與沃爾特?惠特曼一起作時間旅行

　　――邁克爾?坎寧安新著《典型的日子》簡介

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

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

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

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

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

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

　　采訪原文

　　Michael Cunningham: Specimen Days (transcript available)

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

　　Transcript

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

　　Michael Cunningham: Thank you.

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

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

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

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

　　Lyn Gallacher: This is a formula...

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

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

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

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

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

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

　　Michael Cunningham: Absolutely, yes.

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

　　Michael Cunningham: Oh absolutely. I think that what we're here to do is experience the full range of emotions. And there is in America right now a sort of epidemic of cheerfulness.

　　Lyn Gallacher: You say that with gritted teeth.

　　Michael Cunningham: Because I think it's false. I think it involves sweeping ... 'Have a good day...have a good life...' I am not in any way opposed to human happiness. I'm entirely in favour of human happiness. But if you fixate on happiness to the exclusion of every single one of the darker, more difficult emotions, I think you miss a great deal of the richness of human life.

　　Lyn Gallacher: And it's as if that happiness is a goal in itself. So long as you're happy, that's the main thing.

　　Michael Cunningham: Yes. I can't tell you how many people came up to me after I would read from The Hours and say something to the effect of, I wasn't going to read The Hours because I was afraid it would be depressing, and then 75 of my friends told me that it wouldn't be that depressing and so I decided to take a chance. And I would look at these people and think, so your purchase on wellbeing feels so precarious that you think a book is going to topple you over into some kind of pit from which you won't be able to return? That doesn't feel like a healthy state of mind to me.

　　Lyn Gallacher: Especially for you as a writer. Your writerly self must somehow know that you have to kind of experience all those emotions in order to be able to put them down on the page.

　　Michael Cunningham: Absolutely. And I'm writing for a reader who is unafraid to experience a wide range of emotions.

　　Lyn Gallacher: All right. Now the other thing we have to discuss is that you wrote this after September 11, and it's a very brave book to write in the wake of that terror, because you've got a suicide bomber who you make the audience feel sorry for, or feel sympathy with. That is very courageous.

　　Michael Cunningham: I think it is the job of the novelist, and I think the novelist is probably uniquely qualified to do this particular job, to help us all understand what it's like to be whoever one is in the world. If it's the job of the politician and the citizen to prevent terrorism, it's the job of the writer to try to penetrate the mind of a terrorist and understand how everybody is the hero of his or her own story. Whatever you do in the world, you go home at night and think, well, another day's good work done.

　　Lyn Gallacher: The terrifying thing about these particular bombings was that they appeared to have no meaning. Now is that so, is that what scares people?

　　Michael Cunningham: Yes, I think certainly part of what was so terrifying to Americans about 9/11, apart from the fact that it was the first time America had ever been assaulted except Pearl Harbor in Hawaii at the start of world war two. People didn't get it. People didn't understand why anyone would want to do something like that.

　　Lyn Gallacher: Whereas if it was your mother-in-law that wanted to kill you, you could understand that. You've had horrible Christmases for the last 20 years.

　　Michael Cunningham: Right. Why did she decide to kill me? Oh, well, last Christmas...

　　Lyn Gallacher: But a random act is too hard for the human mind

　　Michael Cunningham: It is. Absolutely. And it implies that you're not safe anywhere. It implies that there is nothing you can do. There are no virtuous acts that make you invulnerable. It's much more frightening.

　　Lyn Gallacher: Now these children that are on the children's crusade and do the random bombings, they're also motivated by Whitman and the detective, in order to solve the crime, has to understand Whitman's message to the reader. Now this is a little bit of reader response theory for our listeners, because the academic who the copper turns to says, well you can read Whitman any way you like. And there is no point in which Whitman can be read to advocate children becoming suicide bombers, is there?

　　Michael Cunningham: No. Not according to my reading of Whitman. I do think that all great art is enormously powerful and can be interpreted any number of ways. Hitler was a great fan of Wagner. Many of the monsters of history were also patrons of the arts. And I think it's a kind of dark tribute to the power of art that it can be interpreted in so many ways-including some very twisted and destructive ways.

　　Lyn Gallacher: So the children who are carrying out these crusades, they talk about the machine, which makes sense in the first part of the novel, because the machine is clearly the industrial age. But in the second part, which is present-day New York, what is the machine?

