路透社访谈伊坂幸太郎关于《金色梦乡》(2011年3月)

原文链接:
路透社访问伊坂《Golden Slumbers》 , from Blogspot「Lynyu」
译者:Lynyu
 
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英文原文来自路透社文章

Book Talk: What happens when society turns on you

书籍话题:当社会背叛了你,会发生什麽事?

By Elaine Lies TOKYO | Thu Mar 24, 2011 6:04am EDT

东京 2011/03/24 星期四 上午06:04

(Reuters) - Masaharu Aoyagi is meeting a college friend in his car for a brief chat by the side of the road. But as they talk, the Japanese Prime Minister is blown up just blocks away – and Aoyagi becomes the top suspect.

(路透社)当青柳雅春正在自己的车内和大学友人谈话时,日本首相却在数个街区外遭遇爆破意外,而青柳成为了头号嫌疑犯。

His life turned upside down, the former package delivery man and hero of Kotaro Isaka’s “Remote Control” is forced to run as a net of media and police closes relentlessly around him for no reason he can understand.

他的人生变得天翻地覆。当媒体和警察基于未知的原因毫不留情地逼近他时,这位送货员,也就是伊坂幸太郎《Golden Slumbers》小说的男主角,被迫逃亡。

Set in a near-future Japan where “security pods” track citizens’ every move and based roughly on the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the book looks at what can happen when a witch-hunt mentality is given free reign.

本书将时间设定在近未来的日本,安保监控追踪著市民的一举一动。故事内容粗略根据甘迺迪暗杀事件写成,著眼于当捕猎女巫的心态无止尽地瀰漫时会有什麽样的情况发生。

Isaka, who lives in Sendai – hit hard by the recent Japanese earthquake – spoke with Reuters about how he writes.

住在仙台(近日地震的重灾区)的伊坂和路透社谈论了他的小说。

Q: How did you come up with the idea for this?

问:你是怎麽想到这个点子的?

A: I basically wrote this wondering what would happen if I tried to write something like a Hollywood movie. Before this I’d never really been able to write something in this style. What I had in mind to start with was “Die-Hard” and “The Fugitive.”

答:基本上,我是想要知道如果我尝试写些像是好莱坞电影的小说会怎麽样。在此之前,我从未真正能够写出这种类型的作品。要开始执笔时,我心裡想到的是《终极警探》和《绝命追杀令》。

So I borrowed a lot of movies and watched a lot of fugitive-style movies, getting an idea of what it was like, how it flowed. There were a lot of things that I didn’t like and decided to get rid of. For example, in fugitive movies there’s always the side that’s chasing and the side that’s being chased, which to me almost seems as if it’s giving a sense of security: ah, the next scene we’ll see will show the police, the scene after that will be the fugitive. I didn’t think that was so exciting. So, what if you only write from the point of view of the person who’s being chased, and stick with that throughout?

于是我租了许多电影,也看了很多逃亡式的电影,从中瞭解故事样貌和情节如何流转。有很多东西是我不喜欢并决定去除掉的,比方说在逃亡电影中总有追捕的一方和逃亡的一方,这些彷彿会让人确信:「啊,我们看到的下一幕会出现警察,再下一幕会出现逃亡者。」我觉得这样不会很令人兴奋。因此,如果从头到尾只跟著逃亡者的角度来描写会怎麽样?

Also, if you know who’s doing the chasing, it’s actually kind of boring. Somebody really close to them betrays them, or there’s somebody within the police. That pattern came up a lot. If you know who’s doing the chasing, it’s exciting at first but gets dull after that, especially toward the end.

此外,如果你知道谁是追捕者,实际上会有点无趣。某个真的很亲近的人背叛了他们,或是警察当中有老鼠屎,这个模式出现了很多次。如果你知道谁是追捕的那一方,起初会很刺激,但之后会越来越乏味,接近结尾时更是如此。

Q: Then you had to decide who was being chased.

问:所以你已经决定好谁是逃亡者了。

A: Yes, that was a key point. Doing the work I do makes my world pretty narrow. But every day, a guy from a delivery service comes to my house, bringing me packages from Amazon and other things from the world. I wanted him to be my main character. Once I decided that my character would be a delivery man, then I realized he’d know addresses, and a lot of other topics came together. Then I thought OK, why would a guy like this be chased, and came up with the idea that in the past, he was a hero. So after that it was just adding things like that.

