TE||Browsing at the Strand
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导读
Strand书店
感谢 单读视频：we read the world，强烈推荐观看
上个世纪，在纽约第四大道聚集着许多家书店。而如今，在大型连锁书店的冲击下，其中多数已经凋零。Strand成为这条街上最后的文化阵地。这篇讣告讲的就是这家书店的前任掌门人弗雷德·巴斯(Fred Bass)，具体请看下文分解！
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音乐| 精读 | 翻译 | 词组
Browsing at the Strand
欢迎光临Strand书店
本文英文部分选自经济学人Obituary版块
Fred Bass died on January 3rd
弗雷德·巴斯于1月3日去世
The manager of the world’s largest secondhand-book emporium was 89
世界上最大的二手书店老板，享年89岁
ACROSS the buying counter at the Strand Book Store, which is as worn and battered as an old school desk, has flowed much of the secondhand-book trade of the city of New York. Dog-eared tomes in college bags; shiny review copies dropped in by critics; bland boxes of publishers’ remainders, and tantalising parcels from private estates; leather-bound volumes with uncut pages, and paperbacks rescued by vagrants from the trash. The whole momentum of New York publishing and reading seems to push towards that counter where Fred Bass presided, building up his stock from 70,000 in 1956 to 2.5m by the 1990s, and so rapidly exceeding his sales space that many books also sit in a warehouse at Sunset Park, in Brooklyn.
穿过史传德书店（The Strand Book Store）的柜台，人们总会感觉它的残损破旧，如同学校的旧课桌，然而这里却流转了纽约市大部分的二手书——装在大学生书包里折角的大部头专著、留下评论家引人注目评析的副本、看似平淡无奇的出版社廉价处理的成箱书籍、诱人的私人图书包裹、未切毛边的皮革装订卷宗，以及流浪者从垃圾堆里救出的平装书。整个纽约的出版和阅读势头，似乎促进了弗雷德·巴斯掌管书店的发展，他的书籍库存从1956年的7万本增加到了90年代的250万本，如此迅速的增长超越了书店的贮存能力，所以很多书都被存放于布鲁克林日落公园的一个仓库里。
To this plenitude of books he was forever adding more. Every day he approached his counter like a small boy on a treasure-hunt. And treasure did turn up: a first edition of James Joyce’s “Ulysses” (he paid $7,000; resale price, $38,000), and a second folio Shakespeare (sold for $100,000). Yet the vibrant life of the shop pleased him just as much. From his counter he could survey the crazily overstuffed main floor, man the ever-ringing phone, and keep an eye on people browsing the dollar carts outside (“We prosecute everybody”). Gradually the business covered so many creaky wooden floors, branching out even to satellites at Central Park on Fifth Avenue and the Flatiron District and elsewhere, that what he could see was but a tiny portion of the whole. Still, he could direct the flow.
尽管库存充足，他还是永远在进货补仓。他就像一个每天都在玩寻宝游戏的小男孩一样打理着自己的柜台。他也确实挖到了宝藏：詹姆斯·乔伊斯的《尤利西斯》初版(他付了7000美元,却以38000美元转售),第二版对开本的《莎士比亚》(最终以100000美元售出)。生气盎然的书店生活使他的喜乐得偿所愿。从书店柜台，他可以纵览疯狂地堆满东西的主楼层，接听常常响起的电话，还能密切关注外面那些在美元车附近闲逛的人们。(“来者不拒，童叟无欺”）。渐渐地，他的二手书业务不但席卷了铺着破旧木地板的街区,甚至扩展到了第五大道中央公园的卫星城、熨斗区以及其他一些地方——尽管真正他经手的书只是庞大书目的一小部分而已。他依然能够引领书店扩张的节奏。
Prosecute comes from the Latin, “prosesutus,” meaning “follow after.” The legal sense of the word first appeared in the 1570s. A district attorney will often prosecute, by bringing legal charges and action against a person or group (watch any TV legal drama, and the prosecution will no doubt prosecute eventually). A company may prosecute by suing to protect against damages. Prosecute should not be confused with the word persecute, which means to harass or oppress.
His business was (and is) such a feature at Broadway and 12th, with its 1950s red fascia, its lingering street browsers and its parade of white-on-red signs—“Open Seven Days Until 10.30pm”, “Sell Your Books Here”, “ASK US”—that it seemed to have been there always. But he moved it there from Fourth Avenue, from the dereliction of what had once been the Book District, in 1957, shortly after he took over from his father Benjamin. The secondhand sector was dying, and his father thought he should try another trade. But by then Fred had been thoroughly infected. The book-dust he had been sweeping up since schooldays had got into his blood, and he never got it out. Working with his father, an immigrant from Lithuania who had battled destitution by browsing and acquiring, was sparky. But the pursuit of books united them. He would lug the precious bundles back on the subway, the rope digging into his hands. He supposed later that their bookshop survived, when 50 or so others went under, because his father had taught him what he knew.
