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The singer-songwriter, whose album “The Last Ship” will be released this week, says his favorite novels are really extended songs: “What is ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’ if not an opera?” 歌手兼词曲作者斯汀(Sting)的新专辑《最后一班船》(The Last Ship)将于本周发行，他说自己最喜欢的小说其实就像歌曲的延伸——“《百年孤独》(One Hundred Years of Solitude)难道不像歌剧吗？” What’s the best book you’ve read so far this year? 今年你读到的最好的书是什么？ I enjoyed Hilary Mantel’s “Bring Up the Bodies,” almost as much as I enjoyed its predecessor, “Wolf Hall.” Her portrait of Thomas Cromwell is complex and largely sympathetic to a character that is usually cast darkly and exclusively as Henry VIII’s “muscle.” I enjoyed Nathaniel Philbrick’s treatment of the American War of Independence in “Bunker Hill” for similar reasons, a well-researched story proving to be more nuanced and compelling than a well-established myth. 我喜欢希拉里o曼特尔(Hilary Mantel)的《提堂》(Bring Up the Bodies)，它的上一本《狼厅》(Wolf Hall)我也非常喜欢。她对托马斯o克伦威尔(Thomas Cromwell)的刻画充满同情，十分深刻，要知道这个人物经常被塑造成阴郁排外的形象，就是亨利八世的“打手”。同理，我也喜欢纳萨维尔o菲尔布里克(Nathaniel Philbrick)在《邦克山》(Bunker Hill)里对美国独立战争的描写，它不是讲述一个早已成为定论的神话，而是做了详实的研究，讲了一个充满微妙细节，扣人心弦的故事。
If you had to name a favorite novelist, who would it be? 假如只许说一个最喜欢的小说家，那会是谁呢？ Mark Twain, for the perfect combination of plot and character in “Huckleberry Finn.” 马克o吐温(Mark Twain)，《哈克贝利o芬》(Huckleberry Finn)里情节和人物的结合堪称完美。 What kinds of stories are you drawn to? 你最喜欢什么样的故事？ I like personal dramas set within the sweep of historical events: Colum McCann’s “TransAtlantic” and “Let the Great World Spin,” or Ian McEwan’s “Sweet Tooth.” 我喜欢在大的历史背景下发生的个人戏剧化故事，比如科伦o麦凯恩(Colum McCann)的《大西洋彼岸》(TransAtlantic)和《转吧，这伟大的世界》(Let the Great World Spin)，还有伊恩o麦克尤恩(Ian McEwan)的《甜齿》(Sweet Tooth)。 We have to ask about Nabokov. How does it feel to have turned on a generation of junior high schoolgirls to “Lolita”? Are you a Nabokov fan? 我们得问问你关于纳博科夫(Nabokov)的事。让一整代初中女生都去读《洛丽塔》(Lolita)是种什么感觉？你喜欢纳博科夫吗？（这里是指斯汀80年代的名曲“Don’t Stand So Close To Me”内有一句“就像纳博科夫书里那个老男人”，影响了许多歌迷去读《洛丽塔》——译注）
Is that true — that my appalling rhyme led a mass migration to the linguistic cosmos of Nabokov? I don’t think so, but then, they could have gone to worse places. 真的吗——我那些可怕的歌词真的能让许多人去对纳博科夫笔下的世界感兴趣？我可不这么想，不过要不是那首歌，她们可能去更坏的地方。 In what ways do the books you read figure into the music you write? 阅读是怎样影响了你的音乐创作？ Songwriting is of course a very different art to that of the novelist — condensing sometimes large ideas into rhyming couplets seems to be the opposite process. 写歌当然和写小说非常不一样——有时要把宏大的想法浓缩成押韵的诗句，写小说似乎正相反。 But it is interesting to me how often a novel will begin with a quote from a poem or a song, so the territories do overlap to some extent. My favorite songs are narrative songs, short stories that can be recounted in three minutes. My favorite novels are extended songs. What is “One Hundred Years of Solitude” if not an opera? And a grand one at that! 但对我来说，有趣的是，一部小说经常引用诗歌或歌词作为开头，所以二者之间确实是有重叠的。我最喜欢的歌都是叙事性歌曲，可以在三分钟内讲完的小故事。我最喜欢的小说又都是歌曲的延伸。《百年孤独》不就是一部歌剧吗？而且还是非常宏伟的歌剧！ You’ve written a memoir, “Broken Music.” What was that experience like for you — the writing itself, and the publication and reception of the book? 你出版过一本回忆录，名叫《破碎的音乐》(Broken Music)，你觉得写作的感觉怎么样，出版和了解读者反馈又感觉如何？ I began to realize while writing and remembering that memory is a neural muscle, and once you begin to stretch it, it grows to accommodate everything that has ever happened to you, often things you might prefer to forget. But the abiding emotions that sustained me through the process were gratitude and forgiveness; to use the newly developed muscle otherwise is largely a waste of time. I think people were surprised that I wrote almost exclusively about my early life, before the distorting lens of fame and success, and the well-worn clichés of celebrity. 在写作和回忆的时候，我开始明白，记忆就像一块神经肌肉，一旦开始牵引它，就可以回想起所有曾在你身上发生过的事，通常是那些你宁愿遗忘的事。但是这个过程中，我心里始终充满感恩和宽恕的情感；使用这块新生的肌肉很费时间。我觉得人们看到我只写了自己的早年生活，一定会觉得很惊奇，那个时候的我，视角还没有被名利的哈哈镜扭曲，也没有那些陈腐不堪的名人老一套。 What books might we be surprised to find on your shelves? 人们在你的书架上会惊奇地发现什么书呢？ The complete works of P. G. Wodehouse, for their innocent escapism. PoGo沃德豪斯(P.G. Wodehouse)全集，我喜欢书中那种天真的空想主义。 