A novelist, if he is talented and lucky, may in the course of a lifetime's work offer up one or two characters who enter the exclusive pantheon of the unforgotten. A novelist's characters hope for immortality; a profile journalist's, perhaps, for celebrity. We worship, these days, not images but Image itself: And any man or woman who strays into the public gaze becomes a potential sacrifice in that temple. Often, I repeat, a willing sacrifice, willingly drinking the poisoned chalice of Fame. But for many people, including myself, the experience of being profiled is perhaps closest to what it must feel like to be used as a writer's raw material, what it must feel like to be turned into a fictional character, to have one's feelings and actions, one's relationships and vicissitudes, transformed, by writing, into something subtly—or unsubtly—different. To see ourselves mutated into someone we do not recognize.
一個小說家，如果他有天賦又有運氣，可能會在其畢生的作品中創(chuàng)作出一兩個千古流芳的人物形象。小說家筆下的人物渴望的是永垂不朽；人物特寫記者筆下的人物也許則期望著聲名大振。如今，我們推崇的不是品格形象，而是形象本身：任何一個在不經(jīng)意間成為大眾眼中焦點的人都可能會成為那獨一無二的“先賢祠”中的一員。我要重復一點：一個自愿成為被祭奠著的人通常會心甘情愿地飲下那承載著盛名的圣餐杯里的毒酒。但是對于許多人來說，包括我自己在內(nèi)，被人大寫特寫的經(jīng)歷也許就如同被當成了作家的素材，被變成了有著自己的感受、行動、人際關系和悲歡離合的虛構人物，經(jīng)過一番描寫后自己被改頭換面，其中的差異要么是微妙的，要么是毫無微妙可言的。結果只能看到自己變成了一個連我們自己都辨認不出的家伙。
For a novelist to be thus rewritten is, I recognize, a case of the biter bit. Fair enough. Nevertheless, something about the process feels faintly—and I stress, faintly—improper.
作為一個小說家，我認為自己被別人這樣寫來寫去，不無諷刺意味。這很公平。不過對于這一系列的變化感覺上還是有點兒——我強調的是有點兒——不恰當。
In Britain, intrusions into the private lives of public figures have prompted calls from certain quarters for the protection of privacy laws. It is true that in France, where such laws exist, the illegitimate daughter of the late President Mitterrand was able to grow up unmolested by the press; but where the powerful can hide behind the law, might not a good deal of covert ostrich farming go undetected? My own feelings continue to be against laws that curtail the investigative freedoms of the press. But speaking as someone who has had the uncommon experience of becoming, for a time, a hot news story—of, as my friend Martin Amis put it, "vanishing into the front page"一it would be dishonest to deny that when my family and I have been the target of press intrusions and distortions, those principles have been sorely strained.
在英國，對公眾人物私生活的侵犯已經(jīng)促使某些方面呼吁出臺對個人隱私進行保護的法規(guī)。在法國就存在這樣的法規(guī)，已故法國總統(tǒng)密特朗的私生女就的確可以在不受媒體干擾的環(huán)境中長大；但是在權勢可以得到法律庇護的地方，難道就不可能隱藏著無法受到追査的大量鴕鳥養(yǎng)殖事件嗎？依我個人的感受而言，我仍舊反對那些剝奪媒體享有調査自由的法規(guī)。但是，作為難得地經(jīng)歷了一度成為新聞熱點人物的人——正如我的朋友馬丁·埃米斯所說，成為“在頭條新聞里真實的自己不復存在”的人，就我來說，當我和我的家庭成為媒體侵擾和歪曲的目標時，否認那些法規(guī)已被迫走上了極端就未免不夠坦誠了。
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