答:没错,那是最关键的地方。这份工作让我的生活圈很狭小,但每天都会有个宅配员到我家来,送来亚马逊的包裹或其他来自全世界的物品,我希望他来担任我的小说主角。一旦我决定笔下的人物是个送货员,我就知道他对地址很熟悉,很多主题也都浮现出来了。于是我开始思考为什麽像他这样的人会开始逃亡,并想出过去他曾经是个英雄。之后只要像这样继续加进东西就好了。

Q: Do you plan everything in advance of writing?

问:在你开始写作之前,你会先把所有内容设定好吗?

A: I don’t really plan out the story that much. First I decided I’d start with his former girlfriend eating soba noodles and there’s an explosion, then after I finished that part I thought it would be interesting to show some people in hospital watching the news… I’d decided that things would really start by him jumping off a pedestrian overpass onto the back of a truck, that was as much as I’d come up with beforehand. Basically I thought of the next bit just before I’d start to write.

答:我不会事先想好那麽多的内容。首先我先决定故事开头是他的前女友正在吃荞麦麵,而且发生了爆炸案。在我完成第一部之后,我觉得让医院裡的人看到新闻应该会很有趣……我已经先想好青柳跳下货车平台后会发生的事情,而这就是我事前计画的全部了。基本上在我开始写作之前,我才会稍微想一下接下来的情节。

Q: I’ve always thought this sort of writing style led to a lot of discoveries for the reader as well as the writer.

问:我一直都认为这种写作方式会让读者和作家都产生很多新发现。

A: I’m not sure why I write like that. I think it’s something to do with my character – I get bored of things pretty easily. When I think of something, I want to write it right away. If I plan something out, all the work gets kind of boring. Also, if you don’t write it you don’t really know how it will turn out. If it doesn’t work, well, you can always rewrite.

答:我不太确定自己为什麽喜欢这样,我想这和我的个性有关。我很容易对一件事情失去兴趣。当我一想到什麽东西,我就想要立刻写下来。如果我在事先都计画好,整个创作都会变得有点无聊。此外,如果不写下来的话,就不会真的知道故事会如何演变。如果写得不好,无论何时都可以重写。

Rather than make something that’s pulled together from the start, I like to make things like building with clay, to rewrite if needed. Sometimes – but not that often – I have things that work out from the start, and that’s a special kind of pleasure.

与其让某些东西从一开始就组织好,我比较想要像用黏土来建造的方式来创作,有必要的时候就重写。有时候(但不太常)我从一开始就有了灵感,而这是一种特别的乐趣。

Q: You said you had a vague sense of dread when you were writing this. Was it something in society that made you feel this way or something in your life?

问:你说过在写作这本小说前,你感到有点担忧。是社会上的某种事物,或是你生活中的事物让你有这种感觉吗?

A: I wrote this in 2007. The “security pods” are a big part of this book, but it’s not as if I felt any kind of danger due to surveillance in society. I just thought it would make the story more interesting. But personally – well, I tend to be a bit of a worrier, things seem scary to me. This unavoidably shows up in my work… I was a child during the Cold War. Add the chance of earthquakes and there was a sense that the world could end at any time. I’ve basically spent the last 40 years trying to think how to be positive. Almost all of the things I’ve written are like that too, they tend to try to figure out what to enjoy within a generally dark situation.

答:我在2007年写了这本小说。安保监控在本书中佔了很大的部份,但这并不是我对监视社会感到危险,只是因为我认为这会让故事更有趣。但我个人很容易感到烦恼,事物对我来说似乎很令人害怕,这一点不可避免地出现在我的小说中……冷战时期我还是个小孩。再加上地震发生的可能性,和世界末日随时都可能来临的意识。基本上我花了过去四十年来试著思考如何正面积极一点,我的创作也几乎全部都是这样,那些人物倾向于想出如何在困境中作乐。

(以下有《Golden Slumbers》小说剧透)

“Remote Control” is a more drastic expression of this. He’s chased, he flees, he even changes his face, but he hasn’t lost. This is the real meaning of this. It’s entertainment but I think it’s also about how you manage to go on living.

对于这一点,《Golden Slumbers》正是个更有力的体现。青柳遭到追捕,他逃亡甚至整形,但他并没有认输,这就是本书真正的意义。它是一种娱乐,但我认为它也和你如何努力活下去有关。

(Editing by Steve Addison)

《Remote Control》是《Golden Slumbers》英译本的书名。透过推特的情报看到这篇英文稿,发表日期是 3月 24日,但路透社应该是在 311 地震前去採访的。

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