新聞報導《陳希同親述》作者和主人公壓力重重已於5月28日在香港全面發行的《陳希同親述——眾口鑠金難鑠真》一書，作者姚監復被所在單位黨委書記約談並傳達當局意圖：要求本書暫緩發行,陳希同本人也受到當局壓力,姚監复表示:我準備面對和迎接。(德國之聲中文網)香港新世紀出版社5月28日在港全面發行《陳希同親述--眾口鑠金難鑠真》一書，"六四"23週年即將來臨，此書一經面世即引發公眾對"六四事件"參與鎮壓者責任的討論。德國之聲於5月28日採訪本書作者姚監复時，他表示公眾可把該書與其他和六四有關的書籍一起來對照，如《改革歷程》、《李鵬日記》、《六四真相》等，從中理出關於六四事件的歷史脈絡。他亦擔憂陳希同和他本人會遭當局報復，5月31日，姚監復被其所在單位，既中國國務院農村發展中心研究中心黨委書記約談和遭到警告，他同時披露陳希同本人也受到壓力。《陳希同親述》作者和主人公壓力重重(音頻)公眾和評論人士也指當年參與鎮壓學生運動的當事人李鵬、陳希同等籍由《李鵬日記》、《陳希同親述》等，意在推卸責任。但這些書的積極作用是將中共當局嚴加封鎖的歷史推至公眾面前。早在2010年，香港新世紀出版社欲出版《李鵬日記》，後遭受來自中共當局的阻止，出版計劃擱淺，但該書被網友公開至網上；早在今年2月底，原定於3月1日在港發行的《回歸民主》一書作者杜光曾有同樣經歷，在接受德國之聲專訪後即遭原單位中共黨校黨委約談，阻止該書的出版和要求杜光不得接受外國媒體採訪。"六四維穩，當局又炮製了一本'禁書'"香港新世紀出版社負責人鮑樸也獲悉姚監復被約談和警告一事，他表示該書已在香港各書店鋪開，不可能收回，中國當局警告作者，是再次將《陳希同親述》一書炮製成"禁書"，也將使這本"禁書"的內容更加廣泛的被公眾關注。鮑樸也表示中共當局沒有理由對"一國兩制"下的香港書籍進行干涉，對於香港來說，出版和言論自由也是其珍貴價值所在。鮑樸也表示了對姚監复的處境的擔憂："姚老和我說暫緩發行，我回E-mail說已經發行了，我也再等他的進一步消息，然後再做決定。我不願意把矛盾激化，結果他們去懲治作者。他們有很多能力限制姚老，這是沒辦法繞過去的，作者在他們的手心裡。但現在他們阻止印這本書已經是不可能了，已經送到各書店了。""我準備迎接和麵對這個壓力"德國之聲聯繫到剛剛被約談過的姚監复，他向德國之聲證實對方要求此書暫緩發行："感到壓力，現在還沒有處理完，我準備迎接，台灣有個老和尚說過'面對它、正視它、接受它、處理它、放下它'，我現在正是面對的時候，他們以前對中央黨校的杜光是採取這個辦法，他們還暫時沒有讓我切斷和外界的聯繫。我已經公開說了很多話，如果他們對我採取措施，這不又成了新聞了嗎？公開也許對我是一種保護。"
姚監复Yao Jianfu: Chinese Scholar, Former Researcher on CCP Policies; Copyright: Yao Jianfu
姚監复坦言，5月18日他曾給《動向》雜誌就陳希同"貪污罪"撰文，官方並未對其限制，但《陳希同親述》一書的出版經由媒體曝光後，引起公眾很大的反響，官方也因此異常緊張："我就知道肯定有些地方，有些人得過問此事""當局對'六四'無任何鬆動跡象"姚監复認為當局此舉和"六四"有關，他也指陳希同也受到當局的壓力："我想是有關係的，老先生（指陳希同）那邊也受到更大壓力，因為他身份不一樣。"姚監复認為透過此舉，更能證明當局目前尚無對"六四事件"鬆動的任何跡象："我原來就說不可能，平反是遙遠的未來的事。"談及中國當局阻止該書出版原因，鮑樸認為這是當局面對"六四事件"一貫的維穩舉動，也表明早前傳言的平反六四一說根本不可能實現："都說鬆動，鬆動在哪兒？手都伸到香港來了，算鬆動嗎？根本就是一個虛幻的維穩任務，他們認為把和六四有關的人都摁住，覺得就沒事了。"作者：吳雨
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新書訊：《中華人民共和國史十五講》
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| 《中華人民共和國史十五講》，王丹 著，台北：聯經出版，2012年1月 |
王丹版的中共史
王丹，除了為人熟知的「六四」民運領袖身份 外，寫詩寫評論，還在美國哈佛大學拿到了歷史學博士，本書緣起於王丹二○○九年在台灣清華大學所開的「中華人民共和國史」課程。王丹認為兩岸對中國一九四 九年以後的歷史了解都先天不足，因此希望能整理出中國官方史學中沒有說或不能說的內容。比如過去所認識的毛澤東，都是從政治出發，但是從接近他的人的回憶 可以看到另一個毛澤東：對身邊的女人無可奈何、對長期相處的衛士長依依不捨，這些性格都可能構成毛澤東決策的要素之一。本書處理歷史鮮活有趣，用「八卦」 的方式挖掘歷史真相，別開生面，而由這位身份獨特的作者寫來，更別具意義。
（台北 黃暐勝）
中國的薄案應該讓大家功力加30000成
The Dirt About Gossip
By HOLLY BRUBACH
Published: December 30, 2011
Most of us scriveners feel obliged to call our books something catchy in
the hope of impressing potential readers with how clever we are. Not so
Joseph Epstein. “What’s your book about?” “Gossip.” “What’s it called?”
