乔·希尔的恐怖书单推荐与维克多·拉瓦尔谈《鬼入侵》（重播）

我是《Serial》的主持人Sarah Koenig。我们有一个新节目，名为《预防者》。讲述的是宾夕法尼亚东部发生的一件怪事。父母们声称他们带孩子去医院就医，结果却被强制与孩子分离。

This is Sarah Koenig, host of Serial. We have a new show. It's called The Preventionist. It's about something strange that happened in Eastern Pennsylvania. Parents claiming they'd walked into a hospital to get medical care for their children and then were forced to leave without them.

为什么这些父母突然失去了孩子的监护权？由Serial Productions和《纽约时报》联合制作的《预防者》即将上线。符合条件的Time订阅用户现在就可以在Apple Podcasts和Spotify上收听，快去订阅吧，或者等到10月30日在任何平台收听。

Why were these parents suddenly losing custody of their kids? From Serial Productions and The New York Times, it's The Preventionist. Eligible Time subscribers can listen right now on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, so head there to subscribe, or listen anywhere October 30.

我是《纽约时报书评》的编辑Gilbert Cruz，这里是书评播客。本周我们将延续十月的氛围，为您带来过去几年与几位优秀恐怖小说作家的对话。首先是2024年，Joe Hill带着他近十年来的首部小说《国王的悲伤》做客节目。精彩的对话中，他推荐了许多令人毛骨悚然的好书。

I'm Gilbert Cruz, editor of The New York Times Book Review, and this is the Book Review podcast. This week, we're staying on October vibes and presenting you with a couple of conversations from years past with great horror writers. First, from 2024, Joe Hill, who has just released his first novel in almost a decade, King's Sorrow, came on the pod. Great conversation. He offered a bunch of fantastic scary book recommendations.

广告之后，2023年《孤独女性》的作者Victor Laval将谈论他一生中读过最多次的书——也是我反复阅读的经典——Shirley Jackson的《鬼入侵》。希望您喜欢这两段对话，我个人非常享受。更期待下周MJ Franklin主持的每月书友会讨论，本期主题是Stephen Graham Jones今年的新作《猎野牛人》。不过现在，让我们先听听Joe Hill的分享。

And then after the break, Victor Laval, author of twenty twenty three's lone women, talks about the book he's read the most in his life, a book I have read many times, the great Shirley Jackson's the haunting of hill house. I hope you enjoyed both of these conversations. I absolutely did. And I doubly hope that you look forward to next week's episode of the podcast in which MJ Franklin, as he does, every month hosts a book club discussion, this one about this year's The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones. But first, let's turn to Joe Hill.

作家Joe Hill，长篇小说和短篇小说创作者，也涉足图像小说领域。多年前我为《时代》杂志采访您前第一次读到您的作品《二十世纪鬼故事》短篇集。当时可能没说过，但这个阅读体验让我记忆深刻。

Joe Hill, author, novelist, short story writer, has worked in the graphic novel space. The first time I read you before interviewing you, I feel like years ago for Time Magazine for Horns. This was a very long time ago. It was twentieth Century Ghosts, which is a short story collection. And I don't know if I said this at the time, but it has stuck with me.

当时我在听《二十世纪鬼故事》的有声书版本。如果没记错的话，开篇故事叫《最佳新恐怖》。情节紧张到让我在纽约地铁站台上真的冒冷汗——不是因为夏季站台高达97华氏度的温度，而是纯粹被故事氛围吓的。

I was listening to it. I was listening to the audiobook version of twentieth Century Ghosts. And the first story in twentieth Century Ghosts is a story called Best New Horror, if I'm recalling correctly. And it was so tense that I was genuinely sweating on a New York City subway platform. And I wasn't sweating because it was summertime, and it gets to be 97 degrees on these platforms.

记得那应该不是夏天。就是纯粹的紧张感，非常强烈。后来读到其中《波普艺术》那个短篇时...可以说是我读过恐怖小说集里最动人的短篇作品之一。

I think it was a different time of year. It was just it was very tense. Very tense. And then several stories later, there's a story called Pop Art, which was Yeah. One of the more moving pieces of short fiction I've read in a horror collection ever, maybe.

看到那里的范围真是令人欣喜。

It was a great delight to see the range there.

你太客气了。我记得2010年左右我们在波士顿的一家餐厅聊过，嗯，关于喇叭的事。之后不久，我就精神崩溃并离婚了。所以吉尔伯特，希望这次谈话能有个好结果。

That's very kind. I remember that we spoke in a restaurant in Boston around 2010 Mhmm. For horns. And shortly afterwards, I had a nervous breakdown and a divorce. So, Gilbert, I'm hoping this conversation has a better outcome.

我不想把这些都推给你，但也不会让你完全置身事外。显然我们有过那次谈话，两年后我就成了接受治疗的离婚男人。所以呢？总之，这里没压力。

I don't wanna lay all that on you, but I'm not taking you completely off the hook. Clearly, we had this conversation, and two years later, I was a divorced guy in therapy. And so What? Anyway, no pressure here.

发生了什么？我很难过。我觉得你该早点告诉我这些的。

What happened? I'm so sorry. I feel like you should have told me this earlier.

在谈话之前？

Going into the conversation?

是啊。这可能是我们自那以后第一次交谈。

Yeah. This might be the first time we've spoken since then.

这次谈话后我会随时告诉你进展。我会让你知道情况如何。太好了。

I'll keep you updated after this conversation. I'll let you know how it goes. Great.

谢谢。欢迎收听书评播客。

Thank you. Welcome to the Book Review podcast.

感谢邀请。能来这里真是太好了。

Thanks for having me on. It's wonderful to be here.

考虑到你的身份和成长经历，这个问题可能有点傻，但你从小对恐怖小说的关系是怎样的？我们今天要聊的就是恐怖小说。

This is such a silly question given who you are and how you grew up, but what has your relationship to scary books been from the time you were a child? We're here to talk about scary books.

可以说我一生都与恐怖题材结缘。房间里的大象就是——我父亲是斯蒂芬·金。这个事实在我职业生涯初期曾保密过一段时间，那时我正在寻找自己的声音并开始发表作品。但我是斯蒂芬·金的超级粉丝，和许多八十年代的孩子一样深深着迷于父亲的作品，读完了所有作品。问题是人们觉得那本书很厚，但我读的是第二稿手写本。

It is quite literally a lifelong relationship with the scary stuff. So the elephant in the room was with my dad as Stephen King. A fact that I was able to keep secret for a period of time in the early part of my career while was finding my own voice and starting to publish. But I'm a huge Stephen King fan and fell hard for my dad's work like so many other children of the nineteen eighties and read everything. And the thing is people, they think of it as a long book, but I read it in second draft and manuscript.

那份手稿堆起来有膝盖那么高。那时候我个子是矮些，但也没那么矮。那是部巨大的手稿，真的非常巨大，而我完全被那个故事迷住了。

And that and that manuscript was like came to my knee. I was shorter then, but I wasn't that short. It was a huge manuscript, manuscript, and, and, certainly, certainly, I was swept away by that story.

你读那本书的时候多大？那本书有很多

How old were you when you read that book, which has a lot

很小的时候。实在太早了。

of young. Far far too young.

是的。

Yeah.

我想我当时12岁。如果你查看这本书的出版日期再减去两年

I think I was 12. If you look at the date the book came out and subtract two years

8086，可能吗？

8086, maybe?

好的。那么我是在1984年读的，那时我应该是12岁。

Okay. So I read it in 1984, I would have been 12.

好的。

Okay.

我最近和一个朋友聊天时提到，从某些方面来说，我觉得我一生都在试图写这本书。我的第三部作品《诺斯费拉图》

I was talking to a friend recently, and I said, in some ways, I feel like I've been trying to write it my whole life. My third book, Nosferatu

嗯。

Mhmm.

那是一次尝试，我试着写它。我有一本新书叫《国王的悲伤》，明年会出版，我想我当时就是在尝试写那种风格。我写过一篇短篇小说《黑电话》，收录在《二十世纪幽灵》里。当时写的时候，我完全没往那方面想。但现在回头看，我发现那本书的影响贯穿了整个故事。

Was a stab, my attempt to write it. I've got a new one that'll be out next year called King's Sorrow where I was trying to write it, I think. I did a short story called the black phone that was in twentieth century ghosts. And at the time I wrote it, it was the furthest thing from my mind. But when I look at it now, I see the influence of that book all over that story.

你从那本书中汲取了什么？那是本大部头，内容非常丰富。但你认为哪些元素在你的写作中反复出现？

What did you take from that book? It's a big book. There's a lot to take from it, but what do you think are the elements that keep coming back over and over in your writing?

我很早就明白，有效的恐怖不在于施虐。不是向读者抛出一堆内脏。有效的恐怖在于让你爱上某些角色，塑造丰满立体的角色，让你愿意花时间陪伴他们。而你会花时间陪伴他们，因为通常读完一本书需要十二到二十小时。所以你结识一些角色，爱上他们，然后看着他们被迫面对我们能想象到的最糟糕境遇。

I learned pretty early on that effective horror is not about sadism. It's not about throwing a pile of guts at the reader. Effective horror is about giving you some characters to fall in love with, introducing fully rounded characters who feel like you would want to you would want to spend time with them. And you're going to spend time with them because it usually takes between twelve and twenty hours to read a book. So you meet some characters, and you fall in love with them, and then you see them forced to confront the worst that we can imagine.

