與沃爾特?惠特曼一起作時間旅行

——邁克爾?坎寧安新著《典型的日子》簡介

美國新銳作家邁克爾?坎寧安生于1952年，1989年處女作《末世之家》一經發表，便蜚聲美國文壇。1998年，坎寧安出版了他的第三本小說《時時刻刻》，立刻獲得了當年的“筆會/福克納小說獎”，翌年又獲得“普立策小說獎”。和他前兩本作品不同的是，《時時刻刻》竟然是關于英國著名意識流小說作家弗吉尼亞?伍爾夫及其小說代表作《達洛維夫人》的一本實驗性小說。雖然弗吉尼亞?伍爾夫在現代文壇上的地位已毋庸置疑，但其以雜亂無序的思維活動為線索的創作理念，即使在今天看來，仍然十分難以理解，無論在國外，還是在中國，都無法為大多數讀者所接受。坎寧安采用這樣的選題，無疑是個大膽的創新之舉。《時時刻刻》中共有三條主線，敘述了三個女人的一天：20世紀20年代，作家弗吉尼亞?伍爾夫正在倫敦市郊的里士滿休養，在治療自己神經衰弱的同時開始構思創作其作品《達洛維夫人》，但對生活的恐慌時刻伴隨著敏感的她;20世紀50年代，家庭主婦布朗夫人，懷孕在身，正在閱讀《達洛維夫人》，索然無味的生活讓她絕望，她試圖以自殺來逃避生活;20世紀末，中年女編輯克拉麗莎(她恰巧與達洛維夫人同名，被朋友戲稱為達洛維夫人)，在為其好友理查德籌備舉辦晚會，卻意外目睹了他的自殺。三個女人的一生看似彼此沒有任何關系，卻因為一本《達洛維夫人》而聯系在一起，在全書的最后，作者筆鋒一轉，讓人發現布朗夫人正是自殺的理查德的母親，兩條主線逐漸并成了一條，逐漸映入人們眼簾的是一部現代女性生存狀態的文字交響曲。

2005年，邁克爾?坎寧安出版了他的新著《典型的日子》。該書標題出自惠特曼的自傳書名，這部三段式的小說也以惠特曼的詩句來加以結構，坎寧安沿用《時時刻刻》的創作手法，講述了同一地點(曼哈頓)不同時代的三個故事，情節分別發生在工業革命高潮的19世紀的紐約、恐怖主義彌漫的后“9?11”之21世紀和150年之后紐約假想的未來，一個后寓意的社會，一個人類、機器和作為新移民的外星人共同生活于其中的令人不堪忍受的社會。這次，邁克爾?坎寧安是從美國偉大詩人沃爾特?惠特曼那里尋得了靈感，創作了一部包含三個不同類型故事的三段式作品——鬼故事、驚悚故事和科幻故事，其情節由惠特曼耳熟能詳的詩句串連而起。

小說第一章《機器時代》，主要講述一個名叫路加的畸形男孩的故事。路加在一家鋼鐵廠工作，愛上了了死去的哥哥的未婚妻，但又怕哥哥會把她招回去。第二章《孩子的圣戰》中的主要人物也是個畸形孩子，由一恐怖分子撫養成人，其生活被限制在一個公寓之內，四周墻上貼滿了書有《草葉集》的紙張。第三章《宛若美人》探索的是科幻小說題材，主角是一個半人半機器的人物，與一異人類的伙伴相伴云游泄有放射物的世界，似乎講述的是一個跨越人類的浪漫故事。

作品觸及當下一個世界性的主題，即人類對抗機器，呈現的是抑郁、破裂甚至無望的未來。小說帶著讀者走上一個蕭瑟的旅程，穿越三個不同階段，歷經混亂、不安和騷動，讓人感到，未來的社會絕非是烏托邦世界。

這部精湛、奔放的小說浸透了邁克爾?坎寧安對人類現狀和死亡的深切思考和探索，作者旨在探索人類的連續性、人性與技術、恐怖主義以及完全機器化了的世界之間的關系將會走向何處。和惠特曼一樣，坎寧安深信，我們其實只是“比我們想象之中更為浩瀚、更為非凡的那物之中的一小部份而已”，但坎寧安似乎比惠特曼要悲觀得多。

以下是澳大利亞廣播公司(Australia Broadcasting Cooperate)國家廣播電臺“書籍與寫作”(Books and Writing)欄目記者羅蒙娜?庫法爾主持的節目中，邀請林恩?加拉赫就《典型的日子》對邁克爾?坎寧安所作的訪談。

采訪原文

Michael Cunningham: Specimen Days (transcript available)

Michael Cunningham’s new book Specimen Days is a surprise. It’s a book in three genres. But because of the success of his previous book, The Hours, about Virginia Woolf, he seems to be able to get away with it.

Transcript

This transcript was typed from a recording of the program. The ABC cannot guarantee its complete accuracy because of the possibility of mishearing and occasional difficulty in identifying speakers.