Do you ever read self-help? Anything you recommend? 你看励志书吗，有没有什么可推荐的？ A self-help book? Isn’t that an oxymoron? 励志书？你是在说反话吗？ 对你影响最大的书是什么？ Probably Bulgakov’s “Master and Margarita,” a delicious and disruptive satire of Soviet Russia. I hear a dead man was put on trial in Moscow only this past summer; Woland would have loved it! 或许是布尔加科夫(Bulgakov)的《大师与玛格丽特》(Master and Margarita)。这是苏联的一部精美而具有破坏性的讽刺小说。我听说就在去年夏天，莫斯科那里有一个死人被送上法庭审判；我想沃兰德（小说中的魔鬼——译注）肯定会喜欢这件事的！ If you could require the president to read one book, what would it be? 如果推荐总统读一本书，你会推荐哪一本呢？ “Meditations,” by Marcus Aurelius — Stoicism and the limitations of power. “When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: The people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous and surly. They are like this because they can’t tell good from evil. But I have seen the beauty of good, and the ugliness of evil, and have recognized that the wrongdoer has a nature related to my own — not of the same blood or birth, but the same mind, and possessing a share of the divine.” 马可o奥勒留(Marcus Aurelius)的《沉思录》(Meditations)，这是一本关于斯多葛哲学与限制权力的书。“一日之始就对自己说:我将遇见好管闲事的人、忘恩负义的人、傲慢的人、欺诈的人、嫉妒的人和孤僻的人。他们染有这些品性是因为他们不知道什么是善，什么是恶。但是，我知道善是美的，恶是丑的；而且知道做了错事的人们的本性与我相似——不是相似的血缘或出身，而是同样的心智和同样的一份神性。” Did you grow up with a lot of books? 你从小就看很多书吗？ We only had two in the house, an illustrated Old Testament and Volume 1 of Encyclopaedia Britannica. I was well versed in everything from “aardvark” to “azimuth,” but little else. The public library became a sort of refuge. I never throw a book away now. I have kept every dog-eared paperback I have ever read. Books are the only things I’m acquisitive about. And no, I don’t lend my books . . . join the library! 我小时候家里只有两本书，绘图本的《旧约》和《大英百科全书》第一卷。所以百科全书里A打头的条目，从“土豚”(aardvark)到“航线”(azimuth)我都看得烂熟，别的就不怎么精通。公共图书馆后来成了我的避难所。到现在我都绝不会扔掉一本书。所有看过的平装书，哪怕破破烂烂，我也全都留着。书籍是我现在渴望拥有的仅有的几件东西之一。不，我的书不外借……去图书馆吧。 Do you have a favorite childhood literary character or hero? 童年时你有什么喜欢的文学人物或英雄吗？ I imagined myself as Jim Hawkins in “Treasure Island,” an innocent among thieves and cutthroats. It must have been the first book I ever read from start to finish, with unforgettable characters, Long John Silver, Blind Pew, Ben Gunn. . . . The Black Spot still terrifies me. 我幻想自己是《金银岛》(Treasure Island)里的吉姆o霍金斯(Jim Hawkins)，他在一群盗贼和侩子手当中仍然保持天真。那是我从头到尾读完的第一本书，里面有那么多令人难忘的人物：长脚约翰、瞎子、本o冈恩……“黑券”到现在还让我害怕。 id="medium-rectangle-ad-3" "mid4 What books are on your coffee table? 你的咖啡桌上现在放着什么书？ Albert Camus: “Solitude and Solidarity,” a beautiful and evocative portrait of the man and the writer, edited by his daughter Catherine, and Ellen Von Unwerth’s “Fr"aulein.”. . . Well, what did you expect? 阿尔贝o加缪(Albert Camus)的《孤独与团结》(Solitude and Solidarity)，这本书由他的女儿凯瑟琳编辑，十分优美地勾勒出他作为一个人和作为一个作家的肖像，令人产生共鸣。此外还有艾伦o冯o安沃斯(Ellen Von Unwerth)的摄影集《小姐》(Fr"aulein)……好吧，你以为是什么书？ Disappointing, overrated, just not good: What book did you feel you were supposed to like, and didn’t? Do you remember the last book you put down without finishing? 令人失望、夸张、平庸……什么书令你大失所望？你还记得上一本没能读下去的书是什么吗？ I’m no critic. It’s hard enough writing a book without some opinionated parvenu dismissing your work because he wasn’t in the mood or is too daft to catch your drift. Mind you, anything with the word “Code” in the title, I will avoid like the plague! 我不愿意批评什么。总是免不了有些固执自负的人，也许因为心情不好就去批评你的书，或者有人根本就是太蠢，没看懂你的意思。不过可以告诉你，任何书名里带“密码”两个字的，我都像躲避瘟疫一样避之唯恐不及。 If you could meet any writer, dead or alive, who would it be? What would you want to know? 假如你可以同一位作家会面，不管是在生还是已经去世，你会想见谁？你想问他点什么？ I’d like to ask Shakespeare if he composed while walking, or was he entirely sedentary? 我很想问问莎士比亚，他是一边走一边构思，还是坐在那儿构思呢？ What do you plan to read next? 你接下来要读什么书？ I’m weighing “My Lunches With Orson” against Daniel C. Dennett’s “Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking.” 我正在《与奥森共进午餐》(My Lunches With Orson)和丹尼尔oCo丹尼特(Daniel C. Dennett)的《直觉与其他思想工具》(Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking)中选择。 Any plans to write another book? 你还想再写书吗？ Oh yes! I definitely want to give it another crack! 啊，想！我当然想再过一次瘾。 本文最初发表于2013年9月22日。 |
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