从这个意义上说，我认为优秀的恐怖小说关乎同情。关乎共情，而非残忍。嗯。这一点并不总是被清楚理解，所以你看八十年代的恐怖电影，那些八十年代的砍杀片，会发现很多影片是糟糕的恐怖片，却是出色的闹剧喜剧。比如《十三号星期五》系列，里面每个角色都是单薄的。

And so in that sense, I think good horror fiction is about sympathy. It's about empathy, not cruelty. Mhmm. That isn't always so clearly understood, and so I think when you look at the horror movies of the nineteen eighties, the slasher films of the nineteen eighties, you see a lot of movies that are terrible horror films but great slapstick comedies. The Friday the thirteenth films, for example, every character in those movies is one dimensional.

有啦啦队长，有运动员，有瘾君子，还有那个认真学习、为婚姻守贞的好女孩。

You've got the cheerleader. You've got the jock. You've got the stoner. You've got the the good girl who studies and is saving her virginity for marriage.

所有这些套路都在电影《林中小屋》里被戏仿过。

All of the tropes that were made fun of in the film cabin in the woods.

完全正确。这些角色都没有深度。你永远不会真正关心他们作为人类的存在，甚至不认为他们是立体完整的人。所以看着杰森·沃赫斯用一连串恐怖谋杀解决他们，反而变得有点娱乐性。我们的反应就像看华纳兄弟卡通片时，兔八哥用大锤砸中达菲鸭的脑袋一样。

Absolutely. And none of these characters have any depth to them. You never really care about them as human beings or even see them as fully rounded human beings. And so it actually becomes somewhat entertaining to watch Jason Voorhees work his way through them with one ghoulish murder after another. We respond to that exactly the same way we respond to a Warner Brothers cartoon where, you know, Bugs Bunny smashes a sledgehammer into Daffy Duck's head.

嗯。三个臭皮匠电影与后来的一些十三号星期五系列电影之间的区别非常微妙。

Mhmm. The difference between the Three Stooges film and some of the later Friday the thirteenth films is very fine.

很多眼睛被戳的场景。

A lot of eyes getting poked.

没错。就是那样。比如莫伊用大锤砸柯利脑袋的那个场景，你看到时会大笑出声。而看《德州电锯杀人狂》时，当大锤砸向某个青少年的脑袋，鲜血溅满镜头，你却会尖叫。

Yeah. Exactly. That thing where Moe takes a sledgehammer to Curly's head, you see that scene, and you shout with laughter. You're watching Texas chainsaw massacre, and takes a sledgehammer to some teenager's head, blood flies all over the camera, and you scream.

嗯。

Mhmm.

但本质上你是在对相同的场景做出反应。这其实是同一个场景。而且我觉得有趣的是，在这两种情况下，你的反应都来自那种爬行动物脑的原始发声——比语言更本能的尖叫或大笑。

But you're responding fundamentally to the same scene. It's actually the same scene. And I also think it's interesting that in both cases, you respond with this kind of reptile brain vocalization, something that's deeper than than words, a scream, or a laugh.

我最近刚向别人描述过这种现象或这种反应机制。我看了一部叫《在暴力本性中》的电影。

I was describing this phenomenon or this response mechanism to someone recently. I saw a movie called In a Violent Nature.

还没看过，但我相当期待。

Haven't seen it yet, but I'm pretty excited for it.

对于许多听众来说，不要看这部电影。这部电影不适合大多数人，但我会和乔讨论它，因为这是为他准备的。电影里有个场景——深夜看《小鬼当家》时——我做了你刚才描述的事，突然发出意料之外的声音，毫无准备，却控制不住自己。

Which for many people listening, do not watch this movie. This movie is not for most people, but I will talk to Joe here about it because it is for him. And there's a scene in that movie, was watching at Home Alone late at night, where I did the thing you just described where I went, oh, I started making sounds that I was not expecting to and I was not prepared to, but I could not help myself.

没错。这当然是一个有效时刻的标志，因为它直接穿透了你意识的堡垒，触及更深层的东西，提醒我们只是地球表面的动物，如果挡在嗡嗡作响的电锯前，可怕的事情就会发生。

Yeah. That is a mark, of course, of an effective moment because it's cut right through your conscious, the fortress of your conscious mind and got to something deeper and has reminded you that we're animals on the face of the planet, and terrible things can happen to us if we get in the way of a buzzing chainsaw.

大笑也是很奇怪的事。

It's a very odd thing to to laugh too.

确实。这很诡异。我们竟然渴望这些——想用整个周末读恐怖小说，看人物面对可怕情境。为什么我们要读那些关于某人迷失在黑暗地下室遭遇吸血鬼之类、会让我们难以入睡的故事？

It is. And it's weird. It's weird that we want this. It's weird that we want to spend a weekend with a frightening novel, someone facing a dreadful scenario. Why would we wanna read these stories of someone lost in a dark basement with a vampire or something and something that's gonna make it hard for us to sleep.

有位荷兰作家马蒂亚斯·劳森写过《恐怖如何诱惑》，是近二十五年来该题材最出色的非虚构作品之一。他从进化心理学角度研究恐怖小说，认为其本质类似孩子们玩的捉迷藏游戏——这是捕食者与猎物关系的模拟，关乎追逐与逃亡。

There is a a Dutch writer named Matthias Lawson who's written a book called How Horror Seduces. It's one of the better nonfiction works on the genre in the last quarter century. And he studies horror fiction from the viewpoint of evolutionary psychology. And his attitude about horror fiction is it's much like when children play hide and seek or tag, because hide and seek and tag are are play versions of predator and prey. It's chasing and being chased.

孩子们觉得这非常有趣，但在历史上某些时期，快速躲藏对弱小人类极为重要。同样地，我们阅读恐怖小说如同彩排：在想象的安全场域里，探索关于死亡与生存的恐惧命题，而这些是日常生活中不愿直面的。比如各种吸血鬼故事大受欢迎，从优雅到狰狞的都有——剧透警告：现实中你永远不会遇到吸血鬼，它们不存在。

Children find this terrifically entertaining, but there have been times and places in history when knowing how to hide fast was extremely useful for small human beings. And by the same token, I think that we read horror fiction as rehearsal, that we study horror fiction because in the safe playground of our imagination, we can explore frightening questions about our own mortality and our own well-being that in everyday life we normally don't wanna confront. The example I use is there's obviously, you know, a terrific passion for stories about vampires of all sorts from from glittering vampires to drooling Nosferatu. And spoiler alert, you're never going to face a vampire in real life. They don't exist.

半夜不会有吸血者来你家抽走一品脱血。

No bloodsucker is going to come by your house in the middle of the night, you know, get a pint of blood.

我有点失望，但继续吧。

I'm slightly disappointed, but continue.

我知道，我知道。我是个让人心碎的家伙。但许多人一生中都会与癌症这样的疾病搏斗。癌症是个无形的敌人，它想夺走你的生命，会日复一日地削弱你，而你却不知如何抗争，这很可怕，它让你直面自己的死亡，癌症就是个吸血鬼。

I know. I know. I'm a heartbreaker. But many people in their lives will wrestle with something like cancer. Cancer is an invisible adversary that that wants to take your life and will can weaken you day by day, and it's not clear how to fight it, and it's frightening, it puts you right up in the face of your own mortality, cancer is a vampire.

当我们读到人们击退吸血鬼的故事时，我认为我们正在进行某种预演——如果某个无形的敌人在吞噬我的生命，而我的时间所剩无几，我会做出怎样的选择？

And when we read a story about people fighting fighting off a vampire, I think that we're engaged in a kind of rehearsal about what sort of choices would I make if some invisible adversary was preying on my life and my time was running out.

嗯。

Mhmm.

如果我感到力量正在流失，正为生命而战，且很可能失败，我会希望以怎样的姿态面对这个世界？

How would I want to be in the world if I felt my strength ebbing away and was in this fight for my life that there was a good chance I might lose?

还有，巨大压力下的时刻会揭示一个人的什么？它会揭示我的什么？

Also, what do moments of great stress reveal about a person? What would it reveal about me?

完全正确。我会如何应对？我们被这些问题吸引，是因为我们想提前为重大时刻做好准备，以免为时已晚。我们想知道什么是值得赞赏的行为，什么是健康的行为，什么是情感上健康的行为，以及什么是破坏性的、有害的、无用的和适得其反的行为。我想大多数人都不想像《异形》里的保罗·雷瑟那样，绝望地把同伴关在门外，只顾自己逃命，其他人死活都不管。

Absolutely. How would I cope? And we're drawn to these questions because we want to prepare for the big moments ahead of time before it's too late. We want to have some idea about what is admirable behavior, what is wholesome behavior, what is emotionally healthy behavior, and what's destructive and damaging and useless and counterproductive. I think most people don't wanna go out like the Paul Reiser character in aliens, desperately shutting doors on his fellows and running to save his own ass and every everyone else be damned.

伟大的懦夫之一。

One of the great cowards.