Ramona Koval: Michael Cunningham’s new book Specimen Days is a surprise. It’s a book in three genres, but because of the success of his previous book The Hours, about Virginia Woolf, he seems to be able to get away with it. The Hours won Cunningham both the Pulitzer prize and the PEN/Faulkner award, and as I’m sure you’re aware, it was adapted into an Academy award-winning film. So how does a writer follow up on success like that, particularly if he’s living in New York and feels the need to reflect on life after 9/11.

Michael Cunningham is in Adelaide as a guest of Writers’ Week, but on his way, he visited our Melbourne studios to speak with Lyn Gallacher. He begins his conversation by describing the structure of the book and reading a passage from Specimen Days.

Michael Cunningham: Specimen Days is written in three parts. The first is a ghost story set in New York City in the mid-1800s. The second is a thriller set in present-day New York just after 9/11; and the third is a science-fiction story set in the future. And it specifically involves-well I’ll just have to say it-an android who falls in love with a lizard woman from another planet. All right, there it is. And this sort of manufactured man has a chip implanted in his brain that causes him to spontaneously quote from Walt Whitman.

Lyn Gallacher: So let’s hear a passage, about why poetry...

Michael Cunningham: He has travelled to Colorado and met his maker, essentially, the scientist who actually designed him and implanted this poetry chip in his brain. And this is the scientist speaking at first.

[Reading from: All right. In the third protocol I gave you poetry... to ...I do not know what it is, any more than he..]

Lyn Gallacher: Michael Cunningham, reading there from Specimen Days. Michael, welcome to The Book Show.

Michael Cunningham: Thank you.

Lyn Gallacher: Now what we heard there was characters who keep spouting poetry. Now it’s a wonderful literary device, that, to actually be saying something you don’t yourself want to say. So how much fun was that to play with, as a writer?

Michael Cunningham: It was great fun, up to a point. I’m sorry to say that I feel that, as a writer, if you’re having too much fun you’re probably not working hard enough. But yes, it was great fun to write about androids and lizard women from other planets, and people with poetry chips in their brains.

Lyn Gallacher: And the idea of saying something you can’t control, that spurts out of your mouth. And yet it happens to be Whitman. Why Whitman?

Michael Cunningham: I added Whitman in the first section of the novel, which is the ghost story set in the 1850s. I wasn’t going to put Whitman or any great writer into this book, if for no other reason than the fact that it’s the book that follows my novel The Hours, which concerns Virginia Woolf, and I didn’t want it to look like...

Lyn Gallacher: This is a formula...

Michael Cunningham: Yes, like I’ve made a fortune out of Virginia Woolf and let’s see if I can make a few bucks out of Walt Whitman. But as I researched New York City in 1850, where the first story is set, among poor Irish immigrants, I came quickly to understand that it was a truly terrible place if you were poor and Irish. Think Calcutta; it was filthy and noisy and dangerous and there were dead dogs lying in the streets that no-one bothered to take away. And I was struck by the fact that out of that terrible and squalid place rose Walt Whitman, to my mind the greatest American poet and our great ecstatic visionary Rumi, the 12th century Persian poet who praised everything in the world, and out of that came Walt Whitman saying, essentially, I find it all magnificent, and strange, and marvellous, all of it, all of it-it’s all part of a vast poem too big for any one man or woman to write. And I thought, I can’t leave that out.

Lyn Gallacher: And it’s a celebration of himself, a celebration of America. But you’ve not done that. In your inclusion of Whitman you’ve not celebrated America. You’re fairly down on America, so it’s interesting to have these characters spouting this poetry, almost in a non sequitur kind of fashion. And there’s this idea of beauty that doesn’t really go anywhere, because your vision is much darker.

Michael Cunningham: Well Whitman is there in part for contrast. And the America that Whitman praised, though it had its problems, was a nation that looked, 150 years ago, like it might very well be going through certain growing pains on its way toward becoming the most abundant, democratic, peace-loving nation the world had ever seen. It has not, in my opinion, turned out to be that sort of nation at all. I can’t imagine living in America now and feeling all optimistic and happy about the way things are. So Whitman is there in part for contrast, as a voice of an old America that has gone terribly awry.

Lyn Gallacher: And that’s one of the other interesting things, because you’ve got this idea of optimism within the pessimism, the situation that in all three parts of the novel is pretty bleak. And yet you’re saying that inside this kind of terrible situation people find hope. But the hope’s still so kind of self-annihilating. The hope doesn’t actually lead to revolutionary social change. It doesn’t improve the world.

Michael Cunningham: Not in this book. But I will say that most of my books are fairly dark and I think of them all as profoundly optimistic. My books always end-or have until now-with life going on, even if it’s one man who’s not exactly a man riding out into the wilderness to see what he can find. I’m only interested in the sort of optimism that can survive the worst that can happen to people.

Lyn Gallacher: Now that optimism is based on emotions. Now the man who in this story rides off into the wilderness (on a horse rather than a spaceship) is an android who is learning his own experience of emotion; he has to learn them rather than have them programmed. So it’s almost as if the moral of the story is, become human by experiencing your emotions.

Michael Cunningham: Absolutely, yes.

Lyn Gallacher: Except for your aggression inhibitor. Now apparently we want to also experience even aggression.