杰恩·安妮·菲利普斯：向普利策奖得主学习讲故事 | 我的写作之道

我采访了简·安·菲利普斯，她凭借小说《夜巡》获得了普利策小说奖。我们所做的是深入挖掘她作品中的段落，这些段落将向你们展示她如何思考声音、角色以及伟大作品的诗意。现在当你们聆听时，我希望你们注意一件事。注意简有多少次将写作描述为一种全身心的体验。她看待创作过程几乎像考古学家一样，仿佛在摸索着进入她自己小说中那个隐秘而神秘的世界。

I interviewed Jane Ann Phillips who won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction for a novel called Nightwatch. And what we did is we dug into passages from her writing that are gonna show you how she thinks about voice, character, and also the poetry of great writing. And now as you listen, I want you to notice something. I want you to notice how many times Jane describes writing as a full bodied experience. She sees the creative process almost like an archaeologist would, like feeling her way into the hidden and mysterious world of her own novel.

这听起来很酷。但具体怎么做呢？这正是本次采访要探讨的。我认为对话的一个好框架是你说的：我常被问及写作是否可以教授。天赋无法传授，但我坚信那些致力于教授小说写作和文学的作家们能够鼓励、启发、指导并培养新一代的小说家、短篇故事作家和诗人。

So that sounds cool. And how do you do that? Well, that's what this interview is all about. I think a good frame for the conversation is you say, I'm often asked if writing can be taught. One cannot teach talent, but I fully believe that committed literary writers who teach fiction writing and literature can encourage, inspire, mentor, and instruct a new generation of novelists and short story writers and poets.

你为什么

Why do you

这么说？我一直认为‘写作能否被教授’是个愚蠢的问题。学术界内部竞争激烈，许多英语系为了生存创办了艺术硕士项目，因为这吸引了一群全新的人群，他们以作家视角阅读和写作。其中一些人可能原本不知道需要以作家方式阅读，但希望这正是他们在艺术硕士项目中学到的。因为我个人认为，教授写作就是教授文学。

say that? I always thought that can can writing be taught was a silly question. There's a lot of competition inside academia, And many, many English departments, in order to survive, created MFA programs because that brought in a whole new group of people who were interested in reading as writers and in writing. And some of them might not have known that they needed to read as writers, but hopefully that's what they're taught in an MFA program. Because I feel personally that you teach writing by teaching literature.

我会告诉学生们，如今成为作家几乎像是加入了一个中世纪的行会。曾几何时，僧侣们誊抄这些彩绘手稿，只有僧侣能阅读它们。而我们生活在一个人们阅读的时代——读报纸、读标识、读手机内容，但极少人为了意义而阅读文学。我觉得如果你在写作，那就是你的阅读方式。很多时候你写作是受到盟友的启发，即那些对你而言作品具有根本意义的作家，因为它以一种深刻的内在方式与我们相连。

And I would tell my students that being a writer now is almost like being a member of a medieval guild, that there were those times when monks wrote these illuminated manuscripts and only monks could read them. And we live in a time in which people read. They read newspapers, they read signage, they read on their phones, but very few people read literature for meaning. And I feel as though if you're writing, that's the way you read. And you write many times inspired by your allies, that is the writers whose books are really elemental for you, because it does connect to us in such a deep interior way.

你最初是受过训练的诗人。这如何体现在你现在的写作产出和输入中？

You started off as a trained poet. And how does that show up both in the output of your writing and the inputs now?

嗯，我不确定是否算受过训练，因为那远在读研之前。本科时我确实参加过这类诗歌工作坊。我想我是通过写一页小说学会写作的。但我希望超越散文诗形式，达到一种极度压缩但语言高度凝练的小说境界——时而隐喻，时而反讽，整个故事压缩在一页纸上，使其具有螺旋式结构，如同油井喷发或能量环般从中心向外延展。而结尾必须非常非常明确。

Well, I don't know that I was trained because that was way before graduate school. But undergraduate, I did take part in these sort of poetry workshops. I learned to write, I think, by writing one page fictions. But I wanted to move past the prose poem form to a real sense of fiction that's very, very compressed, but written in a very densely, sometimes a metaphoric language, sometimes an ironic language, and the entire story being compressed into one page so that the story has a kind of spiral construction that moves out of the center like an oil well bursting or a circle of energy. And the ending has to be very, very definite.

最后一行应该完美。它应该在周围创造出一种空白感。标题也非常关键——仿佛先有标题，你读标题，读正文，当你读完时，标题的含义对你而言已经发生了转变。

The last line should be perfect. It should create a kind of white space around it. And the titles are very It's as though there's the title. You read the title, you read the piece, and by the time you finish the piece, the title is is transformed for you in terms of its meaning.

你能为我们读读《婚礼照片》的这个片段吗？好的。

Can you read Sure. This section of the wedding picture for us? Yeah.

这篇作品最初收录在《甜心》中，那是一本包含二十四篇一页小说的合集，封面是我父母的结婚照。所以标题叫《婚礼照片》。我母亲的脚踝从白色套装的裙摆中弯出，仿佛骨骼是水做的。布料之下，她橄榄色的肌肤舒展着。黑发，瓷白的脖颈，几乎不露牙齿的红唇。

And, this piece first appeared in Sweethearts, which was a book of twenty four one page fictions, and on the cover was this wedding picture of my parents. So the title, Wedding Picture. My mother's ankles curve from the hem of a white suit as if the bones were water. Under the cloth, her body and its olive skin unfolds. The black hair, the porcelain neck, the red mouth that barely shows its teeth.

我母亲的眼睛圆睁如炬，仿佛皮肤下有光将瞳孔灼成炭火。她的心跳发出无人聆听的声响，那声音诉说着：每个胎儿在子宫里都像孤岛般漂浮。

My mother's eyes are round and wide as a light behind her skin burns them to coals. Her heart makes a sound that no one hears. The sound says, each fetus floats an island in the womb.

那么当你创作这样的文字时，从写作过程的角度来看，你现在会如何看待这类创作？

So So as you write something like this, what do you see now as from a process perspective of writing something like this?

我其实无法回答这个问题，因为当我写作时，脑海里没有任何思绪。我只是全神贯注地跟随下一行文字。就像一行文字会启发下一行，或者前后行之间存在着紧密联系。创作这样的作品时，我通常会先完成全文，再稍作调整。比如从这里会转向关于父亲的描写。

I can't answer that question really because when I'm writing, nothing is going through my head. I'm just focused on following into the next line. It's sort of like one line sort of inspires the next or one line is so connected to the next. And when I'm writing a piece like this, I would probably write the whole thing and move just a few little things around. I mean, it goes from this to something about the father.