是啊，恐怖电影史上著名的懦夫角色之一。而比尔·帕克斯顿在《异形》中饰演的那个看似懦弱的角色，在最后关头突然双手紧握勇气，站在那里面对冲来的异形喊道：'想来点吗？你也想来点吗？你呢？'

Yeah. One of the great cowards of horror cinema. Whereas whereas Bill Paxton, the Bill Paxton character in aliens who seems like such a coward, actually has this moment at the end when suddenly he grabs his courage with both hands, and he's standing there with the aliens running at him saying, you want some? You want some too? How about you?

我想大多数人都会觉得，好吧，如果身处那种情境，我也会和他一样害怕，但我希望在自己生命的最后时刻能挺身而出。

And I think most of us feel like, okay. If I was in that scenario, I'd be just as terrified as him, but I hope in my last moments, I'd make my stand.

我们今天要讨论恐怖小说，但首先想问问你，考虑到这个季节，考虑到万圣节是我们这次对话的契机，对你而言万圣节意味着什么？

So we're here to talk about horror fiction, but first, wanna ask you, given the season, given that Halloween is part of the reason that we're having this conversation, what is Halloween for you?

我觉得万圣节的意义在于——我是新英格兰人，住在新罕布什尔州——关键在于那种逐渐酝酿的过程。所有的快乐都在于期待的过程：树叶变色，

I think the thing about Halloween and I'm I'm a New England guy. I live in New Hampshire. And the thing about Halloween is it's all about the buildup. The joy is all in the buildup. The leaves are turning.

清晨的空气清冽，没有什么比第一杯茶更美味。每个周五晚上看一部新的恐怖片，提前规划好整个恐怖电影节的片单，挑选适合这个季节的读物。

The mornings are crisp. Nothing tastes better than the first cup of tea. And every Friday night, you watch a new horror film. You plan ahead, so you've got your whole horror film festival worked out. You pick some reading that's appropriate for the season.

嗯。所以最近我正在读阿尔杰农·布莱克伍德的最佳鬼故事集。这是我自青少年时期后第一次读他的作品，都是二十世纪初的作品，带着爱德华七世时代的维多利亚风格，正合时宜。

Mhmm. So at the moment, I'm reading the best ghost stories of Algernon Blackwood. This is the first time I've read him since I was a teenager. It's all early twentieth century. It has a kind of Edwardian Victorian feel to it, so it's just right.

这感觉正适合这个季节。优雅中带着惊悚。

It feels just perfect for the season. Tasteful, but frightening.

嗯。还有

Mhmm. And

然后就是那个重要的夜晚。孩子们盛装出门，挨家挨户讨要糖果。这很有趣，也很棒。但就像圣诞节早晨拆礼物一样，真正的快乐在于期待和铺垫的过程。

and then you have the big night. The kids go out and they get dressed and run from house to house collecting candy. That's fun. That's fine. But sort of like opening your presents on Christmas morning, the anticipation and the buildup is where all the real pleasure is.

说得太对了。我想聊聊你推荐的这个季节适合读的书。你刚才提到了《黑木林里的厄尔特伦》的故事，但我知道你还有几本想要深入探讨的书。第一本是斯科特·卡森的《迷失者小巷》。斯科特·卡森是谁？

That is perfectly put. I want to talk about some books that you would recommend for the season. You just mentioned the stories of Ultron on Blackwood, but I know you have a few more that you wanted to dip into. The first one is Lost Man's Lane by Scott Carson. Who is Scott Carson?

他并非表面看起来那样。斯科特·卡森是惊悚小说作家迈克尔·科里塔的笔名。迈克尔最著名的可能是以本名出版的小说《那些希望我死的人》，后来被改编成由安吉丽娜·朱莉主演的紧张丛林惊悚片。但他确实以斯科特·卡森为名创作其他小说。迈克尔·科里塔的惊悚小说都是主流惊悚题材，而斯科特·卡森的书则满足了他对超自然题材的热爱。《迷失者小巷》可能是迄今为止斯科特·卡森作品中最好的一部。

Not who he appears to be. Scott Carson is a pen name for the thriller writer Michael Corita. Michael's probably best known for a novel under his own name called Those Who Wish Me Dead, which was made into an intense backwoods thriller starring Angelina Jolie, but he does write other novels under the name Scott Carson. His Michael Corita's thrillers are all mainstream thrillers set in the role as we understand it, but the Scott Carson books indulge in his love of supernatural fiction. Lost Man's Lane is probably the best of the Scott Carson books to date.

所以如果你喜欢《怪奇物语》，你也会爱上《迷失者小巷》。它们有相似的感觉。它带有一些青少年小说的质感，但同样非常适合成年人。就像《怪奇物语》一样。背景不像《怪奇物语》设定在八十年代，而是在九十年代末期，偶尔会有历史事件以非常引人注目的方式穿插其中。

So if you loved stranger things, you will love lost man's lane. It has something of the same feel to it. It has some of the texture of a young adult novel, but is also very much for grown ups. Something like Stranger Things. It is set not the nineteen eighties like Stranger Things, but at the at the tail end of the nineteen nineties, and occasional historical events intrude in quite striking ways.

在哥伦拜恩事件发生的那天，他们都坐在电视机前。故事中最感人的时刻之一是其中一位父母对孩子说：我们绝不会让这种事再次发生。

They're all plopped in front of the TV on the day that Columbine happens. And one of the most moving moments in the story is when one of the parents says to the kids, we will never let this happen again.

嗯。

Mhmm.

那是行走中最令人恐惧的时刻，让我浑身战栗。但这个故事讲述的是一个年轻人，在他拿到驾照的那天，因轻微超速被警察拦下。拦下他的警察是个可怕的恶霸，而且他身上有些不对劲。

And that's the most frightening moment in the walk, sent a shiver right through me. But the story is about a young man. On the day he gets his driver's license. He's pulled over by the police for going just slightly over the speed limit. The cop who pulls him over is a terrifying bully, and there's something off about him.

渐渐地，我们不得不得出结论：他遇到的是一名穿越了五六十年时光的警察，一个从二十世纪四五十年代突然出现在九十年代的人。

And, gradually, we are forced to conclude that he's had an encounter with a police officer who is 50 or sixty or seventy years out of time, someone who has popped into the nineteen nineties from all the way back in the nineteen forties or nineteen fifties.

哦，不。

Oh, no.

这个在时空中跳跃的人还犯下了多起谋杀案。我之前提过这个故事带点青少年小说的特质，而且它还塑造了自《哈利·波特》系列中那条蛇以来最出色的超自然蛇类角色。那条蛇叫什么名字来着？

That this person and that this person who is hop skipping through time is also responsible for a number of murders. There's also I mentioned it has a little bit of the quality of a young adult story. There's also the best supernatural snake in this story since the snake in the Harry Potter books. What's the name of the snake?

纳吉尼。

Nagini.

对。没错。

Yes. Yes.

好的，那么在仅有两项的列表中，第一和第二名就这样定了。

K. So number one and number two on a list of two.

没错。就像《大白鲨2》绝对是鲨鱼题材电影中的第二佳片，其实这类影片本来就不多。

Yes. Exactly. It's sort of like Jaws two is the absolute second best shark film. It's not actually a huge list.

是啊，这确实是个很棒的推荐。

Yeah. So So that's a great recommendation.

文笔轻松诙谐，情节推进迅速。因为迈克尔是哈兰·科本或林伍德·巴克利式的惊悚作家，他身上还带点丹尼斯·勒翰的影子。正因出自这样的写作背景，书中充满了令人拍案的反转——那些'天啊这怎么可能'的震撼时刻。真正的艺术在于，当这些反转层层递进直至结局时，你会觉得每个转折都水到渠成。

The writing is light and witty. The pages turn swiftly. Because Michael is a thriller writer in the mold of Harlan Coben or a Linwood Barclay, he also has a little dash of Dennis Lehane in him. And because that's the world of writing he comes from, there are a lot of very satisfying twists, a lot of, you know, really stunning, oh, I can't believe that just happened. And the art is in having those reversals and twists and then getting to the end of the book and feeling like they were all earned.

对，这些反转不只是为了制造惊吓或推动剧情而存在。

Yeah. That it wasn't just it wasn't just a twist to shock you and keep you moving.

作为阅读量远超常人、著作等身且深谙情节架构与反转技巧的你，当在小说中遇到真正出人意料的转折时，是否依然会感到欣喜？那种即使读过千百本书仍能被作者巧思震撼的体验。

Do you feel as someone who has read more than most perhaps and has written a lot and has to think about plotting and structure and twists and turns and surprises. Do you find that when you actually encounter genuine one in fiction, it remains delightful, the idea that someone can still come up with a twist that can confound even someone who's read hundreds and hundreds of books.

真正出色的反转堪称奇迹。犯罪惊悚作家安东尼·霍洛维茨——他偶尔也涉猎恐怖题材——大概是最擅长制造颠覆性反转的作家。

The really good ones are miraculous. Probably the writer who is best at the mind blowing twist is the crime and thriller writer Anthony Horowitz, who also dabbles in horror. Some of his fiction is horror.

他写过福尔摩斯的书吗？我是说这是同一个人吗？好的。

Has he written Sherlock Holmes books? Am I is that the same person? Okay.

