哪位美国作家最应该立传

Each week in Bookends, two writers take on questions about the world of books. This week, Thomas Mallon and Ayana Mathis on authors whose life stories should be told. 每周的书挡专栏(Bookends)都会有两位作家谈论有关书籍的话题。这周托马斯·马隆(Thomas Mallon)和阿雅娜·马蒂斯(Ayana Mathis)讨论哪位作家值得立传。 By Thomas Mallon 托马斯·马隆： Any biography requires raw material, and archivally, Tom Wolfe seems to be a man in full. 任何传记都需要素材，而从素材的角度讲，汤姆·沃尔夫(Tom Wolfe)简直是无所不有。

Back in September The New York Times carried news about a coming biography of Jonathan Franzen. The item surprised some readers because of the writer’s relative youth and mostly quiet personal life. A public rebuke from Oprah is not nothing, but that alone won’t make for a biography “crowded with incident,” as Lady Bracknell would put it. 去年9月，《纽约时报》曾报道乔纳森·弗兰岑(Jonathan Franzen)的传记即将面世。这本书让一些读者吃惊不已，因为这位作家相对年轻，个人生活大体上也平淡无奇。尽管欧普拉对本书的批评非同小可，但仅此也不足以让这本传记如同王尔德《诚实的重要性》剧中人物布拉克奈尔夫人所说的那样，“争议不断。” A more likely living candidate for the full life-and-works treatment might be Tom Wolfe, still young in his subjects and style, but at 84 getting up there in years. True, one could say, as with Franzen, that this writer has put most of his exclamation points onto the page, not off it. A biographer of Wolfe will be reporting on an unscarifying boyhood; a late but long marriage; apparently amiable children; a domestic tranquillity that has supported immersive research and long intervals between hefty volumes. Even so, several aspects of the author’s long career make him ripe for scrutiny beyond the modest critical studies he’s prompted up to now. 另外一位尚健在，而且其生平和作品或许值得大书特书的作家是汤姆·沃尔夫。他的写作主题和风格仍旧矫健，但84岁的他已经不年轻了。也许我们可以说，他如同弗兰岑一样，人生最可圈可点之处在于他的作品，而不是个人生活。沃尔夫的传记作家会写到如下这些：不显山不露水的少年时代；晚婚但白头偕老；与子女们关系融洽；家庭和谐，令他能够全身心投入于研究写作，并且花长时间酝酿鸿篇巨制。尽管如此，他漫长写作生涯的某些方面仍够提供了丰富的素材，能够让传记作家突破目前关于沃尔夫的平淡的批评研究，进行更深层次的探讨。 Wolfe has been both in sync with his times — a key figure in the New Journalism that became the dominant mode of chronicling them — as well as a figure apart: His conservative inclinations alone distinguish him from most American writers of his generation. Well into midcareer he shifted away from nonfiction, glossing his first novel, “The Bonfire of the Vanities” (1987), with a thumping manifesto titled “Stalking the Billion-Footed Beast” (1989). That essay planted Wolfe’s flag on the social and realist turf he believed the novel had long since foolishly abandoned. He had made enemies before — an essay called “Tiny Mummies!,” back in 1965, appalled stalwarts at The New Yorker — and his bumptious, commercially successful move toward fiction renewed his foes’ animus and increased their ranks. I remember John Updike flashing me a relieved smile the night Wolfe’s second novel lost the National Book Award in 1998; two years later Wolfe numbered Updike one of the “Three Stooges” who had failed to appreciate him. It’s hard to have a biography without misbehavior; it’s almost impossible to have one without feuds. 