哈珀·李與卡波特不爲人知的童年二三事
One summer about 85 years ago in a small Alabama town, a scrappy tomboy named Nelle met her new next door neighbor, Tru, a bookish, dapper dresser with a high-pitched voice and a mischievous streak.
大約是85年前的一個夏季，在美國阿拉巴馬州的一個小城，爭強好勝的假小子妮爾(Nelle)在鎮上迎來了新來的鄰居杜魯。杜魯穿着講究，嗓音尖細，愛看書，是個會惡作劇的搗蛋鬼。
They made an unlikely pair. She often went barefoot in overalls while he dressed so fastidiously that a teacher said he stood out like a bird of paradise in a flock of crows. But both were oddballs who took refuge in detective novels, and they quickly bonded over their mutual love of Sherlock Holmes and the Rover Boys, spending long afternoons reading mysteries in their treehouse sanctuary. To entertain themselves, they started writing their own stories on her father’s Underwood typewriter, taking turns as one of them narrated while the other typed.
兩人成爲了不可思議的組合。妮爾經常光着腳，穿着揹帶褲。而杜魯打扮得細緻入微，以至於他的老師形容道，杜魯像是一羣烏鴉中的極樂鳥，突出奪目。兩人性格都很古怪，都愛一頭紮在偵探小說裏。出於對《福爾摩斯探案集》(Sherlock Holmes)和《月球車男孩》(the Rover Boys)的共同喜愛，他們的關係迅速升溫： 在樹屋中度過許多個漫長的下午，閱讀推理小說，並在妮爾父親的安德伍德打字機上自己寫故事，一人講述，一人打字，往復交換，自我娛樂。
They grew up to be two of the South’s greatest writers — Harper Lee and Truman Capote — and their lives and work were intertwined long after that first summer. Ms. Lee drew on their friendship in her portrait of the characters Scout and Dill in “To Kill a Mockingbird” and in her newly released novel, “Go Set a Watchman.” Mr. Capote based the brash, sharp-tongued tomboy Idabel Thompkins in his debut novel, “Other Voices, Other Rooms,” on Nelle. They worked together on Mr. Capote’s true crime book “In Cold Blood,” then drifted apart after Mr. Capote failed to credit her properly.
長大後，他們成爲了南部最優秀的兩名作家——哈珀·李和杜魯門·卡波特。在那個夏天后，各自的生活和工作也仍長久地交織在一起。哈珀在小說《殺死一隻知更鳥》(To Kill a Mockingbird)中塑造了斯庫特(Scout)和迪爾(Dill)，借用了她與卡波特之間的友情。此外，她也將這段關係運用在最新出版的小說《設立守望者》(Go Set a Watchman)中。卡波特則在首部小說《別的聲音，別的房間》(Other Voices, Other Rooms)中塑造了盛氣凌人、伶牙俐齒的假小子形象伊達貝爾·湯姆金斯(Idabel Thompkins)。在卡波特的真實犯罪小說《冷血》中，兩人也有合作，但由於卡波特沒有爲哈珀的貢獻給予充分說明，兩人的關係疏遠。
Their broken friendship has been restored — in fiction, at least — in a forthcoming middle-grade novel, “Tru & Nelle,” by Greg Neri. Though Ms. Lee and Mr. Capote have each individually been the subject of numerous biographies, documentaries and feature films, “Tru & Nelle” is the first book to focus primarily on their childhood bond.
這段破碎的友誼已經修復，至少是在小說中——格雷格·內裏(Greg Neri)撰寫了面向8到12歲孩子的小說《杜魯與妮爾》，這本書即將出版。李和卡波特分別充當過無數傳記、紀錄片和電影的主角，但《杜魯與妮爾》是第一部重點關注他們童年時期聯繫的書。
“It was just kind of sitting there, and I couldn’t believe no one had taken it on,” said Mr. Neri, author of six books for teenagers, including “Ghetto Cowboy.” “Both she and Truman used their real lives as fodder for their fiction, and I figured if they did it, maybe I could do it too.”