其中一句写道：父亲的心脏如钟锤撞击摔跤手般的胸膛。他年近四十，百合花正在吹响号角。照片里，他们身后正盛开着这些百合。这显然是对一张照片的描述，但正如你所见，隐喻性语言在某种程度上是无限的。我以前给学生布置过这样的练习：让每个人都带父母结婚照来课堂。

One of the lines is, My father's heart pounds a bell and a wrestler's chest. He is nearly 40, and the lilies are trumpeting. And in the photograph, there are these lilies coming up behind them. So, it's very definitely a description of a photograph, but as you can see, the metaphoric language is sort of limitless in a way. And I used to have an exercise for my students where I would say to them, okay, everyone bring in their parents' wedding picture.

如果父母没有结婚，就带他们的合照。有个学生带来了他成长的孤儿院照片。他们根据照片写作，然后带着作品和照片来课堂。当大家朗读这些作品时，我们总能获得美妙的体验。我们会将这些作品与照片复印件装订成册分发给学生。尝试描述一张你非常熟悉的照片是很有意义的——你了解照片背后的历史，知道拍摄后二十年的故事，乃至四十年的沧桑变迁。

Or if they weren't married, a picture of them together. One student brought in a picture of the orphanage where he grew up, and they write the piece, and they would bring the piece and the picture in, and we just would have a great experience with them reading all of these pieces. And we make a book of them with Xerox copies of the photographs and the pieces for each of the students. It's good a thing to do to try to describe a photograph that you know very well, that is you know the history, the twenty years beyond that photograph, the forty years beyond that photograph.

谈谈这个吧。'难以遗忘之事总是如此奇特'——这是《机器之梦》开篇第一句。

Tell me about this. It's strange what you don't forget. That's the first line of machine dreams.

是啊。

Yeah.

我的第一本小说。这句话是以母亲角色的口吻说的——那个本可能成为我母亲的角色。难以遗忘之事确实总是如此奇特。

My first novel. And that's being said in the voice of the character who is the mother. That is the character who would have been my mother. It is very strange what you don't forget.

嗯，这句话的深刻程度超越了单纯的开场白。感觉其中蕴含着...

Well, it feels profound beyond just being the first sentence. It feels like there's a

...这个概念蕴含的深意。这其实反映了我们经历无数事件，而她所说的正是这种现实...

lot of depth in that in that as an idea. Well, it's a whole it's this reality of we experience so many things, and yet she's saying

那是在一个非常早期记忆的背景下。为什么你会记得这一件事，以及这整个原始混沌般的意象和经历。它如此有趣，像一把特殊的钥匙，你明白吗？一把通向你是谁、你经历了什么、什么对你重要的钥匙。

that in context of a very early memory. Why do you remember this one thing and this whole kind of primordial soup of images and things that went on. And it's so interesting and it's a special it's a kind of key, you know? A key to who you are and what's happened to you and what matters to you.

你是否觉得那种陌生感是你所追寻的东西，就像试图用陌生感作为指南针来让自己惊喜？

Do you feel like that strangeness is something that you're kind of in pursuit of, like, almost trying to surprise yourself and using a kind of strangeness as a compass?

我感觉当我在作品中时，是跟随句子本身深入材料。不是我自己在思考材料，因为我想做的就是沉浸在材料里。有人曾对我说，读你的作品时，我不觉得是在阅读关于某件事，而是感觉自己就在其中。这实际上正是我希望读者感受到的——我希望他们能置身于材料本身之中。

I feel as though when I that I'm inside the work following the sentences themselves deeper into the material. There's not myself thinking about the material, because what I wanna do is be inside the material. Someone said to me once, when I read your work, I don't feel as though I'm reading about something. I feel as though I'm inside it, And that is actually, what I want the reader to feel. I want them to be inside the material itself.

我的意思是，当我们读到像‘穿过街道’这样的句子时，在你的脑海中，我穿过了街道，你就成为了那个人物。如果作家能足够深入地将你拉进去，你就在体验那个声音以及发生在那个声音世界里的一切，几乎就像发生在你身上一样。你会以自己的方式回应，也许是一种潜意识的方式，甚至你自己都未必意识到，但它形成了连接。明白吗？

I mean, when we read a line like across the street, in your mind's eye, I cross the street, you are that persona. And if the writer can pull you in deeply enough, you are experiencing that voice and whatever happens in the world to that voice, almost as though it's happening to you. And you're responding to it in your own way, in a kind of unconscious way maybe that you're not even necessarily aware of, but it it forms the connection. You know?

那么你是否觉得，即使从小说开篇的第一句话开始，比如‘奇怪的是你不会忘记’，甚至在前提设定之初，那种最初的种子，

So do you feel like even from the beginning of a novel with with a sentence, like, it's strange where you don't forget, like, even at the beginning with the premise, that sort of initial seed, do

你是否感觉自己被牵引着，跟随着那种低语？就像，我敢说，某种程度上臣服于作品本身？我当然希望能臣服于作品本身。如果能达到那种状态，那很好。那会是什么样子，又是什么感觉？

you feel like you're being pulled there and kind of following that whisper? Like, dare I say, sort of surrendered to the work itself? I sure hope to surrender to the work itself. If you can get there, that's good. What does that look and feel like?

你不会去想其他任何事情。你知道这种事可能发生在任何人身上——汽车修理工、画家、厨师，当他们全神贯注于自己所处的事物中时，会忘记时间。作家如果沉浸在材料本身中，也会发生这种事，读者同样如此。我们都曾有过那种阅读体验，某些内容对我们如此强烈，以至于我们忘记了

You're not thinking about anything else. You know how this can happen to anybody, a car mechanic, a painter, a cook, so involved in what they're inside that they lose track of time. So that's the kind of thing that happens to a writer if you're inside the material itself, and it happens to a reader. You know? We've all had that experience of reading something that's so intense for us that we lose track

时间。和我聊聊那种强烈而痴迷的阅读吧。这似乎是你非常珍视的东西，也是你经常做的事。当你那样阅读时，那个过程是怎样的？你如何选择要读什么书？

of time. Tell me about intense and obsessive reading. That seems to be something you really value, something you've done a lot of. When you do that, what is that process like? How do you think about what what books to read?

你如何看待实际的阅读和反思？最后我们会谈到它是如何渗透、融入并沉淀到

How do you think about the actual reading, the reflection? And then we'll end with how it kind of infuses and makes its way, sinks into

你的，你知道，我们会找到自己的盟友，他们可能是活着的作家，也可能是已故的作家。但我们阅读他们所有的作品，并且会反复阅读某些作品。这正是我鼓励学生去做的——找到那些作家，找到那些作品，真正深入其中。

your like, you know, we pick up our allies, and they might be living writers, and they might be dead writers. But we read all of their work, and we read certain works of theirs many, many times. I mean, that's what I encourage students to do. Find those writers. Find that work, and really get inside that work.

