One of my most enduring school memories is of an austere English teacher urging us—a class of two dozen 13-year-old girls with all the raging hormones of a Harry Styles arena tour—not to succumb to the books of Jackie Collins. [qh]
我在学校最难忘的记忆之一,是一位严厉的英语老师敦促我们——一班二十多个十三岁的女孩,荷尔蒙泛滥,如同在哈里·斯泰尔斯(英国男歌手)巡演中一样——不要抵挡不住杰基·柯林斯的书
“If you read trash, girls,” she articulated, with icy precision, “you will write trash.” [qh]
“姑娘们,如果你们读垃圾书,”她用冰冷的语气直接指明,“你们就会写出垃圾的东西
Thinking back on this, all I can summon is: I wish. [qh]
回想起来,我能想到的只有: 我愿意
Collins sold half a billion novels during her life, made more than $100 million, and had a Beverly Hills mansion and a gold Jaguar XKR with the license plate lucky77. [qh]
柯林斯一生售出5亿本小说,收入超过1亿美元,拥有一栋比弗利山庄的豪宅和一辆牌照为lucky77的金色捷豹XKR跑车
We should all be so blessed as to write like she did.[qh]
能像她那样写作,我们应该会感到幸运
Still, for me, the message stuck—not a moralistic warning about the dangers of sexually explicit popular fiction, but an aesthetic one. [qh]
尽管如此,对我来说,这个教导仍然停留在我的脑海中——不是对露骨的通俗小说的危害的道德警告,而是一种美学警告
The idea that “bad” novels could poison someone’s thinking, could plant roots in the recesses of her brain only to send out shoots of florid prose years later, was an alarming one. [qh]
“不好”的小说可以毒害一个人的思想,可以在她的大脑深处扎下根来,要几年后才能文思泉涌,写出华丽的散文,这种想法令人担忧
I read all of Jackie Collins anyway, while feeling slightly embarrassed about it, my initiation into a world where virtually everything that’s pleasurable for women is shaded with guilt. [qh]
尽管如此,我还是读了杰基·柯林斯的所有作品,同时对此感到有点尴尬,我开始进入一个世界--几乎所有让女性愉悦的事物都笼罩着内疚的阴影
Her characters—bold, beautiful women striding through Hollywood in leopard-print jodhpurs and suede Alaia boots—embodied a combination of desirability and ambition that was totally intoxicating to a British teenager with a school uniform and a clarinet. [qh]
她笔下的人物——女性美丽而张扬,身着豹纹马裤、脚蹬麂皮靴子,大步流星,穿过好莱坞——体现了欲望与野心,让穿着校服、拿着单簧管的英国少年完全沉醉其中
And her writing did settle into my subconscious, I can see now, but not at all in the ways my teacher feared it would.[qh]
我现在能感觉到,她的作品确实进入了我的潜意识,但完全不是以我老师担心的方式
Dip even a toe into the pool of popular fiction by women writers, and you’ll discover that this word, trash, has a long lineage. [qh]
稍微涉猎一下女性作家的通俗小说,你就会发现“垃圾”这个词有着悠久的历史
George Eliot, in her 1856 essay “Silly Novels by Lady Novelists,” excoriated what she interpreted as “the most trashy and rotten kind of feminine literature,” a genre of contemporary fiction that concerned itself merely with “the ideal woman in feelings, faculties, and flounces,” written by ladies in “elegant boudoirs, with violet-colored ink and a ruby pen.” [qh]
乔治·艾略特在1856年的小说《女作家写的蠢故事》中,痛斥了她所认为的“最垃圾、最糟糕的女性文学”,这是一种当代小说类型,只关注“有情感、才能和裙边的理想女性”,由女性在“优雅的闺房里,用蓝紫色的墨水和红宝石色的笔”写出来
One year earlier, Nathaniel Hawthorne, in a fit of pique, had vented to his publisher about the “damned mob of scribbling women” dominating the American literary market. [qh]
一年前,纳撒尼尔·霍桑一气之下,向他的出版商发泄了对“一群该死的乱写乱画的女人”统治美国文学市场的不满
“I should have no chance of success,” he pouted, “while the public is occupied with their trash.”[qh]
他撅着嘴说:“当公众忙着阅读垃圾时,我是不会有成功的机会的