斯蒂芬金 我不僅寫了怪獸還寫了肖申克
There’s a story Stephen King can’t resist telling. He was shopping for cinnamon buns and potato chips one day when a woman approached him. She told him that she didn’t care for horror stories like the ones he wrote, and preferred uplifting stories, like “The Shawshank Redemption.” When Mr. King told her he wrote that, too, she didn’t believe him.
斯蒂芬·金(Stephen King)經常給人講這麼一個故事。一天，他去買肉桂麪包和薯片，一個女人走到他身邊，說她不怎麼喜歡他那些恐怖小說，還是更喜歡《肖申克的救贖》(The Shawshank Redemption)之類振奮人心的故事。金告訴她，《肖申克的救贖》也是他寫的，她卻不肯相信。
If there are any lingering doubts about Mr. King’s stylistic range, they should be put to rest by his new collection, “The Bazaar of Bad Dreams,” which features 20 stories that seem to touch on every genre imaginable, except for romance. There are crime and horror stories, a narrative poem and a grim western, along with realistic stories about marriage, aging and substance abuse.
金創作的體裁如此多樣，就算人們對此還有任何疑慮，他的新小說集《噩夢集市》(The Bazaar of Bad Dreams)也足以打消這些懷疑。書中收錄了20個短篇小說，幾乎涉及除浪漫故事之外所有能想到的類型。有犯罪小說、恐怖小說、一篇敘事詩和一個陰鬱的西部故事，此外還有關於婚姻、衰老和濫用藥物的現實主義小說。
The collection also functions as a companion of sorts to his 2000 book “On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft.” In his new book, Mr. King introduces each story, describing how he got the idea and what inspired him. The catalyst for one, “The Dune,” about a sand dune where the names of people who are about to die appear, came to him all at once when he was walking his dog on a beach in Florida. Others came from equally unlikely sources: a glimpse of a woman sitting on a bus, losing a bet with his son, eating lunch with his wife at Applebee’s and seeing a man cutting up his older dining companion’s steak. Another, “The Little Green God of Agony,” was drawn from his near-fatal road accident in 1999 and his long recovery.
這部小說集可以和他2000年的《寫作這回事：創作生涯回憶錄》(On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft)對照觀看。在這部新書裏，金介紹了每一個故事，描述了每個故事的創意和靈感來源。比如《沙丘》(The Dune)，講的是即將死去的人們的名字會顯示在一座沙丘上面，他是在佛羅里達州海灘上遛狗的時候突然想到這個點子的。還有些創意的源頭同樣不可思議：對巴士上一個女人的驚鴻一瞥、和兒子打賭輸了、和妻子在Applebee’s餐廳吃飯，看到一個男人給一起用餐的長者切牛排……《小小的綠色痛苦之神》(The Little Green God of Agony)的靈感則是來自1999年那場差點要了他的命的車禍，以及其後漫長的恢復期。
“When readers come to a short story or a novel, the writer disappears completely, and that should be the case in the story, but it’s sort of fun to be able to talk about where the story came from,” Mr. King said. “It was a pleasure to talk about the craft again.”
“讀者們讀到一個短篇小說或一部長篇小說時，作者就徹底消失了，故事就是這樣，但是能夠聊聊故事的靈感來源也不錯，”金說，“能夠再次聊起創作這門技巧，實在非常愉快。”
In a telephone interview, Mr. King spoke about what scares him, why he’d like to be known for more than horror stories and why he has vivid dreams when he’s not writing. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.
在電話採訪中，金說起了讓自己害怕的事情；他爲什麼希望以恐怖小說之外的作品而爲人所知；不寫作的時候，他爲什麼總能做栩栩如生的夢。以下是經過編輯的談話節選。
Q. This collection seems to showcase your stylistic range. Was that an intentional effort, to emphasize the diversity of your work?
問：這部小說集展示了你創作體裁的多樣；你是不是有意在強調自己風格的多樣化？
A. It was. I wanted to try to spread across this whole spectrum of different things that I’m able to do. And I guess part of that might have been a subconscious reaction to the idea of being dismissed as a horror writer and as the guy who does the monsters. I am the guy who does the monsters, but that doesn’t mean I can’t do other things as well.
答：是的。我想試着儘量去寫各種我能寫的東西。我經常被錯誤地視爲恐怖小說作家，是個只寫怪獸的傢伙，我覺得我對多樣化的嘗試部分可能是對這種看法的一種下意識的反應。我確實是那個寫怪獸的傢伙，但這並不意味着我寫不好別的。
Q. You’ve questioned the arbitrary divide between genre fiction and literary fiction in the past. Was that another goal of yours with this collection, to show people that those labels don’t matter or apply to you?
