美国国家公共电台 NPR Penelope Lively Ponders Pompeii — And Other Stories — In 'The Purple Swamp Hen'

 

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

One of the world's most lauded¹ novelists has produced her first collection of short stories in decades. "The Purple Swamp Hen And Other Stories" is by Penelope Lively, the Man Booker Prize winner for "Moon Tiger" and the best-selling "How It All Began." It's a collection that looks at life in ancient Pompei and modern day Western metropolises².

The stories are short, even for short stories, and subtly simple, or if you prefer, deceptively nuanced. Penelope Lively, who was a dame³ commander of the Order of the British Empire, joins us from London. Thanks so much for being with us.

PENELOPE LIVELY: It's a pleasure.

SIMON: What makes a great novelist turn to short stories?

LIVELY: Well, I always have written them, but they left me for a long time for about - I haven't written any, really, for, decades. And they suddenly came back. They're the most perverse⁴ things, short stories, but they're wonderfully different from writing a novel which is hacking⁵ at the rock face. A short story, the idea comes, and then you can get down to it. And it's not so much hacking at the rock face as sort of pursuing the idea.

SIMON: Help us understand that. I mean, so let's say - maybe I say this because you British are so famously keen on gardening - you're gardening, and then a short story comes into your head?

LIVELY: No. It's rather more things like something seen, something overheard. For instance, the title story which is called "The Purple Swamp Hen"...

SIMON: Yes.

LIVELY: ...Arose from - it was a wonderful exhibition at the British Museum a few years ago of a marvelous room with copies of the garden frescoes⁶ from one of the buildings at Pompei. And I saw a bird on it. I couldn't recognize it. And I'm quite good at birds. I'm interested in birds. And I didn't know what it was, so I asked one of the curators. He said, oh, it's a purple swamphen.

So I went home and looked this up. And the Romans, in fact, kept them as sort of ornamental⁷ birds, rather like small peacocks. And I thought, oh, there must have been a purple swamphen around on that day, on the day of Pompei. And I wondered what it was like for the purple swamphen, so the story arose from the point of view of the purple swamphen.

SIMON: And at the end of the story, without giving anything away, I know I find myself left with a sense of humility⁸, thinking that we people are a very vulnerable lot compared to purple swamphens. And we always thought it was the other way around.

LIVELY: Well, you could say that, yes. And this one, you know, since has been given a voice by me.

SIMON: Yeah. A very strong story you have here called "The Weekend." Couple takes their daughter away for a country weekend. Girl doesn't look forward to it. Tell us about this story, if you could.

LIVELY: Well, I suppose it's a ghost story, really. And it's slightly sending up the kinds of people that these are. They're a couple who are going to stay with another couple who've got - who are very prosperous. And they've got this weekend place in the Cotswolds. And the little girl is a sort of silent observer.

She really - throughout the story, she never speaks. But you understand that initially⁹ she hadn't wanted to go. And when she gets there, somehow she finds that actually it's fine. But you don't quite understand why until the end.

SIMON: And, of course, you - a thousand different questions roll all over the back of your mind then.

LIVELY: Yes. Well, that's what I always hope in any story, that it will kind of provoke, you know, people thinking about it at the end. What actually was all that about? Was it just a ghost story, or was there something a bit more to it than that? I think you can pack a lot into a short story. And I don't actually feel crucially a short story should tell a story and there must be a narrative¹⁰ of some kind.

SIMON: Another story I want to ask about, "The Third Wife."

LIVELY: Yes.

SIMON: A wife discovers that her husband is a con¹¹ artist, and she lays a trap for him. How does a novelist develop a revenge fantasy?

LIVELY: (Laughter) Well, yes, it's rather a feminist¹² story that, isn't it? I hadn't quite thought of it like that but I suppose it is. I don't know. Again, the idea came into my head. And again, that was something to do with a beach. I'd been on a beach. And I saw a man pick up his towel and his things and walk off, leaving a female companion just sitting there.

And a sort of fantasy came into my head, you know, supposing he literally¹³ is leaving her. He's abandoning her. And he's just going off which is the way in which the man in this story abandons one of his wives.