这始于纯粹为强烈愉悦而阅读一本书，然后重读以理解其运作方式，或许再读第三遍并在纸上梳理情节，几乎像背诵般记录每章内容。我曾这样精读过几本书，其中一本是伦纳德·加德纳的《肥城》，这本800页的巨作被他反复删减至如钻石般精炼。它讲述五十年代末加州斯托克顿的摔跤手故事，无数作家将之奉为写作圣经。类似的神作还有不少。

And that starts with reading the book for just intense pleasure and then reading it again to see how it works, and then maybe reading it again and and plotting it out on paper, almost memorizing the book, like writing down what happens in each chapter. What happens I mean, I have I've read several books like that, and one of them is Fat City by Leonard Gardner, a book that was 800 pages that he cut cut cut cut cut until it was just like a diamond. It's about wrestlers in Stockton, California in the late fifties. And many many writers are worship at the altar of that book. And there are other books like that.

对我而言，《喧哗与骚动》就是这样的书。创作《Larkintermite》期间，我始终随身携带这本福克纳的杰作。

For me, The Sound and the Fury is one of those books. It was a book that I carried with me everywhere all the time when I was writing Larkintermite.

能否请你指导如何阅读福克纳？该如何理解他的作品？

Can you walk me through how to read Faulkner, how to think about Faulkner?

美得惊心动魄，对吧？我是说，这

Just beautiful. Right? I mean, this

是福克纳的名句。他说'没有战役能被真正赢得，它们甚至不曾被战斗过。战场只会向人类展示自身的愚蠢与绝望，而胜利不过是哲学家与愚者的幻觉。'

is a very famous Faulkner quote. Because no battle's ever won, he said, they're not even fought. The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools.

可曾有过真实或被真实道出的话语？啊，福克纳就是一切。是他的语言，他创造的世界，他所有作品间的隐秘勾连。要知道，那个在吉姆·克劳时期被虚构出来的'失败事业'神话，而他真正书写的是那些确然失败的理想——正因为彻底失落，才显得如此哀伤而真实。

Was anything true or ever spoken? Oh, Faulkner is just It's everything. It's it's his language, the world that he creates, the way all all the books are connected one to the other. You know, there was this fake lost cause that was sort of drummed up during Jim Crow. But he was really writing about lost causes, and they were so sorrowful and so true only because they were lost.

谢天谢地它们失败了。但他写的是人与认知。写作本质上总是关乎认知。《喧哗与骚动》结尾处，当班吉因马车绕镇中心纪念碑逆向行驶而咆哮时，正是因他的感知秩序被颠覆。我们写作与阅读的方式，本质上都是在引导读者如何感知我们笔下的世界。

Thank god they were lost. But he wrote about people and perception. I mean, writing is really always about perception. You know, in that last image of The Sound and the Fury when Benjie is roaring because they're trying to go the wrong way in the carriage around the monument in the center of the town, it's because his perceptions have been shifted. The way that we write, the way that we read, we're trying to show the reader how to perceive this world that we're writing about.

每本书都在教会读者如何阅读它。不是吗？

Every book teaches you how to read it. Right?

你说'写作方式'具体指什么？我不太明白。

What do you mean you say write, but that's not clear to me?

我认为每本书都在教导读者如何阅读它。当你沉浸书中，就会逐渐感知到自己在叙事空间中的方位。就像坐上一把旋转椅，虽然椅子在转动，但你因全神贯注而能稳坐其中。

I think each book teaches the reader how to read it. You know, you you get inside the book, and you begin to see, feel where you are in space. Sort of like you sit down in a chair, the chair starts revolving, but you keep your seat because you're so intensely in place.

我是说，这正是我希望我的写作能达到的效果。我希望它真正关乎感知本身，唤醒对细节、时代背景和人物的全方位感知。这就像是你创作的基本元素。那么当你描写十九世纪的事物时，如何让它鲜活起来？那完全是个不同的时代，而你试图让它显得真实。

I mean, that's what I want my writing to do. I want it really to be about perception itself and sort of awaking perceptions around all the details, the time period, the characters. It's sort of the elements of what you're doing. So how do you bring that to life when you're writing about something in the nineteenth century? Like, there's that's a literally a different time, and you're trying to make it real.

我知道你去过精神病院，拍了照片之类的。你回到西弗吉尼亚老家。在研究初期，你还会做些什么来让一个地方、一个时代、一群人、一种文化先在自己脑海中生动起来，再转化为纸面上的文字呈现给读者？你通过研究做准备，但不仅仅是在思考研究内容。这需要更进一步的投入。

I know you went to the asylum, and you took photos and stuff like that. You go home to West Virginia. Like, what else do you do in research first to make a place, a time, a people, a culture vivid to yourself, and then to translate that onto the page for your readers. You just simply are kind of preparing yourself by doing the research, but you're not just thinking the research. It has to be sort of more.

具身化？更全身心的投入。但归根结底，这关乎感知，以及小说本质上是时间旅行的一种形式。

Embodied? More whole body. But, again, it's about perception and the fact that fiction is a form of time travel.

我完全不认为自己是个历史小说家。我所有的书都设定在不同时期，但那只是因为那些时代或地点最适合那个故事、那个叙事。所以写一本关于内战的书让我非常忐忑，但我觉得必须写，因为我已经写过越南和朝鲜这两场南北内战。但我们自己也有过那场惊天动地的南北战争，至今仍生活在它的阴影中。嗯。

I don't consider myself a historical novelist at all. All of my books take place in different times, but it's because that was the time or the place for this story, this narrative. So it was very daunting to try to write a book about the civil war, but I felt I had to go there because I'd written about these two civil wars between North and South, you know, in Vietnam and Korea. But we had this whole cataclysmic war between north and south that and we still live in its shadow today. Mhmm.

我必须找到切入点，摸索着进入。当我写《夜巡》开头时，场景是这样的：一个十二岁的孩子在过去几年里一直是家里唯一的大人。她母亲因创伤失语，此刻正被一个她被告知要称作'爸爸'的男人匆忙推上马车。男人说：'我们带她去休养治疗。'写完这第一章节时，他们就那样活生生地存在着。

And I had to find my way in, feel my way in. And when I wrote the beginning of Night Watch, it's this scene where this 12 year old child who has sort of been the only adult in her family for the past couple of years. Her mother is so traumatized that she's now mute, and she's being hustled into this buckboard by the man she's been told to call papa. And he says, we're taking her for her rest and cure. And I wrote that first section, and they were just there.

你知道的，他们的声音、交谈方式、潜台词——那些令人不寒而栗的言外之意，他们对话中隐藏的信息，他对她说的话。自然环境描写也让人感觉真实可信。写完这大约10到20页后，我想：好了，接下来呢？

You know, their voices, the way they were talking to each other, the subtext, this very scary subtext between, you know, and what they're saying to each other and what he's saying to her. The natural world felt as though it was real inside that piece. And at the end of that, I think it's 10 or 20 pages. Okay. Now what?