他经营的书店曾经是（现在依然是）百老汇与12大道的一大特色（书店在百老汇大道与曼哈顿十二街相交处），那些20世纪50年代起的红色招牌，恋恋不舍的逛街行人以及一连串的红底白字标牌——“每周七天，直到晚上10:30”，“请在此卖书”，“有求必应”等——似乎始终在此闪耀。实际上他是1957年从第四大道（这里曾为书区，后被废弃）搬到此地，那时他刚从父亲本杰明手里接管书店不久。二手书行业正在消亡，父亲也在想着是不是该换门生意了。但彼时的弗雷德却已完全浸染其中。那些自学生时代起就在打扫着的书页上的灰尘已经植根于他的血液，令他无法自拔。和他父亲一起工作还有一个充满活力的立陶宛移民，他通过搜寻和收购图书已经摆脱了贫困。是对书籍的追求让他们走到了一起。他吃力地从地铁搬回那些成捆的珍贵图书，捆书绳深深地勒入他的双手。后来他认为，在大约50家二手书商破产倒闭之时，之所以他们的书店还能得以幸存，是因为父亲将其（毕生）所知悉数教给了他。
At the buying counter his father sometimes yelled. Fred, when he assumed command, was quieter. With his three-piece suits and neat beard, he looked more like an Ivy League professor. The workings of his mind, though, moved lightning-sharp through price-scales, stock numbers and prevailing taste. And his decision was final. A biography of Hubert Humphrey? Nobody wanted to read about has-beens. A canvas bag of hardbacks? At a glance, $15. He mostly went by “feel”, losing his temper only when he was offered books that were dirty, or had no covers. “Are you really trying to sell this?” he would ask. And he tried to be fair, even to the down-and-outs. After all, beside the pawnshop, this was almost the only place in the city where you could just walk in and sell stuff.
父亲有时会在柜台上大声吼叫。弗雷德接任之后，则更安静平和。他身穿三件套，留着整齐的胡须，俨然一位常春藤盟校的教授。然而，他的思维却如能如同闪电般在价格区间、库存数量和流行口味之间快速切换。他的决策就是最终报价。休伯特·汉弗莱的传记？没人愿意去拜读这个过时的人。一本精装本的帆布包？只消一瞥，便可确定价值15美元。大部分时候他都是通过“感觉”定价，只有在得到脏书或者没有封面的书时，他才会发脾气。“你真打算卖这个？” 他会这么问。即便面对穷困潦倒之人，他也尽力秉持公道。毕竟，除了当铺外，这里几乎是城里唯一一个你可以就这么走进来卖东西的地方了。
Towards staff he was also kind, though not foolishly so. Their $10.50 an hour, at latest rates, was hardly the New York living wage, but with 60 folk a week lining up to work at the Strand he could obviously name his price. In order to see what they knew about books (since “Without good people, you don’t have anything going”), he devised a quiz to match ten authors with ten works, from Homer onwards. Hundreds failed. Equally testing was the lack, until his daughter and co-manager Nancy insisted on it 12 years ago, of central air-conditioning in the store. Having broiled by then in book-stacks through 70 New York summers, Fred saw no problem.
他对员工也颇为善意，但不乏理智。根据最新的工资率，书店每小时10.5美元的工资，几乎很难达到纽约的基本生活工资，但是对于史传德书店这样每周都有整整60个人排队等着找工作的地方来说，他有能力定价。为了解应聘者对书有多少了解（毕竟“缺少合适的帮手，你什么也干不成”），他设计了一个小测试，内容是将荷马时代至今的著名作者和他们的著作进行配对。结果，数以百计的人都无法顺利完成测试。同样考验人的是，店里没有中央空调，这种状况一直持续到12年前，在弗雷德的女儿、书店共同经理人南希的坚持下，才得到改善。而对于此前在纽约的酷暑中已经被炙烤了70个盛夏的弗雷德而言，这完全不是问题。
Modernity kept encroaching on his emporium, but he was sanguine about most of it. Amazon did not seem to dent his trade, especially since he had turned the shop into such an icon of New York that 15% of the revenues now come from sales of Strand T-shirts, tote-bags, mugs, socks and scented candles. The store’s status in the city reached a sort of apogee, for him, on the night two officers from the Police Department approached him as he was closing up and asked him, shyly, whether they might buy a T-shirt.
