Andrew Sean Greer：小说读起来像真的，是因为后来才看见它在押韵

Andrew Sean Greer won the Pulitzer Prize for 2018 novel called Less. So I had to ask him, what is it like to win a Pulitzer Prize? And his story about that is my favorite part of the interview. But also, we talked about his writing process. How do you tell great stories, develop great characters, write good sentences. And also mantras like when you're thinking about editing whatever you're working on, the editor, they're the patient, but you, the writer, you're the doctor. Andrew Sean Greer 凭 2018 年的小说 Less 获得 Pulitzer Prize。所以我必须问他：赢得 Pulitzer Prize 是什么感觉？他讲的那个故事，是这次访谈里我最喜欢的部分。我们还谈了他的写作过程：怎样讲出好故事、塑造好人物、写出好句子。还有一些口诀，比如你在改正在写的东西时，编辑是病人，而你这个作者才是医生。

And why if you want to write 以及，如果你想写

主持人 great comedy, it's better to be honest than witty. 出色的喜剧，诚实比机智更重要。[音乐]

嘉宾 Where I want to start is this idea in editing of looking for things that echo. Tell me about that. 我想从修改时寻找回声这件事开始。你讲讲这个。

主持人 My first drafts are absolutely terrible. Like in this new book Villa Coco, I really wrote a lot of vignettes out of order. I kind of put them together and so looking it over just myself, there's no editor yet, the first time I try to think what images repeat is like the easiest thing to see. And if it's like, oh, I seem to tell a bird story here and there's a bird metaphor here and then at the end there's a lot of birds in the sky. 我的初稿简直糟透了。比如这本新书 Villa Coco，我其实写了很多短片段，而且顺序全乱。我把它们拼在一起，自己先看一遍，那时还没有编辑，第一次我会试着去想哪些意象在重复，这是最容易看见的。如果是：哦，我这里讲了一个鸟的故事，这里有一个鸟的比喻，结尾天空里又有很多鸟。

I'm like, okay, then let's take out all of the like porcupine stories cuz it seems to be birds and add more birds just because readers like a pattern but one they can't discern. So it should feel like it's it like you know what you're doing. I don't know what the theme is yet. Usually the second draft I That's also the thing I figure out what I'm really talking about and what is totally off the mark has to go. 我就会想，好，那就把那些豪猪的故事都拿掉，因为看起来主题是鸟，再多加一些鸟。因为读者喜欢一种模式，但又辨认不出来。所以它应该让人觉得，你知道自己在做什么。我那时还不知道主题是什么。通常到第二稿，我也是在那时候才弄清自己真正在讲什么，完全跑偏的东西就必须拿掉。

Like stories that aren't You know, I think in Villa Coco I had this really wonderful story about um a fraud that took place in Venice in the 17th century and it was hilarious but it was just not That's not what the book is about, you know, it's really about um what to do with your life. It is a little bit about fraud and crime but it was off the mark so it had to go. So, that's also it. 比如那些并不… …你知道，Villa Coco 里我有一个特别精彩的故事，讲的是 17 世纪威尼斯发生的一场骗局，而且很好笑，但它就是不行。那不是这本书要讲的，这本书真正讲的是，拿自己的人生怎么办。它也有一点关于骗局和犯罪，但跑偏了，所以必须拿掉。

Looking at even like uh a lovely piece, if it doesn't rhyme with something else, because for a novel it all has to rhyme. It has to feel like it's all part of the same thing. 所以也是这个意思。哪怕是一段很美的文字，如果它不能和其他东西押韵，因为对小说来说，一切都必须押韵。它必须让人觉得都是同一件事的一部分。

嘉宾 Hm. 嗯。

Why? 为什么？

主持人 Because otherwise, I think for a 800-page novel it doesn't, but I think for a 250-page novel, there should be the feeling the reader has at the at the end that it was all for a reason. You know, like if you're sitting with your friend and they're like, "I got to tell you the thing that happened today." And if it's a dream they had, it is not interesting, because there's no point to it. 因为否则的话，八百页的长篇小说也许不需要，但对一本两百五十页的小说，读者读到结尾时，应该觉得这一切都有原因。就像你坐在朋友旁边，他们说：“我得跟你讲今天发生的事。 ”如果只是他们做的一个梦，那就没意思，因为没有重点。

But, if if they're good storytellers, you're like, "I started off and the milkman was late." Or something. And you're like, "This guy the milkman has got to be important." The milkman doesn't end up being important, you're kind of annoyed. 但如果他们会讲故事，你会想：“我一开始送奶的人就迟到了。 ”诸如此类。你会想：“这个送奶的人一定很重要。 ”结果送奶的人并不重要，你就会有点恼火。

嘉宾 What I'm hearing from you is that early on there's this certain intuitive, almost ethereal from the subconscious draft that gets written. And then the conscious mind only comes in later on. And I don't want to infer too much, but almost this sense of surprise that there are themes that were there. And you're like, "Where did they come from?" But,they almost appeared without your conscious will to make them appear. 我听到的是，早期会有一种直觉的、几乎空灵的、来自潜意识的草稿被写出来。意识要到后面才进来。我不想推断太多，但几乎有一种惊讶：原来那些主题已经在那里了。你会想：“它们从哪儿来的？”但是，它们几乎是在你没有有意识地让它们出现的情况下出现的。

主持人 I mean, I don't want to sound too David Lynch about it, because that's the kind of way that he thinks. I think he's more magical than I am. But, I definitely the first draft is full of I put in everything that I could possibly use. You know, I just spill it all on the table. Any story or character, I'm like, "I don't know. Is this going to be useful?" You know, and that I mean, they say that you should write on whiskey and um and edit on soda water. 我是说，我不想讲得太像 David Lynch，因为他就是那样想的。我觉得他比我更有魔力。但第一稿里，我确实把所有可能用得上的东西都放进去了。就是全倒在桌上。任何故事或人物，我都会想：“我不知道。这个会有用吗？ ”他们说应该喝着威士忌写，喝着苏打水改。

So, then the second time you go through and you realize it's true what the subconscious was trying to get out. And all the rest that is just sort of junk that the conscious mind can make into a theme and a story and something that will move a reader. I so describe it as writing like a like a crossword puzzle. 所以第二次过稿时，你会发现潜意识想倒出来的东西是对的。其余那些有点像垃圾的东西，意识可以把它们做成主题、做成故事、做成能打动读者的东西。所以我把它说成像填字游戏那样写。

嘉宾 That was Nabokov. Oh, really? And I thought he was lying cuz I thought you can't write like a crossword puzzle. That's nonsense. But I've gotten older and I realized that that is a really useful way to write. So I will write a scene. Villa Coco, I wrote a scene that's 2/3 of the way that's about finding a work of art. And I'm like, I don't know where this goes. And then you write another scene that just has occurred you. You know the answer to like in a crossword puzzle. 那是 Nabokov 说的。哦，真的？而我当时觉得他在撒谎，因为我觉得小说不可能像填字游戏那样写。那是胡说。 [清嗓] 但我年纪大了，才意识到这真是一种很有用的写法。所以我会写一个场景。 Villa Coco 里，我写过一个大约在全书三分之二处的场景，讲的是找到一件艺术品。

嘉宾 You fill in the things you know, and they give you clues to the other parts that go across and slowly they all add up because they connect to one another. And that's how I end up writing these books, which sounds like madness and is madness. But it works better for me than planning it all out. Either I have a nervous breakdown in the middle because the novel has gone a different direction than I hoped. Or um or it feels too calculated. 我想，我不知道这段放哪儿。然后你再写另一个刚刚想到的场景。就像填字游戏，你知道答案的那些格子，先填你知道的，然后它们会给你线索，指向横着交叉过去的其他部分，慢慢全部加起来，因为它们彼此相连。我就是这样写出这些书的，听起来像疯了，也确实是疯了。但对我来说，这比事先全部规划好更管用。

And it doesn't have that organic storytelling feel to it. So when you're writing scene by scene, how does that look like on a day-by-day basis? Like are you I don't know, maybe you're going for a swim and you're like, "Hey, I have this idea of a scene. Okay, I'm going to go back to the computer. 要么写到中间精神崩溃，因为小说走了和我希望不同的方向。要么感觉太算计。而且没有那种有机的讲故事的感觉。所以你一个场景一个场景地写时，每天实际是怎样的？

I'm going to write out the scene." And then what I'm imagining is almost like these different splotches on a piece of paper that don't like a lot of dots that haven't been connected and kind of arranged in order. But you're just trying to get stuff out. You're just imagining different scenes. Is that a fair way to put it? 比如说，也许你去游泳，突然想：“嘿，我有一个场景的想法。好，我要回到电脑前，把这个场景写出来。 ”我想象的几乎像纸上不同的色块，很多还没连起来、也还没排好顺序的点。但你只是想先倒出来。你只是在想象不同的场景。这样说公平吗？

主持人 Sure. I mean, more that way is my friend Daniel who I swim with who writes on index cards that he puts on his dining room table. Which is how Nabokov wrote. Right? He He just wrote index cards and he did not know what they were about. They were fully written paragraphs. Can you imagine? It's hard to imagine that that's true. But I've seen it in action. And it is true. 当然。更接近那种做法的是和我一起游泳的朋友 Daniel，他写在索引卡片上，再摊在餐桌上。 Nabokov 就是那样写的。对吧？他就是写索引卡片，而且不知道它们讲的是什么。那些是写完整的段落。你能想象吗？

Mine is more I know I have a list of scenes that I'm imagining for the book that are coming to me that seem fun to write. And when I'm swimming, I come up with how I'm going to write the scene. Meaning, what point of view, what um details are going to be there, what would be fun, what would be a fun way to write the scene. Well, like you could tell a scene of um like backwards. 很难相信这是真的。但我见过实际操作，确实是真的。我这边更多是，我知道我有一份场景清单，是这本书里正在涌到我脑子里、看起来写起来会很有趣的场景。游泳的时候，我会想好这个场景要怎么写。意思是用什么视角、会有哪些细节、什么会有趣、用什么有趣的方式来写这个场景。

You could say, "Years later, he would look back on that moment and remember only the goat that was tied in the middle of the field. But when he first arrived that morning, he didn't see the goat at all." And so, you're like, "Okay, I'll foreshadow something and I'll tell it from long in the far in the future to give it this perspective and like freak the reader out a little bit." Or you can just say he walked into the room and there was no goat there. 比如说，你可以从后往前讲一个场景。你可以说：“多年以后，他回望那一刻，只记得拴在田中央的那只山羊。可那天早晨他刚到时，根本没看见山羊。 ”于是你会想：“好，我先埋伏一笔，从很远的未来回看，给它这个视角，再把读者吓一小跳。 ”或者你也可以只说，他走进房间，那里没有山羊。

I mean, I read a lot of old books to see how they used to do things because I think a lot of these techniques are lost in uh the desire to write a book. If we're only watching TV shows, we tend to write dialogue of people entering a room, every single thing that happens in that room, and then they leave the room. Whereas actually in a book, you don't have to do that. 我读很多旧书，看他们从前怎么做，因为我觉得很多这类技法已经失传了在想写一本书的欲望里。如果我们只看电视，往往会写成：人走进房间，房间里发生的每一件事，然后他们离开房间。可书里其实不必这样。事实上，你甚至不必… …你可以说：“把实话告诉我。

In fact, you don't even have to You can say, "Like tell me the truth." "I told her exactly what she needed to hear." You don't have to put the dialogue at all. You can just report it. And so, those choices, which I think I only know from reading a lot of books,are the ones that I think, "What would be fun? ”“我把她需要听的话原样告诉了她。 ”对话完全可以不写，只转述就行。所以这些选择，我觉得我只是因为读了很多书才知道的，就是我会去想的那些：“怎样会有趣？哦，如果我不告诉读者他说了什么。

Oh, if I don't tell the reader what he says." Like I just read was reading a book now by Beryl Bainbridge and at the end of the chapter, she says, "I called up my mother and told her what had happened. My mother said what she always says." End of scene. You're like, "Oh, I wonder what it was." And that's kind of cool. ”比如我正在读 Beryl Bainbridge 的一本书，一章结尾她写：“我给母亲打电话，把发生的事告诉了她。母亲说了她常说的那些话。 ”场景结束。你会想：“哦，她到底说了什么？ ”这挺酷的。

嘉宾 Give me other examples of older books that you've read, things that you've seen that are different from how we write now that you're trying to kind of bring into your work, incorporate, you're getting inspired by. 再举一些你读过的旧书例子，你看到的、和。我们现在的写法不同、你正试着带进自己作品里、吸收、并从中获得启发的东西。

主持人 Well, like one This is feels like a foolish example, but it's it's it's I think the first moment I realized that you can do anything you want was reading an old novel by Colette, a French writer, and in fact that it's a novella called Gigi, which people will know if they've watched the musical movie from the '50s called Gigi. 比如有一个，听起来像个笨例子，但我想那是我第一次意识到你可以做任何你想做的事：读 Colette 的一部旧小说，一位法国作家，其实是一部中篇，叫 Gigi，看过五十年代那部音乐电影 Gigi 的人都会知道。

Uh And at the end of it, it's about a courtesan, she's trying to be a courtesan, and there's a man who wants to be her um whatever it's called, the guy who has the courtesan, and instead she says, "No, I don't want to be that." And he's very angry, and then he comes back to the house, and he says to her mother, "Madam Alvarez, I would love the great honor of asking for Gigi's hand {dot} {dot}." And Colette knew not to say any more than that, that we knew he was asking to marry her. 结尾讲的是一个交际花，她正想成为交际花，有一个男人想当她的… …不管那个身份叫什么，包养交际花的那个人，可她说：“不，我不想那样。 ”他非常生气，然后回到那栋房子，对她母亲说：“Alvarez 夫人，我极想荣幸地请求 Gigi 的… … 。 ”Colette 知道不要再多写一个字，我们就知道他是在求婚。如果她再多一个字，就会太煽情。

