04 May 2024 11 min read weekly

DPS 周刊 147 - 作家眼中的其他作家是什么样的？

一个作家眼中的另一位作家会是什么样的？他们会惺惺相惜吗？

这是我一直好奇的问题，恰好 Paul Theroux 分别遇见了村上春树和博尔赫斯，并且在 Ghost Train to the Eastern Star 和 The Old Patagonia Express 两本书中花了大量篇幅记述这两段经历，让我们可以一窥 Paul 眼中的村上春树和博尔赫斯。

Paul 是在东京遇见村上春树的，彼时后者刚刚出版了 Andaguraundo，一本讲述1995年东京地铁沙林毒气事件的书。Paul 刚刚搭乘火车到东京，正想探索东京地铁，于是村上春树成为了他最好的向导，这也让 Paul 得以近距离观察村上春树：

A healthy writer is an oxymoron. Yet Murakami has run twenty-nine marathons and competed in numerous triathlons. One long day he ran a 100-kilometer race. This took him eleven and a half hours.

其实两人最初的见面是在美国，没猜错的话，应该是在波士顿。因为 Paul 是波士顿人，而村上春树曾在哈佛的 Reischauer Institute 做访问学者。

He did not advertise this feat, nor did he go on book tours in Japan. He was so averse to publicity that he had never appeared on Japanese TV or in bookstores, gave no lectures, did no signings, hardly surfaced in Japan at all—though he had taught in the United States, at Harvard and Princeton, and sometimes promoted his books there. But he did not wish his face to be recognizable in Japan.

Another un-Japanese aspect of Murakami's career is that he has chosen to live a large proportion of his adult life outside Japan, in Greece and Italy and the United States (where I first met him).

村上春树有数量惊人的爵士黑胶收藏，这和他早年开爵士酒吧的经历不无关系。

He returns to Japan at intervals to spend time at his house in Oisu, where one of his recreations is playing American jazz records from his collection of six thousand, all vinyl.

Paul 对于村上春树的评价非常高，不仅隐居于世，而且活力惊人。每天四点起床写作，十点结束所有工作。剩下的时间拿来跑步，或者任何他想干的事。每天日出而作，日落而息，这也是放弃爵士酒吧，全职写作之后的最大自由。

I got in touch with Murakami. He is the most reclusive writer I know, also the most energetic, and with a lively mind. You would almost take him to be normal. He rises every day at four A.M. ("it used to be five") to begin his day's stint and writes until midmorning; he spends the rest of the day doing whatever he likes, usually running. After ten in the morning he'll shrug and say, "I've done my day's work."

村上春树其实相当叛逆：尽管他父亲事日本文学教授，当他没有选择日本文学，而博览群书。当然，开爵士酒吧也是非常叛逆的行为，因为当年的日本还没有什么类似的酒吧。

His father was a professor of Japanese literature. Haruki did not read Japanese literature. Instead, he read Truman Capote and Chekhov and Dostoyevsky, while listening to Thelonious Monk.

Murakami said he chose it because such mom-and-pop places were disappearing, being forced out of business by the larger, mostly American coffee shop chains. And the coffee was better here too.

"I was a rebel at Waseda, yes. American soldiers were here on R and R from Vietnam. We held demonstrations. We occupied the university." "Are there demonstrations now against the Iraq War?" "None." "Because the government discourages them?" "No. Student apathy, probably."

选择全职写作更是离经叛道，因为当时的爵士酒吧开得还不错。村上春树觉得自己没法一边做生意一边写作，更要命的是，他只想好好听音乐，于是全职写作成为了最好的选择。

"But you wanted to be a writer." "No. I had nothing in my mind." He stared at me over the top of his coffee cup. "I was married. I just wanted to listen to music."

Paul 遇见博尔赫斯是在布宜诺斯艾利斯，有意思的是，这一章也是将地铁的，和遇见村上春树的那一章一样。Paul 在这一章的一开头就从地铁展开，介绍博尔赫斯的家就在 Retiro-Constitución 线的 Plaza General San Martin 站：

The Buenos Aires Subterranean is an efficient five-line network of subway trains. The same size as Boston’s subway, it was built five years later, in 1913 (making it older than Chicago’s or Moscow’s), and, as in Boston, it quickly put the tram cars out of business. The apartment of Jorge Luis Borges was on Maipú, around the corner from Plaza General San Martin Station, on the Retiro-Constitución line.”

能遇见博尔赫斯也是因为 Paul 早已名声在外。他在阿根廷遇见他的西语译者，后者鼓励他和博尔赫斯见面。而这一切发生得那么突然，那么随性：

The question is not whether I want to meet Borges, but whether Borges wants to meet me.

Late the next afternoon, my phone rang. “Borges wants to see you.” “Wonderful,” I said. “When?” “In fifteen minutes.”

博尔赫斯对于失明非常坦然：

Don’t worry. Gradual blindness is not a tragedy. It’s like a slow summer dusk.

“I don’t have this complex,” he said. “I don’t hate the Spanish. Although I much prefer the English. After I lost my sight in 1955 I decided to do something altogether new. So I learned Anglo-Saxon. Listen . . .”

其实博尔赫斯有着英格兰血统，就像 Paul 自己有着意大利血统一样。

I am partly English. My grandmother came from Northumberland, and there are other relatives from Staffordshire.

In 1901, my great-grandfather had left his village of Agazzano, near Piacenza in northern Italy, and had gone to New York with his wife and four children.

尽管年事已大，博尔赫斯依旧经历惊人。而 Paul 也很享受和他相处的时光，成了半个博尔赫斯的自传作者。就这样，Paul 一再延长在布宜诺斯艾利斯的旅行，每天一起床就记录前一晚和博尔赫斯的谈话，然后出门溜达，直到夜幕降临搭乘地铁去见博尔赫斯：

The restaurant was full this Good Friday night, and it was extremely noisy. But as soon as Borges entered, tapping his cane, feeling his way through the tables he obviously knew well, a hush fell upon the diners.

Borges was tireless. He urged me to visit him again and again. He stayed up late, eager to talk, eager to be read to; and he was good company. By degrees, he turned me into Boswell. Each morning when I woke I sat down and wrote the conversations that had taken place the night before; then I walked around the city, and at nightfall I boarded the Subterranean.

I had canceled several train reservations in order to spend more time with Borges, but now I stopped procrastinating and made firm plans to head south.

不少人提醒 Paul，博尔赫斯的脾气很大，但在 Paul 眼中，后者像天使一般：

I had been warned that he could be severe or bad tempered. But what I saw was close to angelic.

这或许是博尔赫斯的生活态度，他既不报仇，也不原谅，而是选择遗忘。

“Revenge does not alter what was done to you. Neither does forgiveness. Revenge and forgiveness are irrelevant.” “What can you do?” “Forget,” said Borges. “That is all you can do. When something bad is done to me, I pretend that it happened a long time ago, to someone else.”