一方面，沃尔夫与他所处的时代步调一致——他是“新资讯主义”的核心人物之一，后者也成为他记录自己的时代的首要风格；另一方面，他又特立独行。单是他的保守倾向就令他与同时代的多数美国作家格格不入。在写作生涯中后期，他从非虚构作品转向虚构，继首部小说《虚荣的篝火》(The Bonfire of the Vanities, 1987)之后，又在《潜随10亿只脚的动物》(Stalking the Billion-Footed Beast ,1989)一文中发出掷地有声的宣言。这篇随笔让沃尔夫跻身于社会和现实主义阵营，他则在此文中批评美国小说界早已愚蠢地背弃了现实主义传统。沃尔夫此前已经树敌不少——他早在1965年发表的一篇题为《袖珍木乃伊！》(Tiny Mummies!)的文章已经令《纽约客》杂志的大腕作家们震怒不已。而他大张旗鼓进军小说，并且在商业上颇为成功，再次激起这种敌视情绪，并且让更多的人加入了批评他的阵营。我还记得在1998年，当沃尔夫的第二部小说在角逐“国家图书奖”功亏一篑之际，约翰·厄普代克(John Updike)向我展露了如释重负的微笑；两年之后，沃尔夫则还以颜色，称厄普代克为有眼无珠、未能欣赏他的作品的“三个傻瓜”之一。如果没有出格言行，很难写出一本传记；而如果没有宿怨，就干脆不可能有传记。 The editor of this life story will be hoping people want to buy it. Fortunately, Wolfe has the kind of public branding and recognition (the white suits haven’t hurt) that one associates more with the oft-televised writers born in the mid-1920s, less than a decade before he was — Vidal, Capote, Mailer, Baldwin, Buckley; excellent biographical subjects all. Wolfe has fans: I can recall a Washington arts function some years ago at which a Supreme Court justice waited to greet the novelist almost as if he were a costumed superhero who’d arrived on the floor of Comic Con. Few writers have cemented phrases into the national lingo, but Wolfe has done that with several: “radical chic,” “pushing the envelope,” “social X-rays,” “masters of the universe.” 这部传记的编辑会希望读者对它趋之若鹜。幸运的是，沃尔夫与那些经常出现在电视上、生于1920年代中期的著名作家——包括戈尔·维达(Gore Vidal)、杜鲁门·卡波蒂(Truman Capote)、诺曼·梅勒(Norman Mailer)、詹姆斯·鲍德温(James Baldwin)和威廉·F·巴克利(William F Buckley)等人，他们都是绝佳的传主——具有类似的公众品牌和知名度（他标志性的白色西装也增色不少）。沃尔夫有大批拥趸：我记得多年前在华盛顿一个文艺界聚会上，一位最高法院法官等待迎接他，就好像动漫粉丝们在国际动漫展上迎接身穿制服的超级英雄一样。没有几位作家能像他一样把文学语言引入全民的日常会话，比如radical chic（“与激进派人物交往的时尚”）、pushing the envelope（“挑战极限”）、social X-rays（“社交X光”）、masters of the universe（“时空的主宰”）等等。 Any biography requires raw material, and archivally Wolfe seems to be a man in full. The New York Public Library has lately paid more than $2 million for a collection of the writer’s papers said to contain, along with notebooks and manuscripts, over 10,000 letters. The senders and recipients prove Wolfe a busy, connected creature, a figure in the sort of social tapestry he considers to be the novel’s real business. 任何传记都需要素材，而从素材的角度讲，汤姆·沃尔夫简直是无所不有。最近，纽约公共图书馆以200多万美元购入了一批他的文件，据称包括笔记本、手稿和一万多封信件。信件的收发人显示沃尔夫的社交生活异常活跃丰富，就是他自己的小说热衷于描写的那种社交人物。 I greet the announcement of new fiction by lower-key, ultimately greater artists — let’s say William Trevor or Alice Munro — with a different, if no less keen, sort of pleasure. But I feel no urgent desire for a biography of either one of them. They’ve earned their privacy through a kind of exquisite circumscription, the deep, career-long exploration of individual psychologies in remote precincts. Wolfe, by contrast, has looked for life above the fold and at high decibel levels — on the frantic trading floor, in clamorous courthouses, amid the roar of rockets and racecars. It makes sense for his own life to wind up as a chronicle with an index. 