And if if she did a single word more, it would be too sentimental. And I was like, "You can just go {dot} {dot} {dot}, and that's the end? You can just leave us hanging?" And I was stunned. I thought you had to I thought you had to. And then I it made me realize that the real liberties of of of a novel and that kind of storytelling, which is that the narrator and the writer were in control, like theater. 当时我想：“你可以就写… … ，然后结束？你可以就这样把我们悬在那儿？ ”我愣住了。我以为你必须写下去，我以为你必须。然后这让我明白小说、以及那种讲故事真正的自由：叙述者和作者是掌控的，像戏剧。戏剧里总有大量留给想象的空间，无论布景多么华丽。

You can there's a lot in the imagination in theater, always, no matter how elaborate the set is. It's still a black box. And it's more fun in theater if it's actually just a black box, and the chair turns into a train, turns into you know, a a hotel room. And and the novel is more like that, that there's a lot that the reader um invents themselves, and the more they invent themselves, the more tied to the book they are, and the more they enjoy the experience. 它仍然是一个黑匣子。而且戏剧里如果真的只是一个黑匣子，椅子变成火车，再变成一间旅馆房间，反而更有趣。小说更像那样，读者有很多东西要自己发明；他们自己发明得越多，就越和这本书绑在一起，也越享受这次阅读。但阅读体验也会更难。所以作为作者，你必须决定要让它多难，因为如果读者要补的东西太多，很多人会拒绝。

But it is the more difficult it is the reading experience. So, you have to decide as a writer how difficult you want it because a lot of readers will reject it if they have to make up too much. Like the Beryl Bainbridge novel I'm reading now, she does not describe how the characters look,which is hard for me, cuz I love describing how the characters look. Um, nor does she describe a lot of the rooms they're in. 比如我正在读的这本 Beryl Bainbridge，她完全不描写人物长什么样，这对我很难，因为我很爱写人物长什么样。她也不怎么描写他们所在的房间。故事发生在 1948 年伦敦的一座剧院里，那会是什么样子，我很难想象。但我明白，这也是乐趣的一部分。

It takes place in a theater in the early 20 in 1948 in London, which is hard for me to imagine what that's going to look like. But I understand that that's part of the fun. It's a short book. She's not going to fill it with extra description, and you kind of gradually imagine the characters yourself. It took me a while to get into it, and now I'm really invested, because my version of Stella is like nobody else's. I've invented her completely. 书很短，她不会用多余的描写去填，你是慢慢自己去想象这些人物。花了我一段时间才进得去，现在我已经很投入了，因为我心里的 Stella 和别人的都不一样。我是完全自己发明出她的。说到学校，你会想到什么？对我来说，是讲课、作业、坐在书桌前。最糟的是，这样甚至没有用。 54% 的美国人阅读水平低于六年级。

When you think of school, what comes to mind? For me, it was lectures, homework, sitting at a desk. And the worst part is it doesn't even work. 54% of Americans read below a sixth-grade level. That's over half of Americans. We need something new, and that's why I'm excited to have Alpha School as the flagship sponsor for how I write. 超过一半的美国人。我们需要新的东西，而这就是我很高兴请到 Alpha School 作为 How I Write 主赞助方的原因。在 Alpha，你去上学，全部学业每天只需两小时，剩下的时间可以学生活技能，比如创办一家公司、写一部音乐剧，或做一场 TED Talk。

At Alpha, you go to school and do all your academics in only 2 hours per day, so that then you can spend the rest of the day learning life skills, like launching a business, writing a musical, or giving a TED Talk. You know, the kind of things that make you a capable and well-rounded person. And it's working. They have academics figured out. Alpha classes test in the top 1% nationally, and more than 90% of Alpha students say they love school. 就是那些让你成为有能力、发展均衡的人的事。而且这套办法正在起作用。他们把学业这件事搞清楚了。 Alpha 的班级测试成绩位于全美前 1%，超过 90% 的 Alpha 学生说他们热爱学校。我以前住在 Austin，Alpha School 就是从那里起步的，那里发生的事一直让我震惊。

主持人 Now, I used to live in Austin, where Alpha School started, and I was consistently blown away with what was happening there. I personally mentored a bunch of Alpha students, and what stood out to me is how much the team believes in the potential of kids, way more than what I ever got in school. Alpha's approach and the success it's already having is why it's the most talked about K-12 school in the world right now. And it's also where I want to send my kids to school one day. 我亲自指导过不少 Alpha 学生，最突出的是团队对孩子潜力的相信，远远超过我自己上学时得到的。 Alpha 的方法和它已经取得的成功，正是它现在成为全世界讨论最多的 K-12 学校的原因。它也是我将来想送自己孩子去的学校。 [音乐] 所以如果你想了解更多，请到 go.alpha.school/howiwrite。

So, if you want to learn more, go to go.alpha.school/howiwrite. So, as you're thinking about the narr- the narrator, the quality of the narrator, is that something that you kind of write down? You got this big board, kind of like Bradley Cooper in 21, like looking over everywhere, it's like, "Okay, this what it is." Or is it just this really intuitive sense of connection that you have with your narrator and a deep intuition about they would say this, they wouldn't say that. 那么，当你在想叙述者、叙述者的质地时，这是你会写下来的东西吗？你有一块很大的板，有点像 Bradley Cooper 在 21 里那样，把所有东西铺开看：“好，就是这样。 ”还是说，这只是你和叙述者之间一种非常直觉的连接，以及一种很深的直觉，知道他们会说这个、不会说那个。

They would say this, they wouldn't say that. 他们会说这个，不会说那个。

嘉宾 Certainly, it's a pile of books that I have chosen from my library that I think my book sounds like something that is a combination of these books. 当然，是我从书房里挑出的一堆书，我觉得我的书听起来会像这些书的某种组合。

主持人 Oh, wow. And I don't know why. And so I have them there and I pick them up and read them and and tell like the combination creates And I often get a lot of false starts. I had a book called The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells, and I must have written the first 100 pages at of that book three or four times. It's like, let's change the gender of the person. Let's tell it from a different narrative point of view. Let's try it first person from years later. 哇。我也不知道为什么。所以我把它们放在那儿，拿起来读，那种组合会形成… …我经常有很多错误的开头。我有一本书叫 The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells，那本书的前一百页我一定写过三四遍。比如：换这个人的性别。换一个叙事视角。用多年以后的第一人称来讲。

Let's try it present ten- You know, I just got it wrong over and over and I knew it. Clearly not very quickly. 用现在时… …你知道，我一次次搞错，而且我知道自己错了。显然并不是很快就知道。

嘉宾 Mhm. But 嗯。但是

主持人 Yeah, but eventually you hit it and you know you or I know I hit it because I'm able to produce lots of pages easily, even if I'm going to cut them, that they're a pleasure to write. And I really like a first-person narrator because you can give them a lot of personality. Um Less, for instance, the narrator is why I enjoyed writing the book so much, and the narrator is not Arthur Less. The narrator is much smarter and funnier. The narrator knows it's a comedy. 对，但最终你会撞上它，你。会知道，或者说我知道自己撞上了，因为我能很容易地写出很多页，哪怕之后会删掉，写它们是一种乐趣。我很喜欢第一人称叙述者，因为你可以给他们很多性格。比如 Less，叙述者就是我那么享受写这本书的原因，而叙述者并不是 Arthur Less。叙述者要聪明得多，也好笑得多。

Arthur Less doesn't know it's a comedy. He's actually pretty upset a lot of the time. He's having a bad time. But we're having a good time because the narrator knows how the story ends. And that's part of a comedy is a is an understanding that things are going to turn out okay, and therefore it can be a funny story. 叙述者知道这是一出喜剧。 Arthur Less 不知道这是喜剧。他其实很多时候挺难受的。他过得很糟。可我们过得很开心，因为叙述者知道故事会怎样结束。喜剧的一部分，就是明白事情最终会没事，因此它可以是一个好笑的故事。

嘉宾 You're talking about voice, personality, that distinctiveness. How do you cultivate that? 你在谈声音、性格、那种辨识度。你怎样培养这个？

主持人 Well, I read a lot of books and try to be inspired by them without imitating them. Like in Less, the narrator has a very cultivated English language capability. You know, he I had to look up a lot of words because he's knows more than I do, which is really fun because you sound really smart even though it took you know, I had to go to the dictionary a lot to find the kind of words that he would use. 我读很多书，试着。从中获得启发，但不去模仿它们。比如在 Less 里，叙述者有一种非常讲究的英语能力。我得查很多词，因为他知道的比我多，这其实很有趣，因为你会听起来特别聪明，尽管你知道，我得经常去翻词典，才能找到他会用的那种词。

And that is part of the humor in that book, I think, is the language is funny because he's over wrought. But, that was not appropriate for Villa Coco, which is a different narrator. He's um he's a much older man looking back on his time when he was 21 or 22, which is different than looking at someone else. 而这就是那本书里幽默的一部分，我觉得，语言很好笑，因为他写得过分雕琢。但这对 Villa Coco 不合适，那是另一个叙述者。他是一个年长得多的男人，回看自己二十一、二十二岁时，这和看别人不一样。

You can make fun of yourself a lot, but you have great empathy for that person you used to be who you barely recognize, and that's a different feeling, and it was a much simpler choice of language, and maybe less antic storytelling. 你可以大量嘲笑自己，但对那个你几乎认不出来的从前的自己，又有很大的同情，那是另一种感觉，而且语言选择要简单得多，叙事也许没那么喧闹。

嘉宾 What you were saying almost reminds me of the way a designer makes a mood board, and I've heard certain movie makers even talk about how when they're they'll find a playlist that they want for the movie, and then they'll just listen to that playlist over and over again, so they have a keen sense of what's the vibe, the tenor of the story going to be even if they can't put it to words, they do know the feeling intimately. 你刚才说的，几乎让我想起设计师做 mood board 的方式。我也听一些电影人说过，他们会给电影找一份播放列表，然后一遍遍听，好让自己对故事的氛围、调子有敏锐的感觉，。哪怕说不清那是什么，他们对那种感觉却很熟悉。我知道自己在写一本书时，会完全对准什么能帮我写这本书。

Well, I know when I'm writing a book that I'm completely attuned to what is going to help me write the book. Meaning movies or plays or music, and I will stop watching a movie if I'm like, this is no good to me. You know, Jaws 3D is not helpful. Could be. I mean, I never know. It's not like it's high or low art. It's just what storytelling is is going to be interesting and it's not necessarily um just books. It's any kind of storytelling that I go for. 意思是电影、戏剧或音乐，如果我觉得这对我没有用，我会停下来不看。你知道，Jaws 3D 没有帮助。 [笑声]也可能有用。我从来不知道。不是因为高雅或低俗，只是什么样的讲故事会有意思，而且不一定只是书。任何一种讲故事我都会去找。

So, I do start collecting those. And I do know writers who have playlists that are what the book is going to be. And I'm not that kind of writer, but that makes sense to me. 所以我确实开始收集这些。我也认识一些作者，他们有一份播放列表，就是这本书会成为的样子。我不是那种作者，但这对我来说说得通。

主持人 So, what I'm hearing, there's almost two different ways that you would think about consumption. One would be I'm going to consume what's what what's interesting to me, but now, okay, it's time to start writing something. And now I have this particular vector that I'm on and I'm only going to consume things that help me move down. 所以我听到的是，你对吸收材料几乎有两种不同的方式。一种是，我要吸收对我来说有意思的东西，但现在，好，该开始写点什么了。现在我走在这条特定的方向上，我只吸收能帮我往前走的东西。

嘉宾 Yeah, it's very frustrating for my husband who would like to watch Scream 7. And I'm like, no, we have to watch another Bergman movie. Which she refuses to do. And it means I miss out on a lot of contemporary literature because I'm I'm it's often not helpful to me. As wonderful as it is, it's not what I'm working on cuz I'm more old-fashioned, I think. So, I end up going to a second-hand bookstore and looking through the bookstore. 对，这让我丈夫非常沮丧，他想看 Scream 7。我说不行，我们得再看一部 Bergman。他拒绝这样做。这也意味着我错过很多当代文学，因为它们常常对我没有帮助。再好，也不是我正在做的东西，因为我想我更旧派。所以我最后会去二手书店，在书店里翻。

And sometimes I pick up a book I've never heard of and I think this might be it. Or like this Beryl Bainbridge novel I'm reading for my next book I'm working on. I said I was never going to write another novel. Clearly, I am. And uh a friend recommended it and I'm reading it and I'm thinking, yes, there's something here. 有时我会拿起一本从没听说过的书，想这也许就是了。或者像我为下一本正在写的书读的这本 Beryl Bainbridge。我说过再也不写另一本小说了。显然我还是在写。一位朋友推荐了它，我读着，想：对，这里有些东西。

主持人 What are the best bookstores? 最好的书店有哪些？

嘉宾 I mean, I love Green Apple Books so much because they have used books and new books together. And that really makes sense to me. Because the the obsession um with new books uh buy my new book, by the way. But there But I think for for writers, there doesn't We don't need to focus on everything that's just won the Booker Prize, necessarily. I think the problem would be that then you would just sound like everyone else in your field or in your generation. 我非常爱 Green Apple Books，因为他们把旧书和新书放在一起。这对我来说非常说得通。因为那种对新书的执迷，顺便买我的新书。但对作者来说，我们不必把注意力全放在刚刚拿了 Booker Prize 的每一本书上。问题会是，那样你听起来就会像你这个领域、或你这一代里的其他人。

