閱讀斯蒂芬·裏柯剋 Stephen Leacock在散文天地的作品!!! | |||
儘管李科剋的正式職業是大學的政治經濟學教授，而且他也出版過好幾本專業著作，但他在這方面的名聲遠不如他作為一位幽默作傢的名聲大。
李科剋二十幾歲就開始寫作幽默小品，他的第一部幽默小品集子（其中收集了他於1891年至1899年期間所寫的作品）出版於1910年（即馬剋·吐溫和歐·亨利相繼去世的那一年），其時作者已經40歲，此後他便筆耕不輟，在從這時到他1944年去世為止的三十幾年期間他雖也寫過一些其他形式的文學作品如詩歌、劇本、傳記以及文學理論等，但他本人最喜愛的也是寫得最多的則是幽默小品，共有將近30個集子。
李科剋的幽默是一種淡淡的、含蓄的幽默，他不是靠奇特、滑稽的故事情節來把讀者逗得哈哈大笑，而是善於從平淡無奇的日常生活中提煉出一些為大傢司空見慣卻又往往熟視無睹的可笑的和不合理的東西加以放大後呈現在讀者面前，讓他們産生共鳴而發出會心的微笑或無奈的苦笑；並且他的作品也不是讓人看過笑過就完，而是十分耐咀嚼、有回味，發人深省。
李科剋無論寫景寫事還是寫人，筆法都十分細膩；尤其是在刻劃人物方面他更具有獨特的本領。他在《母親節》和《五十六號》中分別塑造的一位一年到頭終日為全家默默操勞而別無他求的母親和一位善於觀察想象、感情豐富、心地善良的中國洗衣店主人阿仁這兩個成功的文學形象令人久久難忘。此外，在這12篇精選的幽默小品裏你將要結識的人物還有：初次與銀行打交道驚惶失措的小職員；自以為閱歷豐富、能應付任何局面而終於上當受騙的“老於世故者”；給人照相一味追求“形象美”而全然不顧照片與真人是否相像的攝影師；為了推銷存貨而不惜蒙騙讀者的書商；不管別人是否願意、硬要給人“幫忙”甚至越俎代皰的“熱心人”；不諳人情世故、不會說假話、終於導致悲慘下場的老實人；事事追本窮源、一輩子都在走回頭路的倒退者；不懂裝懂、做了冤大頭還自鳴得意、津津樂道的暴發戶；富極無聊、愚昧輕信的闊太太；以及觀看演出時自作聰明、大煞風景、最後自食其果的“聰敏人”。這一個個在有限的篇幅裏出現的身份不同、面目各異的栩栩如生，使人有似曾相識之感的可敬、可愛、可憐、可笑、可鄙、可悲的十分鮮明的人物形象，生動地展現了作者刻劃人物的非凡才能，相信會給讀者帶來巨大的藝術享受和滿足。
Early life
Leacock was born in Swanmore, near Bishop's Waltham, Hampshire, England, and at the age of six moved to Canada with his family, which settled on a farm in Egypt, Ontario, near the village of Sutton and the shores of Lake Simcoe. While the family had been well off in England (the Leacocks had made a fortune in Madeira and lived on an estate called Oak Hill on the Isle of Wight), Leacock's father, Peter, had been banished from the manor for marrying Agnes Butler without his parents' permission. The farm in the Georgina township of York County was not a success and the family (Leacock was the third of eleven children) was kept afloat by money sent by Leacock's grandfather. Peter Leacock became an alcoholic.
Stephen Leacock, always of obvious intelligence, was sent by his grandfather to the elite private school of Upper Canada College in Toronto, also attended by his older brothers, where he was top of the class and was chosen as head boy. In 1887, defending his mother and siblings against his father's alcoholic abuse, Leacock ordered him from the family home and he was never seen again. That same year, seventeen-year-old Leacock started at University College at the University of Toronto, where he was admitted to the Zeta Psi fraternity, but found he could not resume the following year because of financial difficulties.
He left university to go to work teaching — an occupation he disliked immensely — at Strathroy, Uxbridge and finally in Toronto. As a teacher at Upper Canada College, his alma mater, he was able simultaneously to attend classes at the University of Toronto and, in 1891, earn his degree through part-time studies. It was during this period that his first writing was published in The Varsity, a campus newspaper.
[edit]Academic and political life
Disillusioned with teaching, in 1899 he began graduate studies at the University of Chicago, where he received a doctorate in political science and political economy. He moved from Chicago, Illinois to Montreal, Quebec, where he became a lecturer and long-time acting head of the political economy department at McGill University.
He was closely associated with Sir Arthur Currie, former commander of the Canadian Corps in the Great War and principal of McGill from 1919 until his death in 1933. In fact, Currie had been a student observing Leacock's practice teaching in Strathroy in 1888. In 1936, Leacock was forcibly retired by the McGill Board of Governors—an unlikely prospect had Currie lived.
Leacock was both a social conservative and a partisan Conservative. He opposed women's rights (including the right to vote), and disliked non-Anglo-Saxon immigration and supported the introduction of social welfare legislation. He was a staunch champion of the British Empire and went on lecture tours to further the cause.
Although he was considered as a candidate for Dominion elections by his party, it declined to invite the author, lecturer, and maverick to stand for election. Nevertheless, he would stump for local candidates at his summer home.
[edit]Literary life
Stephen Leacock House in Orillia, Ontario
Early in his career, Leacock turned to fiction, humour, and short reports to supplement (and ultimately exceed) his regular income. His stories, first published in magazines in Canada and the United States and later in novel form, became extremely popular around the world. It was said in 1911 that more people had heard of Stephen Leacock than had heard of Canada. Also, between the years 1915 and 1925, Leacock was the most popular humorist in the English-speaking world.