　　Michael Cunningham: The machine that these poor, deluded children are talking about is simply the machinery of the 21st century, this kind of vast, technological, industrial society, in which it is difficult to feel like a meaningful member, in which it's difficult to do work that feels like it matters. They are trying, in their deluded way, to bring down this vast, inhuman, corporate mechanism.

　　Lyn Gallacher: And is that something you feel yourself?

　　Michael Cunningham: Not really. I love cities.

　　Lyn Gallacher: They don't disempower you...

　　Michael Cunningham: No. I feel if anything they provide a constant reminder-I live in New York, one of the larger, nastier cities in the world-and I feel like it constantly reminds me of my place in the world, which is what it is. I think if as a writer I lived in a little cottage in the country, it would be easy to overestimate what I'm doing. It's important to remember that books are hugely important and they are simply part of a much bigger picture, and you should keep that in mind.

　　Lyn Gallacher: All right. So bearing that in mind, then the machine in the third part of the novel, which is set in the future, the machine is almost us. You've got an android character, and then as you were saying, the role of poetry in that is slightly different.

　　Michael Cunningham: Yes. The three stories follow a chain of progressive dehumanisation, until we end with a future in which our protagonist is literally a machine, and is trying to learn humanity.

　　Lyn Gallacher: So what is the role of religion in all this, because you've called your characters very religious names; Luke, Simon and Catherine. And some of the characters have prophetic wisdom; they can predict the future. Then you've got re-occurring mystical symbols, like the china bowl. And you've got this kind of ecstatic belief in life after death coming from one of the characters. You say an orgasm is only kind of a hint at the loss of our self-awareness that we'll experience after death. Where does all that come from?

　　Michael Cunningham: You know, I'm not especially religious myself, though I do feel drawn to-how to put this-something in people that wants to worship at least as much as it wants to shop. The religious impulse is fascinating and commendable to me. Its actually playing out is often disquieting. Bottom line really is that I can't quite imagine setting a novel in America right now, America being run as it is by religious fanatics, without including religion. It simply belonged in there.

　　Lyn Gallacher: So you don't think you've been influenced in a more obvious way by some of the religious right's belief in a better world comes from the idea that the better world will come after this one is completely abandoned. So that really conservative view of, well everything here is rubbish but we hope for a better life after death; the second coming-all that kind of apocalyptic thinking. Are you influenced by that?

　　Michael Cunningham: I'm certainly influenced by it. I don't feel particularly sympathetic toward it. I might like it better if the members of the religious right didn't insist so obdurately on salvation for themselves and the active persecution of anyone who is in any way different from them. If it felt genuinely kind and genuinely like a good force in the world, I'd be right there with them. I might even join. No, I actually think religious fundamentalism-and not just Christian fundamentalism-is probably the most dangerous force at work in the world today. But again, as a writer of fiction, I'm interested in how that feeling resides in people. And so I did produce a character who is a genuinely religious person and who finds great solace and a kind of ecstasy in it.

　　Lyn Gallacher: And who also importantly abandons this world in order to start up another one, which is what I'm wondering about you. Have you given up on this world? It does seem to be a pretty miserable heap. It always was kind of pretty rooted in the industrial age. The current age is not much chop. And you abandon this for another planet.

　　Michael Cunningham: In the book, yes. I am really kind of a sap when it gets right down to it, and if anything I probably write the way I do to offset my own sentimentality. I deeply believe that as long as there is one person alive, there is hope for a better future. Of course I worry. Look at the world. Of course I worry about where it's headed and what we and our children and our children's children may live to see. But I'll be right in there until they take me away.

　　Lyn Gallacher: And is that part of the poetry?

　　Michael Cunningham: Absolutely. Whitman, and any great poet, any great artist, is producing something that I believe survives, and has a kind of holiness about it, a kind of immortality about it. A great poem is still here, long after Keats, and Yeats and everyone who knew them are dead. It is our way of speaking to each other from generation to generation.

　　Lyn Gallacher: And becoming human.

　　Michael Cunningham: Yes. It's part of what keeps us human.

　　Lyn Gallacher: A question about the actual research that you did into the history of New York. You obviously had a good time researching the first part of the novel.

　　Michael Cunningham: Yes

　　Lyn Gallacher: How much of that affected your portrayal of the future?

　　Michael Cunningham: Oh, very much. I was quite conscious of trying to imagine a future that was a logical extension of life in 1950. That's what the future is, it's a result of our past and present actions.

