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The rites of summer are, by definition, fleeting: the summer romance, the summer job or vacation. Only the books seem to stick. Twelve writers recall their most memorable experiences of summer reading, proving perhaps that if you’re looking for an enduring summer romance, a good book might be your best bet.
后来我发现了尼古拉·蒙萨拉特(Nicholas Monsarrat)的《尼龙海盗》(The Nylon Pirates)。我觉得肯定是关于海盗偷窃女人尼龙丝袜的故事，感觉真够诱人的。结果这本书肯定成了压垮骆驼的最后一根稻草，因为那个图书管理员拒绝把它借给我。相反还给了我一本《动物农庄》(Animal Farm)。“告诉我你的感想，”她说。我喜欢这本书。“怎么样？”我还书时她问我。“一个关于猪的精彩故事！”我告诉她。她给这本书盖上了续借的红印章，还给了我。“再读一遍吧，”她说。 Louise Erdrich’s most recent novel, “The Round House,” won the National Book Award last year. 路易斯·厄德里奇最新的小说《圆屋》(The Round House)去年荣获国家图书奖。 Walter Isaacson 沃尔特·艾萨克森(Walter Isaacson) When I was growing up in New Orleans, my friend Thomas and I used to go fishing across Lake Pontchartrain. We’d stop for lunch at his uncle’s house on the Bogue Falaya, a lazy river teeming with turtles. I was baffled about what “Uncle Walker” did for a living, since he always seemed to be at home, sipping bourbon. He was a kindly gentleman, whose placid face seemed to know despair but whose eyes nevertheless often smiled. His daughter said he was a writer. One summer I read Walker Percy’s “The Moviegoer,” and it dawned on me that writing was something you could do for a living, just like being a doctor or a fisherman. The novel’s wry philosophical depth opened my eyes to what Percy called “the search,” poking around for clues about why we are here. At the end of that summer, I tried to get him to expound on the religious themes in the book, but he fended me off. “There are two types of people who come out of Louisiana,” he said. “Preachers and storytellers.” It was better to be a storyteller. 我从小在新奥尔良长大，那时朋友托马斯和我常去庞恰特雷恩湖钓鱼。我们在他叔叔家吃午饭，房子旁边是慵懒的波格法拉亚河，里面有好多乌龟。我很困惑，不知道这位“沃尔克叔叔”是靠什么为生，因为他好像总是呆在家里喝波旁酒。他是个好脾气的绅士，一张平静的面孔似乎洞悉世间绝望，但双眼却又总是流露笑意。他女儿说他是个作家。有一年夏天，我读到沃尔克·珀西(Walker Percy)的《电影观众》(The Moviegoer)，突然明白写作和医生或渔夫一样，也是可以谋生的职业。那本小说有着嘲讽的哲学深度，打开了我的眼界，令我开始如珀西所说，去“探索”，在身边寻觅我们何以存在的线索。那年夏末，我想请他详细阐释一下那本书中的信仰主题，但他回避了话题。“从路易斯安纳州出来的人有两种，”他说，“布道的和讲故事的。”做讲故事的人要好一些。 Walter Isaacson is the president of the Aspen Institute and the author of biographies of Steve Jobs, Albert Einstein and Benjamin Franklin. 沃尔特·艾萨克森是阿斯彭学院的院长，也是史蒂夫·乔布斯(Steve Jobs)、阿尔伯特·爱因斯坦(Albert Einstein)与本杰明·富兰克林(Benjamin Franklin)的传记作者。 Pico Iyer 皮柯·耶尔(Pico Iyer) I was just out of graduate school, the world was in front of me and I had nothing to do but roam around the Peloponnese for the"Let’s Go"guidebooks. Day after day, I’d wake up in a modest taverna, take a bus along the coast and wander through whitewashed villages, seeing sights for a living. I subsisted on Greek salads and Cokes and sported (like a sign of hoped-for wisdom) a beard. 那年我刚刚读完研究生，整个世界都在面前，我却无所事事，为写《上路吧》(Let’s Go)这套导游书，去伯罗奔尼撒闲逛。日复一日，我在寒酸的小饭馆里醒来，搭乘巴士去海边，在漆成白色的村庄之间漫游，观赏景色是为了谋生。我靠希腊式沙拉和可乐勉强活着，还蓄起了胡子，希望自己看上去智慧一点。 