20세기에 잘 나오지 않는, 소위 잊힌 소설들을 다시 출간하고자 하는 촐판사의 부탁으로 당시 그 책들에 대해 소개글을 써준 오웰의 에세이. 19세기 말과 20세기 초에 많이 나왔던, 소위 (체스터턴에 의하면) "좋고 나쁜 책"이라고 불리는 책들이 있다. 우리가 잘 아는 셜록 홈즈 시리즈도 여기에 속하는데, 문학적으로 높은 가치를 평가받지 못해도 재밌는 책으로 평가받는 것들이다. 많은 작가들이 다작을 하고, 그에 따라 작품별로 편차가 좀 크긴 해서 오웰은 몇 권의 책을 추천해주기도 한다. 각 작품이 가지고 있는 장단점을 잠깐 언급하기도 하고.
1945년 11월에 발표된 글.
1. They bring out the fact that intellectual refinement can be a disadvantage to a storyteller, as it would be to a musichall comedian.
- 여기서 'bring out'은 that이하를 분명하게 보여준다는 뜻으로 쓰였다.
- bring out: make something more evident.
2. Perhaps it even gains something from the clumsy long-winded manner in which it is written; detail is piled on detail, with almost no attempt at selection, and in the process an effect of terrible, grinding cruelty is slowly built up.
- long-winded: continuing at length and in a tedious way
- grinding: 끝날 것 같지는 않은데 힘든 것을 표현하는 형용사
3. Parts of this book are probably autobiographical, and one of the advantages of good bad writers is their lack of shame in writing autobiography. Exhibitionism and self-pity are the band of the novelist, and yet if he is too frightened of them his creative gift may suffer.
- 'Good bad book'의 저자들은 자신들의 경험한 일들을 작품 속에 녹여 내는데 별로 주저함이 없는데, 이것은 장단점이 될 수 있다. 너무 많이 드러내는 건 소설가로서 별로 좋지 못하다(bane: 맹독), 하지만 그렇다고 자신을 드러내는 일을 너무 꺼리게 되면 창조력이 죽을 수도 있으니까.
4. The existence of good bad literature-the fact that one can be amused or excited or even moved by a book that one's intellect simply refuses to take seriously-is a reminder that art is not the same thing as cerebration.
- cerebration: thinking.
5. A good novelist may be a prodigy of self-discipline like Flaubert, or he may be an intellectual sprawl like Dickens.
- sprawl: 보통 팔과 다리를 대자로 뻗어 누운 상태를 말하는데, 여기서는 명사로 썼다.
6. problem novels, human documents, terrible indictments
- 문제 소설, 인간에 대한 기록, 끔찍한 고발들.
7. a cut above: superior to
8. [he] was good as long as he kept off politics [...]
- keep off: avoid encoarhing on
9. macabre: 으스스함
10. They form pleasant patches in one's memory, quiet corners where the mind can browse at odd moments, but they hardly pretend to have anything to do with real life.
- Good bad books은 휴식처가 될 수 있지만 결코 실제의 삶에 대한 문제를 다룰 수는 없다는 견해가 피력되고 있다.
- browse: look around, peruse
11. It is an unintentionally ludicrous book, full of preposterous melodramatic incidents; it is also deeply movoing and essentially true; it is hard to say which quality outweights the other.
- ludicrous: 웃음을 자아내는
- preposterous: contrary to reason or common sense
12. How about the frankly escapist writers, the purveyors of thrills and "light" humour?
- purveyor: seller
13. All one can say is that, while civilisation remains such that one needs distraction from time to time, "light" literature has its appointed place; also that there is such a thing as sheer skill, or native grace, which may have more survival value than erudition or intellectual power.
14. And by the same token I would back Uncle Tom's Cabin to outlive the complete works of Virginia Woolf or George Goore, though I know of no strictly literary test which would show where the superiority lies.
- by the same token: in the same way
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