　　Lyn Gallacher: So you even did detailed research that didn't make it into the book about what kind of underwear they were wearing.

　　Michael Cunningham: This is one of the pitfalls of writing any novel that involves a great deal of research. You learn fascinating things that you are just dying to put in, whether it be the kind of underwear people had on, or the particulars of trash collection. And you have to be ruthless with yourself and remind yourself that the three-page section about how water travelled from Croton down to New York simply doesn't belong, even though you know it and are quite proud of it and find it interesting.

　　Oh, here's a great chance to have a brief pedantic moment about things that I learned that I couldn't put into the book. One in particular, it took a full generation after the beginning of industrialisation to get the workers to understand that they had to show up at the same time every single day. They had been farmers. They had worked according to the seasons, according to their needs; and it was almost impossible to get them to understand that they had to come to work tomorrow even though they have enough money for now and they'd like to take a little time off. And there was a campaign-I'm not making this up-there was a campaign on the part of people who owned factories and other kinds of businesses, to equate poverty with shame. Until then poverty was a little bit like cancer, it just got some people. The rain didn't come, your crops didn't come up and you were afflicted by poverty, the way one is afflicted by a disease. But people who aren't ashamed of poverty can't be relied on to show up for work every day. And so the invention, about 150 years ago, of poverty as a shameful condition, and so the resentment of people on the street begging for change-damn you, if you'd been a better person you wouldn't be in this condition. That's a relatively recent thing, as it turns out.

　　Lyn Gallacher: The implications of that, then, for also time, are astonishing, that that shame means that we have to also turn up and behave in this sort of way, and we are in fact becoming mechanised individuals with pre-programmed emotional responses to things.

　　Michael Cunningham: Absolutely.

　　Lyn Gallacher: Which is exactly the future that you foretold. But when you introduced this book you were a little bit hesitant about saying that the third section is science-fiction. Some of your readers have been caught a little bit short by that. Do you think it's because they weren't expecting you to change genres in the middle?

　　Michael Cunningham: I think it's partly that. And I've also come to understand that many readers are perfectly willing to hear a ghost story or a detective story-that there is a kind of, if not honourable tradition in those genres, at least a certain unabashed interest. Science-fiction, on the other hand, is repellent to a surprising number of readers. I think the fear is that it will be inhuman, it will be just technological, it will be pure fantasy and have no bearing on actual human life. And ironically, I think some of the most interesting fiction being written today is in the field of science-fiction, which is being largely unread by many people, because it's in that section over there, where no-one ever goes.

　　Lyn Gallacher: Michael Cunningham, thank you very much for joining us on The Book Show.

　　Michael Cunningham: Thank you.

　　Ramona Koval: Michael Cunningham there. Wasn't that interesting about poverty and shame. And having fun there with Lyn Gallacher about Specimen Days, and if you recognised the title as coming from Walt Whitman, you'd be right. Specimen Days is published by Harper Collins

　　羅蒙娜?庫法爾：邁克爾?坎寧安的新著《典型的日子》出人意料，他將三種不同的小說類型融于一部作品之中，但因此前他關于弗吉尼亞?伍爾夫的小說《時時刻刻》的巨大成功，此次嘗試，似乎讓他能成功得益于這樣的冒險。《時時刻刻》曾獲普利策獎和福克納筆會獎，而且大家也肯定知道，根據它改編的電影獲得了學院獎。那么，作家是怎樣以這樣的方式成功地采取適當的行動的呢？尤其是當他生活在紐約，感覺需要思考“9?11”之后的生活的時候。

　　邁克爾?坎寧安前往阿德雷得市作“作家周”的嘉賓，途中訪問了我們在墨爾本的工作室，并接受林恩?加拉赫的訪談。他已描述該書的結構、閱讀《典型的日子》中的一個段落開始了他的交談。

　　邁克爾?坎寧安：《典型的日子》分三個部份，第一個部分是發生在 19世紀中期紐約市的一個鬼故事；第二部分是“9?11”之后紐約當下的一個驚悚故事；第三部分是一個發生于未來的科幻故事，講述一個機器人愛上了一個來自另一星球的蜥蜴女人。嗯，情節大體就是這樣，這個造出來的男人的大腦里植入了一個芯片，他因此能隨時自動地引用沃爾特?惠特曼的詩句。

