Heading Stateside for your own voyage of discovery? Take some inspiration from a couple of these titles.
即將去美利堅開啟你的探索之旅嗎？先來讀讀下面這幾本書獲得一點啟發吧。

1. Jack Kerouac, On the Road
《在路上》，杰克·凱魯亞克著

Published in 1957, Kerouac’s masterpiece captured the voice of America’s ‘Beat Generation’, an iconoclastic group of writers that sprung up in the post-war US as a reaction against mainstream social values:materialism, capitalist accumulation, passive acceptance of religious and ethical codes. On the Road describes the whistle-stop travels of Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty. The story is enriched by the clarity of Kerouac’s spontaneous prose, yet has resounded with young readers to this day for its underlying values of exploration, experimentalism, and the (ultimately fruitless) search for true value in life.
凱魯亞克在1957年出版的這部杰作發出了美國“垮掉的一代”的聲音，這一派作家的思想有悖于傳統信仰，在二戰后的美國迅速崛起，反應了對戰后祖國主流價值觀，即物質主義、資本積累、對宗教和道德準則的被動接受等的抗議。《在路上》描繪了薩爾（Sal Paradise）與狄安（Dean Moriarty）的美國之行。凱魯亞克的散文自然真切，也因為故事內在的價值觀——探索、嘗試、（雖說最后沒有成功卻）不斷尋找生命的真實意義等——一直引起年輕讀者的共鳴。

2. John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath
《憤怒的葡萄》，約翰·史坦貝克著

Arguably Nobel Prize-winning American writer John Steinbeck’s greatest work, The Grapes of Wrath follows the fortunes of the Joads, a family of Oklahoman farmers forced to flee their Dust Bowl home during the Great Depression. On the road to California, they encounter hunger, poverty, abandonment, and exploitation, yet also great generosity, sacrifice, maturity, and finally rebirth. Upon publication, the novel’s accessible prose and sensitivity to the plight of America’s labouring poor both resonated with the country’s working classes and aroused the ire of some of Steinbeck’s contemporaries. A true paean to the power of the human spirit, it is studied in high school English classrooms to this day.
《憤怒的葡萄》可以說是諾貝爾文學獎獲得者、美國作家約翰·史坦貝克最出色的長篇小說，故事描寫了約德家族的興衰。20世紀30年代大蕭條時期，這個俄克拉荷馬州的農家因為其農場位于美國中部的“灰盆”（當時因為氣候原因頻繁爆發大規模沙塵暴），被迫逃離家園。在走向加州的路上，他們遭遇了饑餓，貧窮，被遺棄和剝削等悲慘經歷，同時也見證了同胞的慷慨、犧牲、成熟和最后的重生。小說剛剛出版時，因史坦貝克的文筆樸實感性，體恤民情，引起了美國工人階級的共鳴，但同時也激起了一些同時代人士的怒火。這部小說歌頌了人文精神的力量，迄今都是美國學生英語課堂里的必學材料。

3. Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
《禪與摩托車維修藝術》，羅伯特·梅納德·波西格著

Simultaneously a thrilling piece of travel literature and a philosophical treatise, Robert M. Pirsig’s 1974 novel Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance traces the author’s bike trip from Minnesota to California. Interspersed with vivid sweeps of the American prairies, each chapter also chronicles a series of philosophical discussions as a father recovering from electroconvulsive therapy gradually tries to reconcile his own worldviews with those of the people around him and liberation from a materialist spiritual vacuum. Drawing on both the Western and Eastern philosophical canon, this challenging read ultimately serves as a platform for Pirsig to introduce his own Metaphysics of Quality.
這是一部很有意思的旅游文學作品，也可以被看作一篇哲學論文。波西格74年出版的長篇小說《禪與摩托車維修藝術》描繪了作者從美國明尼蘇達州到加州的一段騎行之旅。除了對北美莽莽大草原的生動描述，每一章里，波西格還針對一系列哲理性話題進行了探討。隨著作者的討論，主人公——一位從電痙攣治療中逐漸恢復的父親，不斷嘗試協調自己和周圍人的世界觀，并試圖擺脫物質文化帶給他的空虛感。波西格借用東西方的哲學論點，闡述了自己的“質量形而上學論”，雖然要看懂相當不易，一旦讀完卻絕對會受益匪淺。

4. Alice Walker, The Color Purple
《紫色姐妹花》，愛麗絲·沃克著

Alice Walker’s Pulitzer Prize-winning epistolary novel The Color Purple won huge acclaim for its sensitive exploration of the lives of African-American women in America’s Deep South during the 1930s. Set in rural Georgia, Celie, the novel’s protagonist, suffers immense abuse and victimisation as a black girl growing up in a racially segregated community. Later, her meeting with Shug Avery, a glitzy singer and magic-maker, helps Celie push back against the repressive society around her and take charge of her own destiny.
由愛麗絲·沃克所著，曾獲普利策文學獎的書信體小說《紫色姐妹花》，因其對30年代居住于美國南方腹地的非裔美國女性生活的感性探討，備受稱贊。故事發生于喬治亞州的鄉村地區，當時因種族隔離制度，小說的黑人女主角西麗（Celie）在成長過程中遭受了大量的虐待和迫害。后來，她認識了一位耀眼的歌手兼魔術師阿弗利（Shug Avery），由此開始抵抗這個壓抑的社會并主動掌握自己的命運。

5. Philip K. Dick, The Man in the High Castle
《高堡奇人》，菲利普·迪克著

A novel of diffuse influences and phenomenal imaginative power, Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle challenged the foundations of American exceptionalism. Dick postulates an alternate ending to the Second World War, one which witnessed the defeat of the Allies, the conquest of the American continent by the Japanese Empire and Nazi Germany, and the subsequent Cold War ‘fought’ between the two new Axis Powers. Suffused with East Asian philosophy, and featuring passages written in stunning Japanese-English creole, the book explores the veracity of the reality we live in, how we negotiate ‘true’ or ‘fake’ identities in the face of persecution, and how much true ‘value’ can be derived from any sense of national pride.
這本小說的靈感集眾家之長，作家的想象力也令人贊嘆。《高堡奇人》挑戰了“美國例外主義”的基本原則。迪克在書中假設二戰有了另外一種結局，反法西斯同盟被打敗，全北美洲都被日本帝國和納粹德國所征服，接下來這兩大軸心國之間便開始“冷戰”。整本書充滿了東亞哲學原理，還包含了迪克自編的令人驚嘆的“日英混合語”。作者通過創造這個平行世界，探討了現實世界的真實性，人們面對迫害表達個性的方式，以及從民族自豪感中到底能獲得多少真實“價值”。

（來源：滬江英語 編輯：許晶晶）