Every day, talking to no one, encircled by the most elemental classical landscape I’d seen — all blue-and-white intensity — I’d page through the anguished dramas of Philip Carey and Mildred in Somerset Maugham’s"Of Human Bondage."For one not long out of British boarding-school, and hungry for a life of imagination, it became a near-scriptural text. When I looked up, I’d see blue water foaming around rocks, a lonely church amidst olive trees; when I looked down, Mildred was slashing through young Philip’s possessions with a carving knife. 我被所见过的最质朴的古典景观所围绕——到处都是浓重的蓝色与白色。每一天，我不和任何人说话，只是读着萨默赛特·毛姆(Somerset Maugham)的《人性的枷锁》(Of Human Bondage)，看着书中菲利普·凯里和米尔德丽德令人痛苦的故事。当时我刚从英国寄宿学校毕业不久，渴望充满想象力的生活，这本书对我来说成了几乎圣书的读物。当我抬起头来，眼前只见蔚蓝的海水翻涌着泡沫，拍打礁石，橄榄树掩映着一座孤零零的教堂；我低下头看着书本，米尔德丽德正用一把刻刀割破年轻的菲利普的财产。 In later years I’d reread the book and cherish, as ever, Maugham’s rare mix of society shrewdness and traveler’s openness. But then, my future as long as the horizons around me, his story held me like a warning and a bildungsroman at once. Books seldom so possess you as when you’re a kid, alone and eager for transformation. My summer in Greece became the summer of watching Philip Carey find — and lose — himself. 若干年后我还曾重读这本书，毛姆能将洞悉世事与旅行者的开放心态融合在一起，这一点十分罕有，一直令我深深喜爱。但在当年，我的未来和地平线一样遥远，他的故事像警告与教育小说那样，一下子攫住了我。当你还是个孩子，孤身一人，渴望脱胎换骨的时候，很少有什么书能这样迷人。于是我在希腊的那个夏天就成了目睹菲利普·凯里寻找乃至丧失自我的夏天。 Pico Iyer’s most recent book is “The Man Within My Head.” 皮柯·耶尔最新出版的书是《我头脑中的男人》(The Man Within My Head)。 Alexander McCall Smith 亚历山大·麦克科尔·史密斯(Alexander McCall Smith) One summer, over 20 years ago, my wife and I went to stay in a small cottage in France, on a farm in the Auvergne. Our children were small and needed an afternoon sleep, during which I sat on the veranda and readPatricia Highsmith novels, one after the other, and scared myself thoroughly. It started after I was a few chapters into"People Who Knock on the Door,” and by the time I had reached the end of"Deep Water,” I felt utterly uneasy. 大约在20年以前的一个夏天，我和妻子去往法国奥维涅一个农场，在一个乡间小别墅里住了下来。我们的孩子还很小，需要午睡，他们睡觉时我就坐在走廊里，读帕特里西亚·海史密斯(Patricia Highsmith)的小说，一本接一本地读，把我自己吓得不轻。《敲响大门的人》(People Who Knock on the Door)那本书我看了几章就开始害怕，读完《深水》(Deep Water)就更是陷入了深深的不安。 It was ridiculous, of course; did I really need to look surreptitiously down the track that led to the house in case some passing stranger — a Highsmithian psychopath — might drop by? It was worse at night. The cottage had electricity, but only just. One could not leave the light on throughout the night, and the house was very isolated. The Auvergne in my mind now has a slightly sinister edge to it, and Tom Ripley, of course, lives in rural France; worth bearing in mind. 当然这很可笑；我难道真的应该偷偷摸摸地去检查通往这栋房子的车道，以防过路的陌生人（一个海史密斯式的变态狂）来到我家？夜里就更糟糕。这栋别墅是有电的，但是刚刚够用，夜里不能不关灯。而且房子又很偏僻。现在回忆起来，奥维涅也有点险恶的气氛，当然，住在法国乡间的汤姆·瑞普利（Tom Ripley，海史密斯笔下的主人公，是变态杀人狂——译注）也值得去想象一番。 Alexander McCall Smith is the author of the “No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency” series. 亚历山大·麦克科尔·史密斯是《第一夫人侦探社》(NO.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency)系列的作者。 