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Books and Arts; Book Review;Diana Athill's letters；Dear Edward;
文藝；書評；戴安娜·阿西爾的信；致親愛的愛德華；
Instead of a Book: Letters to a Friend. By Diana Athill.
并不是一本書，只是些給朋友的信。戴安娜·阿西爾著。
Diana Athill was well past normal retirement age when she wrote a series of memoirs that made her a cult figure. As a young woman she had written a novel, a collection of short stories and a cathartic memoir about being jilted by her lover. But her literary skills went mainly into editing the books of others at André Deutsch, a London publisher, where she worked for decades until she was 75. Near the end of this career she started writing again, and over the next 22 years she produced five more memoirs, including “Stet”, an acclaimed account of her editing life, working with authors such as Philip Roth and John Updike, published when she was 83. She finished with “Somewhere Towards the End”, about getting old, for which she earned the Costa Biography prize as well as an OBE in 2009.
當(dāng)戴安娜·阿西爾完成自己的系列回憶錄，備受追捧的時候，她早已經(jīng)過了正常退休年齡。年輕的時候，她也寫過一部小說，一本短篇故事集，還有一本宣泄感情的回憶錄，記述的是她被愛人拋棄的故事。但是她在倫敦André Deutsch出版社工作期間，其文學(xué)上的天賦主要投入了編輯出版別人的書，而這一做就是幾十年，直到她七十五歲才退休。在她職業(yè)生涯結(jié)束之際，她重新執(zhí)筆開始創(chuàng)作，在接下來的22年間先后又出版了五部回憶錄。其中包括她83歲那年出版的回憶錄《留存》。這本書記錄了她當(dāng)年和像菲利普.羅斯、約翰·厄普代克這樣的作家一起共事的記憶，稱頌了自己的編輯生活。此后，她憑借《終點前某處》（有關(guān)老年生活）的創(chuàng)作，于2009年獲得科斯塔文學(xué)獎同時被授予大英帝國勛章。
Now 93, Miss Athill still takes speaking engagements, but her writing seems to be behind her. So it is good to have this new collection of her letters to Edward Field, a close friend, spanning a period of 26 years. This is not just squeezing the lemon for a bit more juice. By their nature these letters are quite different from the polished prose of the memoirs. They are spontaneous and unstructured, full of daily minutiae (visits to the dentist, car trouble, useless builders) and delightful snippets from her colourful personal life. She gossips about mutual friends and tells stories about the literary world she is immersed in (“I am going to have an interesting lunch tomorrow with the mistress dumped by Vida Naipaul when he married his Indian wife”). Mr Field, a poet six years her junior, is gay, so he was never one of her many lovers, but the relationship is clearly very close, both personally and professionally.
現(xiàn)齡93歲的阿西爾女士仍然會去做演講，不過她在寫作方面似乎沒有跟上。所以說這本新鮮出爐的書信集是一次很好的嘗試。其收信人是阿西爾女士一位的密友愛德華·菲爾德，信件的時間跨度則有26年之長。這可不只是為了多榨點汁而去擠檸檬。從其本質(zhì)來說，這些書信與回憶錄里那些優(yōu)美的散文可謂是大相徑庭。這都是發(fā)自肺腑之言，隨性而為的敘述，滿是日常生活的細(xì)枝末節(jié)（像看牙醫(yī)，交通糾紛，失效的洗選強化劑），還有她豐富多彩的私生活里那些幸福的片段。她閑話自己的好朋友，也會說些關(guān)于那個她所沉浸其中的文學(xué)世界的故事（“我明天要和被韋達(dá)·奈保爾拋棄的那個女人一起吃午飯，這一定很有趣，要知道韋達(dá)要娶個印度女人”）。菲爾德比阿西爾小六歲，是一位詩人，不過是同性戀，因此他也絕不會成為阿西爾的眾多情人之一，但是很顯然他們之間的關(guān)系不論是私交還是在專業(yè)領(lǐng)域都非常親密。
For all Miss Athill's pleas of relative poverty, hers has been a privileged life. Raised in a grand country house, she lived for decades in Primrose Hill, a salubrious bit of London, in a house belonging to a cousin (a journalist at The Economist, it so happens), with weekends in the cousin's Norfolk cottage and lots of trips to places like Venice and the Caribbean. When money seemed tight, cash always turned up from somewhere. Her voice on the page is that of an upper-middle-class Englishwoman—good things are “dear” or “darling”, bad things are “tiresome”, “horrid” or “vile”. But she also swears like a trooper and does not care what people think.
盡管阿西爾一直聲辯自己比較窮困，她的生活其實非常優(yōu)越。在豪華的郊區(qū)住宅長大的她，之后在倫敦環(huán)境宜人的櫻草花山也住了有幾十年。房子是她一個表兄妹的（經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)人的記者，很巧），周末則到她表兄妹的諾福克別墅去小住，沒事就去像威尼斯、加勒比海這樣的地方旅行。手頭緊的時候，鈔票總是又會在哪冒出來。字里行間透露的是那種中上層階級英國女性的調(diào)調(diào)：好的事情則叫“寶貝”呀，“親愛的”呀，糟糕的事情則說“討人嫌”呀，“討厭”呀，或者是“糟透了”。但是她也會像巡警一樣破口大罵，完全不在乎別人怎么想。
Miss Athill did not keep the letters she received from Mr Field. When he suggested that hers be made into a book, she had reservations about “publishing one's private conversation”, particularly if it meant printing only “half the conversation”. Luckily he persuaded her, and the result makes for addictive eavesdropping. Miss Athill writes beautifully, even about mundane subjects, and it is fascinating to follow the change in her preoccupations with advancing years. The letters are frank about the indignities of getting old, from hearing aids to cataract operations, and about the burdens of looking after Barry, her increasingly ailing Jamaican partner.
阿西爾女士并沒有保留菲爾德給她寫的信。最初還是菲爾德建議她把自己那部分的信件整理出來出本書，但阿西爾對于“公開私人談話”的做法還是有所保留，尤其如果是要僅僅發(fā)表“一半的談話內(nèi)容”。幸虧菲爾德說服了她，結(jié)果這本書出來讓人們迷上了“竊聽”。阿西爾的文字非常漂亮，即使是寫微不足道的小事也毫不遜色。讀者會情不自禁地跟隨她，關(guān)注她一直所關(guān)心的事情隨著年華逝去將會如何變化。阿西爾在信中坦率地表達(dá)了老年生活的窘困，從助聽器到白內(nèi)障手術(shù)，還有照顧她那位病情日甚一日的牙買加伴侶——巴里。
But Miss Athill is too clear-eyed to become a bore about such things. Her correspondence with Mr Field continues, now by e-mail, but the letters in the book end in 2007. She explains in a postscript that this is “because we have become old and…too often the experience old people have to share is wobbly health.” Enough said.
但是阿西爾的頭腦可是相當(dāng)精明，她才不會對這種事情一鉆到底。她與菲爾德的通信一直在繼續(xù)，只是現(xiàn)在改成發(fā)電子郵件，但是書中的信件則截止到2007年。她在附言中解釋到，這是因為“我們都年事已高，而且……老年人之間能夠分享的無非就是不穩(wěn)定的健康問題”。說得應(yīng)該夠多了吧。
