这本书是去年9月引进的，大概两月后能出版。那时先是用磕磕巴巴的英文和

莫里斯o迪克斯坦先生直接联系，辗转又和中文代理博达联系上。如今就要出版，就麻烦他为中文版写个序言。因为是自己做的书，就捡个便宜自己尝试下翻译，并在高人指点下做了修改，放在这里请大家多提意见！

很高兴《途中的镜子》即将在中国出版。我的一部早期作品，关于1960年代美国文学、文化、政治的论著——《伊甸园之门》，据说曾在这里大受追捧。我一向认为，文学批评的最佳传播工具是探讨商榷的、简明扼要的、具有想象力的文论，而不是试图穷尽一切的鸿篇巨制。《途中的镜子》是我针对诸多论题的文集，特别是其中对小说的论述，主要反映了新近复苏的对文学现实主义的关注。这是一种长期根植于19世纪，尤其是法国、英国和俄罗斯最卓越小说的文学技巧。许多批评家认为，现实主义从未在美国站稳脚跟，这里的主要小说类型多是“罗曼蒂克”的。本书试图摒除这种观点的同时，强调现实主义作家和敏锐的社会批评家在美国的重要性，这些人包括威廉o迪恩o豪威尔斯、西奥多o德莱塞、史蒂芬o克兰、厄普顿o辛克莱、辛克莱o刘易斯、薇拉o凯瑟以及伊迪斯o华顿。

在20世纪前半段现代主义写作的鼎盛时期，现实主义作为一种艺术形式，被斥为笨拙、过时，只是机械地反映社会表层、社会现实和社会习俗。在普鲁斯特、乔伊斯、弗吉尼亚o伍尔芙最重要的作品中，艺术能量的爆发主要着力于发展新方法——如意识流，以探究个体如何体悟周遭世界。与之相似，弗洛伊德在精神分析学上的探求，尤其是他对潜意识的发掘；自然科学家和社会科学家对相对论的兴会淋漓；哲学家孜孜以求客观世界的局限性；即便像毕加索这样的画家，也热衷于将已知世界的影像变形、打碎、重构。

但持怀疑论的哲学家们，尤其是威廉o詹姆斯、约翰o杜威那样的美国实用主义者，包括一些先锋艺术家和作家的实验性作品，从未质询过个体和世界的相互联系，而正是后者形塑、制约了他们的生活。如果你认为现代作家和画家弃现实主义传统而去，但其作品又能反映现实世界，这种想法是愚蠢的。尽管艺术的表现形式五花八门，但倘若不观照周遭及内部世界，我们还是很难在艺术中创造出活力和价值。理解这一点，将有助于我们重新发现那些秉持现实主义传统的作家和艺术家。以美国绘画为例，当现代主义画风日益式微时，我们反倒更能欣赏威斯洛o赫默和托马斯o伊金斯的风格，更别说长盛不衰的爱德华o霍普了。这三人一生秉持现实主义，但其作品从不缺乏内涵和深度，引人遐思。简而要之，我们已经能意识到，19、20世纪文学艺术发展的不同阶段其实是一脉相承的。

现实主义写作的特殊价值，在于它密切关注重大社会变迁——大规模的移民潮、从农村到城市的人口迁移、伴随新的社会流动性而不断扩大的阶级（层）差别、民主和个人主义思想的传播、重大技术突破、生活方式和道德习俗的深刻变迁、社会经济的高度现代化。文学能让我们领悟到，这些发展不是抽象深奥、苍白无血的社会潮流，而是对个体生活、个体与周遭的一切关系带来深刻影响的社会巨变。

中国是世界上最古老的国度之一，但对于欧美的现代化进程而言，又是初来乍到者。我希望，中国的读者和学生会喜欢本书中提到的作家。我也坚信，在同现代化的角力中，中国人将有自己的反思，如同本书中讨论的，其他国家、尤其是美国的作家，他们是如何应对相似问题的。

莫里斯o迪克斯坦

纽约，2007年12月8日

A Mirror in the Roadway: Literature and the Real World, by Morris Dickstein

Preface to the Chinese Edition, 2008

I’m very pleased that A Mirror in the Roadway is coming out in China, where an earlier work of mine on the 1960s, Gates of Eden, received a warm welcome. I have always felt that the best vehicle for literary criticism is the essay - tentative, terse, and suggestive - rather than the full-length work, which tries to spell everything out. A Mirror in the Roadway collects essays of mine on many subjects, especially on fiction, many of which reflect a recent revival of interest in literary realism. This was a technique long associated with the best novels of the nineteenth century, especially in France, England, and Russia. Many critics felt it had never fully taken hold in America, where the major novels were all seen as “romances.” This is a viewpoint this book tries to dispel, stressing the importance of realistic writers and keen social critics like William Dean Howells, Theodore Dreiser, Stephen Crane, Upton Sinclair, Sinclair Lewis, Willa Cather, and Edith Wharton.

During the heyday of modernist writing in the first half of the twentieth century, realism was considered an outmoded and cumbersome way of linking art to social reality. Its technique was seen as a mechanical reflection of social surfaces, social facts, and institutions. In the important work of Proust, Joyce, and Virginia Woolf, the energies of art were expended in developing new methods, such as stream of consciousness, to explore how individuals perceived their world. This paralleled the psychological investigations of Freud, especially his explorations of the unconscious mind, and the interest in relativity among scientists and social scientists. Philosophers too probed the limits of objectivity, just as painters like Picasso used seeming distortions to fragment and reconstitute the received vision of the known world.

But the skepticism of philosophers, especially the American pragmatists such as William James and John Dewey, and the experimental work of artists and writers never challenged the connection between individuals and the world that shaped and conditioned their lives. It would be foolish to think that modern writers and painters, by turning away from the conventions of realism, had also turned their back on the real world. It would hard for us to develop any vital interest in art that did not reflect the complex world around us and within us, though it may do so in a dizzying variety of ways. Understanding this has helped us recover writers and artists who did work within realistic conventions. In American painting, for example, as the dominance of modernism has ebbed, we have been better able to appreciate the styles of Winslow Homer and Thomas Eakins, along with a perennial favorite, Edward Hopper, painters whose realism does not keep their work from being deep and haunting. Above all, we have been able to appreciate the continuities between different phases of nineteenth and twentieth century art and literature.

One special value of realistic writing can be found its close attention to momentous social changes, including large-scale immigration, the shift of populations from the country to the city, the growth of class differences along with a new social mobility, the spread of democracy and individualism, many major advances of technology, far-reaching changes in manners and morals, and the vast economic modernization of society. Literature enables us to grasp these developments not as abstract and bloodless social trends but as upheavals that have deep consequences in the lives of individuals and their relationships with those around them. China is one of the world’s oldest nations but it is relatively new to modernization compared to Europe and the United States. I hope Chinese readers and students will enjoy the writers they encounter in these pages. But I trust they will also find reflections of their own struggles with modernization in these discussions of how writers in other countries, especially the United States, grappled with similar problems.

Morris Dickstein

New York, December 8, 2007