Joy Williams 乔伊·威廉姆斯(Joy Williams) In the summer of my 13th year I read Thomas Wolfe’s “Look Homeward, Angel.” It seemed that only moments before, I was devouring Walter Farley’s books and writing love letters to a horse (I will have you. . . . I will . . . ), but this was my first discovery of a novel — big, poetic, strange, disorderly, “a story of the buried life,” as Wolfe described it. I later learned that many eminent critics felt it was not a novel at all. Wolfe was mocked for his lyricism and sprawl. Even my English teacher said that it was autobiography and was thus far easier to write than something of a creative nature. Her name has been forgotten, even by me, but “Look Homeward, Angel” remains, in its messy, keening, passionate, horribly comic and tragic way (Ben Gant’s death is one of the most moving in literature), ever memorable. 我13岁那年夏天读了托马斯·伍尔夫(Thomas Wolfe)的《天使望故乡》(Look Homeward, Angel)。就在那之前不久，我还在狼吞虎咽地读着沃尔特·法利（Walter Farley，著名童书作家，专写马的故事——译注）的书，给马写情书（“我要让你……我要……”），但这次是我第一次发现一本小说——篇幅长、有诗意、奇特、混乱，伍尔夫说它是“关于被埋葬的生活的故事”。我后来知道，有许多著名的评论家认为它根本就算不上一部小说。伍尔夫的抒情性与杂乱无章受到讥笑。就连我的英语老师都说它其实是一部自传，还说它没那么有创造性，比较容易写。那个老师的名字如今连我也忘记了，但《天使望故乡》中的混乱、哀恸、热情与可怖的悲喜剧（其中本·甘特[Ben Gant]的死是文学中最感人的一幕之一）将永远被人铭记。 It is a young writer’s book — Wolfe was in his late 20s when it was published — and it is a marvelous book to read when one is young, lonely and unsure, desperate to become real and protect oneself from “school, society, all the barbarous invasions of the world.” It’s excessive, indulgent (originally he wanted to title it “O Lost!” or “Alone, Alone”), mythopoetic, a threnody of loss, defined and undefinable. It’s his best book, of course. He was on the verge of maturation, of summer, the season that eternally promises and confounds so much. 这是一本年轻作家的书——出版时伍尔夫还不到30岁——当一个人年轻、孤独、前途未卜，绝望地渴望着真诚，同时又想保护自己不受“学校、社会以及整个世界所有野蛮的侵犯”时，读这本书再好不过。它是冗长而放纵的神话诗（伍尔夫原本想给这本书起名叫《啊，迷失！》或《孤独，孤独》），是关于失落，关于明确与不明确事物的一曲哀歌。毫无疑问，它是伍尔夫最好的一本书。当时他身处成熟边缘，正值人生的夏天，是永远充满希望与迷惘的季节。 Joy Williams is the author of four novels, three collections of stories and a book of essays. 乔伊·威廉姆斯是4本小说，3本故事集与一本散文集的作者。 Ayana Mathis 安亚娜·马西斯(Ayana Mathis) I turned 16 in the summer of 1989. Philadelphia was pulling itself out of the hole into which it had fallen in the ‘70s and early ‘80s, but the city still had the air of both sinking ship and powder keg. In the high heat of the afternoons I would take two buses and the subway to meet friends in Center City. We wanted to be writers. We felt terrible about everything in our angsty teenage way. Our parents and our lives were complicated in ways we were too young to understand. We hung around one friend’s basement, reading and smoking and playing albums. We listened to “Visions of Johanna” so often I knew every scratch. 1989年夏天我迎来了16岁生日。当时费城刚刚摆脱了它在20世纪70年代到80年代初陷入的困境，但这个城市仍然有着沉船与火药桶的气息。我常常冒着下午的酷暑，换乘公共汽车和地铁去中心城看望朋友。我们想当作家。怀着年轻人的愤怒，我们觉得周围的一切都糟透了。我们的父母与我们的人生都那么复杂，我们太年轻，还理解不了。我们在一个朋友家的地下室里聚会，阅读、吸烟、放音乐。我们常常听《乔安娜的幻影》(Visions of Johanna)，以至于我熟悉唱片上的每个沟回。 One afternoon I brought Sonia Sanchez’ “Under a Soprano Sky” with me. I had not intended to read aloud, but the poems got the best of me. After I’d read a few, we were quiet and astonished. Sanchez knew my yearning and my fears, and she was black like me and a woman like me. And she was a poet, which made me think I could be one too. I didn’t know how to articulate any of that, so I read the poems again, and then again. Summer blazed on, but my friends and I had each other, and our youth, and poems to say what we could not. 