評論
打印
I asked Jobs why he wanted me to be the one to write his biography.
我問喬布斯為什么希望我擔任這本傳記的作者。
“I think you’re good at getting people to talk,” he replied. That was an unexpected answer.
“我覺得你很擅長讓別人開口說話。”他這么回答。這個答案有些出乎我的意料。
I knew that I would have to interview scores of people he had fired, abused, abandoned, or otherwise infuriated,
我知道我必須采訪很多人，這些人要么被他炒過魷魚，要么被他傷害過、遺棄過，抑或被他以其他方式激怒過，
and I feared he would not be comfortable with my getting them to talk.
我以為我跟這些人交談會讓喬布斯不舒服。
And indeed he did turn out to be skittish when word trickled back to him of people that I was interviewing.
的確，當我的一些采訪對象的言論傳到喬布斯耳中時，他表現得有些憤怒。
But after a couple of months, he began encouraging people to talk to me, even foes and former girlfriends.
但幾個月后，他開始鼓勵人們跟我交流，這其中甚至包括他的敵人和前女友。
Nor did he try to put anything off-limits.
他也沒有對任何事情作出限制。
“I’ve done a lot of things I’m not proud of, such as getting my girlfriend pregnant when I was twenty-three and the way I handled that,”
“我做過很多并不值得自豪的事情，比如23歲時讓我的女友懷了孕，以及我處理此事的方式，”
he said.“But I don’t have any skeletons in my closet that can’t be allowed out.”
他說，“但我沒有什么不能對外袒露的。”
He didn’t seek any control over what I wrote, or even ask to read it in advance.
他從不干預我寫的內容，甚至都沒提前讀過
His only involvement came when my publisher was choosing the cover art.
唯一和他相關的是出版商選擇封面時。
When he saw an early version of a proposed cover treatment, he disliked it so much that he asked to have input in designing a new version.
當他看到第一版的封面時，他非常不喜歡，因此他要求更換新的一版。
I was both amused and willing, so I readily assented.
我同樣不太喜歡，因此我迅速同意了。
I ended up having more than forty interviews and conversations with him.
我總共與他進行了差不多40次會面。
Some were formal ones in his Palo Alto living room, others were done during long walks and drives or by telephone.
其中一些是很正式的談話，在他位于帕洛奧圖的住所的客廳里進行，還有一些是在長途散步或者驅車行進的過程中完成的，或者是通過電話。
During my two years of visits, he became increasingly intimate and revealing,
在我18個月的訪問中，他與我越來越親近，也越來越愿意向我吐露心聲，
though at times I witnessed what his veteran colleagues at Apple used to call his “reality distortion field.”
但是有時候我還是可以感受到他身上那種被蘋果的老同事們稱為“現實扭曲力場”（realitydistortionfield)的力量。
Sometimes it was the inadvertent misfiring of memory cells that happens to us all;
有時，這是我們每個人都會有的因疏忽引起的記憶錯誤，
at other times he was spinning his own version of reality both to me and to himself.
但有些時候，喬布斯則是在向我也向自己，編織現實在他頭腦中的印象。
To check and flesh out his story, I interviewed more than a hundred friends, relatives, competitors, adversaries, and colleagues.
為了驗證并充實他的故事，我采訪了100多人，包括他的朋友、親戚、對手、敵人以及同事。
His wife also did not request any restrictions or control, nor did she ask to see in advance what I would publish.
他的妻子勞倫不僅促成了本書，而且希望我的寫作不受約束或控制，也沒有要求提前看到書的內容。
In fact she strongly encouraged me to be honest about his failings as well as his strengths.
事實上，她還鼓勵我坦率地描述喬布斯的全部：他的優點以及他的缺點。
She is one of the smartest and most grounded people I have ever met.
她是我見過的最聰明也是最理性的人之一。
“There are parts of his life and personality that are extremely messy, and that’s the truth,” she told me early on.
“他的生活以及性格中，有一部分是非常糟糕的，這是事實她早先告訴我，
“You shouldn’t whitewash it. He’s good at spin, but he also has a remarkable story, and I’d like to see that it’s all told truthfully.”
“你不用為他掩飾。他很擅長講故事，但他的故事本身也非常精彩，我希望看到整個故事都被如實地敘述。”
I leave it to the reader to assess whether I have succeeded in this mission.
這項使命完成得怎樣，我交給讀者們判斷。
I’m sure there are players in this drama who will remember some of the events differently or think that I sometimes got trapped in Jobs’s distortion field.
我確信會有一些人的記憶有別于書中所述，或者有人認為我陷入了他的扭曲力場之中。
As happened when I wrote a book about Henry Kissinger, which in some ways was good preparation for this project,
在我寫一本關于亨利·基辛格（HenryKissinger)的書時也有類似的經歷，那本書在某種程度上為本書提供了有益的借鑒。
I found that people had such strong positive and negative emotions about Jobs that the Rashomon effect was often evident.
我發現人們對于喬布斯有著十分強烈的肯定或否定的情感，羅生門效應十分明顯。
But I’ve done the best I can to balance conflicting accounts fairly and be transparent about the sources I used.
但我已盡自己所能公正地去平衡不同意見，并對信息來源做到透明。