　　林恩?加拉赫：現在我們來聽一段文字,是關于詩為什么……

　　邁克爾?坎寧安：他行至科羅拉多，遇到他的制造者，尤其是設計他并將包含詩句的芯片植入他的大腦之中的科學家。下面是這位科學家一開始說的話。

　　[閱讀原文略]

　　林恩?加拉赫：邁克爾?坎寧安，讀自《典型的日子》。邁克爾，歡迎您做客圖書秀節目。

　　邁克爾?坎寧安：謝謝。

　　林恩?加拉赫：我們剛才聽到的是那個口中一直不斷涌出詩句的人物。現在這已成為一種非常奇妙的文學方式，你用這樣的方式說出自己不想說的事情。那么，作為作家，玩形式很有趣嗎?

　　邁克爾?坎寧安：某種意義上說是非常有趣。不過我覺得作為作家，如果太有趣，可能就不夠用功了。但是，的確，寫機器人，寫來自別的星球的蜥蜴女人，以及腦子里植有詩句芯片的人物,的確很有意思。

　　林恩?加拉赫：以及那種能說出你無法控制的事情的方式，從你嘴中滔滔不絕地說出。而且碰巧是惠特曼。為什么選惠特曼?

　　邁克爾?坎寧安：我把惠特曼加入到小說的第一部分, 這是發生在 19世紀50 年代中期的鬼故事，如果僅僅是為了效仿自己那部關于弗吉尼亞?伍爾夫的小說《時時刻刻》，我是不會把惠特曼或者其他任何偉大作家放入本書的，我不想讓小說看上去像是……

　　林恩?加拉赫：是一種模式……

　　邁克爾?坎寧安：對,就好像已經借弗吉尼亞?伍爾夫賺了錢，現在再看看能不能借惠特曼再賺點錢。我在研究19世紀50 年代紐約貧困的愛爾蘭移民，也就是我第一個故事發生的背景時，很快發現，假如你即貧窮又是愛爾蘭人，那時的紐約之于你，無異是地獄。想象一下加爾各答，那里污穢、吵雜、危險，街頭死狗遍地，人們都不屑拖走它們。我驚異，這樣恐怖、骯臟的地方竟出了沃爾特?惠特曼，我以為的美國最偉大的詩人。12世紀的波斯詩人、心醉神迷的空想家魯米 贊美世界萬物，沃爾特?惠特曼的贊美繼承于他，其所有的描述，我覺得，本質上說無不出色、奇特、非凡，所有描述,所有描述――這部巨著通篇浩瀚博大，任何男女無從寫就。我覺得,我不能遺漏掉它。

　　林恩?加拉赫：而那部巨著是對他自己的贊美，對美國的贊美。可你不是，你把惠特曼包含在你的作品之中，但你沒在贊美美國，而在怨恨美國，因此，讓你的人物在幾乎是沒有前提推論的情況下，滔滔不絕說這部巨著的詩句，這讓人很感興趣。而且，這一美化的創意其實并無什么效果，因為你作品表現出的觀點比較陰郁。

　　邁克爾?坎寧安：嗯，作品中惠特曼的出現，部分原因是為了起一個比較的作用。惠特曼贊美的美國雖然也存在問題,但那是150 年前美國的樣子，一個在成長中歷經痛苦，發展成為當時世界注目的富足、民主、熱愛和平的國家的樣子。但我卻認為美國并沒有蛻變成這個樣子的國家。我不認為，現在生活在美國，感覺的全是樂觀與幸福。因此，惠特曼在書中的作用，只是作為一個對比，一個舊美國的聲音，而且是偏離了航道的并不客觀的聲音。

　　林恩?加拉赫：而這又是一個有趣的地方，因為你是在悲觀之中呈現的這種樂觀，小說三部份的情勢均極其蕭瑟。而你又說，在這種恐怖的情勢之內，人們尋到了希望。但這種希望是某種意義上的自我毀滅。這種希望不可能導致革命性的社會變革。它不會改善世界。

　　邁克爾?坎寧安：在本書中不會。可我要說的是，我的大部分著作都比較陰郁，但我認為它們均飽含樂觀。我的著作總是――或者說至今為止總是――以生活依舊進行為結尾，即便只是一個人進入荒野尋覓未知。我只對這樣的命題感興趣，即什么樣的樂觀能超越人類最終的劫難？