一天下午，我带来了索尼娅·桑切斯(Sonia Sanchez)的《女高音的天空下》(Under a Soprano Sky)。我本来不想高声朗读，但这些诗歌征服了我。我读了几首诗，大家都安静下来，震惊不已。桑切斯了解我的渴望与恐惧，她和我一样，是黑人，也是女人。而且她是诗人，这让我觉得自己也能成为诗人。我不知道该怎样清晰地表达这些东西，于是一再去读更多诗歌。夏日如火，但我和朋友们拥有友谊与青春，还有诗歌替我们说出我们所不能说出的话语。 Ayana Mathis is the author of the novel “The Twelve Tribes of Hattie.” 安亚娜·马西斯是小说《哈蒂族的12个部落》(The Twelve Tribes of Hattie)的作者。 Christopher Buckley 克里斯托弗·巴克利(Christopher Buckley) It was at a camp in Maine with the unimprovable name of Wild Goose. I was 12 years old and utterly miserable. I’d brought along my toy soldiers, and the other boys in Anaconda Cabin made merciless fun of me. Socially marooned, I discovered, for the first time, really, the escape of reading. 那是在缅因州的一个度假村里，它的名字似乎叫野鹅，已经不可考。我那年12岁，非常可怜。我带了自己的玩具士兵，那些住在阿纳康达木屋里的男孩都无情地嘲笑我。于是被他人孤立的我，生平第一次发现了阅读所能提供的逃避。 The book was a dog-eared paperback whose cover showed a forest penetrated by shafts of sunlight, and two Indians with mohawks walking along. It was a coming-of-age story of a boy torn between two worlds: he is kidnapped by the Delaware tribe as a child and returned to his parents as a teenager. 那是一本破破烂烂的平装书，封面上是一片森林，有一束束阳光照射进来，两个留着莫西干头的印第安人在林间行走。这是一个置身两个世界之间的男孩的成长故事，他从小就被德拉威尔部落的人拐走，直到十几岁才回到生身父母身边。 I would wake early and lie in my bed, devouring every word. I remember the smell of the piney woods outside the cabin and the sound of birds waking. 一早醒来，我总会躺在床上，贪婪地读着每个字。我还记得当时小屋外面松林的香气，还有鸟儿醒来时的啼鸣。 The book is “The Light in the Forest,” by Conrad Richter, first published in 1953, a year after I was born. I know nothing of Richter, but I will always be profoundly grateful to him for providing me with shelter that summer, and for showing me the way into, and out of, the forest. 这本书是康拉德·里希特(Conrad Richter)的《林中之光》(The Light in the Forest)，1953年初版，那时我正好一岁。我对里希特其人一无所知，但我永远深深感谢他为我提供了那年夏天的避难所，给我指示了一条走出密林的路径。 Christopher Buckley’s book of essays, “But Enough About You,” is due to be published next year. 克里斯托弗·巴克利的散文集《但是受够了你》(But Enough About You)将在明年出版。 Junot Díaz 朱诺·迪亚斯(Junot Diaz) Junior year I spent my summer working at a steel mill. All my boys were taking it easy and my girl was down at the shore with her family, writing me sketchy letters about all the guys who were “into her.” She was at the beach, planning to leave me I was sure, and there I was wearing thermal greens and metatarsal boots five days a week. When we went into the melt shop I had to put on thermals under the greens to keep my inner organs from being cooked. What was even worse, though, were some of my co-workers. A couple of them tried to sell me paper targets with drawings of “blacks” on them. Their idea of a joke. 大三那年我在一个钢铁厂打工。身边的男性朋友都觉得这不算什么，我的女朋友和家人一起住在海滩，给我写简略的信件，描写那些“迷恋她”的小伙子们。她住在海边，我敢肯定她想离开我，我在工厂里，一星期有五天穿着绿色耐热服，穿着保护足骨的笨重靴子。进熔炼车间的时候我得穿上绿色耐热服，要不五脏六腑就要被烤熟了。更糟的是有些同事，他们想卖给我画着“黑人”的射击靶子。这是他们的玩笑。 It was seriously a lousy job and an even lousier summer. 这真是一份讨厌的工作，这个夏天就更讨厌。 