他确实写过。他写了一本叫《莫里亚蒂》的书。我当时正大声读给我妻子听，书中有一个转折如此巧妙又惊人。她不相信这是真的发生了，以为是我编出来故意惹她不安的，还从我手里抢过书自己看，确认那确实写在书页上。

He has. He wrote a book called Moriarty. I was reading it aloud to my wife, and it had one twist that was so ingenious and so stunning. She didn't believe it had really happened. She thought I was making it up just to upset and perturb her, and she snatched the book out of my hands to read it for herself to make sure it was really on the page.

这就是一个真正好转折的力量。关于这类事情，我只能谈谈自己的创作经历。

So that's the power of a really good twist. All I can speak of is my own work when it comes to this sort of thing.

嗯。

Mhmm.

我不是那种会列大纲的人。我不会提前规划书的内容。当我写出一个令人满意的转折时，第一个被惊讶到的人是我自己。在让读者惊讶之前，那是我笔下角色做出的某个决定，或是某种揭露，让我自己也完全震惊于它就那么跃然纸上。

I'm not an outliner. I don't plan the books ahead. When I have pulled off a satisfying twist, the first person it surprised was me. Before it ever surprised a reader, it was a decision that one of my characters made or some kind of revelation where I was completely stunned for that to just fly onto the page.

这种灵感是怎么来的？你是坐在那里时突然想到的？是在洗澡时？还是散步时？

And how does that come to you? You're sitting there and it happens. Are you in the shower? Are you on a walk?

通常是在你写作的时候发生的。

It usually happens while you're writing.

所以它是

So it's

通常这不是你散步时突然想到的事。关键在于你面临的情况。我写过一个关于收藏诡异物品的人的故事。他有一个托盘上的人头骨，还有女巫的供词。

usually it's not something that just occurs to you while you're out for a walk. View of it is you have a situation. I wrote a story about a man who has a collection of disturbing artifacts. So he has a tray panned human skull. He has a witch's confession.

他有一部虐杀电影。他有一整个陈列柜的诡异藏品。当他听说有个女人在网上卖鬼魂时，决定必须把它收入收藏。但凡读过恐怖故事的人都知道这主意有多糟，但这家伙还是买了。在我的故事里，主角是个六十多岁的死亡金属摇滚歌手犹大·科因。

He has a snuff film. He has a whole cabinet of curiosities of disturbing artifacts. And he hears about a woman selling a ghost online, and he decides he has to have it for his collection. Now if you ever read even a single horror story, you know what a terrible idea this is, but the the guy buys it. In my case, it was this death metal rocker named Judas Coyne who's in his mid sixties.

这是我的处女作《心形盒子》。创作时我原以为会写成名为《死人西装》的短篇，因为我初见犹大时，他就是个充满敌意的怪人。我以为他网购鬼魂后，三十页内就会被吞噬，我就能再写个五百美元的短篇。但犹大像蟑螂般顽强——每次我以为踩死了他，一抬脚他又窜走了。

This was my first book, heart shaped box. And when I wrote this story, I thought it was gonna be a short story called dead man suit because I was sure that he was the guy when we first meet Jude, he's sort of an angry creep and a belligerent creep. And I thought he would buy this ghost online, and it would eat him for breakfast by page 30, and I'd tell another short story for $500. But Jude turned out to be like a cockroach. Every time I stepped on him, I'd lift my shoe, and he'd scuttle away again.

每次他活下来都让我再次惊讶。这种意外感源于我将自我投射进了他的心理、观点和人格，而他做出的选择对他顺理成章，却总与我预期相悖。我认为这就是不设大纲时，剧情反转能奏效的原因。也许迈克尔会列大纲？我得问问他。

Every time he survived, it surprised me all over again. But the reason he surprised is because I was projecting myself into his psychology and his views, his whole sort of persona, and he kept making choices that were perfectly natural for him but were surprising to me because they were never the choices that I would have made in the same situation. So I think that's how a reveal or a a shock can work if you don't outline for it. Maybe Michael outlines. I'd have to I'd have to ask him.

我和他聊过几次。

I've spoken to him a few times.

你书单接下来的两本《热病之屋》和《指名恶魔》是基思·罗森的作品。特别是第一本有个经典设定——有个邪恶的断头。我们都懂这种套路。

The next two books on your list, Fever House and The Devil By Name are by Keith Rawson. And the first one in particular has a classic conceit, which is that there's an evil severed head. We've all been there.

是的。还有《热病之屋》，它的精装续集《以魔鬼之名》简直疯狂至极，堪称荒诞恐怖小说的巅峰。每一幕、每一章都比前一章更加离奇，但不知怎的，整个故事却环环相扣，令人欲罢不能，充满惊心动魄的张力。《热病之屋》开篇时，我们跟随两名帮派打手——某个犯罪集团雇佣的喽啰——去向一个瘾毒者讨债。结果他们在对方冰柜里发现了一只断手，这只断手对人的影响有点像浴盐毒品。

Yeah. And the fever house, and it's just out in hardcover sequel, the devil by name, is absolutely bonkers, gonzo horror. Every scene, every chapter is more bananas than the one before, and somehow it all works and is compulsive and tremendously exciting. When fever house begins, we're with two enforcers, two two goons who work for a criminal syndicate, and they've come to collect some money from a meth head. Well, when they go to collect, they discover a severed hand in his icebox, and the severed hand works on you a little bit like bath salts.

它具有药物般的特性，能操控你的反应和思维。接近它会让人上瘾，同时也会诱发极度暴力倾向——你会想伤害周围所有人，稍有不顺就抄起最近的棒球棍施暴。在俄勒冈州波特兰市那个无尽雨夜里，这只可能是魔鬼之手的断肢开始在城市中流转，从一个人传到另一个人手中，制造出越来越大的混乱。原来这只断手是三大邪物残骸之一。

It's drug like and has power over your reactions in your mind. There's something addictive about being close to it, but it also makes you incredibly violent. It makes you wanna hurt everyone around you and respond to the slightest setback by reaching for the closest baseball bat. And on one endless rainy night in Portland, Oregon, this severed hand, which might be the severed hand of a devil, begins to move across Portland, move across the city, being passed from one person to another and creating more and more chaos. It turns out that the severed hand is one of three remnants.

另有一盘让人发疯的录音带——光是听到那个声音就会使人精神失常；还有一颗魔鬼的眼球，若你直视它，就会看见自己死亡的景象。

There's also a tape recording that drives people crazy, a voice, a tape recording of a voice that drives people crazy to hear it. And there's an eyeball, an eyeball of a devil. And if you look into this eyeball, you see how you yourself will die.

不知为何，我早预感到这次对话会和我今年其他所有访谈都截然不同。

Somehow I knew this conversation would be very different from views I've had throughout the rest of the year.

《热病之屋》是部匠心独运的作品，带着早期朋克摇滚的冲劲，秉承着朋克精神内核，叙事直击面门，角色群像塑造得极为出色。

The Fever House is an ingenious work of writing. It has the energy of early punk rock. It has something of a punk rock ethos. It's very in your face. It has a tremendous cast of characters.

其中一对联邦探员就像《X档案》里穆德和史卡利的扭曲版本；还有个被囚禁的天使，关押条件让关塔那摩监狱相比之下堪比希尔顿酒店。

There is a pair of feds that read like a twisted version of Mulder and Scully from the x files. There is an angel that's being held under conditions that make Guantanamo Bay look like the Hilton.

你刚才说...天使？

Did you say an angel?

是的，一个天使。偶尔，那些来自秘密政府机构的人会用钢锯锯断他的翅膀逼他开口。这相当野蛮。不知道

Yes. An angel. And, occasionally, people with the secretive government agency take a hacksaw to his wings to force him to talk. That's fairly savage. Don't know

该怎么理解这些。这些都写在一本书里吗？

what to make of this. This is all in one book?

这些都写在一本书里。书中有一位前摇滚歌手，现在几乎无法离开她的公寓，她有点像帕蒂·史密斯。她坚强又极其聪明，但在这个故事里，她被焦虑彻底击垮了。你拥有这整个世界。我有时确实把它描述为恐怖小说中的低俗文学——在这个雨夜连绵的城市里，各色人物如同万花筒般展现着不同程度的卑劣，而我们的世界正在失控，这只手将愤怒、疯狂和混乱散布到俄勒冈州的波特兰。

This is all in one book. There is a former rock and roll singer who is now almost incapable of leaving her apartment, and she's a bit like Patti Smith. She's tough and highly intelligent, but in this case, she's also crippled by her anxieties. You have this whole world. It it actually I have actually sometimes described it as the pulp fiction of horror novels in the sense that you have this kaleidoscopic ensemble of characters on a whole spectrum of scumminess, and all of them are whirling about in this one city, in this one incredibly rainy night while our whole world spins out of control, and this hand spreads rage, madness, and chaos across Portland, Oregon.

结局太过荒诞，我就不剧透了。

The ending is so outrageous, I won't speak of it.

谢谢。

Thank you.