問：過去你曾經質疑類型小說與文學小說之間的壁壘。這本小說集是不是代表了你的另一個目標，向人們顯示任何標籤對你來說都不重要，或者說不適用於你？
A. That has to happen somewhere else. It can’t happen with me. I never sat down to write a story where I said, ‘This is going to be a piece of literary fiction,’ or ‘This is going to be a piece of genre fiction.’ I picked the story “Mile 81” because it’s a perfect example of the sort of thing that people expect from me, and it does hark back to the days when I was writing short fiction to pay the electric bill, and I knew what those men’s magazines wanted. They wanted a scary story that was kind of gruesome. I loved all that pulp stuff, and that’s what “Mile 81” is, it’s a pulp story, and I like to think it has a little more texture. So you start with that, and then you move on to “Premium Harmony” — that has a little more of a Raymond Carver feel to it. It isn’t an effort to try to convince people that I’m a literary writer, that I’m a Jonathan Franzen wearing a popular fiction hat. I don’t want to do that. I can only write what I can write, but I was able to look at the range of stories and arrange them in a certain way.
答：這種事可能會發生在別的什麼地方，卻不會發生在我身上。我從來都不會坐下來寫一篇小說，並且說：“我要寫一個文學小說，”或者“我要寫一個類型小說”。我選了《81英里休息區》(Mile 81)這一篇，因爲它是一個完美的例子，正是人們期待我寫的那種東西，它確實讓人想起我當年爲了付電費賬單而寫的那些短篇小說，我瞭解男性雜誌的需求，他們想要那種有點殘酷的恐怖故事。我喜歡那些低俗雜誌的調調，《81英里休息區》就是一個低俗小說，我覺得它更有質感一些。第一篇是這個，接下來是《和爲貴》(Premium Harmony)，它有點雷蒙德·卡佛(Raymond Carver)的感覺。它並不是爲了向人們證明我是個文學作家，是戴着流行小說帽子的喬納森·弗蘭岑(Jonathan Franzen)。我不想這樣。我只能寫自己能寫的東西，但我可以在這些故事的範疇之內，用合適的方式把它們安排好。
Q. In your introductions to the stories, you often describe how an idea will stay with you half-formed for years, until some catalyst makes you go back to it. Do you write your ideas down somewhere?
問：在你爲這些故事寫的介紹裏，你經常說，某個醞釀了一半的點子會在你頭腦停留好幾年，直到某個催化劑出現，讓你重新想起它。你會把這些點子記下來嗎？
A. I don’t write anything down, any ideas ever, because that’s a good way to immortalize really bad ideas. The bad ideas fall out. It’s a natural Darwinian process. They go away somehow. It’s like throwing a bunch of crackers in a sieve. Some of those ideas shake out because the crumbs get too small, but the big ones stay.
答：我什麼都不記下來，什麼點子都不記，因爲這樣就會永遠記住很多真正糟糕的點子。糟糕的點子會被忘掉。這是一個自然的，達爾文式的過程。它們自然地消失了。就像把一把碎餅乾扔在篩子上。有些點子被過濾掉，因爲碎屑太小了，但是大的都會留下來。
I have an idea right now about a guy who kills his wife, and then his wife shows up and she’s his wife, but she’s strange. She’s pale. I can see her right now. He knows that he’s killed her, and he goes and digs up the place that he buried her, see what I’m saying? And I don’t really know what he finds, whether it’s a body there, but it’s a story idea that stayed with me for a long time.
我現在就有個點子，一個男人殺掉了自己的妻子，然後他的妻子又出現了，她仍然是他的妻子，只不過非常奇怪。她很蒼白，她現在就浮現在我的面前。他知道自己殺死了她，於是跑去挖掘他埋葬她的地方，你明白我在說什麼嗎？我不確定他能找到什麼，有沒有找到屍體。但這是我想了很久的一個點子。
Q. You’re in an incredibly prolific phase. What do you think is driving your creativity at this late stage in your career?
問：你正處於非常高產的階段。在你寫作生涯的晚期，你的驅動力是什麼呢？
A. I’m not as a prolific as I used to be. There was a time when I published four books a year. As a college student, I had so much in my head that I had migraine headaches. Right now, I’m always happy if I have two or three ideas bouncing around that seem tasty.
答：我已經不像過去那樣高產了。有段時間，我一年出四本書。上大學的時候，我腦子裏有那麼多東西，結果得了偏頭疼。現在，如果我腦子裏還有兩三個看上去還不錯的好點子在活躍着，我就很高興了。
Q. You’ve said that when you’re not writing, if you have a break between books, you have especially vivid dreams. Why do you think that is?
問：你說過，不寫作的時候，在出書的間隙如果能休息，你就會做特別栩栩如生的夢。你覺得這是爲什麼？
A. You get habituated to the process, which is very mysterious, but it’s very much like dreaming. A lot of times I can’t remember where these stories came from or what it was like to write them because it’s like being in a trance state when I sit down to write.
答：你已經習慣了這個過程，它非常神祕，但它非常像是做夢。有很多次，我已經記不起筆下的故事是從哪兒來的，或者它們是怎麼寫的，因爲我坐下來寫東西的時候，感覺就像處於一種恍惚狀態。
Once the book is done, the stories are done, you don’t have anything in particular that you want to do. The process goes on, but it goes on at night, your brain does that, and you have the dreams. When I write again, it stops.
