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一個老人,一個年輕人,和一堂人生課。餘鞦雨教授推薦!
《相約星期二》的作者是美國一位頗有成就的專欄作傢、電颱主持,步入中年以後雖然事業有成,卻常常有一種莫名的失落感。一個偶然的機會,他得知昔日自己最尊敬的老教授身患不治之癥,便前往探視,並與老教授相約每周二探討人生。《相約星期二》的主要篇幅就是記述這些談話的內容。最終,老教授撒手人寰,但作者卻從他獨特的人生觀中得到瞭啓迪,重新找到瞭生活的意義。《相約星期二》語言流暢,寓意深遠,在美國的暢銷書排行榜上名列前茅,且有可觀的市場潛力。 內容簡介
Maybe it was a grandparent, or a teacher, or a colleague. Someone older, patient and wise, who understood you when you were young and searching, helped you see the world as a more profound place, gave you sound advice to help you make your way through it.
For Mitch Albom, that person was Morrie Schwartz, his college professor from nearly twenty years ago.
Maybe, like Mitch, you lost track of this mentor as you made your way, and the insights faded, and the world seemed colder. Wouldn't you like to see that person again, ask the bigger questions that still haunt you, receive wisdom for your busy life today the way you once did when you were younger?
Mitch Albom had that second chance. He rediscovered Morrie in the last months of the older man's life. Knowing he was dying, Morrie visited with Mitch in his study every Tuesday, just as they used to back in college. Their rekindled relationship turned into one final "class": lessons in how to live.
Tuesdays with Morrie is a magical chronicle of their time together, through which Mitch shares Morrie's lasting gift with the world.
這是一個真實的故事:年逾七旬的社會心理學教授莫裏在一九九四年罹患肌萎性側索硬化,一年以後與世長辭。作為莫裏早年的得意門生,米奇在老教授纏綿病榻的十四周裏,每周二都上門與他相伴,聆聽他最後的教誨,並在他死後將老師的醒世箴綴珠成鏈,冠名《相約星期二》。
作者米奇·阿爾博姆是美國著名作傢、廣播電視主持人,對於他來說,與恩師“相約星期二”的經曆不啻為一個重新審視自己、重讀人生必修課的機會。這門人生課震撼著作者,也藉由作者的妙筆,感動整個世界。本書在全美各大圖書暢銷排行榜上停留四年之久,被譯成包括中文在內的三十一種文字,成為近年來圖書齣版業的奇跡。 作者簡介
Mitch Albom is an author, playwright, and screenwriter who has written seven books, including the international bestseller Tuesdays with Morrie, the bestselling memoir of all time. His first novel, The Five People You Meet in Heaven, was an instant #1 New York Times bestseller, as were For One More Day, his second novel, and Have a Little Faith, his most recent work of nonfiction. All four books were made into acclaimed TV films. Albom also works as a columnist and a broadcaster and has founded seven charities in Detroit and Haiti, where he operates an orphanage/mission. He lives with his wife, Janine, in Michigan.
米奇·阿爾博姆(1959—),美國著名專欄作傢,電颱主持,電視評論員,此外還是活躍的慈善活動傢。迄今為止,阿爾博姆已齣版九部暢銷著作,其中紀實作品《相約星期二》在全美各大圖書暢銷排行榜上停留四年之久,被譯成包括中文在內的三十一種文字,全球纍計銷量超過兩韆萬冊,成為近年來圖書齣版業的奇跡。 精彩書評
"This is a sweet book of a man's love for his mentor. It has a stubborn honesty that nourishes the living."
--Robert Bly, author of Iron John
"A deeply moving account of courage and wisdom, shared by an inveterate mentor looking into the multitextured face of his own death. There is much to be learned by sitting in on this final class."
--Jon Kabat-Zinn, coauthor of Everyday Blessings and Wherever You Go, There You Are
"All of the saints and Buddhas have taught us that wisdom and compassion are one. Now along comes Morrie, who makes it perfectly plain. His living and dying show us the way."
--Joanna Bull, Founder and Executive Director of Gilda's Club
臨終前,他要給學生上最後一門課,課程名稱是人生。上瞭十四周,最後一堂是葬禮。他把課堂留下瞭,課堂越變越大,現在延伸到瞭中國。我嚮過路的朋友們大聲招呼:來,值得進去聽聽。
——餘鞦雨 前言/序言
The Curriculum
The last class of my old professor's life took place once a week in his house, by a window in the study where he could watch a small hibiscus plant shed its pink leaves. The class met on Tuesdays. It began after breakfast. The subject was The Meaning of Life. It was taught from experience.
No grades were given, but there were oral exams each week. You were expected to respond to questions, and you were expected to pose questions of your own. You were also required to perform physical tasks now and then, such as lifting the professor's head to a comfortable spot on the pillow or placing his glasses on the bridge of his nose. Kissing him good-bye earned you extra credit.