我要点名提到魔鬼，《续集》为我们展现了一个被彻底改变的世界。《热病之屋》设定在我们所理解的现实世界中，超自然力量侵入了已知生活；而《点名魔鬼》则恰恰相反，现实世界正在入侵一个已被超自然力量改变的世界。

I will say the devil by name, the follow-up, presents us with a world that has been profoundly changed. Fever House is set in our world as we understand it with the supernatural intruding on life as we know it, And the devil by name is something of the reverse where the real world is now intruding on a world that has been changed by the power of the supernatural.

这个推荐太精彩了。我觉得你应该以此为业。刚才那段推荐

That was a superb recommendation. I think you should do this for a living. That was recommended

工作完成了。关于这件事，我最后想说的是，我认为这对许多读者很重要。《热病之屋》和《以魔鬼之名》的页面翻动得如此之快，你随时有被纸割伤的危险。我认为这很重要，因为好的恐怖小说需要保持节奏，必须不断有事情发生。

job is taken. The last thing I'll say about it is because I think this matters to a lot of readers. The last thing I'll say about it is the pages of Fever House and the Devil by Name fly by so quickly, you're in constant danger of paper cuts. And I think that matters because I think good horror fiction needs to move. Stuff has gotta happen.

在基思·劳森的作品中，确实没有太多时间进行内省。不过还是有一些的。

And there's certainly not time for a lot of introspection in the work of Keith Lawson. There's some, though.

我觉得你接下来要谈的最后一本书可能有点那种元素。它完全不同，相当严肃，相当吓人。这本书叫《感化院》。

I feel like the next and last book you're gonna talk about probably has a little bit of that. It's totally completely different, quite serious, quite frightening. This is a book called the reformatory.

是的。塔纳里夫·杜的《感化院》刚出了平装本，还刚刚获得了世界奇幻奖最佳小说奖。我认为这很棒，但毫不意外。《感化院》可能是本世纪迄今为止出版的两三本最佳恐怖小说之一。

Yeah. The reformatory by Tananarive Due is just out in paperback. It also just won the World Fantasy Award for best novel. I think that's wonderful, but hardly surprising. The Reformatory is probably one of the two or three best horror novels published in this century so far.

故事设定在1950年代初的美国南方，讲述了一个黑人男孩在与侮辱他姐姐的白人男孩发生冲突后，被送进了一所如同眺望酒店般恐怖且闹鬼的感化院。渐渐地，事情变得明朗：如果这个男孩不能迅速离开感化院，他将活不过15岁。这本书对早期民权运动以及20世纪中期南方黑人的生存状况有很多探讨。我以为我了解那段历史，结果发现还有很多我不知道的事情。

It is set in the early nineteen fifties in the South, and it's about a black kid who gets in a tussling match with a white kid after his sister is insulted. This black kid winds up in a reformatory that is as terrifying as the Overlook Hotel and just as haunted. Gradually, it becomes clear that if this kid doesn't get out of the reformatory in a hurry, he will not live to be 15. The book is has a lot to say about the early civil rights movement and about what it was like to be black in the South in the middle of the twentieth century. I thought I knew that story, and it turned out there was a whole bunch I did not know.

嗯。

Mhmm.

这同时也是一部非常出色的恐怖小说。你知道吗？它恐怖、紧凑、充满紧张激烈的场景。我们的主角在感化院中遇到了许多鬼魂，这些遭遇既令人毛骨悚然又情感强烈。这些时刻揭示了那些被送往（例如）多齐尔男孩学校却再未归来的孩子们的悲剧命运。

It's also just a damn fine horror novel. You know? Scary, zippy, full of fraught, tense, set pieces. Our lead character encounters a number of ghosts in the reformatory, and those encounters are chilling and also emotionally powerful. These are moments that have something to say about the tragedy of so many of the kids who were sent to, for example, the Dozier School for Boys who never left, who walked through that door and never walked back out.

我能给予这本书的最高赞誉大概就是：天哪，读起来就像史蒂芬·金的小说。你知道吗？它充满了那种能量、那种生动感和那种震撼心灵的力量，让我完全被征服了。我大约一年前读了这本书，至今仍时常想起。

And probably the highest praise I can give the book just about is, boy, it reads like a Stephen King novel. You know? I mean, it's it's just it's got that energy, that vividness, and that heart, and I was completely blown away. I read the book probably a year ago, and I think about it all the time.

我还有个临时想到的问题很好奇。你是有孩子的人，你认为哪些作品适合作为（恐怖文学）入门读物？除了《鸡皮疙瘩》系列，我们都知道R.L.

I have one more question for you that I didn't prepare you for, but I am curious. You have you have kids. What do you think are good entry points? Goosebumps aside, we know the work of R. L.

斯坦的作品是孩子们接触恐怖文学的敲门砖，但对于那些想尝试这类题材又觉得《鸡皮疙瘩》太浅的年轻人，你会推荐什么？

Stine is a gateway drug for kids in horror, but what do you give younger people maybe who wanna that's not it, but who wanna dip into this stuff?

我认为10到11岁孩子接触恐怖小说的入门作品...各位家长请注意，我不是你们孩子的父母，你们需要自行判断什么内容适合自己的孩子。所以请谨慎参考我的建议。

I think the gateway drug for horror fiction for kids who are maybe 10, 11. And to any parents listening, I am not the parent of your kid, and you have to make your own decisions about what your kid is appropriate for. So take any advice from me with a grain of salt.

你这话有法律免责声明了。谢谢。

You you are legally protected. Thank you.

没错。你最清楚自己孩子的承受能力，而我不了解。话说回来，有位叫约翰·贝莱尔的作家写过一部黑暗奇幻作品《魔钟屋》，后来改编了电影。我没看过那部电影，因为我曾极度渴望担任编剧却没能如愿。

Yeah. You know what your kid can handle, and I don't. That said, there is a work of dark fantasy by a writer named John Belair's called the house with a clock in its walls. There was a film. I haven't seen the film because I desperately wanted to write the screenplay, and I never got a chance to.

想到别人享受了这个机会我就耿耿于怀，所以干脆拒绝承认那部电影的存在——完全出于个人原因。原著是黑暗奇幻的杰作，我推荐寻找爱德华·戈里绘制插图的版本，他为原版创作的插画本身就是阅读乐趣的重要组成部分。真的绝妙。

And I'm so disgusted someone else got to have that pleasure instead that just I'm just rejecting the film. I'm pretending the film doesn't exist on personal grounds. The book is a masterpiece of dark fantasy, and I would look for any of the editions that were illustrated by Edward Gorey, who illustrated the original edition as part of the joy of the book. You know? Absolutely.

插图非常精美。但故事讲述的是一个名叫路易斯·巴尼维尔特的小男孩，和许多青少年小说中的孩子一样成了孤儿，随后搬去他叔叔家——如果我没记错的话是在康涅狄格州的新泽比迪镇。后来发现他叔叔是位巫师，房子里满是魔法器物。路易斯为了在另一个男孩面前逞能，意外施展了死灵术，唤醒了邪恶可怕的亡灵。这本书我读过，可能读过《墙上有钟的房子与狼》

Marvelous illustrations. But it is about a young boy named Louis Barniveldt who, like so many kids in young adult novels, has been orphaned, and he goes to live with his uncle in, I wanna say, New Zebedee, Connecticut. It turns out that his uncle is a sorcerer and that the house is full of magical artifacts, and in the course of trying to impress another boy, Lewis accidentally casts some gets involved with necromancy and raises the spirit of evil, terrible person. And I've read that book. I've probably read House with Clock and Its Wolves

a

a

我这辈子读过不下十几遍，书中有些场景确实令人毛骨悚然，但仍在想象力丰富、性格开朗的11岁孩子能承受的范围内。这是JK·罗琳从未写出的奇幻杰作。我会毫不犹豫地把《墙上有钟的房子》排在所有《哈利·波特》系列小说之前。

dozen times over the course of my life, and I think it has some incredibly chilling scenes, but still within the range of what unimaginative, good humored 11 year old can cope with. It's the masterpiece of fantasy that JK Rowling never wrote. I I would put House with Clock on its walls comfortably ahead of any of the Harry Potter novels.

我读过你描述的那些版本。对插图记忆犹新。有本约翰的书不是爱德华·戈里画的，真的让我做了好几年噩梦。应该是《女巫与戒指的信》那本。你觉得约翰·贝莱尔的作品现在还有人讨论吗？

I read those books in those editions that you're describing. I remember the illustrations quite well. I think there was one John book not illustrated by Edward Gorey that genuinely gave me bad dreams for years. I think it was from the letter of the witch and the ring. But do you think John Belair's is still discussed these days?

感觉关于他的讨论似乎配不上他的成就。

I feel like you don't hear it as much about him as maybe you should.

我认为他基本已淡出大众视野，这很可惜。他的作品如此出色，值得被重新发现。尤其是《墙上有钟的房子与双胞胎》，绝对是童年奇幻文学的经典之作，和《幻影收费亭》《黑神锅》以及《狮子、女巫和魔衣橱》属于同一级别——那些经久不衰、承载着童年奇迹、黑暗与幻想的顶级作品。

I think he's mostly dropped out of the conversation, and that's too bad. He's someone who deserves to be rediscovered because the work is so great. That book in particular, House with the Clock and Twins, in particular, is really one of the classics of childhood fantasy just as much as the Phantom Pole Booth or The Black Cauldron Mhmm. The Lion of Witch and the Wardrobe. It is in that class, that very elite class of lasting, timeless stories of childhood wonder, darkness, and the fantastic.