“Gossip.” Epstein has repeatedly opted for titles with the generic ring
of labels on the files he must have kept for his research: “Ambition,”
“Friendship,” “Snobbery,” “Envy.” On the part of any other writer, this
might be taken as a sign of laziness or exhaustion. But in Epstein’s
case, it seems a bold grab to own a great big subject, even — or
especially — one on which the Almighty has had a tendency to dominate
the conversation.
United Artists
Tony Curtis, left, and Burt Lancaster in the 1957 film "Sweet Smell of Success."
GOSSIP
The Untrivial Pursuit
By Joseph Epstein
242 pp. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. $25.
Related
Times Topic: Joseph Epstein
Gossip, in Epstein’s definition, is “one party telling another what a
third party doesn’t want known.” A clunky subtitle — “The Untrivial
Pursuit” — calls attention to a premise that would seem to be
self-evident: now that gossip looms so huge in public life, he contends,
the “major rap” against it, “that it is trivial, is no longer the main
thing to be said about it, if it ever was.” As objections to gossip go,
this one has been collecting dust for quite some time, and Epstein, by
placing it front and center, seems to be justifying his choice of
subject to the disapproving ghosts of his grandparents. By far the more
likely case to be made against gossip at the start of the 21st century
would be that it has become so invasive and ubiquitous.
All religions condemn gossip, and Judaism has gone so far as to declare
it a sin: a sin to initiate it, to repeat it, to listen to it. Yahweh’s
position, then, is unequivocal. But Epstein is of two minds, and while
he deplores the blight gossip has inflicted on our culture, he
convincingly argues that it serves any number of worthwhile purposes,
from the literary (Elizabeth Hardwick called it “character analysis”) to
the sociological (David Sloan Wilson, a professor of biology and
anthropology at Binghamton University, says it’s important in regulating
behavior and defining membership in a group). Ultimately, what makes
Epstein such a congenial authority on the subject is that he relishes
good gossip himself.
Much of the hearsay he uses as example will be familiar to anyone with
access to a robust grapevine and the works of Kitty Kelley. Most items
fall into familiar categories, among them: Sexual Proclivities of the
Windsors, Unlikely Bedfellows, Funny Stuff That Happened to People Who
Drank Too Much, Public Figures in the Closet, Heinous Acts Committed by
Men of Illustrious Reputation. In the course of citing scuttlebutt to
make his point, Epstein becomes, to his dismay, a purveyor of it. “There
is still a thing called good taste, and I am reasonably sure that I
have already outraged it several pages ago,” he admits as early as Page
20. What was the alternative? He might have followed the example of
Isabella Stewart Gardner — who, according to George Santayana, “spoke
ill of no one” — and confined himself to the broad philosophical and
moral issues that gossip raises, without naming names. But I think it’s
safe to say that Epstein has no more interest in writing that book than
we do in reading it.
Wending its way through these pages is a procession of the rich, the
famous, the infamous, the mighty and the fallen — and the people who
have built careers talking about them. The parade route passes from
ancient Greece to present-day America, with Alcibiades, Epstein’s
candidate for “the first great subject of public gossip,” in the lead,
followed at intervals by Lord Byron, Eugène Delacroix, Grover Cleveland,
Cyril Connolly, Wallis Simpson, Ava Gardner, Aristotle and Jackie
Onassis, Fidel Castro and Kathleen Tynan, Steve McQueen, Yul Brynner,
Alfred Kazin, Annie Leibovitz, Lillian Ross, Elena Kagan. The cardinal
rule here: If you’re famous, you’re fair game. Waving from the thrones
atop their floats are the Duc de Saint-Simon, Walter Winchell, Barbara
Walters and Tina Brown. As the rumors pile up, the effect, even when the
details are astonishingly intimate, is oddly superficial and
impersonal, as if the protagonists weren’t our fellow travelers but
stock characters in the story of our times.