“它就在那，我不敢相信竟然從來沒有人發現它，”內裏講道。內裏的作品包括《貧民區中的牛仔》(Ghetto Cowboy)，此外還寫過五本其他的青少年讀物。“她和杜魯門將真實的生活作爲小說素材，我對這種做法進行確認和研究，然後覺得或許我也可以這樣做。”
“Tru & Nelle,” which is to be released next spring, will follow the release this year of previously unpublished works of fiction by both Mr. Capote, who died in 1984, and Ms. Lee, 89, who remains in Monroeville, Ala., her hometown, in an assisted living facility.
《杜魯與妮爾》將在明年春天出版，在那之前，卡波特和哈珀·李一些未出版過的作品今年將會出版。卡波特去世於1984年。哈珀·李今年89歲，住在家鄉阿拉巴馬州門羅維爾(Monroeville)的一家養老院。
Last month, HarperCollins released “Go Set a Watchman,” a novel Ms. Lee wrote and set aside nearly 60 years ago. In October, Random House will publish a collection of lost short stories that Mr. Capote wrote when he was a teenager and young man. Both books shed new light on these authors’ creative development, their coming of age and their ties to the South.
哈珀柯林斯出版社(Harper Collins)上月出版了《設立守望者》，哈·珀李在60年前寫了這本書，只不過寫完後就把它放到了一邊。十月，蘭登書屋(Random House)將出版卡波特的遺作短篇小說集，這些作品寫於卡波特的少年和成人時期。兩本書都可以展現作者的成長軌跡，思路發展歷程，以及他們的南部情結。
“They used the same town and people and events, but used them differently and saw them differently,” Mr. Neri said.
“他們使用了相同的小鎮、故事和人物，只不過運用手法不同，看待的角度也不同，”內裏說。
“Go Set a Watchman,” which takes place 20 years after “Mockingbird” when Scout is an adult, is punctuated by flashbacks to her childhood adventures with her brother, Jem, and her best friend, Dill, the Capote figure: “He was a short, square-built, cotton-headed individual with the face of an angel and the cunning of a stoat,” Ms. Lee wrote. “He was a year older than she, but she was a head taller.”
《設立守望者》的故事發生在《殺死一隻知更鳥》的20年後，成年的斯庫特腦海裏不時重現童年時和哥哥傑姆(Jem)以及最好的朋友迪爾在一起的奇遇。迪爾就是那個卡波特式的人物：“他個頭矮小，寬闊堅實，有着天使一般的面容和鼬鼠一般的機智，”李寫道。“他比她年長一歲，但她比他高出一頭。”
In one scene of “Watchman” that parallels an actual childhood incident, Dill, Scout and Jem put on a mock Baptist revival, culminating with a baptism in the fish pond. To their mortification, their antics are interrupted by dinner guests, the minister and his wife. In reality, Nelle, Truman and his cousin put on a mock carnival sideshow on a similar occasion, shocking the visitors, an episode woven into Mr. Neri’s book.
《設立守望者》中還有一個場景與童年時期李和卡波特實際遇到的事件相似。迪爾、斯庫特和傑姆模仿了一場培靈會，最後在魚塘中舉行洗禮，但他們的古怪舉動被來訪的神父和神父的妻子打斷。現實生活中，妮爾、杜魯門和杜魯門的表(堂)兄在相似的場合也曾模仿狂歡節的表演，震驚來賓。這個故事被內裏編寫進了《杜魯與妮爾》中。
The forthcoming collection by Mr. Capote also features stories set in a small Southern town like Monroeville, where they both lived as children. Peter Haag, owner of Kein & Aber, which publishes Mr. Capote in German, stumbled upon them while doing research in the Capote archive at the New York Public Library. Some pieces had appeared in school magazines, but most had never been published. A few were printed last year in German in a German magazine.