我完全没头绪。显然他们要去精神病院，但我从不预先规划整本书。

I had no idea. I mean, obviously, they were going to the asylum, but I don't plan the book out.

所以有种意外的

So there's a kind of surprise, a

创作中的神秘感。其实整本书对我都是个谜，当然这么说有点不诚实，毕竟这本书我已经构思了十年。写《夜巡》时，我确实有几次停笔，因为不知故事该往哪里发展。在这些间隙，我会重新扎进研究里，读更多资料。我的书架上堆满了相关书籍：照片集、日记、信件，还有关于那个地区和各个方面的学术著作。

kind of mystery to what you're creating. Well, the whole book is a mystery to me, but, of course, it's that's a little bit disingenuous because I've been thinking about this book for ten years. And in night watch, I did have periods of time where I stopped writing because I didn't know where I was going. And in those periods of time, I would sort of fall back into the research, you know, and do more and read more. I mean, I have shelves and shelves of books, books of photographs, diaries, letters, and scholarly books, you know, about the region and just sort of every aspect.

所以

So

当你感到那种停滞感时，你会怎么做？有些人会恐慌，有些人会非常沮丧并对自己生气。而你似乎对此异常平静。

what do you do when you feel that sense of stuckness? Is it some people panic. Some people get really frustrated and mad at themselves. You feel remarkably at peace with it.

不，我不知道。总是充满恐惧。我想，这就像在没有安全网的钢丝上行走。我常告诉学生，写作就像太空电影里的场景——有人穿着银色太空服在飞船外维修，仅靠一根细线连接。

No. I don't know. There's always a lot of fear. I mean, I think, you know, it's like walking a tightrope without a net. I used to tell my students that writing, it's sort of like spaceship movies where they're in outer space and somebody's on the outside of the ship in this silver suit, and they're trying to fix something, and they're attached by a little line.

然后线断了，他们永远飘向虚空。这就是写作的隐喻。另一个隐喻是：写作如同穿上石棉服径直走进火焰，而那件石棉服就是写作本身。

But then the line breaks, and they just drift off for eternity. That's kind of what writing that's a metaphor about writing. And another metaphor is the writing is like you put on this asbestos suit, and you walk straight into the flames. And the asbestos suit is writing itself.

回到关于停滞的问题。你说感到恐惧，当你卡住时会发生什么？

So back to the question about stuck. You said, I feel a sense of fear. What happens when you get stuck?

如我所言，有时我会等待。要么生活占据太多精力无法写作，要么就是不知后续方向。特别是写《Nightwatch》时，我重新投入研究。但更重要的是，完成当天工作后，若次日不知如何继续，就重读前一天的内容。

Well, as I said, sometimes I just wait. Either life is so is demanding so much of me that I can't write, or I'm at a point where I don't know where I'm going next. With this book in particular, with Nightwatch, I went back inside the research. But also, I feel as though finish the work for the day, and the next day, if you don't know where to go, you read that work again. You read that page again.

如果仍无头绪，就往前回溯10页重读。若还是迷茫，就从开头重读到当前位置。这样你就能知道接下来该写什么，因为必须沉浸于素材中。这是一种创作视角和方法，当然还有无数其他方式。

And if you still don't know where to go, you go back 10 pages, and you read those 10 pages. If you still don't know where to go, you go back to the very beginning, and you read through to where you are. And that's how you know what to write next because you have to be inside the material. That's a certain way of looking at it and a certain way of writing. There are a million ways.

但对我而言，基于我的创作目标和教学理念，我只能传授我理解的写作近似法。你需要做的就是深入作品内部。

But for me, for what I wanna do, and I suppose for the way that I teach, I can only teach, sort of an approximation of my perception of writing. Where you need to go is inside the work

本身。‘用耳朵编辑’是什么意思？2002年你在教学理念声明中写道——

itself. What does it mean to edit with your ears? 2,002, you write this teaching philosophy statement, and that's what you

‘用耳朵编辑’。因为语言是一种音乐。

say in there. Edit with your ears. Because, language is a music.

特别是大声朗读时——其实默读时我也能察觉。但朗读能明显听出问题所在，就像钢琴上的走音。文字应该自成乐章。当我们作为编辑阅读时，就是在寻找那些不和谐的节点。

And especially if you read the work out loud I mean, I can tell by reading it in my mind. But if you read the work out loud, you can tell where it goes off. It's like a flat note on a a piano. I mean, it should just work sort of inside its own music. And when we're reading as editors, we're looking for that spot where it goes off.

我是说，希望一开始那里就有些东西。你必须达到某个阶段，这个方法才能奏效。但你要倾听作品本身，才知道该往作品的哪个方向推进。有一个谜题是——

I mean, hopefully, there's something there to begin with. You've got to be at a certain point for this method to work. But you're listening for the work itself to know where to move in the work. One puzzle that's

浮现的问题是，你在谈论置身于艺术作品内部的重要性。但在你职业生涯的大部分时间里，你面临着繁重的教学任务，无法全职写作。考虑到你面对的这些特殊限制，我很惊讶这竟成为你写作思维中如此独特的重要部分。

emerging is you're talking about the importance of being inside the work of art itself. But for so much of your career, you had real demands of teaching, and you weren't able to write all the time and weren't always a full time writer. So how did you I'm surprised that that is such a uniquely important part of how you think about writing given that particular set of constraints that you face.

嗯，我就是固执地坚持。绝不放弃。你知道吧？是的。人们可能...我是说，这可能是我个人不讨喜的地方。

Well, I am just doggedly persistent. I do not give up. You know? Yeah. And people I mean, that could be a thing people could not like about me personally.

但正因为写作如此内省，这是我可以在内心持续耕耘的事。我从未废弃过一本书。大概只扔掉过一篇短篇。一旦开始创作，我就有种必须完成的执念，因为我能感觉到它就在那里——只是我还没看清全貌。

But especially because writing is so interior, that's something that I can work within myself. I've never thrown away a book. And I think I've only maybe thrown away one story. Once I start something, I feel this need to see it through because I feel it's there. I'm just not seeing it.

所以关键在于不断尝试抵达核心，深入其中，看清自己的创作。问题是...

So it's about trying to get there, get inside, see what I'm doing. How have

你是如何培养能协助写作的同侪的？无论是学习对象还是日常交往的人。我知道你常对学生强调这点很重要。

you cultivated peers to help you with writing in terms of who you're learning from, just the people that you surround yourself with? Because I know that you tell students that that's important.

其实不用刻意培养，就是偶然相遇。你知道，总会在某个地方遇到。艺术硕士项目的好处之一，就是能结识两三个可以终生相伴的读者。有位女士担任我的读者已长达数十年，我们其实是在产前教育班认识的。

Well, you don't cultivate them. You just run into them. You know, you run into them somewhere. I mean, one of the great things about MFA programs is that one can meet two or three people in that group of people that you will know all your life that can, who can be readers for you. And there's a particular person who's been my reader for years and years and years, and I actually met her in a childbirth class.