Still, you got to fight — so I fought. Every lunch break I sat on the deck overlooking the scrap yard and read me someToni Morrison. I’d brought all of her novels back from Rutgers, vowing to finish them all by summer’s end, and that’s exactly what I did. I read with a concentration I have never again matched. I’ll sure as hell never forget those lunch hours, turning those pages, the Komatsu loader cranking in the distance. I’ll never forget the books or all those heartbreaking lines. “How loose the silk. How jailed down the juice.” I’ll never forget having to close the books, all the strength that took and getting back to work. 但你还是得战斗——于是我就战斗了。每天中午吃饭时我都会坐在能俯瞰肥料厂的平台上，看点儿托尼·莫里森(Toni Morrison)。我把她的所有小说都从罗格斯大学带了过来，发誓要在这个夏天读完，最后也真的做到了。我一心一意地读着，后来就再也没有那么专注过。我绝对肯定自己永远不会忘记那些午饭时间，那些翻过的书页，还有远处忙个不停的小松牌装载机。我永远不会忘记那些书与那些令人心碎的句子。“玉米须是多么松软，汁液是多么饱满。”我永远不会忘记，当自己合上书页时，感觉身体充满力量，回去工作。 I survived the summer. The girlfriend didn’t leave me. And Toni Morrison’s novels took hold of me the way books are wont to do when you’re a certain age. Took hold and never let go. 我挺过了那个夏天。女朋友也没离开我。在那个特定年龄段，托尼·莫里森的小说比其他任何书都让我着迷。而且永远难以忘怀。 Junot Díaz’s novel, “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao,” won the Pulitzer Prize in 2008. His most recent book is “This Is How You Lose Her.” 朱诺·迪亚斯的小说《奥斯卡·瓦奥短暂而奇妙的一生》(The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao)2008年荣获普利策奖。他最近出版的书是《你就是这样失去了她》(This Is How You Lose Her)。 Jorie Graham 乔丽·格雷厄姆(Jorie Graham) Early in the summer of 1963, in Rome, I finished supper and went into the empty living room with a new book. The glossy Gallimard cover of “Anna Karénine” in one hand, I arranged the pillows on the dark green velvet couch. Swallows cut their ellipses through the evening. Cicadas continued their strict stitching. Sounds in the house receded. The door stayed shut. I began to cross that other doorway, that frame filled with lines of black on white, and began to forget. My hands disappeared, my head, the room, the garden, its bursts of sparrows. . . . 1963年初夏，在罗马，我吃完晚饭，带着一本新书走进空荡荡的起居室。我一手拿着有着光亮封面的伽利玛（Gallimard，法国著名出版社——译注）版《安娜·卡列尼娜》(Anna Karénine)，一手整理着深绿色丝绒沙发上的枕头。燕子的身影掠过夜空。知了像纺织机般细密地鸣叫。房间里的声音渐渐消失了。大门紧闭，我却开始忘却一切，穿越另一道大门，门框是由白纸上的黑字组成。我的双手消失了，我的头，整个房间、花园、花园里大群大群的麻雀……这一切全都消失了。 “Anna was not in lilac, as Kitty had absolutely wanted, but in a low-cut black velvet dress. . . . Now she understood that Anna could not have been in lilac, that her loveliness consisted precisely in always standing out from what she wore, that what she wore was never seen on her. And the black dress with luxurious lace was not seen on her; it was just a frame, and only she was seen — ” “安娜并没有像吉提希望的那样穿紫色，而是穿了一件低胸的黑色天鹅绒晚装……现在她明白安娜为什么不能穿紫色，因为她的美就在于她的人总是胜过她穿的衣服，她穿的衣服永远不会引人瞩目。人们不会注意到她穿了带奢华蕾丝的黑色礼服；那不过是画框而已，真正引人瞩目的是她本人——” It was then, with the music of the waltz everywhere, and the words “Just then Vronsky approached,” that the strangeness began. I went blind. Or, rather, I looked up from the clear page into the deep black velvet, which had become the entire room. I tried to touch it, but my hands fluttered through. Where was I? Then there it was, the velvet — at my fingertips — the rim of the pillow. I was in the living room. I was at home. When I looked back to where the page had been, it was gone. Had I not looked away, would they not have vanished, the ballroom, the dancing, the danger, the absolute desire? Was this what Vronsky had seen — how the thing is everywhere and then it disappears? Then the door opened, and my mother was calling. “What are you doing here in the dark,” she said. “You’ll ruin your sight.” And the light came on. And there was the little paperback again, in my hands, weighing about as much as a hand. 