即將出版的卡波特小說集也有一些場景設立在南部小鎮門羅維爾，李和卡波特的童年都在那裏度過。出版家彼得·哈格(Peter Haag)在紐約公共圖書館做卡波特資料研究時，看到這些故事時停住了。一些文章在校園雜誌中出現過，但大部分從未發表。另外有一些的德文譯本去年發表在德國的幾本雜誌上。彼得·哈格擁有Kein & Aber出版社，該出版社此前出版了卡波特作品的德文譯本。
“The stories provide ample evidence that Capote had found his own voice by a very early age and, at the same time, had to work hard to develop it,” David Ebershoff, who is editing the book of stories for Random House, said in an email.
“這些故事充分證明，卡波特很早就找到了自己的風格。並且不得不勤奮寫作，使這種風格得以發展，”蘭登書屋即將出版的那本小說集的編輯戴維·艾伯豪夫(David Ebershoff)在一封郵件中說道。
Born a year and a half apart, the young Harper and Truman both had active imaginations and distant mothers. Neither of them fit in especially well in a small Southern community.
李和卡波特出生的日期相隔一年半，年少的二人都具有非常活躍的想像力，與母親關係疏遠，都不適應南方的小地方的生活。
“Nelle was too rough for the girls, and Truman was scared of the boys, so he just tagged on to her and she was his protector,” a family friend, Charles Ray Skinner, recalled in “Mockingbird,” Charles J. Shields’s biography of Ms. Lee. When schoolyard bullies ganged up on Truman, who was small for his age, Nelle, who was younger, got in fistfights to protect him.
“對女孩們來說，妮爾過於強硬，而杜魯門則害怕男孩們。杜魯門投向了妮爾，而妮爾成爲了他的保護者，”與李一家相熟的朋友查爾斯·雷·斯金納(Charles Ray Skinner)在查爾斯·J·希爾茲(Charles J. Shields)所著傳記《知更鳥：哈珀·李的肖像》(Mockingbird)中回憶道。杜魯門在同齡人中非常弱小，學校的惡霸在操場合起來欺負杜魯門，年齡更小的妮爾就會用拳頭保護他。
Ms. Lee, who stopped giving formal interviews in the 1960s, once described feeling bound to Mr. Capote by “a common anguish” and said of her childhood, “We lived in our imagination most of the time.” Mr. Capote recalled in an interview that the two often felt like “apart people.”
李在60年代停止接受正式的採訪。她曾經形容她與卡波特被一種“共通的痛苦”連結在一起，談到童年時，她說，“我們大部分時間都活在想像中。”卡波特在一次採訪中回憶道，他們兩個經常覺得自己“與衆不同”。
Mr. Neri came up with the idea for a novel about their friendship in February 2014, when he was watching “Capote,” a biopic starring Philip Seymour Hoffman, and remembered the past that the two writers shared as children. As a longtime fan of the work of the authors, Mr. Capote in particular, Mr. Neri wondered why no one had written a book about their childhood.
內裏想到要寫這樣一本小說是在2014年2月，當時他正在看由菲利普·塞默·霍夫曼(Philip Seymour Hoffman)主演的《卡波特》，回想起了這兩個作者小時候的共同經歷。作爲兩人的長期追隨者，特別是卡波特的書迷，內裏感到奇怪，爲什麼沒有一個人就他們的童年寫一本書。
He started researching their lives, reading biographies and interviews. Some of the richest material came from Jennings Faulk Carter, Mr. Capote’s cousin and a frequent co-conspirator during Tru and Nelle’s escapades. Mr. Carter gave a detailed oral history to Marianne Moates Weber for her book, “Truman Capote’s Southern Years.” “These stories were amazing — they were colorful and outrageous and funny and tragic,” Mr. Neri said in a telephone interview from Tampa, Fla., where he lives. “Tru & Nelle” hews closely to history. It opens with their first encounter one summer in Monroeville, when Nelle was 6 and Truman 7, and ends with a dramatic scene with hooded Ku Klux Klan members arriving at a Halloween party that Truman was hosting. According to an account given by Mr. Capote’s cousin, Klan members came because they heard African-American guests had been invited to the costume party, and left after Nelle’s father, A. C. Lee, confronted them.
