美国国家公共电台 NPR A Noir Novel For The Trump Era, From Jonathan Lethem

 

MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:

Of the oceans of ink spilled by writers wrestling with the Trump¹ presidency², it's probably safe to say that Jonathan Lethem is the only one who has managed to produce a book featuring the following - one, a shootout on a decrepit³ Ferris wheel; two, hippies living off the grid⁴ - like, really off the grid in California; and, three, a detective who keeps a live possum in his desk drawer. Lethem's new novel is titled "The Feral Detective." And he - Lethem, that is, not the feral detective, alas⁵ - joins me now. Jonathan Lethem, welcome.

JONATHAN LETHEM: (Laughter) Thanks. Nice to be with you.

KELLY: Good to have you with us. So I want to ask how you came to write this book. You sat down and started writing it January 2017. How come?

LETHEM: Yeah. Well, you know, I'd been planning a book before that. I had a notion about the desert and this feral child who grows up to be a detective who finds missing people in the desert. And I was, you know, very complacently⁶ thinking it was - this would be a nice project to write during the Hillary Clinton administration. And then the fall of 2016 came, and I was sort of undone⁷. I looked at what was on my desk, and it looked about as useless as could be. I didn't think I had a book or...

KELLY: Why, it just felt suddenly frivolous⁸ or what?

LETHEM: I probably in some ways was better prepared than some people because I used to be a science fiction writer. But I felt like I was living in a really different universe. And I wasn't sure that this book meant anything or that being a novelist meant all that much. But I sort of got back on my horse, like we all had to do. And then I looked at the materials and I realized I'd conceived Phoebe, who was a first-person female narrator, and that she could be, you know, the mouthpiece for my confusion, that actually...

KELLY: Phoebe - I should mention she's a reporter. She's a journalist. And she shares your sense of disorientation after the 2016 election. She actually quits her job as a reporter at The New York Times.

LETHEM: And the question that was really important to me was, do they look different because they changed or because they were unmasked, because our reality had a kind of disguise torn off of it? And if I believed the second, which in many ways is what I came to feel, then my book did make sense. My book was about kind of ancient archetypal fissures⁹ in individuals and societies and between men and women. And I thought, well, OK, you know, I can try.

KELLY: And you end up using Phoebe as your envoy¹⁰ into this world. You talked about you couldn't make sense of what was happening in the country; maybe Phoebe can make sense of it. Let's send her and see where she goes.

LETHEM: Yeah. Even make sense of it is probably overstating it. In a lot of ways, this is a book about trying not to think about the election. It's about running off into a free space where maybe you can conceive that there isn't just a right and a left, a red and a blue, a man and a woman, but that there's some kind of possible reinvention. In that sense, it's a - you know, it's chasing the old American fantasy of the frontier, which is a kind of, you know, utopian space where something can be - a new kind of world can be set up.

KELLY: You do set up Phoebe as a rabidly anti-Trump character. She refers to him as the beast. She refers to him as the idiot. And I wonder. Do you worry that you're going to turn off half your potential readers?

LETHEM: I don't know. I - it really has mostly to do with her being a New Yorker and feeling like the weird¹¹ guy from Queens who we'd all been taking for granted as kind of a medium-foreground peculiarity¹² in our environment was suddenly thrust upon the entire world, that that had really snuck up on us because it was a different thing for New Yorkers who were familiar with Donald Trump. He wasn't a new story.

KELLY: I mean, not to give people listening the wrong idea because we're talking a lot about politics and what was going on in America in real life as you're writing this book, the book actually is your characters living through this moment in January 2017 but not paying great attention to daily developments in Washington. They're, as I mentioned, involved in shootouts in a Ferris wheel in the desert in California.

LETHEM: I agree. We're being totally misleading. It's basically just a long chase scene interrupted by spasms¹³ of sex and violence.

KELLY: (Laughter).

LETHEM: There's really - it's..

KELLY: I think you just sold a million copies right there.

LETHEM: I've never written a book as quickly because the velocity¹⁴ of the story and the antic nature of the characters swept me along. I was also - along with thinking about the election, I was hiding from all of that. I was just using this as a place to go and make up a world that was briefly¹⁵ - one I could be amused and kind of consoled by.

KELLY: Without giving away plot twists or the ending, I think I can say that you leave things a little unsettled at the end. We don't quite know where your characters are headed next or who might be by their side. Was that deliberate?

LETHEM: Yeah, the book is a snapshot. And it's a snapshot of, you know, Phoebe and myself in, you know, the five days before and the five days after the inauguration¹⁶. And they've survived some things. And they sort of are together. But they're also in a car in motion - you know? - which I guess describes how I feel just about every day.