Reading “Crampton Hodnet,” a Barbara Pym novel set in North Oxford,
Epstein gets the sense that “gossip traditionally has worked best in a
small, one might even say tight, community.” I can’t help wondering how
many citizens of small communities whose destinies are not in Barbara
Pym’s benevolent hands would agree.
In any case, we all live in a small town now. Epstein acknowledges the
power to libel and “wreck lives” made so widely available by the
Internet. But he cites no more than a handful of online gossip’s
casualties, in examples ranging in gravity from Malcolm Gladwell’s
reputation (after his inclusion in a database of bad tippers) to a
Rutgers student’s suicide (after video of his encounter with another
male student was streamed online). Nor does Epstein seem particularly
interested in gossip’s relationship to power, though he suggests it may
have a role in revolutions. What for him constitutes a kind of spectator
sport has been (and still is) for the disenfranchised a means of
reconnaissance, a way of acquiring information crucial to their status
and survival. It’s not for nothing that the two groups most notorious
for trafficking in gossip have been women and gay men. Epstein quotes
Leo Lerman, who said he kept a gossip-filled journal “because I am
always interested in the disparity between the surface and what goes on
underneath.”
In the end, Epstein seems less concerned with gossip’s role and
ramifications than with the stories it tells, and as a curator of
hearsay, he is attuned to not only the salacious but also the sublime.
Of all the gossip that “Gossip” contains, my favorite is the story of a
young woman who admired Isaac Bashevis Singer’s writing, attended one of
his readings at an unnamed university, and afterward found herself
alone with him, at his invitation, ostensibly to recount her family’s
history in Bialystok. What happened next took her by surprise, though
the reader sees it coming: He interrupted her recital of facts and asked
if he might kiss her. He was 30 years older and reminded her of her
grandfather; the prospect of sex with him was for her unthinkable. She
was terribly sorry, she explained, but she had just begun her second
marriage. He cut her off and, pointing to a bowl on a nearby table,
suggested she take some fruit to her husband. She picked out a large
apple and a green banana, and when she turned around, he was gone. The
vaguely patronizing offer of fruit (presumably supplied by the
university), sent on behalf of the spurned celebrity author to the
husband waiting at home; the abrupt exit, prompted by embarrassment or
disappointment or a refusal to waste another minute on a woman who had
proved to be unwilling — from the reader’s point of view, this
denouement is surely better than their winding up in bed together.
In the days preceding his mother’s death, Epstein learned that her
father had committed suicide. She had kept it a secret, even from her
own husband. To her mind, Epstein conjectures, there was nothing to be
gained by talking about it; silence was more dignified, and Epstein
admires her for it. “But I see that in telling this story, I am
gossiping about my own mother, telling a tale she would not even now
want told,” he writes. “What do you call a man who gossips about his own
mother? At the very least, a writer, but also someone who, in regard to
gossip, is not the man his mother was.” The generational divide where
gossip is concerned is at its widest here. I doubt a reader under 30
would comprehend the dignity of Epstein’s mother’s silence or the shame
that attached to suicide in his grandparents’ time.
“Shame” is my nominee for Epstein’s next book. Or “Remorse,” a potential
companion volume. Or, returning to something he said earlier, “Good
Taste.” Epstein brings a journalist’s appetite for research and an
essayist’s talent for reflection to themes that traditionally have been
left to novelists. “Gossip” takes its place as the latest entry in his
entertaining and idiosyncratic catalog of human nature.
明報月刊有這樣迷你的書介入
Gossip: the Untrivial Pursuit
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| Gossip: the Untrivial Pursuit，Joseph Epstein 著，紐約﹕Houghton Mifflin Harcourt，2011年11月 |
更能消幾番風言風語
世人一直低估流言蜚語對社會以至文化的影響，因為我們都不願意承認自己曾譁眾取寵。本書搜羅千奇百怪的耳語，既有文人雅士的絕妙好辭，也有可怕可恨的風言風語，皆像民謠般反映世道人心。
作者被譽為復興小品文的功臣，筆鋒常帶感 情，對眾生的貪嗔癡亦不乏同情。世人樂於揭人陰私，進而標榜自己高人一等，縱然是飽學之士亦未能免俗。凡夫俗子把傳聞與新聞等量齊觀，甚至藉互聯網將謠言 傳遍天下，早已形成風氣。作者剖析人類的劣根性，而不是譏諷或痛加抨擊，只因為「由來同一夢，休笑世人癡」。
（安大略 雪懷）
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