　　林恩?加拉赫：樂觀應該是建立在情感基礎之上的。小說中騎馬進入荒野（是騎馬而不是乘太空飛船）的男人，是一個正在學習自己的情感經驗的機器人；他得學習情感經驗，而不是植入情感經驗程序。由此，小說似乎在暗示，經歷情感方可成人。

　　邁克爾?坎寧安：是的，是這樣。

　　林恩?加拉赫：這是你在抑制進攻。我們顯然希望有進攻的經歷。

　　邁克爾?坎寧安：哦，當然，當然。我想我們來到這個世上，就是為了嘗試完整的情感。美國現在似乎在流行愉快情緒。

　　林恩?加拉赫:說這話你好像在咬牙切齒。

　　邁克爾?坎寧安：因為我認為那是一種假相。我認為那是在傳播“日子很幸福……生活很美滿……”。我當然不反對人的幸福，我完全贊成人的幸福，但如果一味依戀幸福，排斥任何些微陰郁、困難情緒，我覺得你一定錯失很多豐富的人生體驗。

　　林恩?加拉赫：而且幸福本身好像成為一種目的，只要幸福,目的就達到了。

　　邁克爾?坎寧安：是的。我不知道我朗讀《時時刻刻》會有多少人來找我，我不知道它會有什么后果，因此，我不會朗讀這部小說，因為我覺得這部小說太讓人抑郁，我的朋友中，一大半人跟我說這部小說肯定會讓人感到壓抑，因此，我決定冒一冒風險。我就要看看這些人，難道你們掌握安樂的感覺如此不穩定，一本書便能將你推翻于某種深坑，讓你無以翻身嗎？我覺得這絕不是健康的心態。

　　林恩?加拉赫：尤其是對作為作家的你而言。作為作家，某種程度上說，你得經歷所有感情，才得以將它們付諸筆端。

　　邁克爾?坎寧安：是這樣的。我為不畏歷經各種情感的讀者而書。

　　林恩?加拉赫： 嗯，還有一個問題，這部作品你作于“9?11”之后，是那場恐怖之后，一部非常勇敢的作品，因為你在作品中描寫了一位讓讀者非常憐憫或者說非常同情的人體炸彈，這可很勇敢。

　　邁克爾?坎寧安：我認為這是小說家的責任，而且我覺得，也許只有小說家才能稱職地完成這項特殊的工作,來幫助我們大家了解這個世界上任何身份的人的真實狀態。如果說政治家和公民的職責是防止恐怖主義,那么，作家的職責就是盡可能地解剖恐怖份子的思想，了解他或她的英雄情結。在這個世界上，無論你做什么工作，每每晚上回家，覺得今天又做了滿意的事情，這就足矣。

　　林恩?加拉赫：這些特別的爆炸案，它們讓人恐怖，是因為它們其實似乎并無目的。這才是讓人恐懼的，是不是這樣?

　　邁克爾?坎寧安：是的, 我覺得“9?11”讓美國人如此恐懼，這是一部分原因，除了它是美國在二戰初夏威夷的珍珠港被偷襲以后所遭受的第一次攻擊這個事實以外。人們并沒有明白，他們不沒明白為什么會有人要干這樣的事情。

　　林恩?加拉赫：而倘若是你的婆婆要殺你,你是知道她為什么要殺你的，因為你已經度過了20個恐怖的圣誕節。

　　邁克爾?坎寧安：是的。她為什么要殺我? 哦，對了, 去年圣誕節……

　　林恩?加拉赫：但人們很難理解隨意的無目的行動。

　　邁克爾?坎寧安：是的，的確是這樣。這意味著你沒有一點安全感，你無力作任何防范。沒有任何正義行為能讓你免于傷害，這是格外讓人恐怖的。

　　林恩?加拉赫：嗯，那些在孩子們的圣戰中引發無目的爆炸事件的孩子們，他們也是受惠特曼和偵探的驅使，為闡明這一犯罪,必須讓讀者了解有關惠特曼的信息。這對于我們的聽眾來說，是讀者反應理論，因為有學者認為，人人都可以以自己的方式閱讀惠特曼。但不能說閱讀惠特曼會導致孩子成為人體炸彈吧?