就在那时，在无处不在的华尔兹音乐中，出现了这样的字句“渥伦斯基走上前来”，然后奇怪的事情发生了。我什么都看不见了。换句话说，我望着清晰的书页，却只看到黑色的天鹅绒，而且变得整个房间都是。我想去触摸它，但我的手却滑了过去。我在哪儿？哦，原来天鹅绒就在这儿，就在我指尖——是枕头的边缘。我就在起居室里，我是在家里。然后我又回去看书页，它消失了。如果我不抬起头来，那么舞厅、舞蹈、以及那些危险与欲望是不是就不会消失呢？渥伦斯基所看到的是不是就是这样——事物曾经无所不在，终于会烟消云散？后来房门打开了，妈妈冲我叫道：“那么黑，你在干什么，要把眼睛弄坏了。”然后灯开了。那本小小的平装书重新浮现在我的手里，轻飘飘的没有分量。 Jorie Graham’s most recent book of poems is “Place.” 乔丽·格雷厄姆的新书是诗集《地点》(Place)。 Chelsea Cain 切尔西·凯因(Chelsea Cain) In 1979, I got chloroformed and stuffed in a trunk for the first time at the Key West public library. Naturally, I kept going back. It was a pink palace with white shuttered windows — the perfect place to get bound and gagged and tossed on a ship. No one asked me where my parents were or why I spent five hours a day systematically going through the children’s mystery series section. On weekends, when the grown-ups were around, we went to the beach or out on the water. I found a lot of 20-dollar bills floating in the ocean in those days. I used to take the limp wet cash to the T-shirt shop on Duval Street, and they’d press it dry with their decal iron until it looked brand new. Twenties make excellent bookmarks. On Monday I’d be back at the library, another five books in my arms. I would read for hours, marking my favorite scenes with crisp 20s, before returning the books to the shelves. Funny, what we don’t question in childhood. It was many years later that I realized that my windfall of floating cash had not been lost by careless swimmers, but instead dumped by smugglers about to be boarded by the Coast Guard. By then it was too late. I had already filled the library’s collection of Nancy Drew books with drug money. 1979年，我生平第一次被凯·韦斯特公立图书馆“绑架”了。当然，后来我就经常到那里去。那是一栋粉红色的建筑，有着白色的百叶窗。在这么个地方被绑起来堵住嘴扔进一条船里可真不错。没人问我我爸妈哪儿去了，或者我为什么要每天花5个钟头系统阅读儿童神话选。周末图书馆里有很多大人的时候，我们就去海滩或者去游泳。那阵子我从水里捞起过不少20美元的钞票。我会带着这些湿漉漉软趴趴的钞票去达瓦街的T恤店，让他们用贴印花的烙铁把它们熨干，看上去又是簇新簇新的。20美元钞票可是不错的书签。星期一我又到图书馆去，一借就是5本书。我经常一读就是几个小时，把簇新的20块钞票夹在我最喜欢的书页之间，然后再还回去。有意思的是，小时候我们对此从没质疑过。多年后我才发现自己意外捡来的那些20元钞票不是粗心的游泳者丢的，是走私犯在被海岸巡逻队登船搜查之前扔进海里的。可是太晚了，我已经在图书馆的所有南希·朱尔(Nancy Drew)的藏书里塞满了毒贩子的钞票。 Chelsea Cain’s new thriller, “Let Me Go,” will be published in August. 切尔西·凯因的最新惊悚小说《放我走》(Let Me Go)将在8月出版。 Cheryl Strayed 谢莉尔·斯特雷德(Cheryl Strayed) I worked two full-time jobs the summer I was 15. One was granted me by a federal program for economically disadvantaged youth, doing cleanup and repairs at the school I attended; the other was at the Dairy Queen. Five days a week my two jobs bumped up against each other in a dawn-to-well-past-dusk 16-hour stream, the graffiti-scrubbing and floor-polishing giving way to banana-split-making and cheerful cashiering. During every