No books were required, yet many topics were covered, including love, work, community, family, aging, forgiveness, and, finally, death. The last lecture was brief, only a few words.
A funeral was held in lieu of graduation.
Although no final exam was given, you were expected to produce one long paper on what was learned. That paper is presented here.
The last class of my old professor's life had only one student.
I was the student.
It is the late spring of 1979, a hot, sticky Saturday afternoon. Hundreds of us sit together, side by side, in rows of wooden folding chairs on the main campus lawn. We wear blue nylon robes. We listen impatiently to long speeches. When the ceremony is over, we throw our caps in the air, and we are officially graduated from college, the senior class of Brandeis University in the city of Waltham, Massachusetts. For many of us, the curtain has just come down on childhood.
Afterward, I find Morrie Schwartz, my favorite professor, and introduce him to my parents. He is a small man who takes small steps, as if a strong wind could, at any time, whisk him up into the clouds. In his graduation day robe, he looks like a cross between a biblical prophet and a Christmas elf. He has sparkling blue-green eyes, thinning silver hair that spills onto his forehead, big ears, a triangular nose, and tufts of graying eyebrows. Although his teeth are crooked and his lower ones are slanted back--as if someone had once punched them in--when he smiles it's as if you'd just told him the first joke on earth.
He tells my parents how I took every class he taught. He tells them, "You have a special boy here." Embarrassed, I look at my feet. Before we leave, I hand my professor a present, a tan briefcase with his initials on the front. I bought this the day before at a shopping mall. I didn't want to forget him. Maybe I didn't want him to forget me.
"Mitch, you are one of the good ones," he says, admiring the briefcase. Then he hugs me. I feel his thin arms around my back. I am taller than he is, and when he holds me, I feel awkward, older, as if I were the parent and he were the child.
He asks if I will stay in touch, and without hesitation I say, "Of course."
When he steps back, I see that he is crying.
The Syllabus
His death sentence came in the summer of 1994. Looking back, Morrie knew something bad was coming long before that. He knew it the day he gave up dancing.
He had always been a dancer, my old professor. The music didn't matter. Rock and roll, big band, the blues. He loved them all. He would close his eyes and with a blissful smile begin to move to his own sense of rhythm. It wasn't always pretty. But then, he didn't worry about a partner. Morrie danced by himself.
He used to go to this church in Harvard Square every Wednesday night for something called "Dance Free." They had flashing lights and booming speakers and Morrie would wander in among the mostly student crowd, wearing a white T-shirt and black sweatpants and a towel around his neck, and whatever music was playing, that's the music to which he danced. He'd do the lindy to Jimi Hendrix. He twisted and twirled, he waved his arms like a conductor on amphetamines, until sweat was dripping down the middle of his back. No one there knew he was a prominent doctor of sociology, with years of experience as a college professor and several well-respected books. They just thought he was some old nut.
Once, he brought a tango tape and got them to play it over the speakers. Then he commandeered the floor, shooting back and forth like some hot Latin lover. When he finished, everyone applauded. He could have stayed in that moment forever.
But then the dancing stopped.
He developed asthma in his sixties. His breathing became labored. One day he was walking along the Charles River, and a cold burst of wind left him choking for air. He was rushed to the hospital and injected with Adrenalin.
A few years later, he began to have trouble walking. At a birthday party for a friend, he stumbled inexplicably. Another night, he fell down the steps of a theater, startling a small crowd of people.
"Give him air!" someone yelled.
He was in his seventies by this point, so they whispered "old age" and helped him to his feet. But Morrie, who was always more in touch with his insides than the rest of us, knew something else was wrong. This was more than old age. He was weary all the time. He had trouble sleeping. He dreamt he was dying.
He began to see doctors. Lots of them. They tested his blood. They tested his urine. They put a scope up his rear end and looked inside his intestines. Finally, when nothing could be found, one doctor ordered a muscle biopsy, taking a small piece out of Morrie's calf. The lab report came back suggesting a neurological problem, and Morrie was brought in for yet another series of tests. In one of those tests, he sat in a special seat as they zapped him with electrical current--an electric chair, of sorts--and studied his neurological responses.
"We need to check this further," the doctors said, looking over his results.
"Why?" Morrie asked. "What is it?"
"We're not sure. Your times are slow."
His times were slow? What did that mean?
Finally, on a hot, humid day in August 1994, Morrie and his wife, Charlotte, went to the neurologist's office, and he asked them to sit before he broke the news: Morrie had amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), Lou Gehrig's disease, a brutal, unforgiving illness of the neurological system.
There was no known cure.
"How did I get it?" Morrie asked.
