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What do literary tourists look for when they visit the British Isles? Often it’s the quaint, old-fashioned bookshops that provide the perfect excuse to browse uninterrupted and to disconnect from the world. Until recently, the trend for barista-made coffee and high-speed Wi-Fi was considered by some in the city’s bookish crowd to be ruining London’s centuries-old tradition of disconnected browsing.
这场反抗的领军者是伦敦东区的Libreria书店，这里没有无线网络，也没有咖啡。它是今年2月开张的，店主罗恩·席尔瓦(Rohan Silva)曾是前首相戴维·卡梅伦(David Cameron)的政策顾问，他也是会员制俱乐部“第二个家”(Second Home)的联合创始人，那里为创业者提供办公空间。 “We’re celebrating human curation over algorithmic rhythms,” said Mr. Silva, who was spurred to open his shop after experiencing a common affliction for London’s bibliophiles — the repetitive, grating ring tones of smartphones disrupting the tranquillity of his bookshop experience. “We wanted to get people using their human intuition when they shop for books. You can get Wi-Fi anywhere now, it’s not necessary in a bookshop.” “我们热爱书籍的人性化展示，而不是按照算法的方式，”席尔瓦说，和伦敦的爱书人一样，逛书店的时候，他也受不了智能手机没完没了的刺耳声音不时打破店里的宁静，所以才开了这家书店。“我们希望让人们来买书时动用人类的直觉。现在到处都能连上无线网络，没有必要在书店里上网。” Libreria is in the company of Tenderbooks (tenderbooks.co.uk), Buchhandlung Walther K"onig (buchhandlung-walther-koenig.de), Lutyens & Rubinstein, (lutyensrubinstein.co.uk) and Word on the Water (facebook.com/wordonthewater), all independent book shops shunning high-speed cables and lattes. Their mantra has drawn a sophisticated, brainy crowd, but its premise is simple: In the digital age, the bookshop should be a refuge, an information overload in its own right. 除了Libreria，还有Tenderbooks(tenderbooks.co.uk)、Buchhandlung Walther K"onig(buchhandlung-walther-koenig.de)、Lutyens & Rubinstein(lutyensrubinstein.co.uk)，以及水上的字(Word on the Water，facebook.com/wordonthewater)等独立书店，都不提供高速网络和咖啡。它们的原则吸引了一批聪明、有头脑的人，但前提却很简单：在数字化时代，书店可以成为一个逃避信息过载的避难所。 “If someone gets a phone call, they leave the shop. It’s the same with the internet — people just know this isn’t the space for being online,” said Tamsin Clark, owner of Tenderbooks, which opened in 2014 in Covent Garden, a lively neighborhood packed with theaters and rare-book shops. “The thing about books is that they’re more interesting than the internet — we assume that everyone who comes here believes that.” “如果有人要接电话，就得离开书店，想上网也是一样——人们知道，这里不是上网的地方，”Tenderbooks的老板塔姆辛·克拉克(Tamsin Clark)说，这家书店于2014年在考文特花园开放，这里是个热闹的地方，附近还有不少剧院和珍本书店。“书的意义就在于，它们比网络更有意思——我们假定所有到这里来的人都相信这一点。” Creative downtime means embracing slow over fast and rejecting years of bookshop cool that’s embodied by overeager baristas and a goofy Wi-Fi-code scrawled on a chalkboard. The internet-free bookshop campaigns for the days of haughty glances over the tops of reading glasses, gentle tutting at noise, and hours spent simply considering the words on the page. 有创意的闲暇意味着接受慢节奏，而不是快节奏，它们也拒绝近年来那种书店的“酷”模式：店里总有过分热情的咖啡侍应生，小黑板上涂写着怪里怪气的无线网络密码。无网络书店运动想要回到过去那种岁月：如果有人发出噪音，就会遭到别人从眼镜后面投来的严厉目光以及不算严厉的啧啧声，以示责备，人们可以在书店里呆上几个钟头，脑子里只想着纸上的字句。 Perhaps the most serious of the bookshops is Lutyens & Rubinstein. Since 2009 its Notting Hill building has been divided between a bookshop and a literary agency — and the presence of the highbrow mood of the agency is what sets the tone for the prevailing silence of the reading room. “You wouldn’t even dare ask for the Wi-Fi code here,” a customer there said recently. 这些书店中，或许最严肃的还要算Lutyens & Rubinstein了。这栋坐落在诺丁山的建筑自从2009年起开始分为书店和文学代理公司两部分，代理公司的高雅气息更是为书店的阅读室带来了一种静悄悄的氛围。“你根本不敢开口问无线网络密码，”前不久，一名顾客说道。
Tenderbooks的感觉则要放松一点：“网络会带来太多压力；我们希望人们来到这里时，能比上网的时候精神集中一点，”店主克拉克女士说。“我们这儿有个录音机，我们的店很小，很亲切。人们的反响真的很好。我觉得这是如今的文化环境所需要的。因为我们位于伦敦中心，我们在城市的心脏为人们提供有创意的休闲时间。” Taking its name from Jorge Luis Borges’s cult 1941 classic “The Library of Babel,” a story in which every book ever written is reprinted in a 410-page edition, Libreria emphasizes a meditative experience that its owner said Wi-Fi would ruin. On Libreria’s floor-to-ceiling shelves, books are thematically curated by a rotating British who’s-who cast of the literary, political and media world, who has dreamed up book categories like “Mothers, Madonnas and Whores” and “The Sea and the Sky.” Next up as curator is the recently elected mayor of London, Sadiq Khan. Libreria书店的名字来自豪尔赫·路易斯·博尔赫斯(Jorge Luis Borges)1941年怪异的经典之作《巴别图书馆》(The Library of Babel)，这篇小说中写到，世界上所有的书籍都被浓缩在一本410页的书中，这家书店强调一种沉思的体验，店主说，无限网络会破坏它。Liberia的书架高至天花板，书店邀请英国文学、政治与媒体界的名家轮流担任策展人，按主题展示书籍，谁能想到会有“母亲、圣母与妓女”和“大海与天空”这种图书分类呢？接下来书店邀请的策展人是最新当选伦敦市市长的萨迪克·汗(Sadiq Khan)。
这种完全避免分心的图书馆公德，其实是这个城市的传统，从豪宅中静悄悄的私人图书馆（比如北伦敦汉普斯特德荒野[Hampstead heath]的17世纪宅邸肯伍德屋中的图书室），到国王十字街上大英图书馆的阅览室都是如此。在大英图书馆，礼仪规定中强烈禁止读者拿出手机，并有精心放置的标志来提示读者。这些书店遵从的正是这样一种传统。 Mr. Silva of Libreria Books said “an old-fashioned space” is clearly appealing to book lovers. He said his shop has had twice as many customers as anticipated, with visitors from as far afield as Australia and China. Confronted with a bookshelf curated by the popular new mayor or surrounded by first editions, who wants to download a morning full of emails? Libreria书店的席尔瓦说，“一个老式的地方”对爱书人来说显然很有吸引力。他说，他的书店吸引的读者比自己所期待的多出一倍，甚至有来自澳大利亚和中国的远方游客前来参观。面前的书架上陈列着由受欢迎的新市长挑选的书目，身边都是初版新书，谁还愿意整个上午都用来看电子邮件呢？ 翻译：晋其角 |
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