哦，真意外。当时我怀第一胎，她怀第四胎。我们成为朋友后，我发现她——她其实参与过艺术硕士项目，因为接连生育多年都没完成学业。但她是个极其敏锐的读者，至今仍是。

Oh, wow. I was having my first child. She was having her fourth. And we became friends, and I realized that she well, she had been involved in an MFA program, which she sort of didn't finish for many years because all these children. But she was a brilliant reader, and she is a brilliant reader.

她曾担任编辑和电影剪辑师，非常了解我的作品。所以我总把稿子发给她看。还有几位编辑对我至关重要，他们陪伴我完成了两三本书。

And she has has been an editor and a film editor, and she really knows my work. So I always send her everything. And I've had editors who've been very, very important, who've been with me through two or three books.

好诗的标准是什么？当你创作时，是如何抽丝剥茧写出好诗的？

What makes for good poetry? What makes for good poetry? Yeah. Like, as you're writing it, how do you kind of pull the yarn out to create good poetry?

哦，我不认为我在创作诗歌，但我是一个诗歌的读者。而且，因为我对诗人充满敬畏，我觉得阅读诗歌非常重要。我儿子是个诗人，哇哦，他大约两年前出版了一本诗集。

Oh, I don't I don't think that I'm creating poetry, but I'm I'm a reader of poetry. And, because it's so I'm in awe of people who are poets. And I find I find it very important to read poetry. My son is a poet Oh, wow. Who published a book of poems about two years ago.

所以不知怎么的，我养大了两个从事艺术的孩子。我是说，我不写诗，但我想我在小说写作中运用了某种诗人的创作方式。什么方式？就是逐行写作。是的。

So somehow, I've managed to raise two kids who are in arts. I mean, I don't write poetry, but I I suppose I use a kind of poet's composition process in the writing of fiction. In what way? Just writing line to line. Yeah.

并且思考内在的韵律，词语的声音，音节的排列，以及句子在页面上的呈现方式。这些都是其中的一部分。

And and thinking about the internal rhyme, the the sounds of the words, the way to the syllables, the way the the way the line sits on the page. It's kind of part of it.

你能为《机器之梦》读一下这个吗？我想听听你谈论它。你想要表达什么。

Can you read this for machine dreams? And I wanna hear you talk about it. What you're going for.

房子周围的田野充满了光线。灌木草丛长得高高的，马利筋的茎秆粗如手腕。野麦在田间生长，乌鸦盘旋着觅食，形成圆形的队形。杂草中的乳白色汁液黏稠而洁白。豆荚紧实，几周内都不会爆裂。

The fields surrounding the house were full of light. Scrub grass grew tall, and the milkweed stalks were thick as wrists. Wild wheat was in the fields, and the crows fed wheeling in circular formations. Milk syrup in the weeds was sticky and white. The pods were tight and wouldn't burst for weeks.

这是《机器之梦》中对房子后面田野的描述，基于我长大的房子，那是我父亲建造的。也就是说，他是建造这所房子的工队的工头。那是他的设计。周围是数英亩的土地。我们的院子有一英亩大，有围栏，然后有三片田野和一条小溪，再远处是这些高高的，你知道的，连绵起伏的山丘。

So this is a description of the fields behind the house in Machine Dreams, which is based on the house I grew up in, which my father built. That is, he was the foreman of a work crew that built this house. It was his design. And it was surrounded by acres of land. Our yard was an acre and it had a fence, and then there were three fields and a creek, and then these tall you know, these hills, sort of hills beyond hills.

这是对夏日田野的描述。有一种压缩感，你知道，茎秆粗如手腕，所以你真的能看到。还有乳白色的汁液，那是一种甜腻、黏稠、浓密、黏滑且洁白的东西。豆荚紧实，几周内都不会爆裂。所以，你知道，这非常具有性暗示。

And this is a description of the fields in the summer. There's a compression, know, stocks were thick as wrists, so you really see that. And the milk syrup, which is a sort of sweet, sticky, thick, viscous, sticky and white. The pods were tight and wouldn't burst for weeks. So, you know, it's very sexual.

它非常自然。那是自然世界的力量，你知道的，远在我们存在之前就已经存在。

It's very natural. It's very The power of the natural world, you know, there long before we were.

当你写《夜巡》时，你回去研究了十九世纪阿巴拉契亚的说话方式？是的。告诉我关于

When you were writing Nightwatch, you went back and studied nineteenth century Appalachian speech patterns? Yes. Tell me about

那个。嗯，我阅读了那个时代写的书，我想在《机器之梦》的致谢中，在《夜巡》的致谢中，我提到了其中一些书。有一套四卷的关于内战的书，分别记录了战争的第一年、第二年、第三年和第四年。这些书由将军、步兵、南方的女性、北方试图在战争中生存的女性的信件组成，他们的说话方式——我不是在刻意寻找或记录什么，只是让它们慢慢渗透进来。

that. Well, I I read books written at that time, and I think in the acknowledgments to Machine Dreams, in I the acknowledgments to Night Watch, I mentioned some of these books. There was one four volume set of books on the Civil War that took year one, year two, year three, year four of the war. And these books were composed of letters from generals, from infantry, from women in the South, women in the North trying to live through the war, and the way they spoke just kind of I wasn't sort of looking for things or writing things down. It was just sort of sinking in.

像被冲刷过一样笼罩着你？

Like washed over you?

只是有点被冲刷过的感觉。是的。那些让我们信服地展现那个时代的电影。摄影集。照片对我来说一直非常重要。

Just a little washed over you. Yeah. Films that we've seen that are convincing about that period of time. Books of photographs. Photographs have always been very important for me.

我能看出来。是的。家庭照片，我还有许多精美的内战摄影集。这就是为什么在《夜巡》中，书里收录了我从各个档案馆获取的照片和文件。我还做了一个PPT，在做朗读会和活动时，我经常在大屏幕上展示这些放大的图像，因为它们能以超越言语的方式诉说。

I can tell. Yeah. Family photographs, and I have so many beautiful books of civil war photographs. And that's why in night watch, there are photographs and documents that I've got from various archives that are inside the book. And I have a PowerPoint where you're able to see these images very big on a big screen that when I do readings and events, I often show those images because they just speak in a way that is beyond speech.

你看，我们正在看的是真实存在过的东西。如果你思考时间的共时性——柏格森的理论，过去、现在和未来是共存的，同时存在。只要我们能感知到，真实的事物就永远真实。这就是我对照片的感受。

You know, we're looking at something that was real. And if you think about the simultaneity of time, Bergson's theory, the simultaneity of time, that past, present, and future coexist, all existing at the same time. The fact that something is real means it's real forever as long as we can apprehend it. So that's how I feel about photographs.

为什么你说作家像是文化的良知？因为我们思考之后会发生什么。

And why do you say that writers are like the conscience of a culture? Because we think about what happens afterward.