break, I had a book in my hands. The same one all summer long: Dalton Trumbo’s “Johnny Got His Gun.” Every unapologetic page felt to me like a shot to the head. Trumbo didn’t use a single comma. He didn’t capitalize “Christmas.” He conveyed everything I knew and didn’t yet know about the world without ever leaving the mind of a physically incapacitated man. I read it as I walked the half-mile from one job to the next. I read it while waiting for my ride in the late-night parking lot of the D.Q. Each time I finished the book I bawled my guts out and then turned to Page 1 and began reading again. It was as if Trumbo put me in a summerlong trance, only of the reverse sort — not the kind that puts you under, but rather the kind that wakes you up forever. 15岁那年，我做着两份全职工作。一份是在我就读的学校里做清扫和修理的工作，是一个联邦计划提供给财务困难的年轻人的；另一份是在DQ冰淇淋店。一星期有5天里，这两份工作彼此冲突，让我一天16小时连轴转，从早忙到晚，刚刚擦掉墙上的涂鸦，扫干净地板，就得去做香蕉船，满脸堆笑地收顾客的钱。休息的时候我总是书不离手。整个夏天我只读了一本书，就是达尔顿·特郎勃(Dalton Trumbo)的《约翰尼得到枪》(Johnny Got His Gun)。每一页都是那么不容辩驳，都像对着我脑袋开了一枪。全书中特郎勃一个逗号也没用，写“圣诞”(Christmas)时也不大写。他在书中表达出了关于这个世界我所知道和不知道的一切，但这一切都是在一个身体残疾的男人大脑里发生的。从我上一个工作地点到下一个工作地点有半英里路，我就在这段路上读它。深夜下班时，我在DQ的停车场等车时读它。每次读完我都会长出一口气，然后翻到第一页重读一遍。特郎勃仿佛让我整个夏天都陷入恍惚，但这是另一种“恍惚”，不是那种让你神智不清的恍惚，而是让你此后终生都保持清醒。 Cheryl Strayed’s books include “Wild” and “Tiny Beautiful Things.” 谢莉尔·斯特雷德的书包括《狂野》(Wild)和《美丽的小东西》(Tiny Beautiful Things) Jim Holt 吉姆·霍尔特(Jim Holt) It’s a roaring, squawking, howling cliché, but my most memorable summer-reading experience was getting through all of Proustwhile hitchhiking and Eurail-passing my way around Europe. It was the summer of 1976, and I was still in college. Flying on cheapo Icelandair, I landed in Luxembourg, thumbed my way to the Channel and eventually made my way to Oxford. There, at the heavenly Blackwell’s bookstore, I bought the entire Chatto & Windus edition of “Remembrance of Things Past” in the Scott Moncrieff translation. For the next two months, those 12 little yellow-and-blue volumes sustained, engrossed and frequently bored me in my trajectory through Britain, France, Austria and Italy. I sat chuckling in Paris’s Parc Monceau in the company of the incomparable Charlus; I endured the longueurs of the narrator’s obsession with Albertine, that “improbable jeune fille” with the “pasted-on bosom” (Nabokov), on an all-night train from Salzburg to Venice; I had a fake Proustian moment of mémoire involontaire on the Pont Neuf a couple of days before my flight back. Corny, but I miss the person I was then. 这是一通喧嚣、嘈杂、吵闹的老生常谈，但我最难忘的夏日阅读体验就是一边搭便车和坐火车在欧洲旅行，一边读普鲁斯特(Proust)。那是1976年夏天，我还在上大学。我乘坐便宜的冰岛航空，从卢森堡起飞，一路搭车来到英吉利海峡，最后到了牛津。在牛津天堂般的布莱克维尔书店，我买下了全套Chatto & Windus 版的《追忆似水年华》(Remembrance of Things Past)，翻译是斯科特·曼克里夫特(Scott Moncrieff)。接下来的两个月里，这12本黄蓝两色装帧的小书陪伴我走过英国、法国、奥地利与意大利，时常令我专心致志，不忍释卷，也时常会令我厌烦。我坐在巴黎的蒙索公园里，无与伦比的夏吕斯(Charlus)令我发笑；在从萨尔茨堡开往威尼斯的夜行列车上，我忍受着叙事者对阿尔贝蒂娜(Albertine)冗长的迷恋；纳博科夫说她是个“不大真实的年轻女子”，有着“贴上去的乳房”；回家前几天，在新桥，我经历了一次“伪普鲁斯特时刻”，各种记忆不自觉地涌上心头。是有点俗，但我怀念那个当年的我。 Jim Holt’s latest book is “Why Does the World Exist?” 吉姆·霍尔特的新书是《世界为何存在？》(Why Does the World Exist?) 本文最初发表于2013年6月2日。 翻译：董楠 |
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