20241003|萨莉·鲁尼新书避开成功陷阱

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How do you avoid the trap of success?

如何避开成功的陷阱？

In her new novel, Sally Rooney has found a way.

在萨莉·鲁尼的小说新作中，她找到了办法。

Complex amatory geometry and self-sabotaging lovers: check.

复杂的恋爱关系和自我毁灭的恋人：有了。

I need you, they say, in prose that eschews speech marks, eliding talk with thought: check.

我需要你，他们说，散文体的语言不加引号，将谈话与思想融合在一起：有了。

Frank yet reverent sex scenes; limpid images of windows, streetlights, rain and roads: double check.

直白而又虔诚的性爱场景，窗户、路灯、雨水和道路等清晰的画面：都有。

Brainy chat that flatters your intelligence, student debating, chess: checkmate.

让智力得到满足的话锋机敏的聊天、学生辩论、国际象棋：全都有。

Welcome back to Rooney-world.

欢迎回到鲁尼的世界。

Lots of the interests and motifs in Sally Rooney's new novel, "Intermezzo" (out on September 24th), will be familiar to her many fans.

萨莉·鲁尼的新小说《间奏曲》（于9月24日出版）中的许多有趣之处和反复出现的主题对她的许多粉丝来说都很熟悉。

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《聊天记录》和《正常人》中一样，鲁尼以严肃的道德态度记录了受过良好教育、思想开放的千禧一代的友谊和爱情。

Call her style Jane Austenin modern Ireland with a lashing of S&M.

可以把她的文风叫作“带有一点性虐恋味道的现代爱尔兰的简·奥斯汀”。

In this book, her fourth, she breaks free of the creative trap that literary success can set.

在这本书中，也是她的第四本书，她摆脱了文学成功可能设置的创作陷阱。

Starry authors often find themselves torn between conflicting demands.

明星作家们常常被相互冲突的需求左右拉扯。

Readers generally want them to write books similar to those they adored.

读者们通常希望他们继续写与之前受欢迎的书类似的作品。

Publishers are inclined to agree.

出版商也倾向于同意这种观点。

But novelists as talented as Ms Rooney aspire to do something new.

但是像鲁尼这样有才华的小说家渴望有新的突破。

They must negotiate the twin dangers of staleness and self-indulgent experiment.

他们必须小心应对落入老套和自顾自进行文学实验的双重危险。

"Intermezzo" is the story of Ivan and Peter Koubek.

《间奏曲》是关于埃文·库贝克和彼得·库贝克的故事。

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岁的埃文是对社交感到局促不安的国际象棋天才，他爱上了36岁的玛格丽特，玛格丽特逃离了酗酒的丈夫，但没有逃脱小镇居民的评头论足。

A decade older than Ivan, Peter is a barrister with the swagger and success his brother lacks, or so it seems.

彼得比埃文年长十岁，是一名出庭律师，拥有他弟弟所缺乏的张扬魅力和事业成功，至少看起来是这样。

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.

彼得仍然爱着他的前妻西尔维娅，同时也与娜奥米陷入了一段年龄差距较大的恋情，娜奥米是一名生活经历坎坷的大学生。

Their bantering fling grows serious, "like a stage fight where it turns out the knives are real".

他俩之间互相戏谑的恋情逐渐变得认真起来，“就像舞台上的打斗，结果发现刀子是真的”。

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.

与鲁尼早期创作的人物一样——博比和弗朗西斯、康奈尔和玛丽安——这些知识分子努力表达自己的感受，却在想要表达善意时造成了痛苦。

"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.

“人们并不总是对他们爱的人很好。”玛格丽特说，这句话可以成为鲁尼作品的箴言。

Once again she captures the swirl of power in relationships and dialogue.

她再次捕捉到了人际关系和对话中的权力漩涡。

Money gets in the way again; again her characters yearn both to be normal and to defy convention.

