译者：在2022年收到的圣诞节礼物中，有一本书（纸质）。因为作者的名字是Yiyun Li，我立马搜了一下。然后，借了她的两部小说（电子版）；可惜，都没有看完，虽然她的文笔很棒。为什么？我感觉太压抑了。

《鹅书》是我唯一能够“坚持听完”的李翊云的小说。（不是所有的书，我都愿意听完。时间是“有限的”，即使是我三心二意地在听。）

我们为什么要写小说？

李翊云的新小说《鹅书》探讨我们的创作欲望。

在《鹅书》中，两位（乡村女）青少年设计的文学骗局拉近了虚构与现实之间的距离。

梅根·奥格雷迪

2022 年 9 月 18 日

《鹅书》；作者：李翊云

“仅仅知道一个故事还不够吗？ 为什么要花时间写出来（发表）？” 13 岁的阿涅斯感到奇怪。她是李翊云新小说《鹅书》中的两位青春期女孩之一。 这个问题（本身）不仅促使（成年后的）阿涅斯继续分享她们的故事，也推动了整个文学史的进程。是什么促使我们以这种方式分享我们的内心生活？ 通过出版将它们铭刻在世界上，我们能否捕捉到浩大的宇宙中的那一粒尘埃，携带着的“永恒”的东西？（By inscribing them on the world, can we ever capture something enduring in our speck-of-dust-in-the-universe existence?）

对于那些不创造官方历史、不假装是自己命运的英雄的人来说，文学一直是他们的避风港。【译者：是的；但是，一旦发表了，就可能迎来暴风骤雨？】这显然适合描述李翊云的作品；它们涉及的范围相当广泛：两本精彩的故事集、一本散文回忆录和四部（在此之前）已经出版的小说。其中包括可能是我读过的最凄凉的小说《流浪者》；这部小说细致入微地描绘20 世纪 70 年代末中国的一个   （普普通通的）小社区。她的最令人心碎的小说是：《原因终结之处》；这是一位母亲和她已故儿子之间的对话。这是作者在自己的一个孩子自杀后写的。 通常，李翊云书页面上的人物的沉默寡言（一种不应该被误认为是被动的坚忍主义）与她在书里的故事的怪异、过度的宏伟之间存在着一种紧张关系。作者深信：（孩子的）生命极其重要，值得母亲如此精确和温柔地叙述（给读者）。

从表面上看，《鹅书》讲述的是 20 世纪 50 年代的两位法国（女）青少年阿涅斯(Agnès) 和法比安 (Fabienne) 设计的一场文学骗局。他们生活在一个荒凉的村庄，精神上和物质上都非常匮乏。 “我们“非常贫穷，”（成年后的）阿涅斯回忆道。 他们的村庄圣雷米饱受第二次世界大战的蹂躏，成为一个即使是欢乐的时刻也似乎会带来厄运的地方：法比安的姐姐爱上一名美国大兵；在分娩时和婴儿一起死去。 阿涅斯的哥哥让（Jean）从德国劳工营回到家后，成了床的囚犯；他眼神空洞，常常咳血。

当阿涅斯在学校读书时，斗志旺盛、近乎野性的法比安则整天照顾农场里的动物、侍候她喝醉的父亲和兄弟（书中没有提到她母亲），以及制作涉及鬼魂和墓地的游戏。 性格比较温顺的阿涅斯是“法比安的磨刀石”。阿涅斯意识到，如果不是因为她那位更大胆、更聪明的朋友（法比安），她会像其他女孩一样，在笔记本上写下情歌的歌词，对生活一无所求，除了（想要）丝袜和男孩。 “如果过着平凡的生活，寻找‘并非独特的刺激’，那将是一场多么悲惨的人生啊。”【译者：这让我想起刚刚看过的日本电影Perfect Days，描述的是一种“超级平凡的生活“。也许，因为它的主角是一位60岁的”老人（智者）”？】

为了让人们“了解我们的感受”，法比安想出了一个新的消遣游戏：她会给阿涅斯编故事。阿涅斯的字比法比安的漂亮；阿涅斯的外貌“更令人愉快”。阿涅斯记录下来这些故事，并承认是其（唯一的）作者。 她们一起请来了镇上的邮政员 M. Devaux（按照圣雷米的标准，他受过良好的教育并且很懂文字）来帮助她们修改手稿并将其提交给出版商。 尽管困难重重，（因为这本书讲述了一系列涉及儿童死亡的恐怖故事，）书出版后大受欢迎，并因其“超级的诚实性”而受到称赞。 阿涅斯受邀前往巴黎为书做宣传；在那里她被誉为“一位描写战后生活的无畏的年轻小说家”。

