小说与文学2015vulture.com编辑精选
大卫·福斯特·华莱士的重写之路
The Rewriting of David Foster Wallace
导读
这篇讨论大卫·福斯特·华莱士去世后公众形象如何被重塑，以及围绕他性格、名声与自杀的争议性叙述。对写作者来说，它值得读，因为它逼人思考作品与作者人格、私人生活与公众传奇之间的关系，以及书写他人时如何避免圣化或简化。
可以直接用的写作要点
- 01
写作不必把轻蔑和刻薄彻底清除；保留复杂、甚至不讨喜的作者声音，往往比道德净化更有力量。
- 02
塑造人物或作者形象时，别急着封圣；把矛盾、缺陷和前后不一写出来，形象才可信。
- 03
写他人的死亡、精神疾病或悲剧时，要基于事实并保持克制，避免把它简化成“职业选择”或浪漫传奇。
- 04
不要用“读过全部作品才算真粉”设门槛；一个入口友好的单篇作品也可能真正启发读者。
HN 评论精选
华莱士的魅力来自不掩饰的刻薄与矛盾；写作若彻底去除轻蔑，会失去力量，应保留复杂而不讨喜的声音。
对我来说，华莱士吸引力很大一部分在于，你总能看出他有点混蛋，随时可能刻薄，不只对自己。彻底驱逐轻蔑可能是好的生活方式，但对写作是另一种死亡。这也提醒我们：当华莱士作为“懒散圣人”和自由主义智者的形象固化成海明威式混凝土时，他曾是里根投票者和佩罗支持者；一个嫉妒到曾考虑买枪干掉某个女人丈夫的人；一个写下9/11的“好事”是让美国人团结起来，以及“艾滋病给我们的礼物在于它大声提醒我们性绝不是随随便便的”的人。华莱士从不想那篇文章被收录重印，事实上他想它被遗忘；他大概是最不会为自己封圣的人。
RodericDay查看英文原文
A large part of Wallace’s appeal, for me anyway, was that you could always tell that he was kind of an asshole, ever on the verge of being cruel, and not just to himself. Banishing contempt entirely may be a good way to live, but it’s another kind of death for writing. Which is one reason it’s worth remembering, as the image of Wallace as slacker saint and liberal sage hardens into Hemingwayesque concrete, that he was a Reagan voter and a Perot supporter; a jealous guy who once contemplated buying a gun to knock off a woman’s husband; and a person who put to paper both the notion that the “good thing” about 9/11 was that it brought Americans together, and that “AIDS’s gift to us lies in its loud reminder that there’s nothing casual about sex at all.” Wallace never wanted that piece republished in a collection — in fact, he wanted it forgotten. He’d probably be the last person to argue for his own sainthood. This is the DFW that always has jumped out starkly clear to me from the pages, ever since I hit on the "Yours Truly" chapters in IJ. People who try to spin him as some trans-human wise sage of universalism seem to me like the people who see Jesus in toast. He was an excellent writer, and he hit numerous home runs ("How Tracy Austin Broke My Heart" resonates with me particularly). However, I still think he would've been better if he developed less bland stances than his "apolitical but vaguely pro-status quo" fare. His romanticizing of the goodness of "Middle America", as in "The View from Ms. Thompson's" (about 9/11), is probably him at his worst.