而且我相当确定《墙上有钟的房子》至少现在还在印刷。

And and I'm pretty sure that house with a clock in its walls at least is still in print.

乔·希尔，非常感谢你来到书评播客，为这个季节推荐一系列精彩的恐怖书籍。这真是一次愉快的交流。

Joe Hill, thank you so much for coming on the book review podcast to recommend a bunch of great scary books for the season. This was a real delight.

吉尔伯特，这是我的荣幸。谢谢你和我交谈。

Gilbert, it was a pleasure. Thanks for talking to me.

这是我去年十月与乔·希尔的对话，他刚刚发布了近十年来的首部小说《国王的悲伤》。我们稍后回来。

That was my conversation from last October with Joe Hill, who has just released his first novel in almost a decade, King's Sorrow. We'll be right back.

嗨，我是朱丽叶。我是乔艾尔。我们来自《纽约时报》游戏团队。我们来这里和粉丝们聊聊我们的游戏。

Hi. I'm Juliette. I'm Joelle. We're from the New York Times games team. And we're here talking to fans about our games.

你玩游戏时是什么感觉？

What's your vibe

玩我们的游戏让我感觉像是在以一种非常高效的方式拖延时间。它正好满足了我大脑的某种需求。你有什么固定习惯吗？我正在和男友异地恋。

when you're playing one of our games? It makes me feel like I'm procrastinating in a really productive way. It just scratches an itch in my brain. Do you have a routine? I'm doing long distance with my boyfriend.

我们每晚都会视频通话并共享屏幕。我们先玩Connections，然后是Mini，最后是Strands。总是这个顺序。啊，你有最喜欢的游戏吗？

We'll call every night and share our screen. We do connections, the mini, and then strands. Always in that order. Aw. Do you have a favorite?

迷你游戏。我们试图在三十秒内完成，虽然很少成功，但这始终是我们的目标。

The mini. We try and get it under thirty seconds. We rarely get it under thirty, but that's always the goal.

大家确实会给自己计时，但对于拼字游戏，我给自己一整天时间。

Folks will really time themselves, but with Spelling Bee, I give myself all day.

我在孩子们睡觉时玩。你们会一起玩吗？我女儿玩，她喜欢玩Wordle。如果哪天错过了，还有存档可以玩。

I play it when my kids are going to bed. Do you guys play together? My daughter plays. She likes playing Wordle. If you ever miss a day, there's also archives.

知道这个真是太好了。

That's so great to know.

你们也有连线游戏。天哪帮帮我吧。

And you have it for connections as well. Lord help me.

我只是

I'm just

要整天都玩这个，天天如此。纽约时报游戏订阅用户可完整访问所有游戏和功能。立即在nytimes.com/games订阅享受特别优惠。

gonna be doing that all day, every day. New York Times game subscribers get full access to all our games and features. Subscribe now at nytimes.com/games for a special offer.

欢迎回来。我是吉尔伯特·克鲁兹，《纽约时报》书评编辑，现在为您呈现两年前我与杰出作家维克多·拉瓦尔的对话。他创作了一部名为《孤独女性》的历史恐怖小说，正在讨论雪莉·杰克逊的《鬼入侵》。与亨利·詹姆斯的《螺丝在拧紧》和斯蒂芬·金的《闪灵》齐名，1959年出版的《鬼入侵》是二十世纪具有开创性的鬼屋故事之一。它讲述了32岁女性埃莉诺·万斯的故事，她被一位通灵调查员邀请到著名的希尔山庄，这位调查员聚集了一小群人试图收集超自然现象存在的实际证据。

Welcome back. I'm Gilbert Cruz, editor of the New York Times Book Review, and I am presenting you now with a conversation that I had with a great writer from two years ago, Victor Laval, who wrote a piece of historical horror fiction called lone women. He is talking about Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House. Alongside Henry James's The Turn of the Screw and Stephen King's The Shining, The Haunting of Hill House, published in 1959, is one of the seminal haunted house stories of the twentieth century. It tells the tale of Eleanor Vance, a 32 year old woman who was invited to the titular Hill House by a psychic investigator who has gathered a small group of people to try to gather actual proof of the existence of paranormal phenomena.

埃莉诺多年来因照顾现已去世的母亲而与世隔绝，12岁时曾经历过持续三天的石头砸房事件。这四人小组——埃莉诺、蒙塔古医生、有透视能力的女性西奥，以及山庄继承人卢克——遭遇越来越诡异的事件，他们开始分不清虚实，正如我们也在疑惑什么是真实、什么是幻觉，甚至怀疑是否其中一人就是幕后黑手。维克多，我希望你能朗读《鬼入侵》的开篇段落。

Eleanor, who had spent years essentially cut off from the world as she cared for her now deceased mother, previously experienced an unexplained event when she was 12, when stones fell on her house for three days. This quartet of people, Eleanor, doctor Montagu, a woman named Theo who is clairvoyant, and Luke who's the heir to the house, experience increasingly creepy incidents as they begin to wonder what's real and what's not, as we begin to wonder what's real and what's not, and whether or not one of them is actually responsible. Victor, I'd love it if you can read the first paragraph of The Haunting of Hill House.

我很乐意。'任何生命体都无法在绝对现实的条件下长期保持理智地存在。就连云雀和蝈蝈儿，据某些人说，也会做梦。希尔山庄并不理智，它孑然矗立在山丘间，内里蕴藏着黑暗。它已如此矗立八十年，或许还将再立八十年。'

I'm happy to. No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality. Even larks and catty dudes are supposed by some to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within. It had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more.

'屋内，墙壁依然直立，砖块整齐相接，地板稳固，门扇紧合。寂静牢牢笼罩着希尔山庄的木石结构，无论何物在此游荡，都是独自行走。'是的，我太爱这段了。这是最伟大的开篇段落之一。

Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut. Silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there walked alone. Yeah. I love that. That's one of the great opening paragraphs.

请谈谈你对这段落的看法。

Talk to me about that paragraph.

首先，它的文字实在太优美了。我认为雪莉·杰克逊最了不起的地方在于，她能用如此优美的句子描写奇幻、超自然等元素。这确实是天赋。但更重要的是那段开篇句——'任何生命体都无法在绝对现实的条件下长期保持理智地存在'——这实际上是整本书的主题和核心原则。

Number one, it's just so beautiful, beautifully written. I think one of the great things about Shirley Jackson is the way that she finds a way to she writes about the fantastical, the supernatural, and all the rest, but she does it with such beautiful sentences. And it's it's a real gift, number one. But it's that opening line in that paragraph that is really like the thematic, the organizing principle of the entire book. No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality.

这句话最终成为对我们主角埃莉诺的考验。作为真正的核心人物，我们大量时间都在她的思维中，看她如何分辨虚实。但更重要的是：我感受到了什么？我想要什么？我又在抗拒什么？

And that turns out to be essentially the test that is put to our main character, Eleanor. We see her because she's our real main character, we spend a great deal of time in her head as she's trying to parse out like what's actually happening and what isn't happening. But even more, what do I feel? What do I want? What do I not want?

我是否真的了解自己？这是她在整本书中与自己进行的一场辩论。到最后，我想说她做出的选择——虽然不想剧透——但这个选择几乎是她对自身本质和处境绝对现实的最终回应。而这个答案就在开篇第一句话里。

Do I really understand myself or not? And it's a kind of debate she's having with herself throughout the book. And by the end, I would say the choice she makes, I don't wanna ruin it for anybody, but the choice she makes is almost her final reaction to the absolute reality of who she is and what her circumstances are. And it's right there in the opening sentence.

我记得那段文字在书的结尾又重复出现了。

And that paragraph is repeated at the end of the book, as I recall.

没错。我觉得这就像是一个反复出现的副歌。但到书的结尾时，由于埃莉诺做出的选择，你会对这个主题有完全不同的理解。开篇时令人毛骨悚然，结局时却让人心碎。

That's right. And I think it's just like a refrain that comes back. But by the end of the book, hopefully, you understand it very differently because of the choice that Eleanor has made. And it's spooky in the beginning, and at the end it's heartbreaking.

跟我聊聊你第一次读这本书的经历，或者最早的阅读记忆。告诉我所有细节。你是从哪里得到的？是自己买的吗？还是在图书馆借的？

Talk to me about the first time you read this book or the earliest memory that you have of reading this book. Tell me everything. Where you got it? Was it did you buy it? Was it at the library?

你还留着那本书吗？当时是什么感受？整个来龙去脉。

You still have that copy? What you thought then? The whole Megillah.

其实在接触雪莉·杰克逊之前，我是从斯蒂芬·金的《死亡之舞》开始的，那是他在八十年代对恐怖文学领域的总结。作为一个当时痴迷斯蒂芬·金但阅读量有限的少年，我和很多人一样把那本书当作必读书目清单。而无论好坏，《邪屋》是我最早选读的作品之一——其实我知道原因，因为它是法拉盛公立图书馆分馆里为数不多的藏书，我选择它纯粹因为斯蒂芬·金的推荐。

Well, it actually begins before Shirley Jackson. It begins with Stephen King and his book, Dance Macabre, which was his eighties summary of the horror field in general. And as a kid who was in love with Stephen King at the time, but who was not supremely well read, I treated that book like, as many people did I'm sure, like a just a list, a bibliography, here's everything you gotta read. And for better or worse, Shirley Jackson's Haunting of Hill House was one of the first I picked up. Actually, I know the reason is because it was one of the few that was in the library, our local at the Flushing branch of the public library, and I picked it up because essentially because Stephen King said I should.

