美国国家公共电台 NPR Gene Weingarten Mines Magic From Just 'One Day'

 

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

How much human life goes into a single day - life and death, effort and rest, love, loss and striving. Gene¹ Weingarten, the two-time Pulitzer Prize winner for his Washington Post feature writing, decided² to try and tell stories from a single day in history and remind us of the preciousness of life in everyday moments. His book, "One Day: The Extraordinary Story Of An Ordinary 24 Hours In America." Gene Weingarten joins us in our studios.

Thanks so much for being with us.

GENE WEINGARTEN: Good to be here.

SIMON: Telling the story of a single day of history is kind of an extension of your hammer and nail technique, isn't it?

WEINGARTEN: It is. It's the ultimate extension of it. As an editor, I once had five different writers walk into a room, take out five phonebooks and hammer a nail into each phonebook. And the deal was they had to write a profile of whoever that nail stopped at. It was risky³, but, you know, I have the philosophy that there's a story in everything. And they proved it true.

SIMON: So you decided to try to tell the story of a single day in history, an - you settled on what that day would be after what I'll call an extensive scientific process.

WEINGARTEN: I went to a restaurant, brought a old, green fedora. Inside were 63 crumpled⁴ pieces of paper, 31 on the first drawing drawn⁵ by a little boy for the day of the year, 12 - and the second one for the month the year, and - 20. For the third one, I had limited the year to one of 20 years.

SIMON: You wanted it to be old enough to be history but also have a lot of people who were still around.

WEINGARTEN: I wanted people alive who I could talk to who remembered what happened, yeah. So we limited it to 1969 to 1989.

SIMON: And the date that was chosen?

WEINGARTEN: December 28, 1986. Journalists will tell you that the absolutely worst news day of the week is Sunday. And this was a Sunday. The absolutely worst news week of the year is the sleepy one between Christmas and New Year's. And at least at first glance, 1986 didn't ring any great news bells with me. We seemed to have the worst day of the week in the worst week of the year in a bad year.

SIMON: Yeah. Well, hardly turned out to be the case because there are glimpses of hundreds of stories in this book. December 28, 1986, that morning a fire in a house on Exeter Street in Dallas. A firefighter named Richard Lane committed an act of selfless and undaunted courage.

WEINGARTEN: Yeah, he did the proverbial thing. He rushed into a burning building. In his case, he could have put an oxygen mask on, but he had heard that there were children in there. And he didn't take the time to do it. He used this primitive⁶ technique that firefighters can use if they have the nerve. He grabbed his air from the nozzle. You know, there's a little ring of air around the nozzle as it's pouring the water out. And he went in. There were two children. One did not survive. One did.

SIMON: Yeah.

WEINGARTEN: And the one who survived survived with phenomenal injuries.

SIMON: This is Michael Anthony Green...

WEINGARTEN: Yes.

SIMON: ...A little boy. What's he like today?

WEINGARTEN: He is deeply disfigured to the point where initially⁷ it's hard to look at him. He knows that. He acknowledges that. He actually has worked in a haunted house without any makeup⁸ on. He has that kind of attitude toward what happened.

SIMON: And it was his idea, as I recall.

WEINGARTEN: It was his idea. After a very short period of time in talking to this amazing young man, you kind of forget that he looks different. It's a phenomenon I didn't think I would experience. And I did.

SIMON: It was surprising to me - it was not surprising to me, but it was shocking that you asked if he regretted what happened to him.

WEINGARTEN: Yeah. And there is something interesting in Michael's attitude; it's actually fascinating. He doesn't want to remember the fire. He doesn't think he remembers the fire, but he doesn't want to remember the fire. And the reason is that he does not look at himself as a victim of anything. He is exactly as he has always been to himself. He feels if he remembers the fire, suddenly he would feel as though he had lost something. And so one of the things that happens in the book is I talk to a brain chemist to try to figure out if some dreams that Michael has been having, some nightmares that Michael has been having, are actual memories of the event. And they're not. And I was able to tell that to Michael. And it was great relief.

WEINGARTEN: How do you find these stories? Forgive me - you didn't just Google, did you?

WEINGARTEN: Forgive me. Yes, I did. That was - that probably accounted for half the stories. But it wasn't the Googling. Googling the date gives you a lead. What happens after that is the follow-up, and that's where the magic arrived. The lead you get is essentially⁹ a tip to something that might have happened that day. In the follow-up, you get all of the depths. And some of the follow-up just turned into unbelievable stories way deeper than the initial story suggested.