And it you What you want to sound is just like yourself. That's the only way to make any kind of art is to sound more as most like yourself as possible. And that means being open to whatever inspires you and not being embarrassed by it because it's your job. You know, you have to And you don't have to read the newest translation of the Odyssey because there's a all these book clips reading it. Although, maybe you do. That sounds actually like a good idea. 而你想要的是听起来只像你自己。要做出任何一种艺术，唯一的办法就是尽可能听起来最像你自己。那意味着对任何启发你的东西保持开放，并且不为此感到难堪，因为这是你的工作。你不必去读最新译本的 Odyssey，只因为所有这些书摘片段都在读它。不过也许你该读。那听起来其实是个好主意。

主持人 Tell me more about why the old books as opposed to the new ones. 再讲讲为什么是旧书，而不是新书。

嘉宾 Because I think a lot varieties of storytelling, these books that no one's reading anymore, they're lost to us. And there's all these inventions that happen in these old novels. Old French novels would start like Madame M {under dash} arrived at the city of V {under dash} on the 12th of May to meet the duke. And you're like, "What are the under dashes about? I've never seen that before. What's that about?" And then I think, "Do I want like an under dash in my novel? 因为我觉得很多讲故事的变体，这些已经没人再读的书，对我们来说已经失落了。这些旧小说里发生过各种各样的发明。旧的法国小说会这样开头：M——夫人于 5 月 12 日抵达 V——城，去见公爵。你会想：“那些破折号是什么？我从没见过。那是干什么的？ ”然后我想：我要不要在自己的小说里放一个破折号？

Will anyone understand what that is?" No, but like in Villa Coco, I use that kind of technique because you don't know the narrator's name until the end of the book. They call him by a nickname, Jovidy, and he has a real name. But it's like in Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca. People know the movie, but if you read the book, you realize you never hear her name. Her name is the second Mrs. de Winter. And that's really interesting for the author to choose to do that. 会有人懂那是什么吗？不会，但在 Villa Coco 里，我用了那种技法，因为直到书的结尾你才知道叙述者的名字。他们用一个绰号叫他 Jovidy，而他有一个真名。这就像 Daphne du Maurier 的 Rebecca。人们知道那部电影，但如果你读书，会发现你从未听到她的名字。她的名字是第二任 de Winter 夫人。作者选择这样做，真的很有意思。

It um hides the character from you a little bit, but it also there's a little suspense. 它把人物对你稍稍藏起来一点，但同时也有一点悬念。

主持人 It also makes it feel like maybe it's really happened and they're trying to cover up the information so they don't ruin someone's life, which of course is nonsense. It's it's made up. And that sort of mixture, which we don't read anymore, um is great to to bring back to life. 它也让人觉得这也许真的发生过，他们在试图。遮住信息，免得毁了某人的一生，当然这是胡说。这是编出来的。那种我们现在不再读到的混合物，很值得重新带活。

嘉宾 When you look at art history, 16th century, 17th century, 18th century, whatever it is, you realize that where a piece of art was created and when a piece of art was created actually is more influential than the person who made that. Like the difference between two artists in the 17th century is less than the difference between art in the 17th century and art in the 21st century. And what you realize is that different time periods, they have a completely different spirit. 你看艺术史，16 世纪、17 世纪、18 世纪，无论哪一段，都会发现一件艺术品在哪里被创造、在何时被创造，。其实比是谁做的更有影响。 17 世纪两位艺术家之间的差别，小于 17 世纪的艺术和 21 世纪艺术之间的差别。你会发现，不同时代有完全不同的精神。

And when it's only when you look at the old art that you realize, "Oh my goodness, there is such a homogeneity to the things that we create now, not to any fault of our own, but it's because we live in this present age." And what I hear you saying is, "Hey, that means that if you're looking for new ideas, new ways to make your work distinctive, just go to the old stuff. 只有当你看旧的艺术时，才会意识到：天哪，我们现在创造的东西有一种同质性，这不是我们的错，而是因为我们活在这个当下。我听到你说的是：嘿，那意味着如果你在找新想法、新方法让自己的作品与众不同，就去看旧的东西。

They have a completely different way of seeing and thinking and speaking and talking about character, story, whatever it is." Yeah, absolutely. Like if you want to write a novel that is a huge rant, you should read Philip Roth. 他们看、想、说、谈人物和故事的方式完全不同。对，完全是。比如你想写一本大段咆哮的小说，就该读 Philip Roth。 [哼了一声]

主持人 And even if you don't like him, and I sometimes don't, but like that is how you learn to write a rant. Whereas like John Updike is playful with language in his description in a way that's very funny to me. And I definitely was inspired by that for Less by Updike of all people. 即使你不喜欢他，我有时也不喜欢，但那就是你学习怎样写一段咆哮的办法。而 John Updike 在描写里玩弄语言，那种方式我觉得非常好笑。我为 Less 从他那里得到启发，居然是 Updike。

嘉宾 Yeah, these are the words you always come back to. Playfulness, joy, delight. 对，这些是你总会回到的词。玩心、喜悦、乐趣。

主持人 Well, I like those when I read. Dave Eggers said that what he loves in a book is for there to be a surprise on every page. And he means like a surprise of description or language or dialogue or plot or character, any of those things. But it should be a surprise on every page. And I would say like Marcel Proust, as boring as you think he is, there's a surprise on every page. 我读书时就喜欢这些。Dave Eggers 说过，他爱一本书里每一页都有一个惊喜。他的意思是描写、语言、对话、情节或人物上的惊喜，任何这些。但每一页都该有一个惊喜。我会说，像 Marcel Proust，尽管你觉得他很无聊，每一页都有一个惊喜。

嘉宾 Raymond Chandler, when he would write, he had his typewriter and on something had to happen on every single page before the paper left the typewriter. Yeah, I heard that whenever he got bored, he would send two men with guns through the doorway. And so you read his books and you're like, I guess he got a little bored. But he really crafted those novels. Those are not dashed off. Those aren't Ellery Queen novels. Raymond Chandler 写作时，打字机上的那张纸离开打字机之前，每一页都必须发生点什么。对，我听说他一觉得无聊，就会让两个拿枪的男人从门口冲进来。所以你读他的书会想，我猜他又有点无聊了。但他那些小说是精心做成的。不是随手甩出来的。那些不是 Ellery Queen 小说。

Those Raymond Chandler They're each one of them is spectacular literature. Yeah, I'm not saying you should always write like this, but there is something to demanding that something happens in a short amount of time over and over. I was just at a wedding. And the best man gave one of the best speeches I've ever heard. He had like 25 index cards and he just read index card, index card. And every index card had a whole cohesive story on it. Raymond Chandler 的每一本都是出色的文学。对，我不是说你应该总是这样写，但这里面有些东西。要求在很短的时间里反复发生点什么。我刚参加一场婚礼。伴郎做了我听过最好的演讲之一。他大概有二十五张索引卡片，就一张一张读。

And so just the speed, the rapid fire of funny stuff, wow, that's a great story was so high and it just came down to like how he actually wrote the speech was exactly the opposite of what everybody else did. 每一张索引卡片上都有一个完整连贯的故事。所以那种速度，好笑的东西密集射出，哇，那是个好故事，密度非常高，而这恰恰是因为他写演讲的方式和别人完全相反。

主持人 Well, he didn't have to deal with transitions, which can be so are the hardest thing in a way. And so he did away with that, which is really smart because then you don't have to um do the boring connective tissue, you know? You can just get to the good stuff. 他不必处理过渡，过渡某种意义上是最难的。所以他把过渡去掉了，这非常聪明，因为你就不必去做那些无聊的连接组织。

It's why in my books someone told me or I read something online that was like, "Will at Coca doesn't have any chapters." And I thought, "Sure, yes it does." And I thought, "Oh, no it it doesn't in the way you're thinking. It's not like Frog and Toad are friends. It's but it is sections separated by like a little flower or whatever that are sometimes really short and sometimes really long. Then I don't have to do those transitions. 你可以直接进入好东西。这就是为什么在我的书里有人告诉我，或者我在网上读到：Villa Coco 没有任何章节。我想，当然有。然后又想，哦，按你想的那种方式，它没有。它不像 Frog and Toad Are Friends。但它确实有用一朵小花之类隔开的部分，有时很短，有时很长。

I can just have the white space and move on to another thing. So it doesn't have to be like middle marched like later on in the day or Thea thought she would pay a visit to the tenant farmer. You know, I don't want to do that. Well, there's a profound point here. It's if you like to write in a certain way, find a structure that allows you to write in that way rather than being constrained by how you think writing should or needs to be. 这样我就不必做那些过渡。我可以只要空白，然后转到另一件事。所以不必写成 Middlemarch 那种：当天晚些时候，Thea 想去拜访佃农。我不想那样写。这里有一个很深的要点：如果你喜欢用某种方式写，就去找一种允许你那样写的结构，而不是被你以为写作应该或必须怎样束缚住。

And I think that just again goes to reading lots of books and finding the one that works for you, not the most popular one out there or the one even that your favorite book has done in, but then the one that works for you. And I think that maybe Kurt Vonnegut is the one who taught me how to write in short little things of all writers who I haven't read in 30 years. 我想这再次回到大量读书，找到对你有用的那一种，而不是最流行的那一种，甚至不是你最爱的那本书用过的那种，而是对你有用的那种。我想，也许是 Kurt Vonnegut 教我怎样用短小的东西来写，在所有作者里，而我已经三十年没读他了。

嘉宾 What I'm hearing from that is writing as a way of expanding your horizon of things that make you say, "Oh, I can write like that. I can do that." 我从中听到的是，写作是在扩大你的边界，让你说出：“哦，我可以那样写。我能那样做。”

主持人 Yeah. And it takes reading in a different way. Um it takes reading like a detective a little bit and if there's something that you really enjoyed stopping and thinking, "How did they do that? How did they pull that off?" Cormac McCarthy who does not use quotation marks in his dialogue. That's a particular choice. It's very distancing. It's cold. And that works in his writing, but it would not work in my writing where I'm trying to keep it warm. I like quotation marks. 对。而这需要用另一种方式阅读。它有点像侦探那样读；如果有什么你真的很喜欢，就停下来想：他们是怎么做到的？他们是怎么把这事做成的？ Cormac McCarthy 的对话不用引号。那是一个特定的选择。它非常疏离，很冷。这在他的写作里管用，但在我的写作里不行，我是想把温度保持温暖的。

Or Jose Saramago who doesn't even separate the dialogue out from the rest of the paragraph or give you quotation marks. So you're doing all this work. it's all like all in together, which is really fun, but it it's um it's more fairy tale, I think. And so, seeing which one is going to work mostly for you personally and then for the book you're working on. 我喜欢引号。或者 Jose Saramago，他甚至不把对话从段落其余部分分开，也不给你引号。所以你得做所有这些工作，全部混在一起，这其实很有趣，但我想它更像童话。所以要看哪一种主要对你个人有用，然后对你正在写的这本书有用。

One of the biggest things I've learned from doing you know, 100 episodes of this now is not for every writer, but for most really good writers, they just have way more to pull from than the average writer because they've consumed so much. I have got to watch these 100 episodes cuz I it's not like I don't panic in front of the page every day. I I want to know what these other writers said, too, because I don't know how it's made. 做这一百期节目，我学到的最大的一件事是：不是每个作者都这样，但对大多数真正好的作者来说，他们能调用的东西比一般作者多得多，因为他们吸收了太多。我一定得去看这100期，因为我并不是每天坐在纸前都不慌。我也想知道这些其他作者说了什么，因为我不知道这是怎么做成的。

But, it is true and I'm it's not like I'm the fastest reader, but I have trained myself to do to do this to pay attention, to learn from all these other things. that. Training yourself to pay attention. That's what it is. It is no longer do I get to read a book like Lord of the Rings even and be like, "Oh, what a fun adventures these hobbits are auto." It's It's dangerous. I don't get that pleasure anymore. I have to read it and think like, "Why is this song here? 但这是真的，我也不是读得最快的人，可我训练自己去做这件事：去注意，从所有这些其他东西里学习。训练自己去注意。就是这个。我再也不能像读 Lord of the Rings 那样读一本书，然后想：哦，这些霍比特人的冒险多有趣。那是危险的。我不再有那种乐趣了。我必须读着去想：这首歌为什么在这里？

主持人 Is it Do I like that? Like I wonder what that's doing in the book. Is it boring me?" Which it used to when I was 12, but I think now like it's part of building the magic. You know, I would come up with some I would be I want to know how it's made because I have to I'm going to have to make something in literature later that day. 我喜欢这个吗？我想知道它在书里起什么作用。它让我无聊吗？我十二岁时它确实让我无聊，但现在我会想，这是在建造那种魔力。我会想出一些东西，我想知道它是怎么做成的，因为当天晚些时候，我得去做一件文学作品。

嘉宾 Well, implicit in that, too, is just because Tolkien did it doesn't mean that it's perfect and in every way. Absolutely. Implicit what you're saying is, "No, this might be a great book. Might not be a great book, but you definitely stood the test of time. But, hey, I don't like this thing that Tolkien did here. Why don't I like it?" 这里面也隐含着：Tolkien 这样做了，并不意味着它在每一方面都完美。你说的里面隐含着：不，这也许是一本伟大的书，也许不是，但它肯定经受住了时间。可是，嘿，Tolkien 这里做的这件事我不喜欢。我为什么不喜欢？