艺术总是关于拯救可能消失、终将消失的事物。我对自己的写作，几乎任何我能想到的作家都是如此——除非你写下来，否则它就会消失。这可能始于，你知道，第一部小说往往是最具自传性的作品。它始于拯救那个已逝的世界。但你写的任何东西，都是在发现、创造、倾听、沉浸其中，除非你完整写出来，否则所有这一切都会消失，因为它是独特的视角，而我们需要所有这些。

Art is always about saving what might be lost, what will be lost. And I feel that very much about, well, about my writing and about almost any writer I can think of that unless you write it down, it will be lost. And that might start with, you know, the first novel is often sort of the most autobiographical work. It starts with saving that world that's gone. But anything you write, you're you're finding something, you're inventing something, you're listening to something, you're inside something, and unless you write it to the end, all of it would be lost because it's a particular vision, and we need all of that.

我们需要所有这些书。

We need all of those books.

那么你是否觉得自己天生对语言本身就有超乎寻常的敏感？

So do you feel like you were born with, like, a hypersensitivity to language itself?

哦，这个我不确定。我很早就开始阅读，住在一条乡间小路边。我痴迷地读着母亲为我订阅的小书会寄来的书。信箱在车道尽头，书送到那里后我就跑去取。我写过一篇散文描述这段经历——我父亲有许多小孩子不该读的平装书，封面印着裸女和枪械之类的。他把这些书藏在橱柜里，要站在浴室台面上才能打开柜门拿到，而我确实这么干过，翻看他的书。

Oh, well, I don't know. I was a very early reader, and I lived, you know, out on this rural road. And I read obsessively little book clubs that my mother would join for me. The mailbox was out at the end of the driveway, and they would come to the mailbox and go out there and get them. I've written an essay in which I describe, you know, my father had all these little paperback books that kids weren't supposed to read with naked women on the cover and guns and sort and of like there was a and he kept them in this cupboard that was you had to stand on the bathroom counter to open the door and reach into that cupboard, which I did to look through his books.

有一天我偶然发现一本《兔子快跑》，大众市场版的封面上有个裸女。这明显是该书的大众市场版本。我父亲可能是误买的——谁知道呢？他平时读的都是米奇·斯皮兰那类小说。

And I happened to find one day a copy of Rabbit Run, a mass market copy with a of naked woman on the cover. It was clearly the mass market edition of the book. And my father probably bought it by mistake. Who knows? Because he's like Mickey Spillane and that kind of thing.

我刚翻开这本书，恰好读到珍妮特醉酒后在浴缸里给婴儿洗澡的情节。由于醉酒，她失手滑落了婴儿。这一幕彻底震撼了我的心灵。我记得当时望向窗外，看见紫丁香丛，但它们甚至不再像是紫丁香——我的思绪完全被阅读体验冲击得七零八落。

And I just opened this book, and I opened it to the moment in the book that Janet, drunk, is bathing her infant in the bathtub. And because she's drunk, she loses her grip on the baby. And it just completely blew my brains apart. I remember looking out the window and seeing the lilac bushes as though but they didn't even look like lilac bushes. I was just so blown away by reading that.

那时我大概九、十岁。

And I was about nine or 10.

你当时感受到的是纯粹的震撼吗？比如'天啊这个场景太打动人了'，还是'文字本身竟能如此震撼我'的惊叹？又或是产生了'我也要写出这种效果'的念头？

Do you feel like in that moment you were blown away? Like, wow. I'm the scene was moving, or I'm astonished that writing itself can move me like that? Or was it like, well, I wanna do that for

职业方向？根本没想那么多。纯粹是阅读带来的冲击力。我的第一反应是：天啊，我母亲绝对不可能做出这种事——

my career? Thinking anything. It was simply the power of reading that. I mean, I mean, my way of thinking about it was, wow. My mother would never do that.

我母亲绝不会在浴缸里失手摔落婴儿。但文字能让这种场景如此真实，这是事后我才意识到的。当时我大脑一片空白，就只是震撼。后来我甚至没继续读完那本书——

My mother would never lose her baby in the bathtub. But the power of making that real, you know, I'm I'm describing afterward what was happening. Because at the time, I wasn't thinking about anything. I just was like, wow. And I never I didn't read the rest of the book.

当时不得不把书放回去。当然，后来我还是读完了。

I had to put it back. Of course, I read it later.

真有意思，我总追问你当时的思考过程，而你总说'我没思考，那是一种感官冲击'。

I think it's so funny that I keep asking you about thinking, and you're like, I don't think. I have a felt experience.

其实我无时无刻不在思考

Well, I think constantly

确实。

Right.

甚至到了有害的程度。我的大脑就像永不停歇的发动机，不断空转。但写作时是另一种状态——那时我反而停止了思考。

To my own detriment. I can't stop thinking. I have, you know, rev rev rev kind of brain that goes on and on and on. But in in the act of writing, it's a different experience. I'm not thinking then.

为什么你总是从孩子的视角来写作？

Why do you write so much from the perspective of children?

嗯，我想是因为我早期一位导师的偶像是詹姆斯·艾吉。他的《家中丧事》至今仍是对我最重要的书之一。我喜爱他以孩童视角写作的方式。那本书讲述的是他自己的人生故事。他是个如此有趣的人，在那么多不同体裁中创作探索性作品。

Well, I think because one of my early mentors' idols was James Agee. And his book, A Death in the Family, is still one of the most important books for me. And I love the way that he wrote from a child's point of view. That book is the story of his life. And he was such an interesting being, you know, that he wrote sort of exploratory works in so many different genres.

他是首位影评人，写过诗集，也是新闻业的先驱。他与沃克·埃文斯合著的《现在让我们赞美名人》绝对是本不朽的必读之作。在那本书里，他花了整整两页描写一把手工木椅。

He was the first movie reviewer. You know, he wrote a book of poems. He was the first journalist. He did let us now praise famous men with Walker Evans, another absolutely, you know, deathless necessary book. He spends two pages writing about a a wooden a handmade wooden chair in that book.

福克纳也常从儿童视角写作。我觉得孩子才是终极的叛逆者。没错，他们看待事物毫无语境束缚。

And Faulkner also wrote about children, you know, from child's point of view. And I I just feel as though children are the ultimate outlaws. Outlaws. They're yeah. They don't see anything in context.

一切都是崭新的。那就像禅宗所说的初心境界。若能出色地以孩童视角写作，这种声音能达成其他叙事角度无法企及的效果。

It's all new. Yeah. It's sort of beginner's mind, a sort of zen mind So that inside a child's point of view, if you can write it well unbelievably, it does something no no other voice can do.

你说孩子是终极叛逆者时，听起来这概念很重要。我想写关于叛逆者的故事，这个想法背后有什么深意吗？

You know, children, they're the ultimate outlaws. And you said that as if that's a really important thing. I wanna write about outlaws. Like, what what what's going on with that?