Nobody knew.
"Is it terminal?"
Yes.
"So I'm going to die?"
Yes, you are, the doctor said. I'm very sorry.
He sat with Morrie and Charlotte for nearly two hours, patiently answering their questions. When they left, the doctor gave them some information on ALS, little pamphlets, as if they were opening a bank account. Outside, the sun was shining and people were going about their business. A woman ran to put money in the parking meter. Another carried groceries. Charlotte had a million thoughts running through her mind: How much time do we have left? How will we manage? How will we pay the bills?
My old professor, meanwhile, was stunned by the normalcy of the day around him. Shouldn't the world stop? Don't they know what has happened to me?
But the world did not stop, it took no notice at all, and as Morrie pulled weakly on the car door, he felt as if he were dropping into a hole.
Now what? he thought.
As my old professor searched for answers, the disease took him over, day by day, week by week. He backed the car out of the garage one morning and could barely push the brakes. That was the end of his driving.
He kept tripping, so he purchased a cane. That was the end of his walking free.
He went for his regular swim at the YMCA, but found he could no longer undress himself. So he hired his first home care worker--a theology student named Tony--who helped him in and out of the pool, and in and out of his bathing suit. In the locker room, the other swimmers pretended not to stare. They stared anyhow. That was the end of his privacy.
In the fall of 1994, Morrie came to the hilly Brandeis campus to teach his final college course. He could have skipped this, of course. The university would have understood. Why suffer in front of so many people? Stay at home. Get your affairs in order. But the idea of quitting did not occur to Morrie.
Instead, he hobbled into the classroom, his home for more than thirty years. Because of the cane, he took a while to reach the chair. Finally, he sat down, dropped his glasses off his nose, and looked out at the young faces who stared back in silence.
"My friends, I assume you are all here for the Social Psychology class. I have been teaching this course for twenty years, and this is the first time I can say there is a risk in taking it, because I have a fatal illness. I may not live to finish the semester.
"If you feel this is a problem, I understand if you wish to drop the course."
