经济学人77:手工劳动 Handy work

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　　文艺；书评；手工技艺的乐趣；手工劳动；

　　Made By Hand: Searching For Meaning in a Throwaway World. By Mark Frauenfelder.

　　《手工制作：在被抛弃的世界中寻找意义》：马克·弗劳恩菲尔德著；

　　The Case for Working With Your Hands: or Why Office Work is Bad for Us and Fixing Things Feels Good. By Matthew Crawford.

　　《动手干活的理由：为什么办公室工作与人无益而修理东西却感觉良好》：马修·克劳弗德著；

　　Anyone who has taken an axe³ to a laptop battery and thrown the bits in a pond (they explode: wear goggles) will like Mark Frauenfelder's book. Those who haven't will find a tantalising whiff of what they are missing. The author takes a hands-on approach to suburban⁴ life in Los Angeles. He rewires his espresso machine to produce what he calls proper coffee, keeps bees and chickens, whittles⁵ spoons from scrap⁶ wood, makes a ukulele and a cigar box from toothpicks, grows his own vegetables and tries to teach his children maths at home.

　　任何一个曾用斧子砍破笔记本电脑的电池并把碎片扔进水塘里（爆炸物：请戴护目镜）的人都会喜欢马克·弗劳恩菲尔德的书。那些还没这么做的人则会对他们错过的事感到蠢蠢欲动。作者对洛杉矶的郊区生活采取的是一种亲自动手的方式。他改接了意式咖啡机的电路以制作出他所谓的好喝的咖啡，饲养蜜蜂和鸡，把废木料削成勺子，用牙签做成夏威夷四弦琴和雪茄烟盒，自己种菜，还试着在家里教他的孩子们学数学。

　　The lawn is the archetypal enemy. Why do Americans spend such huge amounts of time, money, water, fertiliser and fuel on growing a useless smooth expanse of grass? Much better to cultivate something useful, like tomatoes. But how to do it? Mr Frauenfelder considers using herbicide to kill his unwanted lawn, but settles for covering it thickly with newspaper and weeding any grass that grows through: as with many of his projects, it is fun to start with, but becomes laborious⁷.

　　草坪就是个典型的敌人。为什么美国人要把如此大量的时间、金钱、水、化肥和燃料花在一大片平整却毫无用处的草地上呢？还不如栽培些实用的东西，比如西红柿。可是该怎么做呢？弗劳恩菲尔德先生也考虑过用除草剂来消灭那些无用的草坪，但他最终决定用报纸把草坪层层覆盖，然后再除去从中长出的任何一根草：这和他的很多方案一样，开头都很有趣，可随后就变得既耗时又费力。

　　As the editor of Make, a magazine for American hobbyists, the author is well-placed to tap the nation's vein⁸ of frustrated⁹ creativity and fiddling¹⁰. Time was, he says nostalgically, when household equipment came with the expectation that the owner could and would wield¹¹ the tools required to fix it: a wrench¹², pliers, screwdriver¹³ and hammer were all that was needed to keep an early Ford² automobile¹⁴ on the road. That changed, he says, thanks to Sigmund Freud's nephew, Edward Louis Bernays, the pioneer of emotional advertising¹⁵. He sold dreams of perfection instead of a partnership¹⁶ between man and machine. Now domestic appliances come with forbidding labels, such as “no user-serviceable parts” and “disassembly voids warranty”.

　　本书作者作为美国业余爱好者杂志《动手做》的编辑，由他来开发这个国家未得施展的创造力和动手捣鼓东西的本事，正是再合适不过了。他怀旧地说道，曾几何时，家用设备的出现带着这样一种期望：其拥有者可以也愿意使用必要的工具对其进行修理。扳手、钳子、螺丝刀和锤子是保证一辆早期福特车在路上行使的必备物品。这种情况已经改变了，他说，这都要“归功”于西格蒙德·弗洛伊德的外甥——爱德华·路易斯·伯奈斯——这位情感广告的先驱者。他用出售完美的梦想取代了出售人与机器之间的伙伴关系。现在的家用电器都带上了禁止标签，比如“不含用户可维修零件”和“拆开产品保修无效”。

　　For the mechanically curious, that is no obstacle. And in some ways technology has made it much easier to fiddle¹⁷ and fix. You can find unofficial instruction manuals on the internet, and watch YouTube to see someone doing it properly. You may make mistakes, but that is the way you learn how things work and how to mend them. Doing so makes you a better person, Mr Frauenfelder argues: master, not prisoner, of your environment.

　　出于机械方面的好奇心，这根本算不上什么障碍。科学技术也在某些方式上使这种拆拆弄弄更容易了。你能在英特网上找到非官方的操作手册，还能通过YouTube看看别人是怎么做的。你可能会犯错，但这就是你了解事物的工作原理并学习如何修理它们的方法。弗劳恩菲尔德先生声称，这样做会让你变成一个更优秀的人：一个外界环境的主人，而不是俘虏。

　　The book echoes Matthew Crawford's masterly and reflective, “The Case for Working with Your Hands”, a bestseller in America which has just come out in Britain. Mr Crawford focuses on motorbikes, with doses of classical philosophy, rather than domestic gripes.

　　这本书回应了马修·克劳弗德精巧娴熟、深思熟虑的新书《动手干活的理由》，一本刚刚在英国出版的美国畅销书。克劳弗德先生的重点集中在摩托车上，又加上几剂古典哲学的良药，以代替做家务活的满腹牢骚。

　　Mr Frauenfelder rightly highlights the impotent fury aroused by tamper-proof tabs seals, and the joy of mastering recalcitrant¹⁸ gadgets¹⁹. But his own literary craftsmanship is irritating too. An ill-planned attempt to start a new life in the South Pacific is irrelevant²⁰ and tiresome²¹. His prose is tinny, and the mentions of his children dull and cutesy. The reader does feel sorry for his wife, though, when dead bees clog²² the light fittings and a coyote eats the favourite chickens. His motto is DIY. Hers is HAP²³ (Hire a Pro). One can see why.

　　弗劳恩菲尔德先生恰当地突出了被那些防止乱拆乱动的标签封条激起的无力的愤怒，以及自如地掌控那些难以驯服的装置的乐趣。可是他自己笔下的手工技艺却同样令人抓狂。一次打算在南太平洋开始新生活却计划不周的尝试脱离了主题，令人厌烦。他的文笔不算好，提到他的孩子们时既无趣又做作。不过，当死去的蜜蜂堵塞了照明装置，郊狼吞吃掉心爱的小鸡的时候，读者确实会为他的妻子感到难过。他的格言是DIY（自己动手），而她的是HAP（雇个专家）。你能明白这是为什么。

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