虽然法比安是这个计划背后的推动者，但是阿涅斯——她的巴黎之行（获得的）经历激发了她的“可能性”感——事实证明，她更擅长告诉世界他们想听的东西，神秘地回答媒体关于她的书的真实性的问题 。 （在这里，我想起了耶日·科辛斯基的《被涂污的鸟》的受欢迎程度。他对被占领的波兰农民的堕落进行了耸人听闻的描述，当书于 1965 年在美国首次出版时，它至少被认为是半自传体，受到热烈欢迎——尽管读者也可能会发现李翊云本人多年来所受的媒体关注的影子。）“记者和评论家，这些没有头脑的人，拒绝看到生与死之间的距离总是比人们愿意理解（接受）的要短得多，” （成年后的）阿涅斯反思道。

虚构的小说与现实之间的距离也更短。 “所有的世界，无论是虚构的还是现实的，都同样真实。 因此，它们也同样不真实。”（成年后的）阿涅斯沉思道；回忆起她无法与法比安谈论自己在巴黎的经历。 如果对于巴黎人来说，乡村是人类最恶劣的一面的直观投射，那么对于村民来说，巴黎可能就是梦幻岛。 成年后的阿涅斯嫁给了一位美国人，居住在宾夕法尼亚州；当她被问及法国时尚或美食时，她也经历了类似的不和谐。她想象着与她的家庭主妇邻居们分享一些更真实的乡村生活：“被暴雨冲刷出来的蛆虫””或“被宰杀的猪的尖叫声，它们的喘息声被其源源不断的嘶嘶声所取代。”（their panting replaced by a liquid hiss）

李翊云从来都不是那种会告诉读者他们想听的东西的作家；这无疑是她在四十多岁的时候就成为我们（在世的）最优秀作家之一的部分原因：她优雅的“形而上学”永远不会回避血和蛆。 阿涅斯和法比安成功地写出了一个由她们自己创造的令人兴奋的“非法世界”，一个承认她们痛苦的世界，但李翊云并没有因为女孩们的情感法西斯主义（the girls’ emotional fascism）而退缩。 村子里冷漠的残酷行为在她们建造的虚构王国和她们操纵现实世界中长辈的方式上都得到了重演，并带来了严重的后果。【译者：这些残酷行为，让我非常吃惊。】 她们“两人世界的”友谊的各个方面，最初可能会让人与埃琳娜·费兰特（Elena Ferrante）的“四重奏小说”（Neapolitan novels）进行比较；但随着小说的进展，阿涅斯在一位精通公关的校长的要求下进入英国精修学校；让我想起了芙蓉·贾吉（Fleur Jaeggy；译者：她是一位瑞士作家，用意大利语写作）和穆里尔·斯帕克（Muriel Spark；译者：她是一位苏格兰小说家、短篇小说作家、诗人、和散文家）特酷的写作风格。 她们的关系变成了一种书信关系——法比安用自己的名字和虚构的追求者（男朋友）的名字同时给阿涅斯写信——游戏规则、她们的友谊，甚至小说本身，都变得越来越暧昧。

所有的小说（All fiction）都是一种骗局，因为它编造出一种错觉，用虚构的人物和情境来煽动读者真实的感情。 《鹅书》是李翊云的所有小说中最带有令人兴奋的娱乐性的一部。它是一个存在主义寓言；它阐明了我们创作故事背后错综复杂的动机：理解和报复我们自身存在的真相，让人们知道什么是痛苦。 成为我们自己，纪念我们心中的村庄里还活着的那些人。 但正是我们阅读小说的冲动背后的动机，以及为什么我们如此急切地进入这种幻觉，让李翊云的这部小说吸引我（读完）：一种让（自己的）生命暂停的愿望，以便我们更具体、更生动地回到自己所了解的现实生活中——也许我们还是要相信我们自己（努力）的“后果”，尽管事实恰恰是相反的。

梅根·奥格雷迪是科罗拉多大学博尔德分校的教授，正在写一本关于艺术与生活的书。

Why Write? Yiyun Li’s New Novel Explores Our Urge to Invent.

In “The Book of Goose,” a literary hoax devised by two teenagers closes the distance between fiction and reality.

By Megan O’Grady

Sept. 18, 2022

THE BOOK OF GOOSE, by Yiyun Li

“Isn’t it enough just to know a story? Why take the time to write it out?” wonders 13-year-old Agnès, one of two adolescent girls at the center of Yiyun Li’s new novel, “The Book of Goose.” The question drives not only the tale Agnès proceeds to tell us, but the entire course of literary history. What moves us to share our inner lives in this way? By inscribing them on the world, can we ever capture something enduring in our speck-of-dust-in-the-universe existence?

Literature has always been a safe house for people who don’t make official histories, who don’t pretend to be the heroes of their own destiny. That’s certainly true of Li’s wide-ranging body of work: two virtuosic story collections, a memoir-in-essays and four previous novels, which include what might be the bleakest work of fiction I’ve ever read — “The Vagrants,” a granular portrait of a small community amid the political oppression of late-1970s China — and the most heart-rending: “Where Reasons End,” a dialogue between a mother and her deceased son, written after the suicide of one of the author’s own children. Often, there’s a tension between the reticence of the people on Li’s pages — a stoicism that shouldn’t be mistaken for passivity — and the eerie, supersaturated grandeur of Li’s storytelling, with its insistence that life matters enough to recount it with such precision and tenderness.