SIMON: So Dame Lively, to - if we were to follow you through a day, how many ideas for stories or novels or scenes would come to your mind?

LIVELY: Probably none at all at the moment.

(LAUGHTER)

LIVELY: Old age I'm finding is - has been - I'm grateful it's been reasonably productive. I'm not sure I have any more short stories. I've got a feeling that that particular vein¹⁴ has gone. I'm hoping to write another novel, a short novel, novella. I've finished a book about gardening, not a sort of how-to book.

I'm not as good a gardener as that, but a book that looks at the ways in which gardening and gardens have affected¹⁵ people and the ways particularly in which writers have written about gardens and gardening. So that was a nice departure. I love writing nonfiction. It's so much easier than fiction.

SIMON: Dame Lively, you're in your 80s now.

LIVELY: Yes.

SIMON: Did you ever have a job that wasn't writing?

LIVELY: Very briefly¹⁶ I had a job. I worked for - as a research assistant to a professor at Oxford¹⁷ University. That's the only sort of paid employment I've ever had. I married very young. I had children very young and then kind of fell into writing. I almost feel sort of accidentally.

I think I'm one of those people for whom reading kind of became writing. I'd always been an absolutely obsessive¹⁸ reader. And I have to say, actually, I've never known a writer who wasn't a fairly obsessive reader. And I think for me the reading somehow - I began to think, I wonder if I could do that, you know, could I have a go? That was how it all began.

SIMON: I have to ask you about one more story because, of course, I'm a James Bond fan, a young man of that vintage - your story "License¹⁹ To Kill."

LIVELY: (Laughter) Yes.

SIMON: An elderly woman named Pauline. Her caregiver is an 18-year-old named Kelly who can be a little patronizing to the older woman. But then Kelly begins to discover Pauline is not who she thought she was.

LIVELY: (Laughter) Yes. Well, I'm not going to give away, in case anybody wants to read it.

SIMON: Yeah.

LIVELY: What I think it was - it was trying to make a point about the old and the young and about the gulf²⁰ between them which isn't necessarily a gulf. I'm a grandmother six times over. And I have four grandchildren in their 20s. And actually, I don't find that there is that much of a gulf. I think one of the interesting things about my generation is that we are much closer to our grandchildren than I - certainly than I was my grandparents.

But I just wanted to show that old people after all are not just what you're seeing now, they're what they have been before. So you look at an old person, and she is an old person. But you can forget is that she has many, many incarnations of all the things that she may have been that you don't know about. And so I was - that was what the story was about really.

SIMON: Penelope Lively. Her new book, "The Purple Swamp Hen And Other Stories." Dame Lively, thanks so much for being with us.

LIVELY: Thank you.

1 lauded   

v.称赞，赞美( laud的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• They lauded the former president as a hero. 他们颂扬前总统为英雄。 来自辞典例句
• The nervy feats of the mountaineers were lauded. 登山者有勇气的壮举受到赞美。 来自辞典例句

2 metropolises   

n.一国的主要城市（不一定是首都）( metropolis的名词复数 )；中心；大都会；大城市

参考例句：

• That season, you ride it, all metropolises achieve what one wishes! 那时节，您骑上它，一切都会如愿以偿！ 来自互联网
• Carl has carried the banner in infernal metropolises. 卡尔曾经在那些地狱般的大都市流浪街头。 来自互联网

3 dame   

n.女士

参考例句：

• The dame tell of her experience as a wife and mother.这位年长妇女讲了她作妻子和母亲的经验。
• If you stick around,you'll have to marry that dame.如果再逗留多一会，你就要跟那个夫人结婚。

4 perverse   

adj.刚愎的；坚持错误的，行为反常的

参考例句：

• It would be perverse to stop this healthy trend.阻止这种健康发展的趋势是没有道理的。
• She gets a perverse satisfaction from making other people embarrassed.她有一种不正常的心态，以使别人难堪来取乐。