　　邁克爾?坎寧安：當然不會，我讀惠特曼絕不會讀出這種信息。我覺得任何偉大作品的影響力都不是浩大無邊的，并不能以無數的方式進行解讀。希特勒是華格納迷；歷史上有很多喪心病狂的人卻都酷愛藝術。我想，藝術威力的某種隱晦特征，就在于它能被以很多方式進行解讀――包括某些非常反常、非常毀滅性的方式。

　　林恩?加拉赫：那么這些進行圣戰的孩子，他們談論機器,這在小說的第一部分合情合理，因為機器顯然代表工業時代。但在小說的第二部份，即當下的紐約, 機器代表什么呢?

　　邁克爾?坎寧安：這些被迷惑的可憐的孩子談論的機器，就是21 世紀的機構，在這個巨大的技術化工業社會里,至身其中，你很難有自己是一個有意義的成員、正干著重要的事情的感覺。他們正受引誘，想扳倒這個巨大、殘忍的集團機構。

　　林恩?加拉赫：你也是這樣感覺的嗎?

　　邁克爾?坎寧安：不是的，我熱愛城市。

　　林恩?加拉赫：他們沒有讓你不能……

　　邁克爾?坎寧安：沒有。若說他們造成什么影響的話，是他們在不斷作著某種提醒：我生活在紐約,一個比世界上任何其他地方都更浩瀚、更齷齪的地方。我感覺它像是在不斷提醒我，自己在這個世界上所處的位置,這個位置意味著什么。我覺得，作為作家，如果住在鄉間小屋中，可能更容易高估自己所做的事情。重要的是你得明白作品很重要，而作品又只是更為廣大圖景中的一個部份而已，你腦子里得有這個概念。

　　林恩?加拉赫：是的，有了這個概念以后，那么，小說第三個部份中的機器，那設于未來的機器，恐怕就是我們自己了。你作品中索性塑造了一個機器人人物，而且，正如你說的,其中的詩的作用略有不同了。

　　邁克爾?坎寧安：是的，小說中三個故事的發展，是一個漸進的非人化過程，直到最后，我們未來的主人翁成了一部完全的機器,一個竭力學習人性的機器。

　　林恩?加拉赫：那么宗教在所有這一切中扮演了一個什么角色呢？你給人物取的名字都很帶宗教色彩：路加、西蒙和凱瑟琳。有些人物還很有預言才能，能預測未來。而你從其中的一個人物身上還獲得這樣癡迷的信念，即死后的重生。你說極樂其實從某種程度上說，是我們自知的喪失，我們死后將體味的自知。這一切從哪而來?

　　邁克爾?坎寧安：你知道我不是一個宗教信仰很強烈的人,雖然我也為人渴望崇拜的本能所吸引，人的崇拜本能至少與購物欲望相差無己。我覺得宗教沖動挺迷人，值得贊美。實現宗教沖動其實很令人憂慮。其底線并不在于我不能想象把小說背景設立在當下的美國，被宗教狂熱分子統治的美國, 沒有包括宗教。不過是故事本身屬于那個背景。

　　林恩?加拉赫：那么，你并不認為自己受了某種宗教力量的影響，相信只有完全拋棄掉這個世界，才會有一個更好的世界。因此，那個的確保守的觀點，即這個世界的一切都是垃圾，我們只能希望死后才有更好的生活；來生――那帶啟示性的思想，你受這種思想影響嗎?

　　邁克爾?坎寧安：我肯定受這種思想影響，但也不是特別傾向于它。如果宗教成員不那么頑固地堅持拯救自己、不那么熱切地迫害與之信仰相異的人的話，我會更喜歡它一些。如果它真正善良，是這個世界一股真正善良的力量, 我會支持他們，甚至加入他們。不，實際上，我覺得宗教基要主義 ――當然不僅僅是基督教基要主義――是當今世界上在起作用的最危險的力量。 但是，我又得重申， 作為小說家，我對這個現象，即那種感覺是怎樣侵入于人的，非常感興趣。因此，我塑造了一個真正意義上的宗教人物，一個在宗教中尋到慰藉和狂喜的人物。

　　林恩?加拉赫：也是一個為開始尋求另一世界而拋棄這個世界的人物，這也正是我疑惑你的地方。你對這個世界放棄了嗎?這個世界似乎的確是個悲慘之地，它似乎總根植于工業時代之中，當今的時代毫無價值。你因此放棄了這個世界，選擇了另一個星球。

　　邁克爾?坎寧安：作品中是這樣。我好像沉浸其中時，自己也變傻了，如果我那樣寫了，我是在彌補自己的多情。我深信，只要還有一個人活著,就有希望有更美好的未來。當然我也有煩惱，你看看現在這個世界，我當然憂慮它會被帶往何處，我們和我們的孩子以致我們孩子的孩子迎接的，將會是什么。但我一定會堅守在這個世界上，直至被帶離而去。

　　林恩?加拉赫：這是詩的一個部分嗎?