主持人 Well, like Proust, who's my favorite writer, but I'm not imitating. In the first volume, there's a long speech by a church about the by a priest about the stones of the church. And it is so boring, and it is 50 pages or something. And when I was teaching my class, I said, "Proust wants you to experience every possible human emotion, and one of them is boredom, and you're going to experience it in real time." I would not do that myself. 比如 Proust，他是我最喜欢的作者，但我不模仿。第一卷里，有一段很长的讲话，是一个教堂，一个神父在讲教堂的石头。它非常无聊，大概有五十页之类。我教那门课时说：Proust 想让你体验每一种可能的人类情绪，其中一种是无聊，而你会实时体验它。

That is not a technique that I would use. But he has other techniques that I that I do use. He has one way of of of creating a sentence where, and this is in translation, of course, so I don't know what the original French is, he will say like, "I it then was awakened in me, um like a a bird awakened by a false sun who takes flight, that impossible thing, colon, the past." 我自己不会那样做。那不是我会用的技法。但他有其他我会用的技法。他有一种造句的方式，当然这是译文，我不知道法文原文是什么，他会说比如：“于是在我心里被唤醒的，像一只被虚假的太阳唤醒而起飞的鸟，那件不可能的事，冒号：过去。 ”

You know, he has this long elaborate sentence, and then there's a colon, and you land it. And I thought, "That is really powerful." And you can only do that once or twice in a book. He does it thousands of times in a very long book. 你知道，他有这个很长、很繁复的句子，然后有一个冒号，你落在那里。我想：这真的很有力量。一本书里你只能这样做一两次。他在一本非常长的书里做了成千上万次。

But I really took that away as like, "That's a That's a great way to make a powerful sentence." I was talking to Lee Child, who wrote all the Jack Reacher books, and I asked him, "Do you outline?" He said, "No." And I said, "Huh, that's surprising." And he said, "I just write." And there was a really interesting back and forth in the YouTube comments, of all places, basically saying, "Okay, you guys are missing the point. 但我真的把这个带走了：这是做出有力量的句子的好办法。我当时在和写了全部 Jack Reacher 书的 Lee Child 谈话，我问他：你列大纲吗？他说不。我说：呵，这挺意外。他说：我就写。 YouTube 评论里有一段非常有意思的来回，说白了就是：好了，你们没抓住重点。

He doesn't outline, but his mental bank of references from reading thousands of books over the years just means that he has this intuitive sense of what to do. Of course, he's outlining. He's not doing it consciously, but there is something going on in his brain after reading all those books, writing all those books, that is different from the novice who does an outline. These are not the same things. 他不列大纲，但他这些年来读过几千本书积累的心理参照库，意味着他对该做什么有一种直觉。他当然在列大纲。他不是有意识地做，但有某种东西在他脑子里进行着，那是读过那么多书、写过那么多书之后才有的，和那个会列大纲的新手不是一回事。

Just like when you're watching um I like to watch a horror movie and there's action and then there has to be a moment where they're like the monster is at bay and they're sitting in there trapped in the graveyard where they turn to each other and be like, "So, what was your childhood like?" You know, you have to have that moment and it has to happen in probably twice in the movie to connect the characters together. 就像你看一部恐怖片，有动作，然后必须有一个时刻，怪物暂时被挡住，他们坐在那里，困在墓地里，彼此转过身说：“那么，你童年是怎样的？ ”你必须有那个时刻，而且电影里大概得发生两次，好。把人物连在一起。如果你真的在研究，也许会说它正好发生在第 35 分钟和第 52 分钟。

Maybe if you're really studying you say like it happens at exactly 35 minutes and and at 52 minutes. But probably when you're writing it you just think like I think it's time for a little chill out. You just doubt. How is the way that we talk about character changed over the centuries? Well, I know because I went to MFA school and I see online sometimes out of the corner of my eye discussions of character that feel like they're influenced by method acting. 但你写的时候，大概只会想：我觉得该稍微冷静一下了。你就这样做。我们谈论人物的方式，几个世纪以来是怎样变化的？我知道，因为我上过 MFA，偶尔眼角也会扫到网上关于人物的讨论，感觉它们受方法派表演影响。

Which is that you have to write out everything the character has ever done in their lives and I don't find that to be true and I wonder what they did in the 19th century. Often those characters are they're longer books and so the characters are built from a lot of detail. Maybe more like the way Stephen King writes that he will give you a giant pages and pages about what this sheriff did in Texas 20 years ago. But we don't do that that much anymore. King does it. 也就是你必须把这个人物一生做过的每件事都写出来，我并不觉得那是真的，我也想知道 19 世纪他们是怎么做的。那些人物往往在更长的书里，所以人物是由大量细节堆起来的。也许更像 Stephen King的写法，他会给你巨长的许多页，讲这个警长二十年前在 Texas 做过什么。但我们现在不太那样做了。 King 还那样做。

Anne Rice did it. Um we're now expected I think to capture a character instantly in a few in in literary fiction um in a few sentences. Which means you do have to go in incredibly prepared. Anne Rice 也做过。现在我想，在文学小说里，我们被期望在几句话里立刻抓住一个人物。这意味着你必须准备得极其充分。

Or you stumble your way through the first draft, discover the character and then go back and remake them. Or what I find is the character either leaps instantly on the page and there's no work needed or they never do. And you're and I have to use my skills to make them come alive for the reader,even though they're not alive for me. And it's fine because that's what the job is. And I know how to do it. 或者你在第一稿里摸索着走，发现这个人物，然后再回去重做他们。或者我发现的是，这个人物要么立刻跳上纸面，不需要什么功夫，要么他们永远跳不出来。于是我必须用自己的技能，让他们在读者面前活起来，哪怕他们对我来说还没活。这没关系，因为这就是这份工作。

Um distinctive ways of talking thinking about things more than the way they they move. It's not giving them a complicated past. I think we think it always has to be like adding and adding to their past. It's making them a real person that you're meeting in front of you, I think. Often, I I don't mind being alone at a bar with a pad of paper. 而且我知道怎么做。独特的说话方式、想事情的方式，多于他们怎么移动。不是给他们一个复杂的过去。我想我们总觉得必须往他们的过去上加了又加。而是让他们成为你正在面前遇见的一个真人。我想是这样。我并不介意独自坐在酒吧里，带着一叠纸。

嘉宾 Ah, the best. I love sitting at the bar. Last night, sat at the bar, had a burger, met some characters. It's my favorite. I mean, I really like people. I think I life is really made up of other people, so you might as well get used to them. And they're so useful for writing. As long as you have like a pad of paper, otherwise I'll forget. 啊，最好的。我爱坐在吧台。昨晚就坐在吧台，吃了一个汉堡，遇见一些人物。这是我最喜欢的。我是说，我真的喜欢人。我觉得生活真的是由其他人组成的，所以你不妨习惯他们。而且他们对写作非常有用。只要你有一叠纸，否则我会忘。

But you I can write down not just the stories they tell you, but like the way they Yeah. move and talk and whatever they're wearing and it's really great. 但我可以写下来的不只是他们告诉你的故事，还有他们怎么移动、怎么说话、穿着什么，这真的很好。

主持人 And also, when you meet a character, there's just these very vivid little details about them that just encompass who they are. 而且，当你遇见一个人物时，总会有这些非常鲜明的小细节，刚好概括他们是谁。

嘉宾 Yeah, and it takes nothing at all on the page. If that person is vibrant for you, you can put them in your book and they don't have to be the bartender. They could be a maid in a 19th century book, but that person with whatever her bug eyes and um mole here will be alive to you and that'll make it really easy to write them. People who are really welcoming, people who are not at all welcoming. I kind of like those. I kind of like the people who are a little off-putting. 对，而且在纸上几乎不费什么。如果那个人对你来说是鲜活的，你可以把他们放进书里，他们不必是酒保。他们可以是一本 19 世纪书里的女仆，但那个有着凸眼睛、这儿有颗痣的人会对你活着，这会让写他们变得很容易。非常欢迎人的人，完全不欢迎人的人。我有点喜欢那些。我有点喜欢有些让人不舒服的人。

主持人 Hm. Tell me more. 嗯。再讲讲。

嘉宾 Well, I think when a bartender doesn't want to serve you or is gruff to you, it means that in the scene you could turn them around a little bit and that gives them more action than someone's like, "Well, hello, darling. How are you doing? What's your name?" You're already there. But if you have to sort of persuade them and in real life, I often never persuade them. They're never never into me. Of course you want something to happen in the dialogue, but you don't have to. 我想，当一个酒保不想招待你，。或者对你很粗，意味着在这个场景里你可以把他们稍微转过来一点，这比那种“你好啊亲爱的，你好吗？你叫什么名字？ ”给他们更多动作。你已经到那儿了。但如果你必须去说服他们，而在现实生活里，我常常永远说服不了他们。 [笑声]他们从来看不上我。当然你想让对话里发生点什么，但你不必。

You can have something happen in the background. 你可以让事情发生在背景里。

You can have a cat in the bar that's trying to make its way across behind the bottles to the other side. And if it makes it to the other side, you feel like something happened in the scene even if it's undetermined. It something has to happen in every portion, but it doesn't have to be what you think it is. 你可以让酒吧里有一只猫，正试图从瓶子后面走到另一边。如果它走到了另一边，你会觉得这个场景里发生了点什么，哪怕那件事并不确定。每一段里都必须发生点什么，但不一定是你以为的那种。

主持人 Why do you keep coming back to surprises like the thing in every scene? 你为什么总回到惊喜，每一场都要有那件事？

嘉宾 You want them to turn the pages. 你想让他们翻页。

And you want them even in a literary fiction, I think, because people they won't read it if they don't turn the pages. And yet what they're coming for isn't plot. What they're coming for actually paragraphs of beauty and wisdom and poetry, but they're not going to read just huge blocks of those. Or I think. So, you have to do use these other techniques to get them to turn the pages so they get to those blocks of poetry. 即使在文学小说里，我想也是，因为如果他们不翻页，就不会读完。可他们来找的并不是情节。他们真正来找的是美、智慧和诗的段落，但他们不会去读大块大块只有这些的东西。或者说我是这样想的。所以你必须用这些其他技法，让他们去翻页，好让他们到达那些诗的段落。

And then when they finish the book, they're like, "You have got to read this book and it has this beautiful paragraph." Something they would never have gotten to if you hadn't put it in a diamond heist. 然后他们读完这本书会说：“你一定得读这本书，里面有这么美的一段。 ”如果不是你把它放进一场钻石劫案里，他们永远到不了那里。

主持人 Is creating drama and suspense something that you go for? 制造戏剧和悬念是你追求的东西吗？

嘉宾 Yeah, for sure. I don't think of myself as a uh a Hitchcock genius of suspense, right? But I think there's a lot of ways to create suspense um narratively that aren't necessarily about like a bomb about to go off in 5 minutes. You know, you can even start the novel saying like the I died on the 24th of December. I cannot explain to you how I'm able to communicate this to you from the other world, but I will start at the beginning and you're like, oh my god, he's going to die? 当然是。我并不觉得自己是 Hitchcock 那种悬念天才，对吧？但我认为有很多办法可以在叙事上制造悬念，不一定是五分钟后有一颗炸弹要爆炸。你甚至可以这样开始一本小说：我死于 12 月 24 日。我无法向你解释我怎么能从另一个世界把这些告诉你，但我会从头说起。你会想：天哪，他要死了？这会怎样发展？

How does this go? And then you're fine. In fact, there's a novel called The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas, which is like a Brazilian masterpiece. 然后你就跟上了。其实有一本小说叫 The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas，像是一部巴西杰作。

主持人 Bras Cubas. Bras Cubas. Bras Cubas. Bras Cubas。Bras Cubas。Bras Cubas。

嘉宾 And it starts that way and you're like, what? And this is a novel from the early 20th century and it does this thing at the beginning. He's speaking from the afterworld. He's like, it's too complicated to explain how, but I have to tell you about my life. And it's the posthumous memoirs. 它就是那样开头的，你会想：什么？这是 20 世纪初的小说，开头就做这件事。他从死后的世界说话。他说，解释起来太复杂，但我必须告诉你我的一生。所以是死后的回忆录。

主持人 Right. 对。

嘉宾 And it's in Portuguese and we've never heard of it and it's so crazy. And I like those. That's surprising to me. 它是葡萄牙语的，我们从未听说过，而且疯狂得要命。我喜欢那些。那对我来说是惊喜。

主持人 What's this uh throw with your left-hand device that you 你那个用左手投球的说法是什么？

嘉宾 Yeah. This was great. I was in graduate school and I was very pretentious and show-offy. I was like young writer. I wanted to show off what I could do and I would write these obscure stories with aliens or, you know, 17th century aristocrats and robots and just to try to be postmodern or I don't know what I was doing. And I everyone hated them and I thought they asked me to write a realistic story and I said, all right, I'll show them. 对。这很好。我当时在研究生院，非常做作，爱炫耀。我是年轻作者。我想炫耀自己能做什么，于是会写这些晦涩的故事，里面有外星人，或者 17 世纪贵族和机器人，只是想变得后现代，或者我也不知道自己在干什么。所有人都讨厌它们。他们让我写一个写实故事，我说好，我让你们看看。

