7.The future of fiction：Sick lit（660）

Passage Seven

The future of fiction(novel)：Sick lit

小说的未来：疾病文学

【1】When the World entered lockdowns for covid in 2020, writers and critics, finding themselves with even more time on their hands than usual, wondered how the pandemic would affect fiction.

2020年，世界因新冠肺炎进入封锁状态，作家和评论家发现自己比以往有更多的时间可以支配，于是纷纷开始思考这场疫情将如何影响小说创作。

【2】Since the "Iliad", literature has documented—and been shaped by—disease, including Daniel Defoe's semi-fictional testimony(evidence) of London during the pestilence of 1655, "A Journal of the Plague Year" (1722), and Albert Camus's imagining of a cholera outbreak in a French-controlled Algerian city, "The Plague" (1947). Who would write the first great pandemic novel of the covid era?

自《伊利亚特》以来，文学开始记录疾病，并开始被疾病塑造，包括丹尼尔·笛福对1655年瘟疫期间伦敦的半虚构证明《瘟疫年纪事》(1722)，以及阿尔伯特·缪对法国控制下阿尔及利亚城市爆发霍乱的想象《鼠疫》(1947)。谁会写出新冠时代的第一部伟大疫情小说?

【3】Two of America's most distinguished(outstanding) novelists, Michael Cunningham and Sigrid Nunez, have published novels that try to carry this mantle.

美国两位最杰出的小说家迈克尔·坎宁安和西格丽德·努涅斯都出版了小说，试图继承这一衣钵。

【4】Despite their new subject matter, however, these books do not break literary ground. Covid did not, as some had predicted(forecast), permanently(enduringly) change the way people lived. As fear of the virus ebbed, they snapped back to old habits. The same is proving true for fiction.

然而，尽管这些书的主题新颖，但却并没有在文学领域取得突破。新冠并没有像一些人预测的那样永久改变了人们的生活方式。随着对病毒的恐惧消退，人们又恢复了旧习惯。小说也是如此。

【5】The narrator of "The Vulnerables", like Ms Nunez, is an older writer who lives in New York. She ends up isolating in a luxury apartment with a friend's parrot, pointedly named Eureka, and a bratty(annoying) 20-something, whom she slowly grows to appreciate.

《脆弱者》的叙述者，就像努涅斯女士一样，是一位生活在纽约的年长作家。她最终被隔离在一间豪华公寓里，和一个朋友的鹦鹉一起生活，鹦鹉的名字叫尤里卡。同居的还有一个20多岁惹人不快的年轻人，但后来她慢慢地发现了这个人的闪光之处。

【6】This writer has all the stereotypical concerns of a middle-aged, middle-class American, but her real covid crisis is literary.

这位作家具备美国中年中产阶级的所有刻板印象，但她真正的新冠危机是文学。

【7】Suffering from writer's block, she concludes that "the traditional novel" has lost its "urgency". Now readers want "a literature of personal history and reflection(rethink): direct, authentic(true), scrupulous(careful) about fact"

她饱受写作障碍之苦，总结道，“传统小说” 已经失去其“迫切性”。现在读者想要的是“一种关于个人历史和反思的文学，直接、真实、对事实一丝不苟”。

【8】Like "The Friend", which drew on Ms Nunez's own life and won the National Book Award in 2018, "The Vulnerables" reads as autobiographical fiction.

于2018年获得美国国家图书奖的《朋友》一 书取材于努涅斯女士本人的生活。与《朋友》一样，《脆弱者》读起来像是本自传体小说。

【9】In recent years juggernauts of "autofiction", including Rachel Cusk and Karl Ove Knausgaard, have turned away from this style. (Genre and historical fiction, rather than literature focused on the first person, is ascendant.) Ms Nunez's narrator, whose reflections on life, art and children read like a boomer's pandemic diary, is familiar—and not in a good way.

近年来，包括蕾切尔•库斯克和卡尔•奥夫•克瑙斯加德在内的“自传体小说”文豪已经放弃了这种风格。(体裁小说和历史小说正在崛起，以第一人称为中心的文学正在走下坡路。)努涅斯女士的叙述者对生活、艺术和儿童的反思读起来就像婴儿潮一代的疫情日记，熟悉，但不是一种好的方式。

【10】Mr Cunningham's "Day" is the kind of traditional novel about imaginary people Ms Nunez suggests is now obsolete(outdated). But it is much more alive precisely because it looks from the outside in, rather than staying locked in a single head.

坎宁安先生的《一天》是努涅斯认为现在已经过时的那种关于虚构人物的传统小说。但它之所以更为生动，正是因为它从外部的视角观察，而不是准确的存在。

【11】Set on April 5th across three years (2019, 2020 and 2021), "Day" tells the story of a young family in Brooklyn. Dan, an ageing rock'n'roller, and Isabel, a photo editor, have two young children and their fair share of burnout.

《一天》中的故事发生在2019年、2020年和2021年的4月5日，讲述了布鲁克林一个年轻家庭的故事。丹是一名上了年纪的摇滚歌手，伊莎贝尔是一名图像编辑，他们有两个年幼的孩子，他们都感到非常疲惫。

【12】Covid accelerates the unravelling of their marriage and the relationships of several other people they know. "Day" is alive with all of the small thoughts, looks and feelings that covid amplified, like "the isolated inhabitedness" of Dan's days.

新冠加速了他们婚姻的破解，也使他们与几位认识的人之间的关系逐渐瓦解。这本书充满了被新冠放大的所有小想法、表象和感受，就像丹所经的偏远的“与世隔绝”的日子一样。

【13】Coincidentally, both "The Vulnerables" and "Day" offer tribute to Virginia Woolf, a celebrated(famous) British writer. Ms Nunez begins and ends considering a line from Woolf's "The Years" ("It was an uncertain spring").

巧合的是，《脆弱者》和《一天》都致敬了英国著名作家弗吉尼亚·伍尔芙。努涅斯女士以伍尔芙《岁月》中的一句话作为开头和结尾(“那是个不确定的春天”)。

【14】Mr Cunningham shares the day-long focus of Woolf's "Mrs Dalloway", which he also employed in his Pulitzer-prizewinning novel, "The Hours" (1998). But, unlike Woolf, neither of these novelists pushes the boundaries(limits) of fiction for their era.

坎宁安先生分享了伍尔芙的《达洛维夫人》中一整天的故事，他在自己的普利策奖获奖小说《时时刻刻》中也采用了这一手法。但是，与伍尔芙不同的是，这两位小说家都没有突破他们那个时代小说的界限。

【15】Unlike other historical traumas(wounds)—the first and second world wars, or September 11th—the pandemic's impact on fiction, as on art more generally, has so far been muted. With lockdown an increasingly distant memory, Ms Nunez's and Mr Cunningham's books may be most significant(important) as historical novels set in a time that now seems stranger than fiction.

与其他历史创伤（第一次和第二次世界大战，或者9·11事件）不同的是，这场疫情对小说的影响，以及对艺术的影响，到目前为止都是微乎其微的。随着封城成为越来越遥远的记忆，努涅斯女士和坎宁安先生的书可能是在这个现在看来比小说更陌生的时代背景下，最重要的历史小说。

【16】They are documents of a new normal that soon slipped right back into the old. Both novels remind readers how much their lives changed during the pandemic, but also, at least for writers and readers of literary fiction, how much stayed the same.

它们是一种对新常态的记录，而这种新常态很快又回到了旧常态。这两部小说都提醒读者，他们的生活在疫情期间发生了多大的变化，但至少对文学小说的作家和读者来说，有多少东西保持不变。