5 hacking   

n.非法访问计算机系统和数据库的活动

参考例句：

• The patient with emphysema is hacking all day. 这个肺气肿病人整天不断地干咳。
• We undertook the task of hacking our way through the jungle. 我们负责在丛林中开路。

6 frescoes   

n.壁画( fresco的名词复数 )；温壁画技法，湿壁画

参考例句：

• The Dunhuang frescoes are gems of ancient Chinese art. 敦煌壁画是我国古代艺术中的瑰宝。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》
• The frescoes in these churches are magnificent. 这些教堂里的壁画富丽堂皇。 来自《简明英汉词典》

7 ornamental   

adj.装饰的；作装饰用的；n.装饰品；观赏植物

参考例句：

• The stream was dammed up to form ornamental lakes.溪流用水坝拦挡起来,形成了装饰性的湖泊。
• The ornamental ironwork lends a touch of elegance to the house.铁艺饰件为房子略添雅致。

8 humility   

n.谦逊，谦恭

参考例句：

• Humility often gains more than pride.谦逊往往比骄傲收益更多。
• His voice was still soft and filled with specious humility.他的声音还是那么温和，甚至有点谦卑。

9 initially   

adv.最初，开始

参考例句：

• The ban was initially opposed by the US.这一禁令首先遭到美国的反对。
• Feathers initially developed from insect scales.羽毛最初由昆虫的翅瓣演化而来。

10 narrative   

n.叙述，故事；adj.叙事的，故事体的

参考例句：

• He was a writer of great narrative power.他是一位颇有记述能力的作家。
• Neither author was very strong on narrative.两个作者都不是很善于讲故事。

11 con   

n.反对的观点，反对者，反对票，肺病；vt.精读，学习，默记；adv.反对地，从反面；adj.欺诈的

参考例句：

• We must be fair and consider the reason pro and con.我们必须公平考虑赞成和反对的理由。
• The motion is adopted non con.因无人投反对票，协议被通过。

12 feminist   

adj.主张男女平等的，女权主义的

参考例句：

• She followed the feminist movement.她支持女权运动。
• From then on,feminist studies on literature boomed.从那时起，男女平等受教育的现象开始迅速兴起。

13 literally   

adv.照字面意义，逐字地；确实

参考例句：

• He translated the passage literally.他逐字逐句地翻译这段文字。
• Sometimes she would not sit down till she was literally faint.有时候，她不走到真正要昏厥了，决不肯坐下来。

14 vein   

n.血管，静脉；叶脉，纹理；情绪；vt.使成脉络

参考例句：

• The girl is not in the vein for singing today.那女孩今天没有心情唱歌。
• The doctor injects glucose into the patient's vein.医生把葡萄糖注射入病人的静脉。

15 affected   

adj.不自然的，假装的

参考例句：

• She showed an affected interest in our subject.她假装对我们的课题感到兴趣。
• His manners are affected.他的态度不自然。

16 briefly   

adv.简单地，简短地

参考例句：

• I want to touch briefly on another aspect of the problem.我想简单地谈一下这个问题的另一方面。
• He was kidnapped and briefly detained by a terrorist group.他被一个恐怖组织绑架并短暂拘禁。

17 Oxford   

n.牛津（英国城市）

参考例句：

• At present he has become a Professor of Chemistry at Oxford.他现在已是牛津大学的化学教授了。
• This is where the road to Oxford joins the road to London.这是去牛津的路与去伦敦的路的汇合处。

18 obsessive   

adj. 着迷的, 强迫性的, 分神的

参考例句：

• Some people are obsessive about cleanliness.有些人有洁癖。
• He's becoming more and more obsessive about punctuality.他对守时要求越来越过分了。

19 license   

n.执照，许可证，特许；v.许可，特许

参考例句：

• The foreign guest has a license on the person.这个外国客人随身携带执照。
• The driver was arrested for having false license plates on his car.司机由于使用假车牌而被捕。

20 gulf   

n.海湾；深渊，鸿沟；分歧，隔阂

参考例句：

• The gulf between the two leaders cannot be bridged.两位领导人之间的鸿沟难以跨越。
• There is a gulf between the two cities.这两座城市间有个海湾。