And I wrote a story about a gay man and a lesbian who get married in the 1960s as beards for each other and their marriage over the next 30 years and how they really become each other's true love in a way. I brought it in, everyone loved it and I was like, I showed them. Like they don't know that I was just kidding. And my professor, William Kittredge, a Western writer, like cowboy Western writer, took me into his and he told me some baseball story I don't recall. 于是我写了一个故事，一个男同性恋和一个女同性恋在 1960 年代结婚，互相当挡箭牌，以及此后三十年他们的婚姻，还有他们怎样真的在某种意义上成为彼此真正的爱人。我拿进去，所有人都喜欢，我想，我让他们看看了。他们不知道我只是在开玩笑。我的教授 William Kittredge，一位西部作家，牛仔西部作家，把我叫进去，给我讲了一个我已经不记得的棒球故事。

Who's a famous left-handed pitcher? 谁是有名的左手投手？

主持人 Whitey Ford. And all he said was Whitey Ford always throwed with through with his left hand. And it took me a while to understand like if you're good at this Whitey Ford。他只说了：Whitey Ford 总是用左手投球。我过了一阵才明白，如果你擅长这个

嘉宾 Yeah. 对。

主持人 Andy you're showing off with all this other stuff, but this is what you're good at. You're good at emotion. And it's not shameful to do what you're good at. In fact, it's the only thing there is to do. And maybe I I wanted to be the cleverest writer in America and I just was not going to be. I was going to be the the a vulnerable writer. And that's the last thing you want to be at 23. But I really understood what he was saying to me. Andy，你用其他那些东西在炫耀，但这才是你擅长的。你擅长情感。做你擅长的事并不可耻。事实上，这是唯一该做的事。也许我想成为美国最聪明的作者，而我根本不会是。我会成为一个脆弱的作者。那是你 23 岁时最不想成为的人。但我真的明白他在对我说什么。

And that is the first short story I ever published. But I think about it a lot. Um about less. 那是我发表的第一个短篇。但我常常想到它。也想到 Less。

You know, that that book was a comic novel and it turned out I was good at that, which I did not know. And my last two books, Villa Koko is a comic novel. And I think, boy, am I allowed to write these still? There's not a lot of literary comic novels out there and I think Whitey Ford pitch with his left hand. You get to pitch with your left hand. 你知道，那本书是一部喜剧小说，结果我擅长这个，而我原先并不知道。我最近两本书，Villa Koko 是一部喜剧小说。我会想，天哪，我还被允许这样写吗？外面没有很多文学喜剧小说，然后我想 Whitey Ford 用左手投球。

If you're if this is what you're good at, the pages are coming, if you're enjoying it, if readers are enjoying it there that is what the whole point is. 你可以用你的左手投球。如果这是你擅长的，如果页码在出来，如果你享受它，如果读者也享受它，那就是全部意义所在。

嘉宾 Yeah, what came to mind for me is there there's four ways of thinking about competence. Unconsciously incompetent, consciously incompetent then you can be consciously competent at something and then you can be unconsciously competent at something. And I think a lot of the times the things that we're consciously competent at, we've had to work for. 对，我想到的是能力有四种想法。无意识地不会，有意识地不会，然后你可以有意识地会做某件事，再然后你可以无意识地会做某件事。我想很多时候，我们有意识地会做的那些事，是我们努力得来的。

We're like, I've worked really hard to get good at that. But I think often the things that were unconsciously competent at, they've come so natural to us that we actually just don't even admire those things in others. We don't admire them in ourselves. 我们会想，我非常努力才把那个做好。但往往我们无意识地会做的那些事，它们来得太自然，我们甚至不会在别人身上欣赏这些东西。我们也不在自己身上欣赏它们。

So then we don't actually do those things and a lot of the way that people in any craft can do better is just to be conscious of the things that they're so naturally competent at and do those things and actually learn to appreciate what those things are. 于是我们其实并不去做那些事。任何一门手艺里，人们能做得更好的很多办法，就是意识到自己天然会做的那些事，去做那些事，并且真正学会欣赏那些东西是什么。

主持人 I That's exactly it. That it feels like, well, it's easy. Anybody can do that. And it is not true anybody can do that. That is just what you can do. And when it feels easy, it doesn't feel like it's art. But it is. It doesn't have to be white-knuckling it through. It can be a a a pleasure. You know, I it is writing is really hard. I said that before. It's not. But writing Villa Coca was a pleasure. 正是这个。感觉像：这很容易，谁都能做。而这并不是谁都能做。那只是你能做的。当它感觉很容易时，就不像艺术。但它就是。不必咬紧牙关硬撑。它可以是一种乐趣。你知道，写作真的很难。我以前说过这话。其实不是。但写 Villa Coca 是一种乐趣。

And I learn I'm old enough now to say like, I'm just going to have um a great time doing what I think I'm good at. It feels easy, but I'm aware that like I have peers who don't write this way. I don't know if they can write this way. So I'm going to This is my little niche, you know? This is perfect for me. 我现在年纪够大了，可以说：我就去好好享受我自认为擅长的事。它感觉很容易，但我知道，我有些同行并不这样写。我不知道他们能不能这样写。所以这就是我的一小块位置，你知道吗？这对我来说正好。

嘉宾 From reading about this, it seems like one of the things that you picked up on is that a lot of comedy comes from tragedy and rather than talk about it as, oh, this is so sad, that the tragedy can then become funny. 从读到的这些来看，你抓住的一件事似乎是：很多喜剧来自悲剧，而不是把它说成“哦，这太悲伤了”，悲剧随后可以变得好笑。

主持人 Yes. I I would say you have to think about the hardest things for you. And see if you are capable of making it into a funny story. And if you are, I mean, Paul Beatty wrote a book um The Sellout, which is about slavery coming back. And that is not a funny subject, but he makes it really funny. It's the hardest thing for him and he was able to make it any one the Booker Prize and things. 是的。我会说，你必须去想对你来说最难的那些事。然后看你有没有能力把它做成一个好笑的故事。如果你能，我是说，Paul Beatty 写过一本书，The Sellout，讲的是奴隶制回来了。那不是一个好笑的题材，可他写得真的很好笑。那是对他来说最难的事，而他做成了，还拿了 Booker Prize 之类。

And I think I learned that lesson in less because I was writing a very serious book about a middle-aged gay man in San Francisco and it was such a tedious self-pitying book. I thought I can't write this. 我想我在 Less 里学到了这一课，因为我当时在写一本非常严肃的书，关于旧金山一个中年男同性恋，那是一本极其乏味、顾影自怜的书。我想我写不了这个。

And then I've told this story before that I went swimming, the miracle thing, but really in a desperation about what to do with this book. And I just thought, well, what the hell, I'll just make fun of him instead. And opened every door because I was writing about stuff that was really hard for me. 然后这个故事我讲过，我去游泳，那件奇迹般的事，但其实是对这本书该怎么办的绝望。我只是想，管它呢，我干脆嘲笑他吧。于是每一扇门都打开了，因为我写的是对我来说真的很难的东西。

You know, there is one point at the beginning of the book where it says, "Arthur Less was the first homosexual ever to grow old." Which I think is a funny sentence because the word homosexual is like hilarious. And rather than say he felt like the oldest homosexual, it just says he was the oldest as a homosexual. And what that is really about is that everyone else in the generation above him, almost all the men died of AIDS. 你知道，书的开头有一处写：“Arthur Less 是第一个变老的同性恋者。 ”我觉得这是一句很好笑的句子，因为 homosexual 这个词就很好笑。它不是说他觉得自己是最老的同性恋者，而是直接说他作为同性恋者是最老的。而这真正讲的是，他上一辈几乎所有男人都死于 AIDS。

And so he had never had any um any example of how to turn 40, 50, 60, which I don't. And it's a track It's one of the greatest tragedies I've witnessed in my life just to see all those men die and I escaped it because I'm just young enough. But it's a funny sentence. But I have learned that you have to You can only You have to be really quick by touching on those really hard things in a comedy. Or at least for me. 所以他从未有过任何榜样，告诉他怎样变成 40 岁、50 岁、60 岁，我也没有。这是一条我此生见过的最大悲剧之一，眼看着那些男人死去，而我逃过了，只因为我刚好够年轻。可那是一句好笑的句子。但我学到的是，你必须… …你只能… …在喜剧里，你必须很快地触碰那些真正难的事。

That you touch on them and you want to make the reader realize we're having fun, but we're really talking about something serious. And what I'm doing is I'm leading you through the fire and I'm distracting you while we go through this hard thing and then we'll realize we're on the other side of it. But once in a while you have to look around and see what we're going through. And this was Joan Rivers who said this. 至少对我来说是这样。你触碰它们，你想让读者意识到我们在玩得开心，但我们其实在谈一件严肃的事。而我做的是带你穿过火，在我们穿过这件难事时让你分心，然后我们会发现已经到了另一边。但偶尔你必须环顾四周，看看我们正在穿过什么。这是 Joan Rivers 说的。

She's telling a Helen Keller story, like a ridiculous Helen Keller story, and someone yells, "That's not funny." And she says, "My mother was deaf." What do you think comedy is about? 她在讲一个 Helen Keller 的故事，一个荒唐的 Helen Keller 故事，有人喊：“这一点都不好笑。 ”她说：“我母亲是聋的。 ”你以为喜剧是关于什么的？

Comedy is about taking us to the hardest things of our lives all together and looking at it together. You're stupid. The other thing about comedy is just the old cliche, it's about timing, which means there's a lot of revision just in the timing of small things. How does that work on the page? It's very clear to me how that works when you're seeing stand-up or something. How does it work on the page with timing? You have to work with the words to delay something. 喜剧是把我们生命中最难的那些事，大家一起带到面前，一起看着它。你真蠢。 [笑声]喜剧的另一件事就是那句老套话：它关乎时机，这意味着大量修改只是为了小事的时机。这在纸上是怎样运作的？看单口或类似表演时，这对我非常清楚。时机在纸上是怎样运作的？你必须用词去推迟某件事。你把它拉长，或者必须让它更快。

You play it out or you have to make it go faster. You add less. There's right at the end. I was with my friend Daniel, who's very funny writer. And I think he'd told me like, "Your last 20 pages need to be like eight." 你加得更少。就在结尾。我和朋友 Daniel 在一起，他是非常好笑的作者。我想他跟我说过：你最后二十页需要变成大概八页。

嘉宾 Hm. 嗯。

主持人 And I just cut and cut and cut. I was like, "I can't make it any shorter because he's in Japan and he needs to take a plane to San Francisco to go back for the final scene." And he said, "Andy, you don't have to write him getting on a plane. You can write {dot}{dot}{dot} next paragraph {dot}{dot}{dot} he stood at his house. I needed it faster. It wasn't funny or moving unless I kept picked up the pace and that is done grammatically. 于是我删了又删。我想，我没法再短了，因为他在日本，需要坐飞机回旧金山，去最后一场。他说：Andy，你不必写他登机。你可以写……下一段……他站在自己的房子前。我需要它更快。除非我加快节奏，否则它既不好笑也不动人，而这是用语法做成的。 [笑声]

嘉宾 In comedy, how much of great comedy writing for you comes from it being your first pass and you just had it in your heart and you just plopped it out on the page versus the revision, the revision, trying to get that right? 在喜剧里，对你来说，出色的喜剧写作有多少来自第一稿，它就在心里，你直接把它拍到纸上，又有多少来自修改、再修改，把时机改对？

主持人 The funny stuff is all in the first pass. I got to say. 好笑的东西全在第一稿里。我得这么说。

嘉宾 Why is it true for comedy that it's in the first pass, but then you talk so much about the importance of editing and other parts for a novel. 为什么喜剧是在第一稿里，然后你又那么强调修改、以及小说其他部分的重要性？

主持人 I'm not a witty person. I'm not a quick wit. I'm very much someone who thinks of the right thing to say, you know, l'esprit de l'escalier, on the way out of the party. 我不是一个机智的人。我不是那种反应很快的急智。我是那种事后才想到该说什么的人，你知道，l'esprit de l'escalier，走出派对的路上才想到。

嘉宾 Oh, I wish I'd said that. 哦，我真希望刚才那样说了。

主持人 But that's only like 2 minutes later. So, at the writer's speed, 2 minutes is not very long. So, I'm able to get it in the page and I can have fun. However, in revision, I'm there I'm able to see where I'm like, "Oh, I set up a joke without knowing it, and now I see where I can make it land." In Less Is Lost, there's a whole scene he's out in the desert with these hippies and they built a universe appreciation platform that looks really rickety. 但那也不过大约两分钟以后。所以按作者的速度，两分钟并不长。于是我能把它写进纸里，并能从中得到乐趣。不过在修改时，我能看见：哦，我在不知道的情况下铺了一个笑话，现在我看见它可以在哪里落地。 Less Is Lost 里有一整场，他在沙漠里和这些嬉皮士在一起，他们建了一个看起来摇摇欲坠的宇宙欣赏平台。

And then later, he takes blueberries he didn't know have mushrooms in them and he goes on a trip. And And in the original version, he woke up in a teepee naked. And on the final version, I was like, "No, he has to wake up on the universe appreciation platform. Why did I put it there if not?" It's much funnier if he's naked on a universe appreciation platform and he cannot get down. Like that's better than just a teepee. And I I wrote it for myself. It is all there. 后来，他吃了自己不知道里面有蘑菇的蓝莓，开始幻觉。原先的版本里，他赤身裸体在一座圆锥帐篷里醒来。到最后的版本，我想：不，他必须在宇宙欣赏平台上醒来。我把它放在那儿，不就是为了这个吗？他赤身裸体在一个宇宙欣赏平台上，而且下不来，要好笑得多。这比只是一座圆锥帐篷更好。我是写给自己的。它全在那儿。