现代化的新东西不断侵蚀着他的大书店，好在他对大部分的事物都能抱之以乐观态度。亚马逊的出现并没有削弱他的生意，尤其是在他使书店变成为纽约的一个城市地标之后，如今书店15%的收入都来自售卖史传德书店的T恤、托特包、马克杯、袜子以及香薰蜡烛。对他而言，在那样的一个夜晚，书店在这个城市的地位已经达到了一个最高点，当时佛瑞德正忙着关门，两位警察局警官向他走来，不好意思地询问他，他们是否可以买一件史传德书店的T恤。
Living and dead
生与死
One question often asked was why on earth he needed more books, when those he hadn’t yet sold were heaping up all over. He had asked his father the same thing, but soon understood. You couldn’t sell a book you didn’t have. Besides, the secondhand-book trade was not about old, inert, long-accumulated things. It was alive, and needed renewing all the time. As fast as he was taking in fresh, lively books at his counter, staff would be clearing far shelves of all the dead, which would never sell. And this philosophy seemed to explain a second question that arose: how in one year, 2005, the store’s “8 Miles of Books” suddenly became “18”. Some Jewish patrons of the Strand pointed out that, in Hebrew, 18 is also the numerical value of the word chai—meaning “life”.
有一个问题是他经常被问到的，也就是为什么当存书已堆积如山之时，他还需要更多的书呢？他也曾经问过父亲同样的问题，但立刻就明白了。你无法卖出一本你没有的书。并且，二手书店做得并不是陈旧、没有活力、长期积压的书籍生意。它们是也是生气盎然的，需要不断地推陈出新。他尽可能快速地在货架上摆出新鲜的、有生气的图书，员工们也以相同的速度在清空里层货架上那些永远不会卖出去的废弃书籍。这个理念看起来也能顺便解答大家想问的第二个问题：为什么在2005年这一年里，这家店的“8英里图书”一下就变成了“18英里图书”。书店的一些犹太老主顾指出，在希伯来语中，18也是“chai”这个词的数值形式——意味着“生命”。
翻译组：
Yi, 女，财务民工，经济学人爱好者
Evelyn，女，研究生，经济学人爱好者
Amber，女，文学研究生，经济学人爱好者
Top，女，大三翻译专业，经济学人爱好者
校核组：
Forest，女，自由职业，经济学人爱好者
Ryan，男，IT民工，10年经济学人阅读经验
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观点 |评论|思考
这篇讣告讲的是Strand书店的前任掌门人弗莱德·贝斯，文中说到这家二手书店并没有收到网购浪潮的影响，再联想到前段时间看到的国内很多实体书店都经营不下去了，不禁想知道这家二手书店的魅力到底在那里。想了想，这家书店的吸引力有这几点：一是历史，这家店已经开了很久，已成为了地标性小店，人们早已养成把不用的书带来店里的习惯，来这里应聘店员的人也是排起了长队；二是情怀，就像店主愿意在二手书中淘宝，招募店员要设计测试题，这里聚集了一批爱书的人，因此爱淘老旧图书的人们自然会来到这里；三是商品特点，二手书的买卖和新书买卖的不同，并不是所有地方都会接收旧书，网上卖二手书操作也并没有那么便捷，因此二手书会比新书更容易以实体店生存。最后，很赞同弗雷德·巴斯的观点，书不是死的，二手书更不是死的，重点在于我们怎么看待这些书籍。（以上观点感谢财务民工Yi精心总结）
小编所在城市（杭州，https://www.zhihu.com/question/24073006）的独立书店不算多，但觉对不算少，现在这些独立书店的经营模式基本都本都是“卖书+卖饮品+卖各种小百货”，至于生存状况，小编想说的只有两个字：堪忧！记得上次看到一篇文章讲到的诚品书店，成立至今这么多年，前面15年都是亏损的，直到2004年才开始盈利，而盈利中卖书只是小部分，这个现实告诉我们如果你要做独立书店，我们需要耐得住寂寞，当然这是远远不够的，还需要大把的资金支持。
昨天翻译的文章题目sizematters.大小很重要，说的是火箭越大越厉害，那么小编想说的是书店从某种程度上来说，也是越大越厉害。最明显的例子就是诚品，它的规模来说真的是一般独立书店无法企及的，当然除此之外它的另一属性是一种文化地标，（稍微有点文化的人）去台湾旅游一般都会看看，前几年国内在苏州也开了一家，小编去过两次，主要目的其实也就是想去看看，小编相信更多的人和我一样，把它当作是一个旅游景点，顺便买点书，文具，明信片等等。但是话说回来，如果真的要买书，小编还是会选择网络购买，因为同样都是正版书，价格想对便宜而且还省时间。
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