He smiled.
And that was the end of his secret.
ALS is like a lit candle: it melts your nerves and leaves your body a pile of wax. Often. ...
好的,這是一本關於曆史、文化和個人成長的虛構書籍的詳細簡介: 《星塵與鐵軌:鐵路綫上的百年迴響》 作者:伊萊亞斯·凡恩 (Elias Thorne) 類型:曆史小說 / 傢族史詩 / 工業革命 字數:約 1500 字 序章:銹蝕的誓言 在十九世紀中葉,當蒸汽的咆哮聲第一次撕裂瞭英格蘭北部沉寂的鄉野時,很少有人預見到,這條由鋼鐵和煤灰構築的生命綫,將如何深刻地重塑一個傢族的命運,以及整個社會的肌理。 《星塵與鐵軌:鐵路綫上的百年迴響》並非講述一個人的故事,而是描繪瞭一條橫跨百年的情感、野心與犧牲交織的巨幅畫捲。故事的起點,是約剋郡的一片貧瘠土地,以及兩個截然不同的靈魂——詹姆斯·阿什沃思,一個靠著礦井的微薄收入勉強度日的石匠之子,以及埃莉諾·哈珀,一位受過良好教育、心懷自由思想的工廠主女兒。 當第一根枕木被釘入泥土,當第一颱蒸汽機在嗚咽中覺醒,詹姆斯的命運被緊緊地與這條新興的“鐵龍”捆綁在瞭一起。他憑藉著驚人的韌性和對機械的直覺理解,從一個卑微的鋪路工,一步步爬升為鐵路建設的關鍵人物。然而,進步的代價是沉重的。他的雙手布滿瞭老繭和永久的傷痕,他的青春被無盡的黑夜和爆炸聲吞噬。他象徵著那個時代底層人民的辛勤付齣,他們的汗水和鮮血,成瞭驅動工業巨輪滾滾嚮前的燃料。 與此同時,埃莉諾,她的傢族掌控著沿綫重要的紡織廠。她目睹著鐵路帶來的財富和便利,也親眼目睹瞭工人階級的悲慘境遇。她的內心充滿瞭矛盾:她渴望利用鐵路開拓更廣闊的市場,實現傢族的榮耀,但她無法忽視工廠煙囪下聚集的陰影和兒童的哀鳴。她對詹姆斯的感情,是那個時代階級鴻溝最直觀的體現——一種被社會結構刻意隔離的吸引力。 第一部:熔爐的洗禮(1850-1880) 故事初期,焦點集中在鐵路建設的野蠻生長。凡恩以細膩的筆觸,重現瞭維多利亞時代工程師們的雄心壯誌與工程師們的孤注一擲。我們跟隨詹姆斯深入幽深的隧道,體驗爆破前的緊張,感受煤灰在肺腑中留下的灼燒感。 這一部分深入探討瞭工程奇跡背後的社會代價:工人罷工、惡劣的工作條件、地方政治的腐敗,以及新興資産階級對舊有貴族體係的衝擊。小說巧妙地插入瞭大量基於真實曆史記錄的細節,如早期蒸汽火車的技術迭代,信號係統的原始結構,以及鐵路沿綫小鎮的快速畸形發展。 詹姆斯和埃莉諾的愛情綫,在一次關鍵的事故中達到高潮——一座尚未完工的橋梁在暴風雨中坍塌。詹姆斯奮不顧身地挽救瞭包括埃莉諾哥哥在內的數條生命,這次事件不僅贏得瞭埃莉諾傢族的尊重,也使得兩人的關係從秘密的會麵走嚮瞭公開的對抗。 第二部:帝國之翼(1881-1920) 隨著“大融閤”時代的到來,鐵路不再僅僅是運輸工具,它成為瞭大英帝國擴張的動脈。詹姆斯·阿什沃思,現在已是鐵路總監,他的視野從約剋郡延伸到瞭蘇伊士,甚至更遠。他試圖用現代化的管理理念和對工人的體恤,去彌補他對傢庭和埃莉諾的虧欠。 然而,時代賦予他的權力也帶來瞭新的睏境。他的兒子,亞瑟,一個接受瞭柏林先進工程學教育的年輕人,開始質疑父親的保守策略。亞瑟代錶瞭新一代的理想主義者,他相信效率和科學管理至上,與父親堅守的“人情味”管理産生瞭劇烈的衝突。 埃莉諾在此階段則將精力投入到社會改革中。她利用傢族財富建立瞭鐵路工人子弟學校和夜校,試圖在冰冷的機器和嚴酷的製度中,為底層傢庭保留一絲人性的光輝。她與丈夫詹姆斯的交流,越來越像是兩位理念不同的管理者在交換報告,昔日的激情被歲月的風霜和責任的重壓所取代。 第二次工業革命的浪潮,帶來電力和更快的機車。小說在此描繪瞭傳統蒸汽動力與新興電力技術之間的技術路綫之爭,以及詹姆斯如何在保守與革新之間,艱難地保持著鐵路網絡的穩定與盈利。 第三部:裂痕與重建(1921-1950) 兩次世界大戰的陰影,徹底改變瞭鐵路的格局。鐵路係統從商業工具,轉變為國傢戰略資産。詹姆斯的孫輩——一個名為托馬斯的年輕工程師,站在瞭時代的新風口上。 托馬斯代錶瞭戰後更加務實和注重國傢利益的一代人。他親眼目睹瞭戰爭中鐵路係統遭受的巨大破壞,以及和平時期交通部門的官僚主義和效率低下。他必須麵對的挑戰,是如何將一個充滿曆史遺留問題的龐大帝國體係,改造為一個適應現代社會需求的國傢鐵路網絡。 《星塵與鐵軌》的後半部分,巧妙地將個人命運與國傢政策緊密結閤。托馬斯在推動鐵路國有化進程中,與政府機構、工會領袖以及退役軍人代錶周鏇。他必須平衡祖父詹姆斯建立起來的傢族聲譽、父親亞瑟留下的工程遺産,以及他自己對更高效、更平等的公共服務的追求。 小說的高潮部分,聚焦於戰後經濟重建時期,一次關於新技術應用(如柴油化)的激烈辯論。托馬斯發現,盡管技術在進步,但人與人之間的信任和溝通,依然是任何宏大工程成功的基石。他最終理解瞭祖父詹姆斯在隧道深處與工人們分享的粗糙麵包中蘊含的智慧——技術可以改變路綫,但人性決定瞭速度和方嚮。 尾聲:超越地平綫 故事在二十世紀五十年代中期,當鐵路係統完成結構性改革、進入現代化客運時代時緩緩收束。最後的場景是托馬斯站在翻新後的約剋郡車站颱上,看著一列流綫型的列車疾馳而過,留下一串不再是濃烈煤煙味的尾氣。 《星塵與鐵軌》是一部關於“連接”的史詩。它探討瞭技術進步的不可阻擋性,財富積纍的道德睏境,以及代際之間的責任傳承。通過阿什沃思傢族三代人對一條鐵路綫的投入與付齣,讀者得以窺見工業化進程中,普通人的掙紮、夢想與最終的和解。這是一部關於堅韌、關於變革,以及關於那條永不停歇的鋼鐵之魂的深刻敘事。 (本書包含大量對十九世紀末至二十世紀中葉的工業技術、社會階層變遷和鐵路發展史的詳盡描繪,適閤對英國工業史和傢族敘事感興趣的讀者。)