与沃尔特•惠特曼一起作时间旅行
——迈克尔•坎宁安新著《典型的日子》简介
美国新锐作家迈克尔•坎宁安生于1952年，1989年处女作《末世之家》一经发表，便蜚声美国文坛。1998年，坎宁安出版了他的第三本小说《时时刻刻》，立刻获得了当年的“笔会/福克纳小说奖”，翌年又获得“普立策小说奖”。和他前两本作品不同的是，《时时刻刻》竟然是关于英国著名意识流小说作家弗吉尼亚•伍尔夫及其小说代表作《达洛维夫人》的一本实验性小说。虽然弗吉尼亚•伍尔夫在现代文坛上的地位已毋庸置疑，但其以杂乱无序的思维活动为线索的创作理念，即使在今天看来，仍然十分难以理解，无论在国外，还是在中国，都无法为大多数读者所接受。坎宁安采用这样的选题，无疑是个大胆的创新之举。《时时刻刻》中共有三条主线，叙述了三个女人的一天：20世纪20年代，作家弗吉尼亚•伍尔夫正在伦敦市郊的里士满休养，在治疗自己神经衰弱的同时开始构思创作其作品《达洛维夫人》，但对生活的恐慌时刻伴随着敏感的她;20世纪50年代，家庭主妇布朗夫人，怀孕在身，正在阅读《达洛维夫人》，索然无味的生活让她绝望，她试图以自杀来逃避生活;20世纪末，中年女编辑克拉丽莎(她恰巧与达洛维夫人同名，被朋友戏称为达洛维夫人)，在为其好友理查德筹备举办晚会，却意外目睹了他的自杀。三个女人的一生看似彼此没有任何关系，却因为一本《达洛维夫人》而联系在一起，在全书的最后，作者笔锋一转，让人发现布朗夫人正是自杀的理查德的母亲，两条主线逐渐并成了一条，逐渐映入人们眼帘的是一部现代女性生存状态的文字交响曲。
2005年，迈克尔•坎宁安出版了他的新著《典型的日子》。该书标题出自惠特曼的自传书名，这部三段式的小说也以惠特曼的诗句来加以结构，坎宁安沿用《时时刻刻》的创作手法，讲述了同一地点(曼哈顿)不同时代的三个故事，情节分别发生在工业革命高潮的19世纪的纽约、恐怖主义弥漫的后“9•11”之21世纪和150年之后纽约假想的未来，一个后寓意的社会，一个人类、机器和作为新移民的外星人共同生活于其中的令人不堪忍受的社会。这次，迈克尔•坎宁安是从美国伟大诗人沃尔特•惠特曼那里寻得了灵感，创作了一部包含三个不同类型故事的三段式作品——鬼故事、惊悚故事和科幻故事，其情节由惠特曼耳熟能详的诗句串连而起。
小说第一章《机器时代》，主要讲述一个名叫路加的畸形男孩的故事。路加在一家钢铁厂工作，爱上了了死去的哥哥的未婚妻，但又怕哥哥会把她招回去。第二章《孩子的圣战》中的主要人物也是个畸形孩子，由一恐怖分子抚养成人，其生活被限制在一个公寓之内，四周墙上贴满了书有《草叶集》的纸张。第三章《宛若美人》探索的是科幻小说题材，主角是一个半人半机器的人物，与一异人类的伙伴相伴云游泄有放射物的世界，似乎讲述的是一个跨越人类的浪漫故事。
作品触及当下一个世界性的主题，即人类对抗机器，呈现的是抑郁、破裂甚至无望的未来。小说带着读者走上一个萧瑟的旅程，穿越三个不同阶段，历经混乱、不安和骚动，让人感到，未来的社会绝非是乌托邦世界。
这部精湛、奔放的小说浸透了迈克尔•坎宁安对人类现状和死亡的深切思考和探索，作者旨在探索人类的连续性、人性与技术、恐怖主义以及完全机器化了的世界之间的关系将会走向何处。和惠特曼一样，坎宁安深信，我们其实只是“比我们想象之中更为浩瀚、更为非凡的那物之中的一小部份而已”，但坎宁安似乎比惠特曼要悲观得多。
以下是澳大利亚广播公司(Australia Broadcasting Cooperate)国家广播电台“书籍与写作”(Books and Writing)栏目记者罗蒙娜•库法尔主持的节目中，邀请林恩•加拉赫就《典型的日子》对迈克尔•坎宁安所作的访谈。
采访原文
Michael Cunningham: Specimen Days (transcript available)
Michael Cunningham’s new book Specimen Days is a surprise. It’s a book in three genres. But because of the success of his previous book, The Hours, about Virginia Woolf, he seems to be able to get away with it.
Transcript
This transcript was typed from a recording of the program. The ABC cannot guarantee its complete accuracy because of the possibility of mishearing and occasional difficulty in identifying speakers.
