作家笔记 ( A Writer‘s Notebook)

"我从没说过自己有凭空编故事的本领;我往往需要一个事件或是一个人物才好动笔,不过我总是运用想象力、创作力以及戏剧感,把素材变成我自己的东西。"毛姆如是说。从一八九二年他十八岁开始,毛姆就养成随时记录各种创作素材的习惯,这一习惯他一直坚持了五十多年。一九四九年,已经七十五岁高龄的毛姆从他保存的十五册笔记、备忘录和旅游札记中精挑细选并加以简明的按语,出版了这本《作家笔记》。这无疑是毛姆最为重要也最为真实的作品之一,等于是在正式放弃虚构文学创作后将他"写作素材的仓库"亦即他创作的终极秘密公之于众了。虽然之后还出版了《随性而至》和《观点》这两本随笔和评论集,《作家笔记》可以看作毛姆一生文学创作的起点和终点,是他对自己一生漫长的文学生涯的告别。("I never said that I have the ability to make up the story out of thin air; I usually need one thing or one figure that I can start writing, but I always use imagination, creativity and the feeling of drama to make materials become my own things." Maugham said. From 1892 when he was eighteen years old, Maugham has cultivated the habit to record all kinds of creation material at any time, and he insisted this habit for more than fifty years. In 1949, the seventy five year old Maugham chose carefully from his fifteen notes, memorandums and travel notes with concise comment and published this A Writer's Notebook. There is no doubt that this is one of the most important and actual works of Maugham, that is his "warehouse of writing materials " and his ultimate secret of his creation after formally giving up fiction literary creation is exposed to the public. Though he published The Vagrant Mood and Points of View these two informal essays, A Writer's Notebook can be seen as the beginning and ending of the literary creation of Maugham's life, and is the farewell for his lengthy literature career.)