評論
打印
Culture
文藝版塊
Back story
幕后故事專欄
How do you avoid the trap of success?
如何避開成功的陷阱？
In her new novel, Sally Rooney has found a way.
在薩莉·魯尼的小說新作中，她找到了辦法。
Complex amatory geometry and self-sabotaging lovers: check.
復雜的戀愛關系和自我毀滅的戀人：有了。
I need you, they say, in prose that eschews speech marks, eliding talk with thought: check.
我需要你，他們說，散文體的語言不加引號，將談話與思想融合在一起：有了。
Frank yet reverent sex scenes; limpid images of windows, streetlights, rain and roads: double check.
直白而又虔誠的性愛場景，窗戶、路燈、雨水和道路等清晰的畫面：都有。
Brainy chat that flatters your intelligence, student debating, chess: checkmate.
讓智力得到滿足的話鋒機敏的聊天、學生辯論、國際象棋：全都有。
Welcome back to Rooney-world.
歡迎回到魯尼的世界。
Lots of the interests and motifs in Sally Rooney’s new novel, “Intermezzo” (out on September 24th), will be familiar to her many fans.
薩莉·魯尼的新小說《間奏曲》（于9月24日出版）中的許多有趣之處和反復出現的主題對她的許多粉絲來說都很熟悉。
As in “Conversations with Friends” and “Normal People”, she chronicles the friendships and romances of well-educated, broad-minded millennials with grave moral seriousness.
正如在《聊天記錄》和《正常人》中一樣，魯尼以嚴肅的道德態度記錄了受過良好教育、思想開放的千禧一代的友誼和愛情。
Call her style Jane Austenin modern Ireland with a lashing of S&M.
可以把她的文風叫作“帶有一點性虐戀味道的現代愛爾蘭的簡·奧斯汀”。
In this book, her fourth, she breaks free of the creative trap that literary success can set.
在這本書中，也是她的第四本書，她擺脫了文學成功可能設置的創作陷阱。
Starry authors often find themselves torn between conflicting demands.
明星作家們常常被相互沖突的需求左右拉扯。
Readers generally want them to write books similar to those they adored.
讀者們通常希望他們繼續寫與之前受歡迎的書類似的作品。
Publishers are inclined to agree.
出版商也傾向于同意這種觀點。
But novelists as talented as Ms Rooney aspire to do something new.
但是像魯尼這樣有才華的小說家渴望有新的突破。
They must negotiate the twin dangers of staleness and self-indulgent experiment.
他們必須小心應對落入老套和自顧自進行文學實驗的雙重危險。
“Intermezzo” is the story of Ivan and Peter Koubek.
《間奏曲》是關于埃文·庫貝克和彼得·庫貝克的故事。
A socially awkward chess whizz, 22-year-old Ivan falls in love with Margaret—who, at 36, has escaped her alcoholic husband but not the judgments of her small town.
22歲的埃文是對社交感到局促不安的國際象棋天才，他愛上了36歲的瑪格麗特，瑪格麗特逃離了酗酒的丈夫，但沒有逃脫小鎮居民的評頭論足。
A decade older than Ivan, Peter is a barrister with the swagger and success his brother lacks, or so it seems.
彼得比埃文年長十歲，是一名出庭律師，擁有他弟弟所缺乏的張揚魅力和事業成功，至少看起來是這樣。
Still devoted to Sylvia, his ex, he is also embroiled in an age-gap affair with Naomi, a student and graduate of the school of hard knocks.
彼得仍然愛著他的前妻西爾維婭，同時也與娜奧米陷入了一段年齡差距較大的戀情，娜奧米是一名經歷過很多磨難的大學生。
Their bantering fling grows serious, “like a stage fight where it turns out the knives are real”.
他倆之間互相戲謔的戀情逐漸變得認真起來，“就像舞臺上的打斗，結果發現刀子是真的”。
As with the author’s earlier creations—Bobbi and Frances, Connell and Marianne—these intellectuals struggle to articulate their own feelings, causing pain when they mean to be kind.
與魯尼早期創作的人物一樣——博比和弗朗西斯、康奈爾和瑪麗安——這些知識分子努力表達自己的感受，卻在想要表達善意時造成了痛苦。
“People aren’t always very nice to the people they love,” says Margaret, a line that could be the motto of Ms Rooney’s oeuvre.
“人們并不總是對他們愛的人很好。”瑪格麗特說，這句話可以成為魯尼作品的箴言。
Once again she captures the swirl of power in relationships and dialogue.
她再次捕捉到了人際關系和對話中的權力漩渦。
Money gets in the way again; again her characters yearn both to be normal and to defy convention.
金錢再次成為障礙，她筆下的人物再次既渴望正常又反抗傳統。
For all these echoes, this is her richest book.