Ramona Koval: Michael Cunningham’s new book Specimen Days is a surprise. It’s a book in three genres, but because of the success of his previous book The Hours, about Virginia Woolf, he seems to be able to get away with it. The Hours won Cunningham both the Pulitzer prize and the PEN/Faulkner award, and as I’m sure you’re aware, it was adapted into an Academy award-winning film. So how does a writer follow up on success like that, particularly if he’s living in New York and feels the need to reflect on life after 9/11.
Michael Cunningham is in Adelaide as a guest of Writers’ Week, but on his way, he visited our Melbourne studios to speak with Lyn Gallacher. He begins his conversation by describing the structure of the book and reading a passage from Specimen Days.
Michael Cunningham: Specimen Days is written in three parts. The first is a ghost story set in New York City in the mid-1800s. The second is a thriller set in present-day New York just after 9/11; and the third is a science-fiction story set in the future. And it specifically involves-well I’ll just have to say it-an android who falls in love with a lizard woman from another planet. All right, there it is. And this sort of manufactured man has a chip implanted in his brain that causes him to spontaneously quote from Walt Whitman.
Lyn Gallacher: So let’s hear a passage, about why poetry...
Michael Cunningham: He has travelled to Colorado and met his maker, essentially, the scientist who actually designed him and implanted this poetry chip in his brain. And this is the scientist speaking at first.
[Reading from: All right. In the third protocol I gave you poetry... to ...I do not know what it is, any more than he..]
Lyn Gallacher: Michael Cunningham, reading there from Specimen Days. Michael, welcome to The Book Show.
Michael Cunningham: Thank you.
Lyn Gallacher: Now what we heard there was characters who keep spouting poetry. Now it’s a wonderful literary device, that, to actually be saying something you don’t yourself want to say. So how much fun was that to play with, as a writer?
Michael Cunningham: It was great fun, up to a point. I’m sorry to say that I feel that, as a writer, if you’re having too much fun you’re probably not working hard enough. But yes, it was great fun to write about androids and lizard women from other planets, and people with poetry chips in their brains.
Lyn Gallacher: And the idea of saying something you can’t control, that spurts out of your mouth. And yet it happens to be Whitman. Why Whitman?
Michael Cunningham: I added Whitman in the first section of the novel, which is the ghost story set in the 1850s. I wasn’t going to put Whitman or any great writer into this book, if for no other reason than the fact that it’s the book that follows my novel The Hours, which concerns Virginia Woolf, and I didn’t want it to look like...
Lyn Gallacher: This is a formula...
Michael Cunningham: Yes, like I’ve made a fortune out of Virginia Woolf and let’s see if I can make a few bucks out of Walt Whitman. But as I researched New York City in 1850, where the first story is set, among poor Irish immigrants, I came quickly to understand that it was a truly terrible place if you were poor and Irish. Think Calcutta; it was filthy and noisy and dangerous and there were dead dogs lying in the streets that no-one bothered to take away. And I was struck by the fact that out of that terrible and squalid place rose Walt Whitman, to my mind the greatest American poet and our great ecstatic visionary Rumi, the 12th century Persian poet who praised everything in the world, and out of that came Walt Whitman saying, essentially, I find it all magnificent, and strange, and marvellous, all of it, all of it-it’s all part of a vast poem too big for any one man or woman to write. And I thought, I can’t leave that out.
Lyn Gallacher: And it’s a celebration of himself, a celebration of America. But you’ve not done that. In your inclusion of Whitman you’ve not celebrated America. You’re fairly down on America, so it’s interesting to have these characters spouting this poetry, almost in a non sequitur kind of fashion. And there’s this idea of beauty that doesn’t really go anywhere, because your vision is much darker.
Michael Cunningham: Well Whitman is there in part for contrast. And the America that Whitman praised, though it had its problems, was a nation that looked, 150 years ago, like it might very well be going through certain growing pains on its way toward becoming the most abundant, democratic, peace-loving nation the world had ever seen. It has not, in my opinion, turned out to be that sort of nation at all. I can’t imagine living in America now and feeling all optimistic and happy about the way things are. So Whitman is there in part for contrast, as a voice of an old America that has gone terribly awry.
Lyn Gallacher: And that’s one of the other interesting things, because you’ve got this idea of optimism within the pessimism, the situation that in all three parts of the novel is pretty bleak. And yet you’re saying that inside this kind of terrible situation people find hope. But the hope’s still so kind of self-annihilating. The hope doesn’t actually lead to revolutionary social change. It doesn’t improve the world.
Michael Cunningham: Not in this book. But I will say that most of my books are fairly dark and I think of them all as profoundly optimistic. My books always end-or have until now-with life going on, even if it’s one man who’s not exactly a man riding out into the wilderness to see what he can find. I’m only interested in the sort of optimism that can survive the worst that can happen to people.
Lyn Gallacher: Now that optimism is based on emotions. Now the man who in this story rides off into the wilderness (on a horse rather than a spaceship) is an android who is learning his own experience of emotion; he has to learn them rather than have them programmed. So it’s almost as if the moral of the story is, become human by experiencing your emotions.
Michael Cunningham: Absolutely, yes.
Lyn Gallacher: Except for your aggression inhibitor. Now apparently we want to also experience even aggression.