每当那些低调但又不失伟大的作家——例如威廉·特里弗(William Trevor)和爱丽丝·门罗(Alice Munro)有新著问世，我都会颇为欣慰，但这是一种不同的愉悦感：如果有人为上述两位作家立传，我可没什么兴趣读。他们早已通过微妙的自我定位，通过多年来在陌生领域的对个人心理的深刻探索，赢得了他们的隐私权。而沃尔夫则不同，他热衷于描写名利场，在那些万众瞩目的喧嚣场景中探究人生——混乱忙碌的股票交易大厅、人声鼎沸的法庭，噪音震耳欲聋的火箭发射场和赛车场等等。所以，他自己的人生成为一部精心编撰的历史，也不足为奇。 Thomas Mallon’s eight novels include “Henry and Clara,” “Bandbox,” “Fellow Travelers” and “Watergate,” a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award. He has also published nonfiction about plagiarism (“Stolen Words”), diaries (“A Book of One’s Own”), letters (“Yours Ever”) and the Kennedy assassination (“Mrs. Paine’s Garage”), as well as two books of essays. His work appears in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly and other publications. A recipient of the Vursell prize of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, for distinguished prose style, he is currently professor of English at George Washington University. 托玛斯·马隆的八部小说包括《亨利与克拉拉》(Henry and Clara)《同途旅人》(Fellow Travelers)和《水门》(Watergate)，后者入围国际笔会/福克纳奖最终候选名单。他的非虚构作品还包括关于抄袭的文章《被盗的文字》(Stolen Words)，日记《自己的一本书》(A Book of One’s Own)和关于刺杀肯尼迪事件的文章《佩恩夫人的车库》(Mrs. Paine’s Garage)，另外还有两本散文合集。他的作品曾发表在《纽约客》、《大西洋月刊》等期刊上。他曾获得美国艺术暨文学学会表彰优秀散文风格的Vursell奖。他目前在乔治·华盛顿大学担任英文教授。 ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ By Ayana Mathis 阿雅娜·马蒂斯： Albert Murray was a man of great accomplishments and not nearly the renown he ought to have had. 阿尔伯特·穆瑞(Albert Murray)的卓越成就和他的名气不成正比。 You may not have heard of Albert Murray. You might not own any of his 12 books or have sat in on any of his lectures at Columbia or Emory University. You may have entirely missed the life and work of an inimitable novelist, cultural critic, and jazz and blues scholar — I certainly did. 你可能没有听说过阿尔伯特·穆瑞；他的12本著作，你可能一本也没有买过；他在哥伦比亚和埃默里大学的讲座，你可能一次也没去听。你可能完全错过了一位独特的小说家、文化评论家、爵士乐和蓝调研究者的生活和作品——就跟我一样。 Albert Murray died at 97 on Aug. 18, 2013. He was a man of great accomplishments and not nearly the renown he ought to have had. Which isn’t to say he was obscure; the people who knew Murray loved him. They loved him so much that his memorial service was held at Jazz at Lincoln Center, which he helped found alongside Wynton Marsalis and Stanley Crouch. Judith Jamison, the former artistic director of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, was there, along with Crouch and Henry Louis Gates Jr. Not to mention the publishing luminaries Sonny Mehta and Erroll McDonald. And, in the jazz-funeral style Murray deserved, Marsalis ended the memorial by marching his band out of the auditorium playing “Didn’t He Ramble.” 