写作必须无所畏惧。我常告诉学生，你们唯一的责任就是怀着悲悯写作。绝不能憎恶自己笔下的角色。

Writing can't be afraid of anything. I used to tell my students, your only responsibility is to write with compassion. That compassion has to come into it. You can't hate your characters. You know?

除此之外，你必须如实书写。无论真相多么伤人——毕竟那些以为你在写他们的人错了。当你开始书写某人的瞬间，那人就不再是原本的某人。

Beyond that, you you have to just tell the truth. No matter how. It might hurt people who think you're writing about them because, of course, you're not. The minute you start to write about someone, it's not that someone.

什么意思？开始书写某人时，那人就不再是原本的某人？

What do you mean? The minute you start to write about somebody, it's not that somebody.

虚构创作就是如此。这意味着当你进入角色世界时，你并非在记录某人，而是在创造新现实。

No. Not if you're writing fiction. What does that mean? It just means that if you're going to move into the world of character, you're not simply writing about somebody. You're inventing a new reality.

可能是受到你认识的某个人或与你所知之人相关的某些事物的启发。比如我写第一部小说时，就一直在思考我的父亲和母亲。希望我触及了他们本质中更深层的真实——他们是谁、他们是什么样的人。你不能考虑别人会如何评价你的作品，因为一旦你开始考虑受众——就像有些人说的‘要为读者着想’，比如编辑会说‘这类题材的书现在很畅销’之类的话。

Might have been inspired by someone you knew or some something about someone you knew. I mean, certainly when I was writing my first novel, I was thinking about my father and my mother. And, hopefully, I approached the deeper reality of who they were, who they are. You can't think about how people will react to your work because the minute you think about an audience because, you know, some people say, think about your audience. Think Think about, you know I mean, the editors are saying, books about this are doing well, something like that.

你绝不能考虑受众，因为那会让你立即脱离真正重要的事——即你正在努力创作的那本书本身。

You can't think about your audience because that immediately, you know, cuts you off from what's really happening, which is the book that you're trying to write.

关于儿童的观点，你说孩子们会制定自己的规则。他们寻找比父母或社会给予的更真实的真相，而后者往往像一道屏风，掩盖着秘密。

On the point about children, you say children formulate their own rules. They look for a truth that is truer than what they've been given by their parents or society, which is often some screen to push down secrets.

正是如此。掩盖秘密的屏风。这就是我成长的文化环境。这种文化有无数种变体，明白吗？

Exactly. A screen to push down secrets. That's the culture I grew up in. And there are many, many permutations of that culture. You know?

我丈夫是犹太人，他肯定会说很多事都是避而不谈的。但在那个小镇世界里——我觉得全美各地的小镇都很有趣——小镇都有某些共同点。我说的不是郊区或荒僻的微型村镇，那些地方有非常独特的地理环境。

My husband's Jewish, and he would certainly say many things weren't talked about. But in that world, it was a small town. I think small towns are so interesting all across America. Small towns have certain things in common. I'm not talking about suburbs or, you know, really small towns that are out in the land somewhere, you know, that have these physical worlds that are very specific.

这是个人们熟知彼此家族几代故事的世界。尤其对于偷听大人谈话、察觉流言蜚语的孩子而言，能感受到表象世界之下还藏着另一个世界，一张由秘密编织的网。当然这是真实的，这就是生活本身的本质。你凝视它时——

And it is a world in which people know each other's stories back generations. And there's especially for a child who's sort of hearing adult conversations and being aware of gossip or whatever, there is this sense of a world underneath the world, a secret a a a sort of web of secrets. And, of course, that's true. That's true about the element of life itself. You sort of you look you look at it.

在分子层面，我们完全感知不到那张桌子分子的运动轨迹。所以这有点像‘上行下效’——那句古老谚语说的‘人间即永恒，人间即...’永恒的反面是什么来着？

The the the molecular level, we're not aware of any of that, the way that the molecules at that table are moving. You know? So it's it's kind of as above, so below. You know, that ancient proverb saying, as in our daily lives, so with eternity. As in our daily lives, so with what's the opposite of eternity?

死亡。人间即死亡。我常告诉学生写作也是死亡的预演。因为你在书写转变的过程——从构思、渴望到真正落笔，这个创作行为本身就是一场蜕变。

Death. So with death. I used to tell my students too that writing is practicing for death. It's practicing for death because you're writing about you're trying to write about transformation, that there is a transformation involved from the thinking and the wanting to actually writing. I mean, you're you're involved in transformation in the act of writing.

你刚说写作是死亡的预演。而你——

You said it's practicing for death. And, you

明白吗？我们确实需要练习。我希望保持觉知。没人知道具体会面临什么境况，但死亡终究是重大转折。我们不记得出生，至少没有清醒的记忆。

know, we do need to practice. I mean, I wanna be aware. You know what I mean? I don't wanna be no no one knows, you know, what what the circumstances will be, but this is sort of the big transition. We don't remember birth, at least not consciously.

我不知道。只是觉得这非常有趣。

I don't know. I just find it very interesting.

我摘录了这段引文，很想请你读一读。这是一个12岁女孩对她失语的母亲说的话。我认为这某种程度上串联起了我们近期讨论的一些主题——孩子、声音。

I pulled this this quote, which I'd love for you to read. 12 year old girl speaking to her mute mother. And I think this kind of brings together some of the themes that we've been talking about over the last little while, children, voice.

这是角色帕帕。她被要求称呼这个角色为帕帕，而他几乎霸占了她们家近三年。在此期间，她母亲遭受严重创伤以致失语。某天他们突然坐在前往精神病院的马车上，途中他对康奈利说了这些话。

Well, this is the character Papa. She's been told to call this character Papa, and he has been sort of occupying their home for almost three years. And during that time, her mother has become so traumatized that she is mute. And one day, suddenly, they're in the buckboard on the way to the asylum. And they're on the way, and he's saying this to Connelly.

“和她说话，”他说，“告诉她她会喜欢那个地方。像城堡钟楼那样宏伟的好地方。告诉她。” “你会喜欢的，妈妈，”我说。

Talk to her, he said. Tell her she'll like it where she's going. A fine great place like a castle with a tower clock. Tell her. You'll like it, mama, I said.

“像石砌城堡那样的好地方。”当然，她从未见过那里，也不知道目的地。在这部分的结尾，发生了些我们不便透露的事。某种意义上，我所有的书都是在为创作这本书做准备。约十到十五年前，有位朋友曾听我提起过这个关于母女前往精神病院的构思。

A fine place like a castle built from stone. So, of course, she's never seen this place, and she doesn't know where they're going. And at the end of this section, something happens that we won't reveal here. I think all of my books you know, were preparation for writing this book in a sense. And a friend of mine told me, like, maybe ten or fifteen years ago, we were somewhere together, and I mentioned this book or this idea about a mother and daughter who go to an asylum.

