等待命令
亨利·哈特（Henry 哈特）对着他在塔克大厅（Tucker Hall）的办公室地板上堆满了一堆纸夹，厚达近一英尺的马尼拉纸夹，苦笑地点了点头。
“That’s all of it, down there,” he said. “The anthology is supposed to be about 1,200 pages long. That’s the whole manuscript, with my introductions, photocopies of different texts—plays, poems, short stories, essays and whatnot.”
The manuscript represents an anthology of American literature following World War II—and also more than two years of work for 哈特, professor of 英语 at William & Mary. His manuscript is the last in an omnibus series of five volumes that together were to comprise the 汤姆森美国文学选集. 整个选集的出版由于出版界的一系列公司收购而被搁置。
“Thomson was sold. Another division, Wadsworth, took it over,” 哈特 explained, and so the 汤姆森选集 simply became the 沃兹沃思选集. “The anth
ology was supposed to be published in 2008. But then we found out the umbrella company, Cengage—which owns Wadsworth—had just bought the college division of the publishing company Houghton Mifflin.”
关注选集市场
At the time of the acquisition, Houghton Mifflin was just coming out with a new edition of the 希斯美国文学选集. “As a result, Cengage told Wadsworth that it couldn’t come out with our anthology,” he said. “I think Cengage believed that two anthologies would overload the market.”
但这个项目并没有完全消亡。 哈特 has sent photocopies of his foot-high manuscript off for typesetting: “They hired typists to type all of that stuff into computers,” he said. “I assume that my volume, along with all the other volumes, are in computers, waiting to be published.”
哈特说，为了让这个项目继续下去，沃兹沃思团队的负责人想出了一个主意，把选集的组织元素作为一种营销手段。 在这个过程的早期，选集的总编辑，米德尔伯里学院的杰伊·帕里尼建议选集编纂者通过准备主题部分来瞄准文学教师的需求。
“Jay basically started off by saying that we should have anthologies that collect a lot of the important texts from the different periods, and that we should also have sections that are organized around topics that professors and students like to discuss in class,” 哈特 said. “These are the hot-button topics: gender, race, religion and spirituality, war and violence, that sort of thing. We thought that professors could go right to those sections and use those sections in class discussions.”
摆好开胃小菜
当选集团队在等待公司对整个项目的批准时，他们决定围绕主题部分推出一系列小册子。 哈特 said the idea was for the booklets to serve as “appetizers,” with hopes that they would whet the academic market’s appetite and nudge the anthology closer to publication.
The 华兹华斯《美国文学系列》中的主题 includes five pamphlets extracted from 哈特’s post-World War II volume. 他们的头衔是：
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大熔炉中的种族和民族
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阶级冲突与美国梦
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探索性别和性规范
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目睹战争
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宗教与灵性。
每本小册子约70页； 每篇包含10篇左右的短篇或节选。 还有一个共同的序言，概述了整个系列的21本小册子。 哈特为每本小册子都写了一个介绍，开始了主题探索，并将在论文和课堂讨论中充实。
不仅仅是诗歌和短篇小说
Many of the texts 哈特 chose for the booklets (and in the anthology) are not necessarily “literary” in nature and include essays, speeches and even journalism. Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech is included, as is “The Ballot or the Bullet” speech from Malcolm X. Novelist Gore Vidal is represented by his anti-anti-gay/anti-anti-Semitic nonfiction essay “Pink Triangle and Yellow Star.” 《怪诞新闻》记者亨特·s·汤普森（Hunter S. Thompson）成功入围，展现了后9/11时代的末世主义，其中包括约翰尼·德普（Johnny Depp）打来的一个电话，以及他在屋外疯狂地向油箱附近一个几乎肯定是虚构的入侵者开枪。 它读起来很有先见之明，就像卡特里娜飓风后的博客文章。
“That’s what the editors wanted us to include,” 哈特 said, “not only poems and short stories, but also some chapters of novels, some non-fiction essays.”
Some of 哈特’s selections are to be expected—Tim O’Brien is in 目睹战争 and sections of Robert Bly’s Iron John are part of 探索性别和性规范—but there are a number of interesting thematic juxtapositions among the booklets. 例如，马丁·路德·金和马尔科姆·艾克斯的演讲就在不同的小册子里。 The Malcolm X oration is in 大熔炉中的种族和民族; King’s is in 阶级冲突与美国梦.
关注在线
哈特 says the booklets are being sold—they’re on Amazon.com—and he has heard from professors who are using them. 这些小册子由一个在线资源中心提供支持，可以通过访问代码访问。 互联网正在成为课堂上的主要内容：哈特说，当他要求学生在课堂上读一首诗时，有时学生会在笔记本电脑上用谷歌搜索这首诗，而不是翻阅一本纸质选集。
“I also know that printed texts are going the way of the dinosaurs,” he said. “One of the plans of the publisher is to have an online version of the anthology. Perhaps they won’t go ahead with the print version, but maybe they’ll go ahead with an online version. At this point, I’m really not sure.”
Little to do…but wait
For now, there’s little that 哈特 can do other than trade snippets of news with the editors of the other volumes, hope the “appetizer” booklets do their job, and continue to wait for word from the project’s director.
“I really do hope that the anthology will go forward,” 哈特 said. “But I’m fatalistic about it. Because of the financial crisis, I know that this is a terrible time for the publishing business.”