SIMON: Reading your book made me think of words from - you know, Auden's poem, "Musee Des Beaux Arts?"

WEINGARTEN: Don't know it.

SIMON: Icarus flying, a little boy. And Auden writes about suffering they were never wrong, the old masters, how well they understood its human position. Here's the line, how it takes place while someone else is eating or opening the window or just walking dully along.

WEINGARTEN: That's great.

SIMON: I mean, here's this one day from history, and all this life going on.

WEINGARTEN: Absolutely.

SIMON: And in a funny way, we were looking away from it at the time, weren't we?

WEINGARTEN: We were. We were engaged in our own lives. You know, the book has these tragedies in it. It also has stories that are ostensibly simple and straightforward¹⁰. And what I did find is that the deeper you dig, you find out that nothing is really simple or straightforward.

There is a couple that met on the day for five minutes. They then went on a date the next day. And on this date, they got pretty drunk and announced to a roomful of people that they were engaged. And on the following day, the man moved in with the woman, which is the day he learned for the first time that she had two sons. He just hadn't thought to ask. Now, obviously, this is a relationship doomed¹¹. Well, they're still together.

SIMON: Yeah.

WEINGARTEN: And they're still in love. And it's just this wonderful, happy story about love and persistence¹².

SIMON: Do you remain convinced you could choose most any day in history and still have this range of stories?

WEINGARTEN: I am now absolutely certain. I don't think it matters what day you would pick. You would still - you would get different stories, but they would still cover this amazing scope of life.

SIMON: Gene Weingarten and his book "One Day: The Extraordinary Story Of An Ordinary 24 Hours In America." Thank you so much for being with us.

WEINGARTEN: Great to be here.

(SOUNDBITE OF TOTE SONG, “SPANISH SEA”)

1 gene   

n.遗传因子，基因

参考例句：

• A single gene may have many effects.单一基因可能具有很多种效应。
• The targeting of gene therapy has been paid close attention.其中基因治疗的靶向性是值得密切关注的问题之一。

2 decided   

adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的

参考例句：

• This gave them a decided advantage over their opponents.这使他们比对手具有明显的优势。
• There is a decided difference between British and Chinese way of greeting.英国人和中国人打招呼的方式有很明显的区别。

3 risky   

adj.有风险的，冒险的

参考例句：

• It may be risky but we will chance it anyhow.这可能有危险，但我们无论如何要冒一冒险。
• He is well aware how risky this investment is.他心里对这项投资的风险十分清楚。

4 crumpled   

adj. 弯扭的, 变皱的 动词crumple的过去式和过去分词形式

参考例句：

• She crumpled the letter up into a ball and threw it on the fire. 她把那封信揉成一团扔进了火里。
• She flattened out the crumpled letter on the desk. 她在写字台上把皱巴巴的信展平。

5 drawn   

v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的

参考例句：

• All the characters in the story are drawn from life.故事中的所有人物都取材于生活。
• Her gaze was drawn irresistibly to the scene outside.她的目光禁不住被外面的风景所吸引。

6 primitive   

adj.原始的；简单的；n.原(始)人，原始事物

参考例句：

• It is a primitive instinct to flee a place of danger.逃离危险的地方是一种原始本能。
• His book describes the march of the civilization of a primitive society.他的著作描述了一个原始社会的开化过程。

7 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。

8 makeup   

n.组织；性格；化装品

参考例句：

• Those who failed the exam take a makeup exam.这次考试不及格的人必须参加补考。
• Do you think her beauty could makeup for her stupidity?你认为她的美丽能弥补她的愚蠢吗？

9 essentially   

adv.本质上，实质上，基本上

参考例句：

• Really great men are essentially modest.真正的伟人大都很谦虚。
• She is an essentially selfish person.她本质上是个自私自利的人。

10 straightforward   

adj.正直的，坦率的；易懂的，简单的

参考例句：

• A straightforward talk is better than a flowery speech.巧言不如直说。
• I must insist on your giving me a straightforward answer.我一定要你给我一个直截了当的回答。

11 doomed   

命定的

参考例句：

• The court doomed the accused to a long term of imprisonment. 法庭判处被告长期监禁。
• A country ruled by an iron hand is doomed to suffer. 被铁腕人物统治的国家定会遭受不幸的。

12 persistence   

n.坚持，持续，存留

参考例句：

• The persistence of a cough in his daughter puzzled him.他女儿持续的咳嗽把他难住了。
• He achieved success through dogged persistence.他靠着坚持不懈取得了成功。