我完全不记得这事，但这个念头肯定酝酿已久。我成长的小镇距那所精神病院仅二十分钟车程。虽然我知晓它时已成废墟，但在我心中那是真实存在的地方。本书的部分研究就是追溯它在内战初期及之后的原貌——那当然是个截然不同的时空。

And I don't remember that at all, but I must have been thinking about it for a long time. And I grew up. And the small town I grew up in was about twenty minutes from this asylum. So it was a real place in my mind, although at the time that I knew of it, it was a ruin. And part of the research with the book was going back to that place as it existed in the beginning during and after the civil war when it was a very very different, of course, time, place, world.

那么灵感如何转化为书？是突然决定“我要写这个主题”吗？还是每天持续写作直到...

So how does the how does an idea transition into a book? Do you make a decision? I'm gonna write a book about this? No. You just kinda write every day and

不，我甚至不每天写作。我的创作是爆发式的，当有空间时可能连续写几周或几个月。如我所言，这本书写了八年，期间有过数月停笔。

No. I don't even write every day. I write I write in in spurts almost Okay. For weeks or months at a time when I have the space. And as I said, I've worked on this book for about eight years, and there were times in which I would stop writing for months.

实际上我在2020年1月辞去了日常工作。

And actually, I retired from my day job in January 2020.

真是...凑巧的时间点。

Tough. It's convenient time.

就在疫情爆发前。是的。当时发生的一切让人感到无助。没有解药。你知道吗？

Right before the pandemic. Yeah. And and it there was something about the what was happening to everyone. There was no cure. You know?

街道空无一人。这本书几乎成了我的避难所，就像精神病院成为伊莱扎和康奈利出人意料的庇护所那样。书中核心的讽刺在于，外界充满暴力与混乱，而在这个地方却存在着另一种可能。一切都颠倒了。

Things were deserted. This book almost became my refuge in the way that the asylum becomes a refuge, a surprising refuge for Eliza and Connelly. And the irony at the heart of the book is that the world was violent chaos. And inside this place, there was something else. Everything was reversed.

明白吗？因为这确实像是彻底颠覆了我们所认知的生活。所以在那个特殊时期，我反而完成了这本书。

You know? Because it did feel like a complete reversal of what life's with what we thought life was. So somehow, that period of time in that period of time, I was able to finish the book.

跟我说说。这是怎么回事？你为什么坚持手写？别漏掉细节。

Tell me this. What's going on here? Why do you write by hand? Don't some stuff out.

我甚至不知道你引用的是哪段话。

I don't know even what that's from.

那就更笼统地说吧，你知道的，关于...

Well, just more generally, you know, in terms of

这就是我标准的写作方式。我在笔记本上写作，而且我一直不擅长——从没真正学会写连笔字。所以我写的更像是快速书写。不过我倒写过几篇关于美发沙龙的文章，因为那是我童年时女性聚集的场所。当时我还是个孩子。

this is pretty standard for how you write. I write, in a notebook, and I I was always a terrible I never really learned how to write cursive. So my my is sort of printing that you can do very quickly. Well, I have written a few things about hair salons because there are places where when I was a child, women gathered. And I was a child.

我像是这个女性聚会中的小闯入者。那种感觉就像...你知道教堂的实体感官元素——红地毯、长椅、巨大的管风琴、彩色玻璃窗，那个世界对孩子来说震撼得令人永生难忘。而美发沙龙里弥漫的热气、流动的水、泡沫，还有女人们那种心照不宣的私密交谈，对我来说，童年时那真像是通过钥匙孔窥视成人世界，女性世界的体验。

I was an outlaw inside this gathering. And it's sort of like, you know, the physical, the sensory element of church, the red carpet, the pews, the huge organ pipes, the stained glass windows, the that world is so impressive and, never to be forgotten for a child. And this world with the sort of the heat in the air and the running water and the suds and, these women talking to each other in a way that they know no one can hear them. For me, it was a real as a child, it was a real a sort of looking through a keyhole into the adult world, the world of women.

听起来你的童年记忆异常鲜活，你花了很长时间去理解这些经历。

Seems like you had a very vivid childhood that you spent a long time really making sense of.

我不确定。我只是在寻找某些东西，真相。还有其中的美——虽然当时并不觉得那是美，只觉得世界本就如此。

I don't know. I was always looking for something, you know, the truth. And also, just the beauty of it. I wasn't thinking of it as beauty. Just the way things were.

我曾渴望如此。后来作为作家，我真正想使作品具有真实感。这很大程度上依赖于感官细节和清晰的物理描述。文字有种魔力般的特质——对我而言，语言本身、人们运用语言的方式、以及那些对我至关重要的作家驾驭文字的方式，都蕴含着这种魔力。

I wanted to. And later on, you know, as a writer, I wanted to really make the work real. And a lot of that had to do with sensory detail and physical descriptions being very clear. There is this magical quality to it. There's this magical quality for me to language, to the way people use language, to the way certain writers who've become so important to me use language.

能参与这种尝试实在是种殊荣，因为作家的思维方式确实不同。无论这是为死亡预演，还是以某种方式具象化蜕变，本质上都是对信仰的宣言——不是宗教意义上的信仰，不是相信一切都会变好的盲目乐观，而是坚信生命具有意义，一切皆有深意。否则我们为何要追寻意义？这正是我们讨论作家写作以避免世界被遗忘的原因。如果把生命比作广袤的摇曳长草，所有无名逝者都湮没其中...

And it's just really a privilege to be involved in that attempt because writers do think a little differently, Whether that's practicing for death or embodying transformation in a way, it's a real statement of faith. Not religious faith, not the faith that everything's gonna turn out great, but the faith that life is meaningful, that it all has meaning. Because if it didn't, why would we be finding meaning? That is I think one thing that we talked about writers writing so that worlds aren't lost. If this life and all of these nameless forgotten people, if you just think of it as a huge field of moving tall grass, and it's all just anonymous.

草浪翻涌不息。每个人都是独特的历史天才，各自经历着完全独立的体验、创伤与可能的治愈。他们穿行于自己的人生——这本身就意义非凡。而写作，尤其是叙事写作之所以重要，正因为我们是故事的造物。

It's just moving. Each person is a kind of historical genius in that each person is completely separate in their experience, traumas, their healing if it happens. They're moving through their lives, you know. It means so much. And that's what writing and particularly writing I think because we are creatures of narrative.

我们以文字思考，用意象构建过去、现在、未来与幻想。无论生活多么残酷，这一切都充满深刻意义。我认为这本身就是种奇迹。

We think in terms of words. We think in terms of images, past, present, future, fantasies. It's all intensely meaningful no matter how terrible life can be. And I just think that's kinda miraculous.

很高兴见到你。非常高兴。

It's good to meet you. Good to meet you.