內裏開始研究李和卡波特的生活，閱讀他們傳記和採訪。詹寧斯·福克·卡特(Jennings Faulk Carter)提供了最豐富的資料，他是卡波特的表(堂)兄，也是杜魯和妮爾童年曆險的同謀小夥伴。卡特爲瑪麗安娜·莫特·韋伯(Marianne Moates Weber)的《杜魯門·卡波特的南方歲月》(Truman Capote's Southern Years)做了詳細的口述。“這些故事棒極了——他們非常有色彩，有趣並且帶點悲劇性”，內裏在佛羅里達坦帕(Tampa)接受電話採訪時這樣說道，目前他居住在坦帕。《杜魯和妮爾》非常接近於歷史，以妮爾和杜魯門六七歲時在門羅維爾的相遇開端，以3K黨成員來到卡波特舉辦的萬聖節聚會的戲劇性場面結尾。根據卡特的講述，3K黨成員之所以前來，是因爲他們聽說非裔美國人被邀請來化裝舞會。妮爾的父親A.C.李(A. C. Lee)和他們展開對峙，而後3K黨成員離開。
The novel ends on a bittersweet note, when Truman leaves for New York not long after the Halloween party, when he is about 8 years old. The real story was much messier, though.
小說收尾的情節喜憂參半。萬聖節聚會後不久，8歲的杜魯門去了紐約，儘管真實的故事比這更復雜一點。
Mr. Capote continued to visit Monroeville in summer. He published his first novel in his early 20s. Ms. Lee, encouraged by his success, moved to New York to write when she was 23, despite her family’s misgivings.
卡波特依舊在夏天探訪門羅維爾。20幾歲時，他發表了第一本小說。李被他的成功而鼓勵，在23歲時搬到紐約進行寫作，儘管她的家裏爲她擔心。
But their friendship was strained by bitterness and rivalry. Mr. Capote envied the success of “Mockingbird,” which won the Pulitzer Prize. Rumors spread alleging that he had written “Mockingbird” for Ms. Lee. She was stung when Mr. Capote relegated her to the acknowledgments of “In Cold Blood,” after she helped to research it and contributed 150 pages of typed notes. Toward the end of his life, Mr. Capote drank and used drugs heavily, alienating many of his friends, including Ms. Lee. He died of liver disease at the age of 59. “Drugs and alcohol did not cause his insanity, they were the result of it,” Ms. Lee wrote to an acquaintance.
他們友誼被不安和競爭的痛苦所損害。《殺死一隻知更鳥》贏得普林策獎，獲得成功，卡波特因此感到嫉妒。傳言四起，是卡波特爲李寫了這本書。而卡波特在《冷血》的致謝中並未提及哈珀；此前，李幫助他做研究，打印了150頁的筆記。卡波特在人生末尾過量飲酒和吸毒，疏遠了包括李在內的許多朋友，59歲時因肝病去世。“他的瘋狂不是藥品和酒精造成的，藥品和酒精只是這種瘋狂的結果，”李在給一位熟人的信中寫道。
Literary influence is hard to measure, and it’s impossible to say how Harper Lee and Truman Capote might have developed creatively in isolation, had they not spurred each other on as young writers.
文學上的成就難以衡量，如今人們已經很難想像，哈珀·李和杜魯門·卡波特如果沒有在年輕時相互鼓勵，後來會各自發展成什麼樣。
Mr. Neri offers a theory toward the end of his novel, when Tru proposes a pact: “ ‘I’ll make you a deal: I’ll write, but only if you promise to write as well. Then we can mail each other our stories,’ he said, hopeful.”
內裏在小說接近末尾時提供了一個解釋，杜魯提出了一個約定：“‘說定了，我會繼續寫作，但前提是你答應也會寫作。之後我們可以把自己的故事發送給對方，’他說道，對未來充滿憧憬。”