I just had to later see it. And that happens all the time, that I have set up a joke for myself, but I have not finished it. 我只是后来才看见。这种事经常发生：我给自己铺了一个笑话，却还没有收完。

嘉宾 You were talking earlier about learning from other writers throughout history? What comedy writers have you learned from that you've then incorporated into your writing? 你前面在谈向。历史上的其他作者学习？你从哪些喜剧作者那里学到东西，然后带进了自己的写作？

主持人 These are maybe not going to sound like comedy writers to people, but in the '50s and '60s, literary writers who we think of as great important people, they also wrote comedies. That was just part of the thing. Updike was a comedic writer. And Philip Roth, definitely a comedic writer, and Saul Bellow, and playwright Thornton Wilder wrote farces, and all of that felt like normal part of being a also a serious writer. So, I actually enjoy reading them. 对有些人来说，这些也许听起来不像喜剧作者，但在五十年代和六十年代，我们当成伟大重要人物的文学作者，他们也写喜剧。那只是。事情的一部分。 Updike 是喜剧作者。 Philip Roth 当然是喜剧作者，还有 Saul Bellow，剧作家 Thornton Wilder 写闹剧，所有这些都感觉像做一个严肃作者正常的一部分。

And there's a lot of British writers I enjoy that are not as laugh-out-loud funny, but are have a certain charm from the early 20th century. American readers don't read these books. Here's a good example of reading things that other people don't read. Nancy Mitford novels. No one's heard of her. Gerald Durrell. Famous in England for a book called My Family and Other Animals. And never heard of him. 所以我其实很喜欢读他们。还有很多英国作者我喜欢，他们不是那种让人放声大笑的好笑，但有一种来自 20 世纪初的某种魅力。美国读者不读这些书。这是一个很好的例子：去读别人不读的东西。 Nancy Mitford 的小说。没人听说过她。 Gerald Durrell。在英国因一本叫 My Family and Other Animals 的书而出名。

For Villa Coco, these are the books I looked at for books that were a very gentle kind of comedy. Harmless, but like just constantly again, delighted by them. Talk to me about the transition into lesson into being a comedy writer and losing your British publisher. Oh, yeah. Um I don't know why I laughed. I Cuz tragedy leads to comedy. 也从没听说过他。对 Villa Coco，这些就是我去看的书，为了那种非常温和的喜剧。无害，但又不断地，再一次，让人感到喜悦。跟我讲讲进入 Less、成为喜剧作者，以及失去英国出版商这件事。哦，对。 [笑声]我不知道自己为什么笑。我因为悲剧通向喜剧。

嘉宾 Yeah. Well, I wrote last I got to tell you the book before that, The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells, barely reviewed, certainly not purchased by readers, and I felt like I it felt like it was beneath notice to me. I'm I'm too sensitive to these things. And I thought it's all over I'm as a writer like I've 对。我写完上一本……我得告诉你那本之前的书，The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells，几乎没有书评，读者当然也没买，我觉得它好像低到不值得被注意。我对这类事太敏感。我想一切都完了，作为作者，我已经

主持人 That was your fourth fifth book at that time? 那是你当时的第四本、第五本书？

嘉宾 Fifth book. Fourth novel. And I thought, well, that's it, you know, I'm an old man 46 or something, and I've written a book that is beneath notice, and I guess I'm just out of the club. Which liberated me to write anything I wanted, you know? And so, I wrote this comedy. I just assumed no one was ever going to read it. 第五本书。第四本小说。我想，好吧，就这样了，你知道，我是个老人，大概 46 岁，写了一本低到不值得被注意的书，我想我已经出局了。而这把我解放出来，去写任何我想写的东西。于是我写了这部喜剧。我只是假定永远不会有人读它。

I put in things that are way too personal that people should not know about my life that are there and I'm glad I did because it turns out people don't care about my life. They enjoy the a novel, you know, per se. Usually when a a novel is published in America, then you get a British publisher and it's just they publish it there as well and I did for all of my books with the same publisher, Faber. 我放进一些太私人、别人不该知道的关于我生活的事，它们在那儿，而我很高兴我那样做了，因为结果是人们并不关心我的生活。他们享受的是小说本身。通常一本小说在美国出版后，你会有一个英国出版商，他们也会在那里出版，我之前所有的书都是同一家出版商 Faber。

And they de clined to publish Less based on book sales of my last of the book before. Not on the idea of like we're investing in you for a a lifetime. No, they were kicking me free. But so did 11 other British publishers. I never found a British publisher for Less. It came out in the United States. No British publisher until the day after I won the Pulitzer Prize. Which was like 10 months later. You know, it was like significantly a long time had passed. 他们拒绝出版 Less，依据是我上一本书的销量。不是那种我们在为你的一生投资。不，他们在把我踢走。另外 11 家英国出版商也是如此。我始终没能为 Less 找到英国出版商。它在美国出版了。没有英国出版商，直到我获得 Pulitzer Prize 的第二天。大概十个月以后。已经过了相当长一段时间。

And then they all wanted to publish it. 然后他们全都想出版它。

Can you imagine a more satisfying So what is it like winning the Pulitzer? It was Like what is the day like when you find out, okay, oh my goodness, I just won and then what happens in the aftermath of that? I was working in Tuscany as director of an artist residency. Yeah, I saw that place. Look cool. It was pretty cool. There were um some dogs that were roaming free. 你能想象还有更痛快的事吗。 [笑声]那么，赢得 Pulitzer 是什么感觉？那是比如你得知的那一天是什么样，天哪，我刚赢了，然后余波里又发生了什么？我当时在 Tuscany 工作，做一处艺术家驻地的负责人。对，我看过那个地方。看起来很酷。挺酷的。有一些狗在自由走动。

Margaret Atwood was coming, so that was a big deal and I was like, I think these pugs shouldn't be pooping all over the dining room table when Margaret Atwood is here. So I'm in the floor, not the table. And so I bought diapers from China that have suspenders cuz pugs have no waist and you can't they won't stay on a diaper, I discovered. So I was training the pugs to wear diapers that evening. And I um put them to bed,and it was like 10:00. I'm There's a time difference. Margaret Atwood 要来，所以那是件大事，我想这些巴哥不该在 Margaret Atwood 来的时候把屎拉得餐厅桌子到处都是。所以是地板上，不是桌子上。于是我从中国买了带吊带的尿布，因为巴哥没有腰，尿布根本待不住，我发现了这一点。所以那天晚上我在训练巴哥穿尿布。然后我把它们安顿去睡，大概晚上十点。有时差。这是故事里重要的一部分。

That's an important part of the story. And also, we had no cell reception. So, I wasn't looking at my cell phone the way we do now, cuz there was no no point in looking. So, that was my evening was taken up by the pugs and the diapers. And then, my boyfriend was there, and he showed me his phone, and it was the San Francisco Chronicle. Someone had sent it to him that says, "Local author wins Pulitzer Prize." Andrew Sean Greer. 而且我们没有手机信号。所以我不像现在这样看手机，因为看了也没用。所以我那个晚上被巴哥和尿布占满了。然后我男朋友在那儿，他把手机给我看，是 San Francisco Chronicle。有人发给他，上面写着：本地作者获得 Pulitzer Prize。 Andrew Sean Greer。

But, I didn't know when the Pulitzer happened. I didn't It's April 18th, by the way. But, I didn't know that. It was just another day in in, you know, And so, I just said, "That is not true." It was very clearly not true to me. And, um, but I did look at my phone. I was back in cell phone range, and I had a million text messages, and they're all like fireworks, dancing Spanish lady, you know, like clown fish, like not very helpful texts. 但我不知道 Pulitzer 是什么时候公布的。顺便说，是 4 月 18 日。但我当时不知道。那只是在… …的又一天。所以我只是说：“那不是真的。 ” [笑声]对我来说非常清楚那不是真的。但我确实看了手机。我回到有信号的范围，有无数条短信，全是像烟花、跳舞的西班牙女郎，你知道，像小丑鱼，不太有帮助的短信。

High heel. And, but I did have a lot of calls from Michael Chabon. Good friend. He had won the Pulitzer Prize in I think 2001. And I thought, "Okay, if there's some sort of fraud or weird a fake rumor, yeah, he will tell me the truth." Cuz I'm like, "Don't get me worked up about something that's clearly not true." 高跟鞋。但我确实有很多来自 Michael Chabon 的电话。好朋友。他大概在 2001 年拿过 Pulitzer Prize。我想：好，如果这是某种骗局或奇怪的假谣言，他会告诉我真相。因为我想，别让我为一件明显不是真的事激动起来。

And I've been fooled in the past. So, I called him, and he said, "Andy, do you not know?" And I said, "I don't know what you're talking about, Michael." He said, "Am I the first person to tell you?" And he told me I had won the Pulitzer Prize. And he said, "Let me tell you two things. There is no downside, and now you can write any book you want to." 而且我过去被骗过。所以我打给他，他说：“Andy，你不知道吗？”我说：“我不知道你在说什么，Michael。”他说：“我是第一个告诉你的人吗？”然后他告诉我，我获得了 Pulitzer Prize。他说：“让我告诉你两件事。这件事没有坏处，现在你可以写任何你想写的书。”

主持人 Let's go. 太好了。

嘉宾 That liberated me to completely enjoy myself. 这把我解放出来，去彻底享受自己。

主持人 It's like tenure for writers. 这就像作者的终身教职。

嘉宾 Yeah. And then, um, Michael Cunningham called me, who had won the Pulitzer Prize for The Hours, and he said, "All All the writers who had won the Pulitzer Prize all contacted me who are still living." That's what happens. They all contact you. So, it's Donna Tartt and Jhumpa Lahiri, and like writers I didn't know, and you suddenly feel like you're accepted. It was an incredible experience over those days to feel part of something. 对。然后 Michael Cunningham 打给我，他凭 The Hours 拿过 Pulitzer Prize，他说：所有拿过 Pulitzer Prize、还活着的作者都联系了我。就是这样。他们都会联系你。于是是 Donna Tartt 和 Jhumpa Lahiri，还有我不认识的作者，你突然觉得自己被接纳了。那几天里，感觉自己成为某件事的一部分，是一次不可思议的体验。

And Michael Cunningham said, "Do not waste any time worrying about whether you deserve it." Which I had not occurred to me yet. But, I thought, "Okay, that's not my job. I was not on that committee. I got it, and I'm not going to worry about whether a comic novel deserves to win a Pulitzer Prize. That's not my, you know, position." Michael Cunningham 说：“不要浪费任何时间去担心自己是否配得上。 ”那一点当时还没在我脑子里出现。但我想：好，那不是我的工作。我不在那个委员会里。我拿到了，我不会去担心一部喜剧小说是否配得上 Pulitzer Prize。那不是我该站的位置。

主持人 The thing that really stands out about that story is that you wrote less in a state of some combination of hopelessness, despair, "Oh my goodness, I just don't have it anymore." 那个故事里真正突出的是，你写 Less 时处在某种无望、绝望的状态里：“天哪，我已经不行了。”

嘉宾 Again, that's where comedy comes from. I'm sure Seinfeld would tell you that. He's He's the one who said, "Comedy is when you decide it's a funny story." Life is not funny. You just decide. What happened today to you is is awful and miserable, but you decide it's a funny story when you tell it to your friends at the bar, and they laugh, and you feel, "Okay, I'm over it." You know? And that was a low point in my life when I wrote Less. And to be to win that prize for it? 再一次，喜剧就是从那里来的。我确信 Seinfeld 也会这样告诉你。他说过：喜剧是当你决定它是一个好笑的故事。生活并不好笑。你只是决定。今天发生在你身上的事又糟又惨，但你决定把它当成一个好笑的故事讲给酒吧里的朋友听，他们笑了，你觉得：好，我过去了。你知道吗？写 Less 时是我生命里的低点。

I can't tell you. That was That was supposed to be a book no one would even read. And then, it was a best seller for a year. 然后为它赢得那个奖？我没法告诉你。那本应该是一本甚至没人会读的书。然后它畅销了一年。

主持人 What is your self-conception as an artist, as a writer? What How do you think about what that means, and what it is that you're trying to do? 你作为艺术家、作为作者的自我认知是什么？你怎样理解那意味着什么，以及你在试图做什么？

嘉宾 That's a good question. It's funny to to like say I'm an artist. I do think of myself that way. I think it's from going to artist residencies and they're being with like real artists, painters, and like sculptors and things, and they definitely see writers as their peers. And so I'm I'll take it. I wouldn't have called myself that before, but I certainly with my other writer friends, we you know, our lives are in a way devoted to art. 这是个好问题。说自己是艺术家挺奇怪的。我确实那样看自己。我想这来自去过艺术家驻地，和真正的艺术家在一起，画家、雕塑家之类，他们确实把作者看成同行。所以我接受。以前我不会这样称呼自己，但和我其他的作者朋友在一起，我们的生活在某种意义上是献给艺术的。我们在做一些可能并不流行的东西。

We're we're making things that just may not be popular. They're popular by accident, honestly. Like Less, that wasn't accidentally popular. But I was happy with that book before it was published because I thought I have made the thing in my head as closely as I possibly can, and I am That's all I wanted to do. And that is the artistic sensation. Is it there's a compulsion, and if you're able through great effort to to make it, and it sounds like madness. 说实话，它们受欢迎是碰巧的。像 Less，那本并不是冲着碰巧受欢迎去写的。但出版前我就对那本书很满意，因为我想：我已经尽可能接近地做出了脑子里的那个东西，而这就是我想做的全部。那就是艺术的感觉。有一种强迫，如果你能通过极大的努力把它做出来，听起来像疯了。