KELLY: Jonathan Lethem - his new novel is "The Feral Detective." It's out this week. Thank you so much.

LETHEM: Thank you so much - treat to talk to you.

(SOUNDBITE OF YOUNGBLOOD BRASS BAND'S "BROOKLYN")

1 trump   

n.王牌，法宝；v.打出王牌，吹喇叭

参考例句：

• He was never able to trump up the courage to have a showdown.他始终鼓不起勇气摊牌。
• The coach saved his star player for a trump card.教练保留他的明星选手，作为他的王牌。

2 presidency   

n.总统(校长，总经理)的职位(任期)

参考例句：

• Roosevelt was elected four times to the presidency of the United States.罗斯福连续当选四届美国总统。
• Two candidates are emerging as contestants for the presidency.两位候选人最终成为总统职位竞争者。

3 decrepit   

adj.衰老的，破旧的

参考例句：

• The film had been shot in a decrepit old police station.该影片是在一所破旧不堪的警察局里拍摄的。
• A decrepit old man sat on a park bench.一个衰弱的老人坐在公园的长凳上。

4 grid   

n.高压输电线路网；地图坐标方格；格栅

参考例句：

• In this application,the carrier is used to encapsulate the grid.在这种情况下，要用载体把格栅密封起来。
• Modern gauges consist of metal foil in the form of a grid.现代应变仪则由网格形式的金属片组成。

5 alas   

int.唉(表示悲伤、忧愁、恐惧等)

参考例句：

• Alas!The window is broken!哎呀！窗子破了！
• Alas,the truth is less romantic.然而，真理很少带有浪漫色彩。

6 complacently   

adv. 满足地, 自满地, 沾沾自喜地

参考例句：

• He complacently lived out his life as a village school teacher. 他满足于一个乡村教师的生活。
• "That was just something for evening wear," returned his wife complacently. “那套衣服是晚装，"他妻子心安理得地说道。 来自英汉文学 - 嘉莉妹妹

7 undone   

a.未做完的，未完成的

参考例句：

• He left nothing undone that needed attention.所有需要注意的事他都注意到了。

8 frivolous   

adj.轻薄的；轻率的

参考例句：

• This is a frivolous way of attacking the problem.这是一种轻率敷衍的处理问题的方式。
• He spent a lot of his money on frivolous things.他在一些无聊的事上花了好多钱。

9 fissures   

n.狭长裂缝或裂隙( fissure的名词复数 )；裂伤；分歧；分裂v.裂开( fissure的第三人称单数 )

参考例句：

• Rising molten rock flows out on the ocean floor and caps the fissures, trapping the water. 上升熔岩流到海底并堵住了裂隙，结果把海水封在里面。 来自辞典例句
• The French have held two colloquia and an international symposium on rock fissures. 法国已经开了两次岩石裂缝方面的报告会和一个国际会议。 来自辞典例句

10 envoy   

n.使节，使者，代表，公使

参考例句：

• Their envoy showed no sign of responding to our proposals.他们的代表对我方的提议毫无回应的迹象。
• The government has not yet appointed an envoy to the area.政府尚未向这一地区派过外交官。

11 weird   

adj.古怪的，离奇的；怪诞的，神秘而可怕的

参考例句：

• From his weird behaviour,he seems a bit of an oddity.从他不寻常的行为看来，他好像有点怪。
• His weird clothes really gas me.他的怪衣裳简直笑死人。

12 peculiarity   

n.独特性，特色；特殊的东西；怪癖

参考例句：

• Each country has its own peculiarity.每个国家都有自己的独特之处。
• The peculiarity of this shop is its day and nigth service.这家商店的特点是昼夜服务。

13 spasms   

n.痉挛( spasm的名词复数 )；抽搐；（能量、行为等的）突发；发作

参考例句：

• After the patient received acupuncture treatment,his spasms eased off somewhat. 病人接受针刺治疗后，痉挛稍微减轻了。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The smile died, squeezed out by spasms of anticipation and anxiety. 一阵阵预测和焦虑把她脸上的微笑挤掉了。 来自辞典例句

14 velocity   

n.速度，速率

参考例句：

• Einstein's theory links energy with mass and velocity of light.爱因斯坦的理论把能量同质量和光速联系起来。
• The velocity of light is about 300000 kilometres per second.光速约为每秒300000公里。

15 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。

16 inauguration   

n.开幕、就职典礼

参考例句：

• The inauguration of a President of the United States takes place on January 20.美国总统的就职典礼于一月二十日举行。
• Three celebrated tenors sang at the president's inauguration.3位著名的男高音歌手在总统就职仪式上演唱。