后来我读了这本书，但当时连一半都没读懂。有趣的是当我回顾不同人生阶段对这本书的理解：15岁初读时只记得鬼屋的部分，满脑子都是恐怖场景。而这次为今天活动重读时，我惊讶地发现直到第25页才出现鬼屋描写（这书总共才175页）。但小时候正是这个情节点燃了我的兴奋点——哇，有座大鬼屋！

And then I read it, and I didn't understand more than half of it. The funny thing is when I think about the book at my different stages, when I read it as a kid, I was probably 15, and all I really remembered, the part that really stayed with me was the haunted house. Everything's spooky, which as I reread it again, like preparing to come today, I was like looking through it, and I was marveling at the fact that we don't even get to the house till page 25 of the book, and it's a short book, it's only a 175 pages. But when I was a kid, that was the part that sparked my excitement. Oh, there's a big spooky house.

而她对我所做的另一件事，在鬼屋题材中更为罕见——尽管读过《闪灵》的人都能理解——就是许多鬼屋故事最终都归结为某个实体作祟，比如有人死在那里，发生过命案等等。但在她的书中，邪恶的是房子本身。希尔山庄就是邪恶的，至少埃莉诺是这么认为的。眺望酒店给人的感觉与此非常相似。

And then the other thing that she does that to me is even more rarefied within the haunted house field, although certainly anyone who's read The Shining will understand it, is that a lot of haunted house stories turn out to be that there's an entity there that is the cause, someone died there, someone a crime was done, blah blah blah. But in her book, it's the house itself. It's Hill House that is evil, or at least that's what Eleanor believes. The Overlook Hotel feels very much like akin to that.

是的。我记得书中有句早期台词，可能是埃莉诺第一次看到房子时。杰克逊写道：'这房子令人作呕'。她颤抖着，任由这些词句自由涌入脑海：'希尔山庄是邪恶的'。

Yeah. I believe there's a line early on, maybe when Eleanor sees the house for the first time. Jackson writes, the house was vile. She shivered and thought the words coming freely into her mind. Hill House is vile.

它已经病入膏肓。立刻离开这里。你说得对，这座房子确实有某种邪恶之处。而杰克逊表现这一点的方式，我记得不仅是让埃莉诺告诉我们，还通过房子的建筑结构来体现。对我来说，这正是这本书最令人难忘的地方之一。

It is diseased. Get away from here at once. You're absolutely right that there is something to the house being evil. And the way that Jackson gets at it, as I recall, is not just having Eleanor tell us, but it's also within the architecture of the house. It's it's what to me, is one of the more memorable things about the book.

想想几十年后出现的作品，比如《叶之屋》，讲的就是一座不断变异、内部空间持续扩大的房子。杰克逊描写房间的方式让人觉得不对劲——墙壁没有以正确的角度相接，从这个窗户本应看到的房屋部分完全被遮挡。这触及了洛夫克拉夫特常写的主题：角度永远无法正确吻合，但她几乎是把房子当作活体生物来运用这个理念。

If you think about books that came decades later, like House of Leaves, which is about a house that keeps mutating, growing bigger on the inside. The way that Jackson describes the way rooms just don't seem right. Walls don't come together at the right angles. Pieces of the house that you should be able to see from this window are just completely obscured. It touches on how HP Lovecraft used to write about the way in which angles never came together in the right way, but she applies that to a house as a living organism almost.

对，非欧几里得几何。那是洛夫克拉夫特笔下整个城市的建筑基础，我特别喜欢这个设定，虽然完全不明白那是什么意思。

Yeah. The non Euclidean geometry. That was Lovecraft's whole whole cities built on non Euclidean geometry, which I always love because I had no idea what that means.

我也不知道那是什么意思。完全不懂。

I don't know what it means. I don't know.

没人知道那是什么意思。但听起来很酷。雪莉·杰克逊的描写确实厉害——就连埃莉诺第一次进房间时，她只是站在门口，就试图理解墙角的位置，因为在她认为不该有阴影的地方出现了奇怪的阴影，天花板一端比另一端更高。当她走过房间时，刚才站立的地方突然显得陌生，这种迷失方向的感觉丝毫不显得廉价。廉价版本可能是她走进去后突然发现角落里有具骷髅之类的。

Nobody knows what it means. But it sounds good. And definitely Shirley Jackson, even the first time Eleanor enters her room, she's just standing at like the doorway and she's just trying to understand where the corners are because there's strange shadows in places where she thinks there shouldn't be, and the ceiling goes higher on one end than the other. And then she walks across the room and suddenly where she was looks strange, and it's so disorienting in a way that feels not cheap. Like the I feel like the cheap version of this is she walks in and then there was a skeleton in the corner, and whatever it might be.

求你了，我绝不会

Please, I would never be

他妈的正确。它不会成为经典。但对她说来，那种不对劲的感觉挥之不去。这个地方总是透着古怪。而最妙的是，你开始理解——或者说开始怀疑——究竟是房子有问题，还是埃莉诺有问题。

so fucking Right. It would not become a classic. But for her, it's that sense of something is off. Something is always off in this place. And then of course, the beauty of it is you start to understand or you start to wonder, is that the house or is that Eleanor?

因为埃莉诺也总在试图弄明白：为什么她无法与人亲近？为什么她无法信任任何人？为什么她无法爱上任何人？她身上到底有什么不对劲？而这栋房子又如何映照出这些问题？

Because Eleanor is also always trying to figure out why why can't she get close to people? Why can't she trust anyone? Why can't she love anyone? What is what are the things that are off in her? And how is this house a reflection of that?

于是这变成了一场在两者之间来回反射的、绝妙的哈哈镜游戏。

And it becomes this wonderful fun house mirror back and forth between the two.

跟我聊聊你人生中另一个更年长时阅读这本书的时刻，说说你当时不同的感受。比如第一次读时你觉得'哇这鬼屋故事真带劲'，那么告诉我你第二、第三、第四次重读时的人生境遇，以及那时你注意到了什么。

Talk to me about another moment in your life when you were older when you can remember reading this book, and how you received it differently. So if the first time you read it, you're like, wow, this is a great creepy haunted house story. Tell me where you were in your life when you read it second, third, fourth time, and what you picked up then.

我记得第二次读它大概是在1990年——应该是94年，当时我因为成绩太差被大学开除。我在纽约州伊萨卡市找了份人力中介公司的临时工，整天搬家具、打扫办公室什么的，同时纠结着大学生涯是否就此终结——毕竟我是大三被赶出来的。临时工常有空闲时间，这本书原本是为某门课准备的（虽然我当时根本无心学习）。

So the second time I can recall reading it, I was it must have been about 1990, I wanna say '94, and I had been kicked out of college because I was not doing well. I had poor grades, all this kind of rest. I was living in Ithaca, New York, and I took a job working for Manpower, the temp agency. And I was usually like moving furniture, cleaning offices, whatever it might be, and trying to figure out like was my college career over, because I got booted out in my junior year, think. And I had a lot of free time as you sometimes do at temp jobs, and I'd picked up the book for a class that I characteristically at that time in my life did no work in.

那本书就放在我和几个合租男生共用的房间里。这次重读时，最震撼我的是前25页——你会发现埃莉诺来希尔庄园之前的生活多么悲惨：她多年照料着刻薄恶毒的母亲，后来和姐姐姐夫同住（开篇那个被我15岁时完全忽略的精彩场景）。她坐在那里说想借家里的车去希尔庄园，而姐姐不断推脱——杰克逊把这种'委婉拒绝'写得精妙绝伦。

But I had the book in the house that I was sharing in the room that I was sharing with these other guys, and I started to read it. And the thing that stayed with me this time was those first 25 pages, where you discover how awful Eleanor's life was before she shows up at Hill House. The awfulness of that was she spent years taking care of a mother who was vile to her, and then she lives with her in one of the most effective scenes right at the start, but that I totally glossed over at fifteen. She's sitting with her sister and brother-in-law, and she's saying, I'd like to take the family car to drive to Hill House for this trip. And you watch the sister keep saying, she's Jackson's so nice about this.

埃莉诺一直说车子有一半是我的。那就像是我一半的遗产。而她姐姐总说，我就是不确定能不能让你开我的车。他们就这样没完没了，然后她姐夫又不停地说，要是你不在的时候孩子生病了怎么办？我们可能需要开车去某个地方。

Eleanor keeps saying the car is half mine. It was like half my inheritance. And the sister keeps saying, I just don't know if I can let you take my car. And they just keep doing that, and then the the brother-in-law just keeps saying, what if our kid gets sick while we're on while you're away? We might need to get in the car and drive somewhere.