雖然這些都是對之前作品的呼應，但《間奏曲》是她最豐富的一本書。
Two traumas reverberate through it.
兩場創傷在其中回響。
Sylvia, an academic—“Intermezzo” is Ms Rooney’s only novel without a fiction-writer—has been injured in a car crash.
西爾維婭是一位學者——《間奏曲》是魯尼唯一一本沒有虛構作家人物的小說——在一場車禍中受傷了。
The time before that is “visible behind a thin veil, through which even a hand could pass, touching, but not”.
那之前的時間“仿佛可以透過一層薄紗看見，一只手也能穿過，但無法觸摸”。
And the brothers have recently buried their father.
而兩兄弟最近安葬了他們的父親。
Grief is a bridge and a chasm; it ambushes and intoxicates them.
悲傷是一座橋梁，也是一道深淵，悲傷會伏擊他們，也會讓他們沉湎其中。
The loss is hard for Ivan because he was close to his dad, hard on Peter because he wasn’t.
父親逝世對埃文來說很難接受，因為他和父親很親近，對彼得來說也很難接受，因為他和父親并不親近。
They can’t go home, and yet all roads lead there.
他們不能回家，但所有道路都通向家里。
The main difference in “Intermezzo” is that its central bond and tension is fraternal.
《間奏曲》的主要不同在于書里的核心情感紐帶和緊張關系是兄弟之間的。
Peter can’t see that Ivan has grown up.
彼得看不出埃文已經長大了。
Ivan resents Peter’s condescension but won’t face his vulnerability.
埃文憎恨彼得的傲慢態度，但不愿面對自己的脆弱。
“I’ve hated you my entire life,” he hisses at their nadir.
“我恨了你一輩子。”埃文在他們關系最差的時候惡狠狠地說。
“I know,” Peter replies.
“我知道。”彼得回答。
Still, like all siblings, they share childhood experiences no one else can grasp, even if some are comprehensible only much later.
不過，就像所有的兄弟姐妹一樣，他們有著別人無法理解的共同的童年經歷，即使有些經歷只有在很久以后才能理解。
You sympathise with both and hope they can forgive each other.
你同情他們兩個人，希望他們能原諒彼此。
Another departure will not please every reader.
另一個不同不會讓所有讀者高興。
Sections recounted from Peter’s perspective are written in a staccato stream of consciousness, as if grammar were breaking down under the weight of his depression: “And why. Not wanting. Not wanting not.”
從彼得視角敘述的幾個部分用了斷斷續續的意識流寫法，仿佛語法被他沉重的抑郁情緒壓碎了：“而且為什么。不想。不想要，不要。”
In bursts, this technique—pioneered by James Joyce, an obvious lodestar—bracingly mimics a fractured mind.
這種寫法由詹姆斯·喬伊斯開創，他顯然是指路明燈，詞語的一陣陣迸發模擬了破碎的思緒，效果令人耳目一新。
Over long passages? Palls, maybe. A risk.
在漫長的旅途中？朋友吧，也許。有風險。
Nevertheless, by expanding her emotional range, Ms Rooney has found a better way out of the success trap than in her third book, “Beautiful World, Where Are You”.
然而，通過拓展情感范圍，魯尼找到了比她的第三本書《美麗的世界，你在哪里》更好的擺脫成功陷阱的方法。
That amplified the lefty politics that rumble through her work, not least the politics of fiction.
那本書放大了回蕩在她作品中的左派政治立場，尤其是關于小說的政治立場。
Characters worried that the sort of bourgeois novel of sentiment in which they were appearing was worthless. (It isn’t.)
書中人物們擔心，他們身處其中的那種充滿小資感傷情緒的小說毫無價值。（這種小說不是沒有價值的。）
The author’s art and principles seemed to wrestle on the page.
作者的藝術和原則似乎在書頁上相互角力。
This was a literary cul-de-sac.
這是一條文學死胡同。
“Intermezzo”, by contrast, is a wonderful book.
相反，《間奏曲》則是一本佳作。
Ms Rooney’s characters are maturing as she does (she is just 33), and by combining her prodigious gifts with this natural process she has charted her path forward.
魯尼筆下的人物隨著她本人（她才33歲）的成熟而成熟，她將自己的天賦異稟與年齡增長的自然過程相結合，從而走出了屬于自己的路。
Every few pages she pulls off one of fiction’s oldest, simplest and most magical tricks: reading her piercing descriptions of passion, heartache, drunkenness or rage, you stop and wonder, how did she know that?
每隔幾頁，她就會使出小說中最古老、最簡單、最神奇的招數之一：讀到她對激情、心痛、醉酒或憤怒的犀利描寫時，你會停下來想，她是怎么知道這些的？