“The Book of Goose” is, on its face, about a literary hoax devised between two French teenagers in the 1950s, Agnès and Fabienne, who grow up in a desolate village in which privation is as spiritual as it is material. “Well-proportioned we were not,” recalls Agnès, who narrates in retrospect. Ravaged by World War II, their village, St. Rémy, is the kind of place in which even moments of joy seem to precipitate doom: After falling in love with an American G.I., Fabienne’s older sister dies in childbirth along with her infant; Agnès’s brother, Jean, returns home from a German labor camp only to become a prisoner of his bed, vacant-eyed and coughing up blood.

While Agnès attends school, the scrappier, nearly feral Fabienne spends her days tending farm animals, waiting on her drunken father and brothers (her mother’s absence is unexplained), and cooking up games involving ghosts and graveyards. A “whetstone to Fabienne’s blade,” the more biddable Agnès realizes that she would have been like other girls had it not been for her bolder and more brilliant friend, writing down the lyrics to love songs in her notebook, wanting nothing more from life than stockings and boys. “What a tragedy that would have been,” she decides, “living an interchangeable life, looking for interchangeable excitements.”

The desire to make people “know how it feels to be us” prompts Fabienne to come up with a new diversion: She will tell Agnès stories; Agnès, who has better penmanship and a “more pleasant look,” will transcribe them and take credit for their authorship. Together, they enlist the town’s postmaster, M. Devaux, who is educated and worldly by St. Rémy standards, to help them revise the manuscript and submit it to a publisher. Against all odds, the book, a series of macabre stories involving the death of a child, becomes a hit, praised for its “ferocious honesty.” Agnès is invited to Paris to promote the book, where she’s hailed as “a savage young chronicler of the postwar life.”

While Fabienne is the engine behind the scheme, it is Agnès — her sense of possibility ignited by her Paris adventures — who turns out to be more skilled at telling the world what it wants to hear, answering questions from the press about her book’s verisimilitude enigmatically. (Here I was reminded of the reception of Jerzy Kosinski’s “The Painted Bird,” his lurid account of peasant depravity in occupied Poland, which was eagerly embraced as at least semi-autobiographical when it was first published in the United States in 1965 — though one may also detect echoes of the publicity machine Li herself has been subjected to over the years.) “The journalists and critics, mindless people, refused to see that the distance between life and death was always shorter than people are willing to understand,” Agnès reflects.

The distance between fiction and reality is shorter, too. “All worlds, fabricated or not, are equally real. And so they are equally unreal,” Agnès muses, recalling her frustrated efforts to talk about her experiences in the capital with Fabienne. If, for Parisians, the countryside serves as a handy projection for the worst of humanity, then for the villagers, Paris might as well be Neverland. Later, the adult Agnès, married to an American and living in Pennsylvania, experiences a similar dissonance when she’s asked about French fashion or cuisine and imagines sharing some of the more authentic textures of village life with her housewifely interlocutors: “the maggots unearthed by the torrential rain,” or “the screeching of butchered pigs, their panting replaced by a liquid hiss.”

Li, of course, has never been the kind of writer who tells you what you want to hear, and this is surely part of why she has become, while still in her 40s, one of our finest living authors: Her elegant metaphysics never elide the blood and maggots. Agnès and Fabienne succeed in creating a thrillingly illicit world of their own making, one that acknowledges their pain, but Li doesn’t flinch from the girls’ emotional fascism. The indifferent cruelty of the village is re-enacted both in the fictional realm they’ve built and in the way they manipulate, with grave consequences, their real-world elders. Aspects of their hothouse friendship may initially invite comparison to Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels, but as the novel progresses and Agnès lands, at the behest of a P.R.-savvy headmistress, in a British finishing school, I was reminded of the cooler registers of Fleur Jaeggy and Muriel Spark. Their relationship becomes an epistolary one — Fabienne sends Agnès letters under both her own name and that of an invented suitor — and the rules of the game, of their friendship, and indeed, of the novel itself, become increasingly ambiguous.

All fiction is a kind of hoax in that it spins a delusion, inciting genuine feelings with invented characters and situations. The most propulsively entertaining of Li’s novels, “The Book of Goose” is an existential fable that illuminates the tangle of motives behind our writing of stories: to apprehend and avenge the truth of our own being, to make people know what it feels like to be us, to memorialize the people we keep alive in the provincial villages of our hearts. But it’s the motives behind our impulse to read fiction, and why we enter this delusion so eagerly, that occupied me through Li’s novel: the desire to suspend life in order to return to it more specifically and more vividly known to ourselves — and perhaps in order to believe, despite all evidence to the contrary, in our own consequence.

Megan O’Grady is a professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and is working on a book about art and life.