金钱再次成为障碍，她笔下的人物再次既渴望正常又反抗传统。

For all these echoes, this is her richest book.

虽然这些都是对之前作品的呼应，但《间奏曲》是她最丰富的一本书。

Two traumas reverberate through it.

两场创伤在其中回响。

Sylvia, an academic-"Intermezzo" is Ms Rooney's only novel without a fiction-writer-has been injured in a car crash.

西尔维娅是一位学者——《间奏曲》是鲁尼唯一一本没有虚构作家人物的小说——在一场车祸中受伤了。

The time before that is "visible behind a thin veil, through which even a hand could pass, touching, but not".

那之前的时间“仿佛可以透过一层薄纱看见，一只手也能穿过，但无法触摸”。

And the brothers have recently buried their father.

而两兄弟最近安葬了他们的父亲。

Grief is a bridge and a chasm; it ambushes and intoxicates them.

悲伤是一座桥梁，也是一道深渊，悲伤会伏击他们，也会让他们沉湎其中。

The loss is hard for Ivan because he was close to his dad, hard on Peter because he wasn't.

父亲逝世对埃文来说很难接受，因为他和父亲很亲近，对彼得来说也很难接受，因为他和父亲并不亲近。

They can't go home, and yet all roads lead there.

他们不能回家，但所有道路都通向家里。

The main difference in "Intermezzo" is that its central bond and tension is fraternal.

《间奏曲》的主要不同在于书里的核心情感纽带和紧张关系是兄弟之间的。

Peter can't see that Ivan has grown up.

彼得看不出埃文已经长大了。

Ivan resents Peter's condescension but won't face his vulnerability.

而埃文则憎恨彼得居高临下的态度，但不愿面对自己的脆弱。

"I've hated you my entire life," he hisses at their nadir.

“我恨了你一辈子。”埃文在他们关系最差的时候恶狠狠地说。

"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.

不过，就像所有的兄弟姐妹一样，他们有着别人无法理解的共同的童年经历，即使有些经历只有在很久以后才能理解。

You sympathise with both and hope they can forgive each other.

你同情他们两个人，希望他们能原谅彼此。

Another departure will not please every reader.

另一个不同不会让所有读者高兴。

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."

从彼得视角叙述的几个部分用了断断续续的意识流写法，仿佛语法被他沉重的抑郁情绪压碎了：“而且为什么。不想。不想要，不要。”

In bursts, this technique-pioneered by James Joyce, an obvious lodestar-bracingly mimics a fractured mind.

这种写法由詹姆斯·乔伊斯开创，他显然是指路明灯，词语的一阵阵迸发模拟了破碎的思绪，效果令人耳目一新。

Over long passages? Palls, maybe. A risk.

在漫长的旅途中？朋友吧，也许。有风险。

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，通过拓展情感范围，鲁尼找到了比她的第三本书《美丽的世界，你在哪里》更好的摆脱成功陷阱的方法。

That amplified the lefty politics that rumble through her work, not least the politics of fiction.

那本书放大了回荡在她作品中的左派政治立场，尤其是关于小说的政治立场。

Characters worried that the sort of bourgeois novel of sentiment in which they were appearing was worthless. (It isn't.)

书中人物们担心，他们身处其中的那种充满小资感伤情绪的小说毫无价值。（这种小说不是没有价值的。）

The author's art and principles seemed to wrestle on the page.

作者的艺术和原则似乎在书页上相互角力。

This was a literary cul-de-sac.

这是一条文学死胡同。

"Intermezzo", by contrast, is a wonderful book.

相反，《间奏曲》则是一本佳作。

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.

鲁尼笔下的人物随着她本人（她才33岁）的成熟而成熟，她将自己的天赋异禀与年龄增长的自然过程相结合，从而走出了属于自己的路。

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?

每隔几页，她就会使出小说中最古老、最简单、最神奇的招数之一：读到她对激情、心痛、醉酒或愤怒的犀利描写时，你会停下来想，她是怎么知道这些的？