A humorist particularly admired by Leacock was Robert Benchley from New York. Leacock opened correspondence with Benchley, encouraging him in his work and importuning him to compile his work into a book. Benchley did so in 1922, and acknowledged the nagging from north of the border.
Near the end of his life, the American comedian Jack Benny recounted how he had been introduced to Leacock's writing by Groucho Marx when they were both young vaudeville comedians. Benny acknowledged Leacock's influence and, fifty years after first reading him, still considered Leacock one of his favorite comic writers. He was puzzled as to why Leacock's work was no longer well-known in the United States.
During the summer months, Leacock lived at Old Brewery Bay, his summer estate in Orillia, across Lake Simcoe from where he was raised and also bordering Lake Couchiching. A working farm, Old Brewery Bay is now a museum and National Historic Site of Canada. Gossip provided by the local barber, Jefferson Short, provided Leacock with the material which would become Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town (1912), set in the thinly-disguised Mariposa.
Although he wrote learned articles and books related to his field of study, his political theory is now all but forgotten. Leacock was awarded the Royal Society of Canada's Lorne Pierce Medal in 1937, nominally for his academic work.
[edit]Death and tributes
In 1900 Leacock married Beatrix ("Trix") Hamilton, niece of Sir Henry Pellatt (who had built Casa Loma, the largest castle in North America). In 1915 — after 15 years of marriage — the couple had their only child, Stephen Lushington Leacock. While Leacock doted on the boy, it became apparent early on that "Stevie" suffered from a lack of growth hormone. Growing to be only four feet tall, he had a love-hate relationship with Leacock, who tended to treat him like a child.
Predeceased by Trix (who had died of breast cancer in 1925), Leacock was survived by Stevie, who died in his fifties. In accordance with his wishes, after his death from throat cancer, Leacock was cremated and his ashes were buried at Sibbald Point in Georgina Township, near his boyhood home and across Lake Simcoe from his summer home.
Shortly after his death, Barbara Nimmo, his niece, literary executor and benefactor, published two major posthumous works: Last Leaves (1945) and The Boy I Left Behind Me (1946). His physical legacy was less treasured, and his abandoned summer cottage became derelict. It was rescued from oblivion when it was declared a National Historic Site of Canada in 1958 and ever since has operated as a museum called the Stephen Leacock Memorial Home.
In 1947, the Stephen Leacock Award was created to recognize the best in Canadian literary humour. In 1969, the centennial of his birth, Canada Post issued a six cent stamp with his image on it. The following year, the Stephen Leacock Centennial Committee had a plaque erected at his English birthplace and a mountain in the Yukon was named after him.
A number of buildings in Canada are named after Leacock, including the Stephen Leacock Building at McGill University, a theatre in Keswick, Ontario, and schools in Toronto and Ottawa.
[edit]Screen adaptations
Two Leacock short stories have been adapted as National Film Board of Canada animated shorts by Gerald Potterton: My Financial Career and The Awful Fate of Melpomenus Jones.
[edit]Bibliography
Elements of Political Science (1906)
Baldwin, Lafontaine, Hincks: Responsible Government (1907)
Practical Political Economy (1910)
Literary Lapses (1910)
includes "The New Food"
Nonsense Novels (1911)
Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town (1912)
Behind the Beyond (1913)
Adventurers of the Far North (1914)
The Dawn of Canadian History (1914)
The Mariner of St. Malo (1914)
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich (1914)
Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy (1915)
Essays and Literary Studies (1916)
Further Foolishness (1916)
Frenzied Fiction (1918)
The Hohenzollerns in America (1919)
Winsome Winnie (1920)
The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice (1920)
My Discovery of England (1922)
College Days (1923)
Over the Footlights (1923)
The Garden of Folly (1924)
Mackenzie, Baldwin, Lafontaine, Hincks (1926)
Winnowed Wisdom (1926)
Short Circuits (1928)
The Iron Man and the Tin Woman (1929)
Economic Prosperity in the British Empire (1930)
The Economic Prosperity of the British Empire (1931)
The Dry Pickwick (1932)
Afternoons in Utopia (1932)
Mark Twain (1932)
Charles Dickens: His Life and Work (1933)
Humour: Its Theory and Technique, with Examples and Samples (1935)
Hellements of Hickonomics in Hiccoughs of Verse Done in Our Social Planning Mill (1936)
Funny Pieces (1936)
The Greatest Pages of American Humor (1936)
Here Are My Lectures (1937)
Humour and Humanity (1937)
My Discovery of the West (1937)
Model Memoirs (1938)
Too Much College (1939)
Our British Empire (1940)
Canada: The Foundations of Its Future (1941)
My Remarkable Uncle (1942)
Our Heritage of Liberty (1942)
Montreal: Seaport and City (1942)
Happy Stories (1943)
How to Write (1943)
Canada and the Sea (1944)
While There Is Time (1945)
Last Leaves (1945)
The Boy I Left Behind Me (1946)
Wet Wit and Dry Humor
Laugh with Leacock
Back to Prosperity
The Greatest Pages of Charles Dickens
Essays and Literary Studies
[edit]Quotes
"Lord Ronald ... flung himself upon his horse and rode madly off in all directions." -- Nonsense Novels, "Gertrude the Governess", 1911
"Professor Leacock has made more people laugh with the written word than any other living author. One may say he is one of the greatest jesters, the greatest humorist of the age." – A. P. Herbert
"Mr Leacock is as 'bracing' as the seaside place of John Hassall's famous poster. His wisdom is always humorous, and his humour is always wise." – Sunday Times
"He is still inimitable. No one, anywhere in the world, can reduce a thing to ridicule with such few short strokes. He is the Grock of literature." – Evening Standard
"I detest life-insurance agents: they always argue that I shall some day die, which is not so."