It sounds like um Richard Dreyfuss in Close Encounters of the Third Kind where he's had a vision and he builds the mountain out of mashed potatoes at the kitchen table. That kind of feels like what it is. Like it's madness to live with someone like that, and Terry Carr leaves him, but that is it. There's something in your head and you have to make it, and what are the right materials, and what I'm going to do, and no one understands me. 听起来像 Close Encounters of the Third Kind 里的 Richard Dreyfuss，他有一个幻象，在厨房桌上用土豆泥堆出那座山。感觉就是那样。和那样的人一起生活像疯了，Terry Carr 离开了他，但就是这样。你脑子里有样东西，你必须把它做出来，用什么材料才对，我要做什么，没人理解我。

They won't understand me until I've made it, and then you make it, and often they still don't understand you. But sometimes but the but the pleasure comes from having having done it as closely as possible. That's I remember that in Less. I was so happy before publication came out. I thought, you know, it'll be great to get good reviews or or whatever happens, but because I thought it would never be a success anyway, I just wanted that artistic sensation. 他们要到我做成了才理解我，然后你做成了，他们常常仍然不理解你。但有时乐趣来自已经尽可能接近地做成了。我在 Less 里记得那种感觉。出版之前我就那么高兴。我想，得到好评或无论发生什么都会很好，但因为我本来以为它绝不会成功，我只是想要那种艺术的感觉。

主持人 What you learn from the painters? 你从那些画家那儿学到什么？

嘉宾 I learned do you have to let the lacquer dry. Their process is so similar to writing a novel that it's wonderful to talk to them. That they will say things like I spent all day painting tiny little flowers in the upper right-hand corner. And I'll be like, I know exactly what you mean. Because I spent all day replacing the word dog with the word cat. You know, it's something that doesn't feel like art. 我学到你必须让漆干透。 [笑声]他们的过程和写小说如此相似，和他们谈话真好。他们会说：我花了一整天在右上角画很小的花。我会想：我完全明白你的意思。因为我花了一整天把 dog 这个词换成 cat。你知道，那是一种并不像艺术的东西。

主持人 Wait, I want to stop you there. I think that that's so profound that a lot of the work of writing of being an artist, what people imagine is you're like Jackson Pollock, you know, you got your bucket of paint splashing the paint on the page, you know, like whatever it is. And it's this like think of a singer just getting after it. But no, actually a lot of the work is super specific, maybe technical, maybe intellectual, and what comes from it is art. 等一下，我想在这儿停住。我觉得这非常深：写作、做艺术家的大量工作，人们想象的是你像 Jackson Pollock，提着一桶颜料往纸上泼，无论那是什么。又像一个歌手全力投入。但其实，大量的工作极其具体，也许是技术性的，也许是智性的，从中出来的是艺术。

But actually what you're doing on a day-by-day basis doesn't feel like the cultural understanding of what an artist is. 可你日复一日实际在做的事，并不像文化里对艺术家的理解。

嘉宾 Yeah, that big inspiration, it just pours I mean, that's lovely when that happens. And then there is but revision does not feel like that. Revision feels very technical to me. Revision is like this scene isn't working. I have to technically figure out how to fix it. Whether I cut it, whether it goes somewhere else. You know, again looking at the the the rhyming and mirroring in the book, this scene belongs here because um on page 30, there's a scene with the donkey. 对，那种巨大的灵感，它就涌出来，我是说，那种时候很美。然后修改并不像那样。修改感觉非常技术性。修改是：这场不行。我必须从技术上想出怎样修好它。是删掉，还是放到别处。你知道，再次去看书里的押韵和镜像，这场该在这里，因为第 30 页有一场驴的戏。

So 30 pages from the end there should be a scene with the donkey and it'll match it. How do I Now I have to reconnect everything to make it make sense, which does not feel inspirational. It's very technical. Tell me more about the painters. They will say um I lacquered I put on a whole coat of lacquer and so I just had to sit and wait for it to dry. And I thought that makes sense. 所以离结尾 30 页处也该有一场驴的戏，它们会对应。我现在要怎样把所有东西重新接上，让它说得通，这并不感觉像灵感。它非常技术性。再讲讲那些画家。他们会说：我上了一整层漆，所以只能坐着等它干。

It's like when I polish a whole scene and I can't I I I I I can't look at it again to to um adjust it or critique it. I have to let it hang out and leave my mind for a little while. And over and over there are things that make sense. Especially that when you talk to painters or any visual artists, photographers care about not their subjects, even if their subjects are like naked people in front of them. They care about light. And painters they don't care about their subject. 我想这说得通。就像我把一整场打磨完，不能再立刻去看它、去调整或批评它。我必须让它挂在那儿，让它暂时离开我的脑子。这样的对应一次次出现。尤其是当你和画家或任何视觉艺术家谈话时，摄影师在意的甚至不是他们的拍摄对象，哪怕对象是面前的裸体。他们在意的是光。画家也不在意他们的题材。

They care about paint. That absolutely makes sense to me. It sounds insane. But painters will talk about the texture of the paint and the color and how it's applied and how it dries and whether you use linseed oil and they're you know, all these technical things. And I think about words. 他们在意的是颜料。这对我完全说得通。听起来像疯了。但是画家会谈颜料的质地、颜色、怎样涂、怎样干、用不用亚麻籽油，你知道，所有这些技术的事。而我想的是词。

主持人 Well, there's a Picasso quote that I really like. When art critics get together, they talk about form and structure and meaning. When artists get together, they talk about where you can buy cheap turpentine. 有一句我很喜欢的 Picasso 的话。艺术评论家聚在一起，谈形式、结构和意义。艺术家聚在一起，谈哪儿能买到便宜的松节油。

嘉宾 Exactly. 正是这样。

主持人 It's the deep specifics. I mean, also just hanging out with artists here, they're always talking about money. 就是那些很深的具体细节。而且和这里的艺术家待在一起，他们总是在谈钱。

嘉宾 Well, yes. 嗯，是的。

主持人 People like they talk about money more than the finance people talk about money. It's like there's this extreme pragmatism of what they're doing, which has really surprised me. 人们谈钱比金融圈的人还多。他们对正在做的事有一种极端的务实，这真的让我吃惊。

嘉宾 Right. You would think they're like, "Who care I for money or fame or riches? I'm just going to be wearing this smock." 对。你会以为他们会说：谁在乎金钱、名声或财富？我只要穿着这件罩衫。

主持人 need money so that I can make my art. Where do I find money? You know what I mean?" 需要钱，我才能做我的艺术。我上哪儿去找钱？你明白我的意思吗？

嘉宾 Yeah, if they're a good professional, they find grants or they have gallerists and there's practical things to do for all of that. And for writers, it's true,too. You know, you wonder how Less came about? I was a travel writer for years and years and I would come to New York. I remember I was like, "I have to make some money somehow." And I had a friend who was an intern at Travel and Leisure, a former student. 对，如果他们是好的专业人士，会去找资助，或者有画廊主，所有这些都有实际的事要做。对作者也是如此，也一样。你知道 Less 是怎么来的吗？我做了好多年旅行作者，会去 New York。我记得当时想：我总得想办法赚点钱。我有一个朋友是 Travel and Leisure 的实习生，以前的学生。

And I said, "I want you to introduce me to your editor." She said, "He won't take a meeting with just some writer." And I said, "Doesn't matter. I just want you I want to go to lunch with you and have you introduce me as I'm passing by." And I dressed in the loudest colors I possibly could so that "Behold, this is my friend Andy. Hi, he's on the phone. That's it." I thought I was like, "One day they'll be meeting. 我说：我要你把我介绍给你的编辑。她说：他不会只为某个作者见一面。我说：没关系。我只要你带我去吃午饭，在我经过时把我介绍一下。我穿了自己能穿到的最鲜艳的颜色，好让人说：“看，这是我朋友 Andy。嗨，他在打电话。就这样。 ”我想，有一天他们开会会说：某某写不了这篇。

They'll be like, 'You know, so-and-so can't write this piece.'" And my friend will say, "Well, what about my friend Andy? Who's he? You know, he was the guy in the bright clothes." Sure. And that's exactly what happened. But I had to be really cunning. 我的朋友会说：那我朋友 Andy 呢？他是谁？就是那个穿很亮衣服的人。当然。后来就正好发生了这样的事。但我必须非常狡猾。 [笑声]

主持人 You other You have to eat. 你必须吃饭。

嘉宾 Which leads me to ask, what career advice do you have for writers? 这让我要问，你对作者有什么职业建议？

主持人 I highly recommend life experiences. I highly recommend them. They're um And it either means like a a different interesting career as your day job. Um one that might provide you some stories. Interactions with lots of people. 我非常推荐生活经历。我非常推荐它们。这要么意味着一份不同而有意思的白天工作。一份也许能给你一些故事的工作。和很多人打交道。

You don't have to be a big drinker go to bars, but that's an example of like paying attention. I would say replace your iPhone with an pad of paper exactly the same size. And when you were bored waiting for the bus, pay attention to what is around you. But the career advice is you're going to have to make money. You'll probably never make money from your writing. So, find something or someone to support you at a minimum level. 你不必是个大酒量、去酒吧的人，但那是注意的一个例子。我会说，把 iPhone 换成同样大小的一叠纸。等公交觉得无聊时，去注意周围是什么。但职业建议是：你得赚钱。你大概永远不会靠写作赚钱。所以找一件事或一个人，至少在最低限度上支持你。如果你有昂贵的口味，那就祝你好运。

If you have fancy tastes, then um good luck to you. But the other thing to know is that there is no champagne room that you're finally invited into where all the VIPs are sitting around and say, "Well done, my good and faithful servant." And there there's no heaven. There's just writers. You know, there's I can tell you that like maybe the champagne room was Donna Tart emailing me with pictures of her own pug. But like there's no room. There's no separate existence. 另一件要知道的事是：并不存在一间香槟室，你终于被请进去，所有 VIP 坐在那儿说：“做得好，我忠实的好仆人。 ”没有天堂。只有作者。我可以告诉你，也许那间香槟室就是 Donna Tartt 给我发邮件，附上她自己巴哥的照片。但没有那样一个房间。没有另一种存在。

You're still the hard work. And um and and no private club. Every writer is interesting to me no matter what they are in their career unless as long as they're honest about talking about their work. It's all interesting. 你仍然是那份艰苦的工作。也没有私人俱乐部。每一个作者对我来说都有意思，无论他们处在职业生涯的什么位置，只要他们诚实地谈自己的工作。全都有意思。

嘉宾 Take me back to when you were a travel writer and you would go to different places and only write about I think it was places you've been and experiences that you actually had. Yeah, I had notebooks. And less and less is lost those were my rules is that I couldn't make up anything. Certainly for travel writing I didn't want to make up anything. Plenty of people do. But I didn't want it to be for instance the white guy making up stuff about Vietnam. 带我回到你做旅行作者的时候，你会去不同的地方，而且只写你去过的地方和你真正有过的经历。对，我有笔记本。 Less 和 Less Is Lost，那些就是我的规则：我不能编造任何东西。旅行写作当然更不想编造。很多人会编。但我不想变成那个白人在编关于 Vietnam 的东西。

Because it'll probably tap into some orientalist fantasy of mine. Where am I getting this made up stuff? And it'll be you know, nonsense and offensive. So I also I was alone in Vietnam in a restaurant that took two hours to bring me my food. So I took a lot of notes. 因为那大概会碰到我自己某种东方主义幻想。我这些编出来的东西是从哪儿来的？而且会是胡说，也会冒犯。所以我也曾独自在 Vietnam 的一家餐厅，菜要两个小时才上来。于是我做了很多笔记。

主持人 And what do you look at? Like if you're in a restaurant in Vietnam what sorts of things are you writing down on the page? 那你看什么？比如在 Vietnam 的一家餐厅里，你在纸上会写下哪些东西？

嘉宾 I mean everything. I am writing down the brand of the air conditioning unit in the corner. I'm writing down I remember one restaurant where there was a dog. They the the food was made up front. And um the chef was out there boiling bones and he would shoo the dog into the back and the dog would go down and sit down and look at me. Then the waitress would come and she would shoo the dog up to the front and he would sit there until he got shooed back. 几乎所有。我会写下角落里那台空调的牌子。我记得一家餐厅有一只狗。食物在前面做。厨师在那儿煮骨头，会把狗赶到后面，狗就会走过去坐下看着我。然后女服务员过来，又把狗赶到前面，它会坐在那儿，直到再次被赶回后面。那感觉像某种隐喻。也许有点佛教的东西。

It just felt like a metaphor for something. Maybe something Buddhist. Like when would he be released from this? You know, I remember a parrot in a cage, you know, talking and talking and one restaurant and those are all details that made it into my novel cuz they feel like they're about something. They feel poignant and funny. 它什么时候才能从这里解脱？我记得一只笼子里的鹦鹉，说个不停，在一家餐厅里，这些细节都进了我的小说，因为它们感觉是关于某种东西的。它们感觉既心酸又好笑。

主持人 If you were describing this room, you had a notepad, what were the first three things that you would 如果你在描写这个房间，你有一本笔记，你会先写下的三件事是什么？