　　邁克爾?坎寧安：是的。惠特曼以及其他任何偉大的詩人和藝術家創作的傳世之作，我覺得其中都蘊涵著一種神圣和不朽。濟慈死了，其詩仍在，葉芝死了，其詩仍在；認識他們的人都死了，可他們的詩仍在。我們就是用這樣的方式，一代一代地交流著。

　　林恩?加拉赫：并因此成為人。

　　邁克爾?坎寧安：是的，這是令我們依然為人的方式之一。

　　林恩?加拉赫：問一個你研究的紐約歷史的問題。你顯然樂于研究小說的第一個部份。

　　邁克爾?坎寧安：是的。

　　林恩?加拉赫：這在多大程度上影響了你對未來的描繪?

　　邁克爾?坎寧安：哦, 很大程度。我非常有意識地試圖在想象未來，想象20世紀50年代生活合乎邏輯的未來的延續，那便是未來的樣子，我們過去和現在行為的結果。

　　林恩?加拉赫：因此你甚至對他們穿著的內衣是什么樣的都做了詳細的研究，盡管你在書中并沒表現出來。

　　邁克爾?坎寧安：這是寫小說的困難之一，創作任何小說都需要作大量的研究。 你掌握很多生動的材料，你都想把它們放入你的小說之中，無論是人們穿著的內衣，還是垃圾箱的特形。可你得對自己嚴格，你得提醒自己，那整整三頁有關流向紐約的水的描述，盡管你覺得很有趣，但不合適。

　　哦, 現在倒是個機會讓我簡要賣弄一下我覺得不能放入書內的一些材料。尤其是,工業化開始之后，花了整整一代時間，才讓工人們意識到，他們得每天在同一時間開始工作了。他們原本是農民，是按季節、需要工作的；而且，似乎沒法讓他們理解，即便現在有錢，明天還是得去工作，他們喜歡有時間歇息。曾有過一場運動――我不是在杜撰――在那些擁有工廠和其他生意的人中曾有過一場運動,即視貧窮為羞辱。那時，貧窮就如癌癥,擊倒一些人。沒有雨水，你的莊稼長勢不好，你因此受貧窮之苦,與受疾病折磨一樣。但甭指望不羞于貧窮的人能每天去上班工作。因此，150 年之前，有了貧窮即羞辱的觀念，從而導致憎恨沿街乞討：該死的！好人怎么會落到這般境地。這是相對近些時候的事情。

　　林恩?加拉赫：其寓意是驚人的，當然也包括時間上。它暗示，那樣羞辱意味著我們得以這樣的方式行為，我們因此實際上等于變成了機器化了的個體，對事物的情感反應已被預先程序化了。

　　邁克爾?坎寧安：是這樣的。

　　林恩?加拉赫：這就是你預言的未來。但你介紹這部作品，在說到第三部分是科幻小說時，似乎有些猶豫。有些讀者也有點摸不著頭腦。你覺得是不是因為他們沒料到你會在作品中間改變類型?

　　邁克爾?坎寧安：我覺得部分是因為這個的原因。我發現現在很多讀者愿意讀鬼故事或者偵探故事――這種類型的故事很有傳統了,對這類故事感興趣不丟臉。但有很大一部分讀者不喜歡科幻小說，我想這可能是因為科幻小說讓人感覺不人性，只有技術和純粹的幻想，沒有真實的人類生活的再現。可我倒覺得當今一些寫得最有趣的小說，恰恰在科幻小說領域，善未被大多數人閱讀。因為它們屬于那個領域，人們根本不怎么光顧。

　　林恩?加拉赫：邁克爾?坎寧安,非常感謝您光臨我們的圖書秀節目。

　　邁克爾?坎寧安：謝謝你。

　　羅蒙娜?庫法爾：剛才采訪的是邁克爾?坎寧安。剛才談到的有關貧窮與羞辱的話題不是很有趣嗎？和林恩?加拉赫一起了解《典型的日子》更有趣了，如果你發現這個書名借用自沃爾特?惠特曼，你就對了。《典型的日子》由Harper Collins出版社出版。