阿尔伯特·穆瑞于2013年8月去世，享年97岁。他成就卓越，却并没有与之匹配的名声。这倒并不是说他默默无名——认识他的人都非常喜欢他。出于对他的喜爱，亲朋好友们在林肯中心的爵士厅为他举办了追悼会。而这一演出场所是穆瑞和温顿·马沙利斯（Wynton Marsalis，小号演奏家，林肯中心爵士乐团艺术总监——译注）还有斯坦利·克劳奇（Stanley Crouch，诗人、爵士乐评家）一起促成创建的。出席追悼会的有“阿尔文·艾丽美国现代舞团”的前艺术总监朱迪斯·杰米森(Judith Jamison)、克劳奇和小亨利·路易斯·盖茨（Henry Louis Gates Jr.，哈佛大学教授，美国黑人问题研究专家—译注），当然还有索尼·梅塔(Sonny Mehta)和艾洛尔·麦克唐纳德(Erroll McDonald)这样的出版界名流。 追悼会由马沙利斯带领他的乐队演奏着《他到处游逛》(Didn’t He Ramble)走出演奏大厅而收场。穆瑞的一生完全配得上这个爵士味十足的追悼会。 Here is a crash course in Murray: He was the author of a memoir, four novels, several books about the blues that are at once scholarly and down-homey, and a few volumes of cultural criticism. Ah, yes, and a collection of poetry that includes a poem about William Faulkner I’d dare anyone to top. Ralph Ellison was a dear friend of his. The painter Romare Bearden was a friend, too. Murray and Bearden entered into an artistic collaboration that yielded Bearden’s series “The Block,” inspired by the view from Murray’s balcony in Harlem. Murray hung out with James Baldwin in Paris in the 1950s. He was the co-writer of Count Basie’s autobiography. The National Book Critics Circle gave him a lifetime achievement award in 1997. Duke Ellington called him “the unsquarest man I know.” During his college days, he spent a night at Ma Rainey’s house; in his memoir, “South to a Very Old Place,” he describes sleeping in her “red-velvet-draped, tenderloin-gothic, incense-sultry sickroom.” 穆瑞的生平简介如下：他写了一部回忆录，四部小说，几部关于蓝调音乐的既富于学术价值而又平易近人的著作，还有几本文化评论的作品。对了，他还出版过一本诗集，里面有一首关于威廉·福克纳(William Faulkner)的诗，我敢打赌没有任何人能够超越。拉尔夫·埃里森（Ralph Ellison, 美国当代黑人作家）和画家罗米尔·比尔登(Romare Bearden)都是他的好朋友。 穆瑞在哈莱姆住处的阳台景观是比尔登《街区》系列的灵感来源——这可以说是两位好友之间的一次艺术合作。穆瑞在50年代的巴黎还和詹姆斯·鲍德温过从甚密。他是“贝西伯爵”（William James Count Basie 爵士音乐家——译注）自传的合著者。美国国家书评圈在1997年授予他终身成就奖。艾灵顿公爵说他是“我所认识的人中最特立独行的”。上大学的时候，穆瑞在芮妮大妈（Ma Rainey, 美国蓝调歌手，被誉为“蓝调之母”——译注）的家中度过一晚。在他的回忆录《向南重游旧地》(South to a Very Old Place)中，他描述了睡在她“红丝绒窗帘遮挡，弥漫着厚重香薰的病房，这哥特风格房间有着牛里脊般的质感”。 Murray didn’t publish his first book until he was in his 50s, and then he spent the rest of his life making up for lost time. That first book, “The Omni-Americans,” argued for a wider conception of American identity that acknowledged the centrality and profundity of black culture. Murray maintained that America is so mingled as to be “a mulatto culture” (a startling reappropriation of the term). His ideas struck some as too integrationist and earned Murray more than a few enemies. But as Henry Louis Gates Jr. points out in “King of Cats,” his 1996 New Yorker profile of Murray, “in Murray’s hands, integration wasn’t an act of accommodation but an act of introjection.” 穆瑞直到50多岁才出版了他的第一本书。这之后他著作不断，像是在弥补之前的沉寂。在这第一本书《综合美国人》(The Omni-Americans)中，穆瑞提出，美国身份的概念应该更加宽泛，这一概念应该正视黑人文化的中心地位和深度。穆瑞坚称美国种族混杂，是一个“黑白混血文化”（穆瑞令人吃惊地重新使用了“黑白混血文化”这一说法）。