New fiction
小说新作
Bowled out, not over
山穷水尽，柳暗花明
Jun 26th 2008
From The Economist print edition
TOO often the literary novelist’s downfall-or shortfall-is plot. An Irishman brought up in the Netherlands and now living in New York, Joseph O’Neill exemplifies this curious blind spot in his new novel, “Netherland”.
文艺小说家总是用身败名裂、每况日下来做伏笔。生于爱尔兰，成长在荷兰，现居纽约的作家约瑟夫·奥尼尔在其新作《荷兰》中向人们展示了这引人入胜的层层悬念。
Also a neo-New Yorker, the hero Hans is a mild-mannered Dutch banker whose marriage founders during one of those life-reassessments that were so widespread in the immediate aftermath of the September 11th attacks. Mr O’Neill is good at capturing the atmosphere of exceptionalism and a sense of the centre not holding. The wife absconds with their son back to London. On his own in the Chelsea Hotel and reluctant to return to the loft from which the attacks have exiled the family, Hans falls into a friendship with an animated but shady entrepreneur named Chuck Ramkissoon, a Trinidadian determined to establish the city’s first cricket club.
小说主人公荷兰银行家汉斯，性格温和，和作者一样，都是刚到纽约不久。经历了911之后，几乎每个纽约人都开始重新思量生活的意义，也就是在这过程中，汉斯的婚姻走到了尽头。奥尼尔非常善于捕捉游离于主流之外的别样气息，驾驭无主题的文字。汉斯的妻子撇下他，带着儿子回了伦敦。他一个人蜗居在切尔西旅馆，不愿回到小阁楼–那个曾经是家的地方，正是发生在那儿的袭击让他妻离子散。汉斯和来自特立尼达岛的恰克·拉米克斯成了好朋友。恰克是个精力充沛但又圆滑世故的企业家，一心要建立纽约第一家板球俱乐部。
To ruin the suspense shamelessly: Hans will eventually come full circle and patch things up with his wife. Thereafter Chuck is murdered, off-camera and with no explanation. His death has no consequences for the narrator. The cricket club never materialises, a failure of no consequence either. Mr O’Neill tries to bulk Chuck into a quirky, charismatic character, but because he has nothing to do, in a cause-and-effect sense, his early effervescence goes flat, gently subsiding like warm, abandoned champagne.
故事一波三折，最终还是毫无悬念– 汉斯走出困境，与妻子复合，恢复正常生活。之后不久，恰克被谋杀，就此从书中消失，再没有任何后文。他的死也没有给叙事者留下任何波澜。板球俱乐部也一直没有开起来，又是一个没有后文的败笔。奥尼尔想把恰克塑造成一个传奇有魅力的形象，但他又什么都做不了，规律难逃，开始的喧嚣沸腾渐渐趋于平淡，慢慢走向沉静，昨天已被遗忘。
Mr O’Neill ably describes some under-portrayed parts of New York, although his frequently cartographical approach (“On the Long Island Expressway I guided him past the red neon signs of Lefrak City and a certain Eden Hotel, past Utopia Parkway”) makes it a bit too easy to envision him cruising these streets with a notebook. Any number of passages are droll or well-observed. Of the “we’re-all-going-to-die sex” in the aftermath of a trauma, he comments: “it was my understanding that all sex, indeed all human activity, fell into this category.” He aptly conveys his narrator’s enthusiasm for cricket.
奥尼尔非常善于刻画一些鲜为人知的纽约侧面。读他的文字常常让人感觉是在地图上游走，（在长岛高速，我给他带路，红色氖光灯打出”拉弗兰城”的字样，一幢幢伊甸园旅馆，乌托邦公园大道），脑中很容易就浮现出他拿着笔记本在大街小巷穿梭的样子。所有的公路编码都是精心设计，精灵古怪。对于”纵欲”–一种外伤后遗症，他评价说：”我理解的性，准确说是人的所有行为，都是放纵的”。奥尼尔的激情在《荷兰》一书中，从叙事者对板球的狂热就可见一斑。
Yet the plot is light and fragile. Single pleasing paragraphs do not a sound novel make. However beguiling the decor, however beautiful the carved cornices, the gleaming brass fixtures, if the joists of a building are made of balsa wood it is not a good investment.
悬念终归是悬念。美好情节的平铺直叙不是小说的风格。一栋房子无论内饰华丽如何，雕塑精美如何，陈设炫目如何，如果梁木不实，就没有投资的意义了。
Book details
Netherland
By Joseph O’Neill
Pantheon; 272 pages; $23.95. Fourth Estate; £14.99
译者：eirrac http://www.ecocn.org/forum/viewthread.php?tid=12446&extra=page%3D1
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