通人、政府官员、企业家等，但不少情况下，也有了公事公办的意味，一定程度上，奈保尔成了采访者的角色。是故，书里记录的，超过一半都是“被采访者”的口述，而奈保尔个人的观感和议论少了许多，所以在可读性上，这本书不及《中途航道》。尽管如此，对喜欢奈保尔和对美国历史感兴趣的读者（我只能这样说了），这本书读下来仍有不少收获，尽管显得有些枯燥。
说到美国南方，我们不免想到的是种族问题、农业方面。而奈保尔的这本书几乎包括了美国南方的各个方面，夸张点说，是部小型的“百科全书”，提到的有如下话题：种族问题的历史及现状、南方的历史、养殖业（如鲶鱼）、种植业（如烟草）、白人的生活状况、宗教、工业、就业、“猫王”、乡村音乐等等，十分全面。
其实我写下的这些都不如书的封底所说：
In the tradition of political and cultural revelation. V.S.Naipaul so brilliantly made his own in Among the Believers. A Turn in the South, his first book about the US, is a revealing, disturbing, elegiac book about the American South—from Atlanta to Charleston. Tallahassee to Tuskegee, Nashville to Chapel Hill.
再如《大西洋月刊》的评论：His Writing is clean and beautiful, and he has a great eye for nuance…No America writer could achieve (his) kind of evenhandedness, and it gives Naipaul’s perceptions and almost built-in originality.
抄书：
P24 The heat was a revelation. It made one think of the old days. Together with the great distances, it gave another idea of the lives of the early settlers. But now the very weather of the South had been made to work the other way. The heat that should have debilitated had been turned into a source of pleasure, a sensual excitement, and attraction, a political convention could be held in Dallas in the middle of August.
P168 奈保尔并无恶意地引用了两则嘲笑中国人的顺口溜：
Chico Chinaman
Eats dead rats,
Chews them up
Like ginger snaps.
这一则是流行在奈保尔的老家特里尼达的：
Chinese, Chinese, never die.
Flat nose and chinkee-eye.
P221 这一段是奈保尔对写游记的思考：
The land was big and varied, in parts wild. But it had nearly everywhere been made uniform and easy for the traveler. One result was that no travel book (unless the writer was writing about himself) could be only about the roads and the hotels. Such a book could have been written a hundred years ago. (Franny Kemble’s account of traveling in 1838 from Philiadelphia to the Georgia Sea Islands, by rail and stagecoach, partly on a road covered with logs, is a proper adventure.
Such a book can still be written about certain countries in Africa, say. It is often enough for a traveler in that kind of country to say, more or less, “This is me here. This is me getting off the old native bus and being led by strange boys, making improper proposals, to some squalid lodging. This is me having a drink in a bar with some local characters. This is me getting lost later that night.
This kind of traveler is not really a discoverer. He is more a man defining himself against a foreign background; and depending on who he is, the book he writes can be attractive. A book like that can be written about the United States only if the writer, taking the reader into his confidence, sets himself up as alien or outlandish in some way. Generally, though this approach cannot work in the United States. The place is not and cannot be alien in the simple way an African country is alien. It is too well known, too photographed, too written about; and, being more organized and less formal, it is not so open to casual inspection.
I had been concerned, from the start of my own journey, to establish some lines of inquiry, to define a theme. The approach had its difficulties. At the back of my mind was always a worry that I would come to a place and all contacts would break down and I would not get beyond the uniformity of highway and chain hotel (the very romance I was surrendering to that afternoon in the Delta). If you travel on a theme, the theme has to develop with the travel. At the beginning your interests can be broad and scattered. But then they must be more focused; the different stages of a journey cannot simply be versions of one another. And, more than the other kind of travel, this traveling on a theme depended on luck.. It depended on the people you met, the little illuminations you had. As with the next day’s issue of a fast moving daily newspaper, the shape of the chapter in hand was continually being changed by accidents on the way
说到美国南方，我们不免想到的是种族问题、农业方面。而奈保尔的这本书几乎包括了美国南方的各个方面，夸张点说，是部小型的“百科全书”，提到的有如下话题：种族问题的历史及现状、南方的历史、养殖业（如鲶鱼）、种植业（如烟草）、白人的生活状况、宗教、工业、就业、“猫王”、乡村音乐等等，十分全面。
其实我写下的这些都不如书的封底所说：
In the tradition of political and cultural revelation. V.S.Naipaul so brilliantly made his own in Among the Believers. A Turn in the South, his first book about the US, is a revealing, disturbing, elegiac book about the American South—from Atlanta to Charleston. Tallahassee to Tuskegee, Nashville to Chapel Hill.
再如《大西洋月刊》的评论：His Writing is clean and beautiful, and he has a great eye for nuance…No America writer could achieve (his) kind of evenhandedness, and it gives Naipaul’s perceptions and almost built-in originality.
抄书：
P24 The heat was a revelation. It made one think of the old days. Together with the great distances, it gave another idea of the lives of the early settlers. But now the very weather of the South had been made to work the other way. The heat that should have debilitated had been turned into a source of pleasure, a sensual excitement, and attraction, a political convention could be held in Dallas in the middle of August.
P168 奈保尔并无恶意地引用了两则嘲笑中国人的顺口溜：
Chico Chinaman
Eats dead rats,
Chews them up
Like ginger snaps.
这一则是流行在奈保尔的老家特里尼达的：
Chinese, Chinese, never die.
Flat nose and chinkee-eye.
P221 这一段是奈保尔对写游记的思考：
The land was big and varied, in parts wild. But it had nearly everywhere been made uniform and easy for the traveler. One result was that no travel book (unless the writer was writing about himself) could be only about the roads and the hotels. Such a book could have been written a hundred years ago. (Franny Kemble’s account of traveling in 1838 from Philiadelphia to the Georgia Sea Islands, by rail and stagecoach, partly on a road covered with logs, is a proper adventure.
Such a book can still be written about certain countries in Africa, say. It is often enough for a traveler in that kind of country to say, more or less, “This is me here. This is me getting off the old native bus and being led by strange boys, making improper proposals, to some squalid lodging. This is me having a drink in a bar with some local characters. This is me getting lost later that night.
This kind of traveler is not really a discoverer. He is more a man defining himself against a foreign background; and depending on who he is, the book he writes can be attractive. A book like that can be written about the United States only if the writer, taking the reader into his confidence, sets himself up as alien or outlandish in some way. Generally, though this approach cannot work in the United States. The place is not and cannot be alien in the simple way an African country is alien. It is too well known, too photographed, too written about; and, being more organized and less formal, it is not so open to casual inspection.
I had been concerned, from the start of my own journey, to establish some lines of inquiry, to define a theme. The approach had its difficulties. At the back of my mind was always a worry that I would come to a place and all contacts would break down and I would not get beyond the uniformity of highway and chain hotel (the very romance I was surrendering to that afternoon in the Delta). If you travel on a theme, the theme has to develop with the travel. At the beginning your interests can be broad and scattered. But then they must be more focused; the different stages of a journey cannot simply be versions of one another. And, more than the other kind of travel, this traveling on a theme depended on luck.. It depended on the people you met, the little illuminations you had. As with the next day’s issue of a fast moving daily newspaper, the shape of the chapter in hand was continually being changed by accidents on the way
有关键情节透露