嘉宾 Well, my favorite thing is that window, which is at such an angle, but they have remade the window to make it look normal, but they can't hide the fact that something's happened over time. It looks like one of the houses in Snow White, doesn't it? Yeah. They're kind of droopy. Looks like my apartment in Venice, which is so wobbly that I put my rolling chair down and it rolls like Poltergeist across the floor. Yeah. But those it makes it human. I'm like humans made this. 我最喜欢的是那扇窗，角度很怪，但他们把窗户改过，好让它看起来正常，却藏不住时间里发生过什么。它看起来像 Snow White 里的那些房子，对吧？对。有点塌。看起来像我在 Venice 的公寓，晃得要命，我把带轮子的椅子放下，它就会像 Poltergeist 那样自己滚过地板。对。 [笑声]但那些让它显得人做的。我会想：这是人做的。那就是我在找的证据。

That's what evidence I'm I'm looking for evidence that it's human. What is the difference between great travel writing and crappy travel writing? Well, you can see crappy travel writing if you ask AI to write anything. Because it's um it's so full of cliches. When I am a travel writer and also when I was writing Less Than Zero Than Zero, I looked for the thing you would not expect in that place. A way to make you rethink. 我在找它是人做成的证据。什么是出色的旅行写作和糟糕的旅行写作之间的差别？如果你让 AI 写任何东西，就能看见糟糕的旅行写作。因为它充满陈词滥调。我做旅行作者时，也在写 Less 和 Less Is Lost 时，会去找你在那个地方意想不到的东西。

Like in Morocco there's a point where Les goes to a ski resort. Which I was taken to. 一种让你重新去想的办法。比如在 Morocco，有一处 Less 去了一家滑雪场。那是别人带我去的。

主持人 Right. 对。

嘉宾 And I just thought that is 我当时就想，那是。

主持人 Mountains? 山？

嘉宾 In the Atlas Mountains. I was like, I was not expecting a ski resort in Morocco. Of course there's a ski resort. They have mountains. But you know, we have I you want to get away from the cliche. I had to write about camels. I had to write about Bedouins, but I needed something to widen the view of that country. 在 Atlas Mountains。我想，我没料到 Morocco 会有滑雪场。当然有滑雪场。他们有山。但你知道，我们想离开陈词滥调。我必须写骆驼。我必须写贝都因人，但我需要某种东西来拓宽对那个国家的视野。

主持人 So cliche is what I'm hearing is the first thing. There's a lot of cliche in travel writing. What you don't want to do is lean into those cliches. But the superficial way to read your advice is write about the opposite way of the cliche, which is also probably the 所以我听到的第一件事是陈词滥调。旅行写作里有很多陈词滥调。你不想做的就是倒向那些陈词滥调。但表面地理解你的建议，会变成去写陈词滥调的反面，那大概也

嘉宾 be crazy cuz it's not representative of the place. 会很疯狂，因为它并不能代表那个地方。

主持人 Exactly. 正是。

嘉宾 I think of one place we stopped and there was um a little boy who had a a little chick that had been dyed bright pink. 我想起我们停过的一个地方，有一个小男孩，手里有一只被染成亮粉色的小鸡。

All the chicks had been dyed different colors and he was selling them because they were brightly colored. And of course, you don't I won't want that. It's going to turn into a chicken. But there was something amazing about it. I thought, "Whose idea was this? This is someone's idea. It must work." Someone's buying these dyed chickens. Tourists maybe. You know, like it's something that's neither a cliche nor the opposite. It is something utterly itself. 所有小鸡都被染成不同颜色，他在卖它们，因为颜色很鲜艳。当然，我不会想要那个。它会长成一只鸡。但这里面有某种惊人的东西。我想：这是谁的主意？这是某个人的主意。它一定管用。有人在买这些染过色的鸡。也许是游客。你知道，那既不是陈词滥调，也不是它的反面。它是某种完全是它自己的东西。

And and therefore interesting and and again I think in travel writing, you for me, I'm writing about the human beings. Um I'm not a nature writer particularly. I'm a I write about people. So, I'm so interested in how the people vary. And how they're very much like us. Actually, that's what of course you find when you travel. That's a cliche in and of itself. So, you try to hide that. But you do find that people are poor and kind everywhere. And in in very specific ways. 因此有意思。再一次，我想在旅行写作里，对我来说，我写的是人。我不是特别写自然的作者。我写的是人。所以我对人怎样各不相同非常感兴趣。以及他们怎样非常像我们。其实这就是你旅行时当然会发现的。那本身也是一种陈词滥调。所以你试着把它藏起来。但你确实会发现，到处都有贫穷而善良的人。而且是以非常具体的方式。

主持人 With AI, are you like, "I will not touch it." or you incorporate it a little bit? What is your relationship with it? 对 AI，你是完全不碰，还是会用一点？你和它是什么关系？

嘉宾 It's very simple. I am suing a number I'm a representative plaintiff in a number of suits against these companies. So, I'm not allowed to use AI. 非常简单。我是这些公司若干诉讼的代表原告。所以我不被允许使用 AI。

主持人 Or talk about it. 或者谈论它。

嘉宾 Or talk about it. All right. 或者谈论它。[笑声] 好。

主持人 Or else you're going to be deposed and you don't want to be deposed. 否则你会被录取口供，而你不想被录取口供。

嘉宾 No, that's so boring. I'll I'll I'll stay out of court. 不，那太无聊了。我会远离法庭。

主持人 Um poetry, why do you keep it by by you when you're writing? 诗，你写作时为什么把它放在手边？

嘉宾 Because I think that they are the ones who go down in the mines and get the jewels and bring them up. It's it's like Indiana Jones. They do all the hard work, And bring out the golden idol, and I'm like the French bad guy who's like,"Once again, Mr. Jones, what you have fought for is now mine." I take their discoveries, which are narrative discoveries, language discoveries. I learn every time I read poems, just like reading old books. 因为我觉得他们是下到矿井里、把珠宝带上来的人。像 Indiana Jones。他们做了所有艰苦的工作，带出金色神像，而我像那个法国坏蛋，说： “又一次，Jones 先生，你奋力争取的东西现在是我的了。 ”我拿走他们的发现，那些是叙事上的发现、语言上的发现。我每次读诗都在学，就像读旧书。

They have because they're shortening everything down and condensing and mixing things and using end breaks. They're um line breaks. Um It It's just constant invention for a prose writer. Not always, but often. Both elevating your sense of what's possible and expanding your sense of what you can do as well. Yeah, and it's not to sound poetic. 因为他们把一切缩短、压缩、混合，并用行末停顿。用分行。对散文作者来说，这就是不断的发明。不总是，但常常是。既抬高你对什么是可能的感觉，也扩大你觉得自己能做的范围。对，而且不是为了听起来像诗。

It is um I'm trying to I'm in a I'm in a poetry Zoom club that's been going for years every Friday, and we meet for an hour,and it takes us months to get through a poem. M- I I left the club. Um we'd started a poem by Wallace Stevens, and I was gone for a month, and I came back and they were on stanza four. Because we're really most of it's poets, but there's also novelists and that I look there are prose answers to prose problems I have in poetry. How do you read a poem? 我参加一个已经办了好几年的诗歌 Zoom 俱乐部，每周五，我们聚一小时，读完一首诗要几个月。嗯，我离开过那个俱乐部。我们开始读 Wallace Stevens 的一首诗，我走了一个月，回来时他们还在第四节。因为我们大部分是诗人，但也有小说家，我在诗里寻找散文问题的散文答案。

Like if we were sitting down to read a poem at lunch, and I said, "Hey, can Can we spend 30 minutes on this?" What would we do? 你怎样读一首诗？比如我们坐下来吃午饭时读一首诗，我说：嘿，我们能在这上面花 30 分钟吗？我们会做什么？

主持人 You read it all loud, and then you go and then you think, "What's standing out to me?" Like and let me examine that more closely. Why is that interesting to me? What's going on there? What am I resistant to? What am I enjoying? Usually now I can tell in terms of prose answers, I can tell right away. Um There's a book called The Others by Matthew Rohrer. It's a long series of poems, but it's a prose piece. It's stories within stories. 你大声读完，然后去想：什么在我这儿跳出来？让我更仔细地看。它为什么让我有兴趣？那里在发生什么？我在抗拒什么？我在享受什么？现在我通常能立刻看出散文上的答案。有一本书叫 The Others，Matthew Rohrer 写的。它是一长串诗，但其实是一篇散文。

And but not just in the Scheherazade way because it's a poem, it teaches me something else about how within a story you can have someone telling a story, which in Villa Coco happens a lot. There's this old woman, a baronessa, who's telling these crazy stories, and I had to figure out how to work those in. I found them really fun, but I realized people might find them distracting cuz it's not the plot anymore. 故事套故事。但不只是像 Scheherazade 那样，因为它是诗，它另外教我：在一个故事里，你可以让某个人在讲一个故事，这在 Villa Coco 里经常发生。有一个老妇人，一位女男爵，在讲这些疯狂的故事，我必须想出怎样把它们嵌进去。

And don't you hate it when they're suddenly telling you a 40-page story and you're like, "But what what happened to the cowboys, you know?" So, I learned from that book about that. Let's finish here with this advice from Daniel Handler. The editor is the patient and you are the doctor. That is one of the wisest things he ever said to me, and he has a lot of wisdom. What does it mean? 我觉得它们很好玩，但我意识到人们也许会觉得分心，因为那已经不是情节了。你讨厌那种突然有人给你讲一个四十页的故事，你会想：可那些牛仔怎么样了，对吧？所以我从那本书里学到这个。我们用 Daniel Handler 这条建议结束：编辑是病人，你是医生。

We think that um the book is the patient, the editor is the doctor, and they know they're going to say, "Nurse, here's what I need you to do." and that you do it, but that is not true. The editor is the patient. They're the reader. They know they're feeling things, and they can come It's like a patient who comes in and says, "Doctor, my arm hurts. I'm sure it's arm cancer." You, the writer, say, "It's There's no such thing as arm cancer, but the arm hurts. That's important. 那是他对我说过最有智慧的话之一，而他有很多智慧。这是什么意思？我们以为书是病人，编辑是医生，他们会说：“护士，我需要你做这个。 ”然后你照做，但那不是真的。编辑是病人。他们是读者。他们知道自己在感觉到东西，他们可以进来。就像一个病人进来说：“医生，我的胳膊疼。我肯定是胳膊癌。 ”你这个作者说：“没有什么胳膊癌这种东西，但胳膊疼，这很重要。

I will figure it out." The editor will not know the answer because it's in your head. The thing you want to make, they have no access to it. And a good editor will not tell you specifically what to do. They will just tell you where it hurts. And you could have a lot of people read your book, and if they consistently say where it hurts, ignore Please ignore the advice they give you. It'll really throw you off, especially in a in a workshop. 我会弄清楚。 ”编辑不会知道答案，因为答案在你脑子里。你想做成的那个东西，他们无法进入。好的编辑不会具体告诉你该做什么。他们只会告诉你哪里疼。你可以让很多人读你的书，如果他们一致说出哪里疼，请务必忽略他们给你的建议。

But they're right about what's not working. I've said this in my classes, you know, there will be a story that is about a middle-aged couple having marriage problems and then there's a mermaid that appears at the end. And everyone will say, "Cut out the mermaid. It doesn't fit." And I will say, "Or, more mermaid." Right? The problem is it doesn't fit. 那会让你偏离很多，尤其是在工作坊里。但关于什么不行，他们是对的。我在课上说过这个：会有一个故事，讲一对中年夫妇有婚姻问题，然后结尾出现一条美人鱼。所有人都会说：删掉美人鱼。它不合适。而我会说：或者，更多美人鱼。对吧？问题是它不合适。

But the solution is not necessarily cut out the mermaid. Uh how about we prepare for the mermaid by more mermaid, commit to the mermaid, and less married couple in a vague mer- you know, like that's not as interesting. The first instinct will be to to make the work mediocre. And you as a writer have to think, "Should I actually commit to the thing that's strange and putting the reader off?" And the first instinct will end up making the work more mediocre a lot of the time. 但解决办法不一定是删掉美人鱼。我们怎样为美人鱼做准备？更多美人鱼，对美人鱼承诺到底，少一点婚姻夫妇和含糊的美人鱼，你知道，那样没那么有意思。第一反应会是把作品变得平庸。而你作为作者必须想：我是否其实该对那个奇怪、让读者不舒服的东西承诺到底？而第一反应很多时候最终会让作品更平庸。

Why? Because it is getting rid of the thing that doesn't fit. Like for Less, my editor is the best in the world, Lee Boudreaux, God bless her, but she did suggest to me that I should cut the ending, which has a kind of revelation in it. She said, "We don't We've had such a good time. We don't want to risk spoiling it for readers who will be put off." And I said, "I understand. It doesn't work yet. 为什么？因为它在去掉那个不合适的东西。比如 Less，我的编辑是世界上最好的，Lee Boudreaux，愿她一切都好，但她确实建议我删掉结尾，结尾里有一种揭示。她说：我们过得这么开心。我们不想冒险毁掉它，免得让那些会因此不舒服的读者扫兴。我说：我明白。它现在还不行。

I will make it work." And I spent most of my time changing the rest of the novel so that the ending would land properly, which was a lot of work, but luckily I was developed enough to know to to that her solution was definitely the easiest one, but it was not the right one. Thank you. That's so fun to talk about that stuff. I'm glad you enjoyed it. No one talks about that in interviews. 我会让它行。我把大部分时间花在改小说的其余部分，好让结尾真正落地，那是很多工作，但幸好我已经成熟到知道，她的办法绝对是最容易的，却不是对的那一个。谢谢。谈这些东西真有意思。我很高兴你喜欢。访谈里没人谈这些。 [笑声]

嘉宾 They want to know where I grew up. Yeah. 他们想知道我在哪儿长大。对。

主持人 I'm glad you enjoyed it. 我很高兴你喜欢。