写作者不应把自杀和精神疾病浪漫化或简化成职业叙事；评论他人死亡要负责任、基于事实。
2011年弗兰岑在《纽约客》文章中说，华莱士与自身名声的关系是他成年生活的核心战斗。他还提出多数记者回避、许多人觉得不体面的对华莱士之死的“解释”：华莱士“死于无聊和对未来小说的绝望”；自杀“把这个人从我们——他所爱的人——身边夺走，并把他变成非常公众的传奇”；因此他上吊是“选择陌生人的追捧而非最亲近者的爱”。弗兰岑说这可能是“作为职业选择的自杀”——“科特·柯本路线”。根据第一手材料，这像是不负责任、不加限定的叙述。华莱士终身与临床抑郁症斗争，20多岁时住院，多年服用Nardil（治疗难治性抑郁的三线药物）；自杀前的大抑郁发作似乎由试图停药触发。精神疾病是真实的东西。正如乔布斯的癌症没让他成为科技殉道者，基思·哈林的艾滋病没让他成为艺术殉道者，死于临床抑郁也不让华莱士成为“科特·柯本”，或让他的死成为“职业选择”。
tptacek查看英文原文
In a 2011 New Yorker essay, Franzen named Wallace’s relationship to his own fame as the central battle of his adult life. He also gave voice to more than one “interpretation” of Wallace’s death that most journalists have been careful to avoid and many others probably found unseemly, that Wallace “had died of boredom and in despair about his future novels”; that his suicide “took the person away from us,” his loved ones, “and made him into a very public legend”; and that he had therefore, in hanging himself, “chosen the adulation of strangers over the love of the people closest to him.” Franzen said it might well have been “suicide as career move” — the “Kurt Cobain route.” Based on firsthand accounts of what Wallace suffered, this seems like an irresponsible account of his death to run unqualified --- though it fits with the rest of the one-note cynicism that runs through the article. Wallace had a life-long struggle with clinical depression, and was hospitalized in his 20s. He was for years on a regimen of Nardil, a third-line medication for treatment-resistant depression. The major depressive episode that preceded his suicide appears to have been triggered by an effort to wean himself off the drug. Mental illness is a real thing. Just as Steve Jobs cancer didn't make him a martyr to tech and Keith Haring's AIDS didn't make him a martyr to art, succumbing to clinical depression doesn't make Wallace "Kurt Cobain" or his death a "career move". The whole article bugs me, with its shrill hipsterism, a literary version of Courtney Love's "REM's important work was done before they signed to IRS". On a limb: I think the article itself is doing the same thing it accuses the world of doing by rewriting any sincerity out of the stuff people like about Wallace's writing. This despite the fact that in addition to being by all accounts kind of a dick, Wallace was also apparently just a "treacly" kind of dude, as the essays he wrote in Normal, IL indicate.
不要设“真粉”门槛；单篇作品也能启发读者，写作应允许友好入口。
我不喜欢这篇文章的语气，至少前半部分。它有一种“如果你在华莱士死前没读过《无尽的笑话》，你就不是真粉”的味道。那些生前没听说过华莱士的人看到并喜欢他的“This Is Water”演讲，真是那么糟糕吗？我觉得它很好地描述了人多么容易陷入让周围世界控制你每时每刻感受的模式。是的，他把整个观点收得太整齐，但那是毕业演讲，不是长篇散文。当然，可能有很多人把华莱士供上“太聪明以至于不属于这个世界的受折磨艺术家”神坛。但作者没有给人们足够信任，去假设这只是他近期受欢迎的唯一原因。也许人们偶然看到“This Is Water”视频，看了，受启发去稍微不同地思考自己的思维过程和感受。你不需要消费一个艺术家的所有作品，才能被其中一件启发。
kjdal2001查看英文原文
I’m not a fan of the tone of this article, at least the first half or so. Its got something of a “if you hadn’t read Infinite Jest before Wallace died then you aren’t a true fan” vibe to it. Is it really such a terrible thing that people who hadn’t heard about DFW while he was alive are seeing and enjoying his This Is Water speech? I think it does a good job of describing how easy it is to fall into a pattern of letting the world around you control how you feel on a minute-to-minute basis. Yeah he ties the whole idea up too neatly, but it’s a commencement speech not a long form essay. Sure, there are probably plenty of people out there putting DFW up on a “tortured artist too brilliant for this world” pedestal. But I think the author isn’t giving people enough credit to assume that is the only reason for his recent popular appeal. Maybe people stumbled upon the This Is Water video, watched it, and it inspired them to think a bit differently about their own thought process and feelings. You don’t need to have consumed everything an artist has produced to be inspired by one of them.
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