你看着她被这个家庭和这些根本不听她说话的人压得喘不过气。于是在某个被拒绝后的早晨，她直接偷走了车，而你其实为她感到骄傲。她做了这件大胆的事。某种程度上，当我读到这段时——那时我刚被学校开除，那个教务主任（我不想点名）对待我的方式极其恶劣，就在他办公室里对我说：只要我还是教务主任，你就永远别想毕业。而我之前从未见过这个人。

And you see her being snowed under by the weight of this family and these people who just don't listen to her. And so then one morning after they've told her no, she just steals the car, and you're actually proud of her. She's done this bold thing. And I guess in a way, like reading it then when I was booted out of school, and I had been, I'm not gonna say anybody's names, but I had been treated really badly by this dean when I got booted out, like literally in his office he said to me, you will never graduate while I am a dean. And I had never met this dude before.

所以当时真的觉得，哇，全世界都在针对我。因此我对埃莉诺的处境感同身受，特别能理解她被这些人压迫的感受。在小说的前25页，她偷了车，在前往希尔山庄的路上，她第一次感受到了自由。你看着她停驻在不同地方，幻想着：哦，我可以去这里，住在森林里，种这些水果蔬菜，快乐地生活。或者去那里。最美妙的是你看着她尝试独立的过程。

And so it really felt like, wow, the universe is out to get me. And so maybe I was extra empathetic to Eleanor and her feelings of being crushed under the weight of these people. And so that first 25 page, she steals the car, and then on her drive to Hill House is her first time that she is free. And you watch her stopping in different places, and living out these fantasies about, oh, I could just go here, and I could live in the woods, and I could grow this kind of fruit and vegetables, and I could just live happily. Or I could go here, and the beauty of it is you see her trying out independence.

你看着她努力为自己抗争，然后她去了希尔山庄。

You see her trying to stand up for herself, and then she goes to Hill House.

在那里一切都很顺利。

Where everything goes fine.

在那里——这会是史上最短的小说。她到了那里，大家都欢迎她，一切都很美好，房子也没闹鬼。

Where where it's the shortest novel ever. She gets there, everyone welcomes her, it's all sweet, the house isn't haunted.

你有没有从这本书里借鉴过什么用于创作？角色名字、情节节点、动机设定、行文基调？你从中汲取了什么？

Have you ever borrowed anything from this book for your work? A character name, a beat, a motivation, a tone. What have you pulled out of it?

实际上，我是说，就在上周末重读开头部分时，我意识到《孤独女性》的开篇是埃莉诺的逃亡以及她害怕被抓的感觉，我完全借鉴了这种感受用在阿德莱德身上。某种程度上，书中没有这部分是因为最终我和编辑都认为它有点无聊。但在早期草稿中，我确实花了更多时间描写——读者会跟随她最初从南加州登船，然后到西雅图短暂停留，再从西雅图乘火车穿越蒙大拿。

Well, actually, I mean, rereading it again just over the weekend, the opening bits, I realized the beginning of Lone Women is Eleanor's escape and the way that she's afraid of being caught, like I absolutely lifted that feeling for Adelaide and in a way, it's not in the book because in the end, my editor and I agreed, it was a little boring. But I spent actually a lot more time in an earlier draft. You stayed with her on the ship that she's first on from Southern California, then she's in Seattle. She spends a little time in Seattle. Then in then from Seattle, takes the train across Montana.

那段旅程我投入了更多精力，尤其是特别借鉴了前25页的内容。

And that one, I spent even more time, like, really borrowing from that first 25 pages in particular.

你上次读《鬼入侵》是什么时候？

When was the last time that you read The Haunting of Hill House?

在这次周末重读之前，上一次是我妻子生下我们第一个儿子的时候。那是我们俩都不用教课的夏天，所以基本上我们的生活完全跟着他的作息走，过着奇怪的昼夜颠倒生活——我们会在凌晨五点边喝啤酒边吃撒着小麦粉的爆米花看《火线》，据说那能补充能量什么的。等他终于睡着后，精疲力尽的妻子会立刻昏睡过去。有次我在厨房里养成了习惯守在那儿，这样他醒来时我能更快反应，也就是那时我开始读些书。

The last time before this weekend when I was rereading it for this, my wife had given birth to our first son. It was the summer we're both off from teaching, so we were just basically what we would do is we were up and down by his schedule at that point, and living this kind of weird nocturnal life where we would, at around 05:00, watch the wire while drinking beer and eating popcorn with this like wheat dust on top of it, because it was supposedly gonna give us more energy or whatever it might do. And then eventually he would fall asleep. My wife who was absolutely much more exhausted would crash. And one of those times, I was in the kitchen, I started to make it my thing that I would be in the kitchen so that I could be closer to if he woke up, I could get to him quicker, and I started to read some things.

《鬼入侵》就是当时读的，那应该是十一年前了，因为他现在11岁。我还读了雪莉·杰克逊之后写的《我们一直住在城堡里》，虽然我很爱《鬼入侵》，但我觉得后者才是她的杰作。不过这两本书堪称绝配。在华盛顿高地那个精疲力尽的厨房里，我特别羡慕埃莉诺独居的状态——当时孩子才一两个月大，我实在太需要独处了。

And this was one of the books I actually read Haunting of Hill House then, so that would have been eleven years ago now because he's 11. And I also read her the book that came after this, We Have Always Lived in the Castle, which is as much as I love this book, that's her masterpiece, I would say. But it's it the the two are almost like a great pairing. But I read that Exhausted In Our Kitchen in Washington Heights, and in that one, I just envied the idea that Eleanor lived alone. Because I really needed to live alone at that point when our baby was about a month or two old.

我记得那些疯狂的凌晨时分，醒着试图读书或...我想我看的是《鬼书》吧？凌晨四点看这个可不是好主意，尤其刚有孩子的时候。

I remember those crazy early morning hours and being up and trying to read something or trying to I think I watched The Babadook Yeah. Like Oh, no. 04:00 in the morning, which is not a great movie if you've just had a kid.

确实不是。那绝对是个糟糕的选择。

That is no. That's a terrible idea.

天啊。也许这是个糟糕的主意。确实。

Oh my god. Maybe this was a bad idea. Yes.

那部电影很深奥，我是说我很喜欢，但确实不会在这种情况下推荐它。

That one that's a profound I mean, I love that movie, but yeah, I wouldn't recommend it then.

我之前没读过剧情简介。这是我的失误。你会怎么向别人推荐这本书？当你试图告诉某人他们必须读《邪屋》时，你会怎么推销它？

I had not read a plot synopsis before. It was my mistake. How do you recommend this book to people if you ever do? When when you're trying to tell someone you absolutely have to read A Haunting of a Hill House, how do you sell it?

其实通常就是用你让我读的开篇段落，因为我觉得它就像一把钥匙——如果有人听了那段话后身体前倾，表现出'等等，这是什么意思？希尔山庄不理智是什么意思？连云雀和凯蒂都会做梦又是什么意思？'如果这些问题能引发他们的好奇，我就知道这本书适合他们。直接拿去看吧。

You know, actually, often it's with that opening paragraph that you asked me to read because I really feel like it's almost a kind of key, like if a person hears that paragraph and they lean in, they kinda go, wait a second. What does that mean Hill House is not sane? What does that mean that even Larks and Caddy did dream? If all those things inspire questions, then I know this will be your thing. Just take it.

我向你保证。而如果我念给别人听后他们说'我不知道他们在说什么，不明白意思'，我通常会说'让我想想别的推荐'。这时候我可能会推荐《我们一直住在城堡里》，因为那本书开头对主角玛丽·凯特的介绍理论上更清晰。她虽然超级古怪，但描写更具体。

I promise you. And then if I read that to someone and they go, I don't know what they're talking about. I don't know what that means, I often say, let me think of something else. How about the because the other thing the nice thing is then I might recommend the We Have Always Lived in the Castle, because that one begins with a much clearer, in theory, introduction to the main character, Mary Cat. And she's super weird, but it's more concrete.

但本质上我会问：你想读一本关于孤独女人住在孤宅中的文笔优美的小说吗？

But really I say at heart, do you wanna read a beautifully written book about a very lonely woman in a very lonely house?

嗯，这绝对是我这辈子会反复重读的书。希望对你也是如此。

Well, this is definitely a book that I can see myself reading several more times in my life. Hopefully, that's the same for you.

是的。

Yes.

希望我们已成功说服所有听众尝试一下。

And hopefully, for everyone listening, we've convinced you to give it a shot.

希望如此，希望如此。它会回报

I hope so. I hope so. It will reward

你的。这是部杰作。是的。我刚才与维克多·拉瓦尔讨论了雪莉·杰克逊的《邪屋》和他的新小说《孤独女性》。维克多，非常感谢你今天做客。

you. It's one of the greats. Yes. I've been speaking with Victor Laval about Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House and about his new novel, Lone Women. Victor, thank you so much for being here today.

很愉快。谢谢邀请。

It was a pleasure. Thanks for this.

以上是我与2024年的乔·希尔及2023年的维克多·拉瓦尔的对话。我是吉尔伯特·克鲁兹。希望大家保持惊悚氛围，下周见。

Those were my conversations with Joe Hill from 2024 and Victor Laval from 2023. I'm Gilbert Cruz. I hope you keep it spooky, everyone. See you next week.