他的观点在一些人看来过于强调融合，从而为他招致了不少敌人。而小亨利·路易·盖茨在1996年为《纽约客》撰写的题为《猫王》的穆瑞人物特写中指出，“在穆瑞笔下，融合并不是适应外界，而是一种不自觉地把外面的东西拿来为我所用的过程。” Visionary though he was, Murray wasn’t right about everything — and certainly his polemics against the likes of Richard Wright and James Baldwin rightfully stuck in more than a few craws — but his work reveals a nuanced and agile thinker, and his prose is transcendent. When it comes to the blues, Murray’s expertise is undeniable. With characteristic brio, his seminal “Stomping the Blues” explores that music as the African-American idiom through which the spirit, mood and variety of black experience finds expression. 尽管颇有远见，穆瑞并不总是正确的。他与理查德·怀特(Richard Wright)、詹姆斯·鲍德温(James Baldwin)和其他一些人的论战触怒了不少人，而对此他并不能为自己开脱。但是他的作品细致入微，思维敏捷。他的文字也极为精妙。在谈论蓝调音乐时，谁都不能否认穆瑞的专业知识。在他影响深远的《顿足蓝调》(Stomping the Blues)中，穆瑞以特有的生动笔触探讨了蓝调音乐和“顿足”这一美国黑人俚语之间的关系，而两者都充分表达了黑人生活的神髓和多样性。 I’ve saved my favorite for last: Murray’s first novel, “Train Whistle Guitar,” an autobiographical coming-of-age story set in his native Alabama. His style was heavily influenced by the language of the South and by the jazz and blues he loved. His sentences dive and soar, they vibrate with word play and hum with lyricism. 我把我最喜爱的留到了最后。穆瑞的第一本小说《火车，口哨，吉他》(Train Whistle Guitar)是一步自传性质的成长小说。故事发生在他的家乡阿拉巴马州。他的文风很大程度上受到了美国南方语言和他所喜爱的爵士乐和蓝调的影响。他的句子跌宕起伏，充满了文字游戏，读起来就像歌词那样韵律有致。 Murray had a phrase he used often in his work: “the also and the also.” He used this as shorthand for the relatedness of things, and the complexities — and challenges — in that relatedness. He used it to evoke the multivalence of cultural memory, of blues and jazz music and of American identity itself. Murray seems more relevant now than ever. If this isn’t a moment in which we could all benefit from an encounter with a little “also and also,” I don’t know what is. 在他的作品中，穆瑞常用“诸如此类”这一短语来概括事物之间的关联性，以及关联性之中的复杂和质疑。他用这一短语来描述文化记忆，蓝调和爵士乐以及美国身份本身的多种意义。这样看来，穆瑞的思想在现在意义尤其相关。在这个时节点，我们所有人都能从穆瑞的“诸如此类”之中获利。 Ayana Mathis is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and a recipient of the 2014-15 New York Public Library’s Cullman Center Fellowship. “The Twelve Tribes of Hattie,” her first novel, was a New York Times Bestseller, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, one of NPR’s Best Books of 2013 and was chosen by Oprah Winfrey as the second selection for Oprah’s Book Club 2.0. Ayana taught Creative Writing at The Writer’s Foundry MFA Program at St. Joseph’s College, Brooklyn. She is an Assistant Professor of English and Creative Writing at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. 阿雅娜·马蒂斯毕业于艾奥瓦大学作家坊，获得过2014-2015年纽约公共图书馆Cullman中心奖金。她的第一部小说《海蒂的12个部落》(The Twelve Tribes of Hattie)曾登上《纽约时报》畅销书榜单，获得《纽约时报》年度优秀图书奖，美国公共广播电台2013最佳图书奖，并登上欧普拉·温弗雷(Oprah Winfrey)的“欧普拉图书俱乐部2.0”图书榜单。她在布鲁克林圣约瑟夫学院作家培训MFA班教授创意写作，并担任艾奥瓦大学作家坊的英文与创意写作副教授。