當一本書寫完，故事結束了，你又沒有什麼特別想做的事。這個過程還在繼續，不過是發生在夜裏，你的大腦非常活躍，就開始做夢。等我再次開始寫作，它就消失了。
Q. So you don’t remember your dreams?
問：那你不記得這些夢嗎？
A. No. I don’t have them. I don’t dream when I’m writing.
答：不，不記得。而且一開始寫作我就不做夢了。
Q. One of the stories was sparked by your near-fatal accident in 1999, when you were walking and were hit by a van. But in the introduction, you say that you’re “not in the business of confessional fiction” and that this story turned into a horror story instead. Why are you opposed to confessional writing?
問：這些短篇小說裏，有一篇是受1999年那場差點讓你送命的車禍啓發寫下的，當時你正在走路，被一輛麪包車撞了。但在簡介裏，你卻說自己“不寫自白式的小說”，而且這個故事最後變成了一個恐怖故事。你爲什麼不喜歡自白式的寫作？
A. You use your experiences to make the fiction more real to the reader. You rely on things that you absolutely know, because that gives you bedrock to stand on when you write the fiction, and I knew about pain. Pain is one of those things like sexual ecstasy that’s very difficult to write about unless you’ve experienced it. I knew about the therapy and how much it hurts, and I did want to write about that from the standpoint of some guy who didn’t want to go through the pain to get the positive benefit of it. And then it turned out that this guy really did have this sort of demonic creature inside of him. That was kind of cool.
答：你運用自己的經歷，讓小說對於讀者來說更真實。你依靠自己徹底瞭解的事物，因爲它給了你一個寫虛構小說的基礎。我瞭解這種痛苦。痛苦和性高潮一樣，除非你有親身體驗，否則是非常難寫的。我知道治療過程是什麼樣，知道那有多疼，我很想站在這樣一個人的視角來寫故事，他不想經歷這種痛苦去獲得其中的好處。結果這個人體內確實有那種邪惡生物。這還挺酷的。
I don’t live that interesting of a life. All I can do is take pieces of my own experience or even stuff from my reading or viewing and put them in a story that I think will entertain people. That’s the main job, to entertain people, and confession can get boring after a while. I guess that’s why I can’t see myself ever writing a full-blown memoir. I’m not sure anybody would want to read it.
我的生活不那麼有趣。我能做的只有把自己經歷的片段，或者我讀過、看到過的東西的片段拿出來，放進一個我覺得可以娛樂別人的故事裏。娛樂別人是我的主業，而自白過段時間就可能讓人厭煩。我覺得這也解釋了爲什麼我不會寫一本全面的回憶錄。我不確定有人會願意讀。
Q. What made you want to write scary stories in the first place?
問：你最早爲什麼想寫那些嚇人的故事呢？
A. Nothing. There are certain minerals, for lack of a better word, buried in our nature, that come with the DNA, that are part of the original equipment. For me, I was about 8 or 9 years old, and my brother and I were going through some stuff that my mother had in this crawl space in an apartment in Stratford, [Conn.], and there were boxes and boxes of my father’s stuff. There were a bunch of paperbacks, and one of them had a cover that showed this green monster crawling out of an open grave. My brother didn’t want anything to do with that, and I looked at that and thought, ‘That’s mine.’ I want to know what that’s about. As a kid, I went to see every horror movie I could possibly see. Sometimes my brother went with me. My brother’s two years older, and he would put his hat over his face. I never put my hat over my face.
答：沒什麼。我們的天性中有某種特殊的“礦藏”——我沒有更好的詞來形容它——它就在我們的DNA裏，就像是我們的原始裝備。我在八九歲的時候，和哥哥在（康涅狄格州）斯特拉特福德的公寓裏，看我媽媽堆在那低矮空間裏的東西，有好幾箱都是我爸爸的東西。有一大堆平裝書，還有一本書，封面是一個綠色的怪物，從敞開的墳墓裏爬出來。我哥哥不想看，我盯着這本書，想：“這是我的。”我想知道這本書裏講了什麼。小時候，我看過所有能看的恐怖電影。有時候哥哥也和我一起去，他比我大兩歲，看到恐怖的地方總是用帽子擋着臉。我從來不用帽子擋住臉。
Q. What are you most afraid of?
問：你最害怕的東西是什麼？
A. Everything? Death, but not even death so much as Alzheimer’s, premature senility. My idea of a horror movie is “Still Alice.” The things that scare me or interest me over the years are less drive-in movie horror stuff, and more, what can you find in real life that scares the devil out of you?
答：最害怕？死亡，但死亡也不像阿爾茲海默症那樣可怕，過早的衰老不能自理。我覺得最可怕的電影就是《依然愛麗絲》(Still Alice)。這些年來，讓我害怕，或者讓我感興趣的事不再是那種免下車影院裏放的恐怖片，而是那種現實生活中能把你嚇得半死的東西。
Q. You certainly have a talent for scaring people.
問：你的確很有嚇人的天賦。
A. But I want all the people who don’t like to be scared. I want to welcome them in a gentle way, and then scare them. I want to get them in there, where they can’t get out.
答：但我希望吸引那些不想被嚇到的人們。我想用一種溫和的方式迎接他們，然後再嚇住他們。我想帶他們進來，然後他們就別想離開。
