《渺小一生》是柳原的试验田？

“还没有查作者的信息，不知道她的创作意图是什么。如果有机会见到她，只想问她一句，她觉得什么样的读者最渴望读这本书呢？像我这样的吃瓜群众吗？当然不是，吃瓜群众跟最渴望读这本书的读者比起来，只不过是占比大的读者而已。如果说谁真的超级超级想读这本书，那当属现实生活中的‘裘德’们了吧，或者现实中的‘裘德’身边的人。然而，我却希望他们不要读这本书。原因不只是作者对裘德太残忍了，恨不得世界上所有性侵受害者能够遭遇的伤痛都加到了他身上，甚至还有孤儿、残疾等等惨状。一定要这么惨吗？一定要这么惨才能吸引读者吗？一定要以这种手段‘唤醒’读者的共情吗？说到共情，什么样子的读者会对这本书的共情最深呢？不就是生活中的‘裘德’和爱着他的人吗。书中裘德的惨状、结局，很有可能已经深深潜伏在生活中的‘裘德’们的潜意识里了。我不禁怀疑，作者究竟爱不爱、心不心疼裘德，无论是她自己笔下的，还是现实生活中的。”

以上这段话是我花了八天时间，每天读一个小时左右，刚刚读完这本书时在地铁上记录下来的感受。而现在，我对作者本人的质疑不但没有减少，反而随着浏览的一些资料而越来越深。我现在甚至觉得这本书的创作是作者的自我高潮，读者只是她的试验小白鼠而已。

首先，我并不觉得作者本人了解同性恋群体。外网有媒体称这本书为the great gay novel，媒体们是认真的吗？即使我自己不是同性恋群体、不了解同性恋群体，我也能感觉出来作者对同性恋或者说同志群体不了解呀。譬如，威廉对裘德的感情转变、他的某方面需求、裘德自己的取向等等。至于卢克修士那种人，他们那是恋童癖、是变态，不是同性恋！为了证明这不是我个人的臆测，我上了一下外国豆瓣goodreads，发现了以下两条读者评论。至少这两条评论来自同志，而他们都表达了作者本人对同志群体并不了解。

goodreads上的读者评论

还是goodreads上的读者评论

其次，关于这本书的暴力情节描写，我不知道理想国的编辑当初看到原稿是什么想法，对作者创作这么多的暴力情节有没有质疑过，又有没有对其进行删减。作为一个读者来讲，我不知道真实的性侵有多可怕，林奕含和伊藤诗织的描写已经让我觉得恐怖到不敢生孩子了，而她们所经历的远远比不上《渺小一生》里的裘德。抱着作者为什么要这样创作的好奇心，我又去外网搜索了一下她的想法，发现她的编辑曾经就暴力情节的限度问题与她争论过。我贴上几句她的原话，渣翻见谅，如果有理解错误也欢迎指出。

1、"I think it's a specious argument, this idea that the reader can't take certain things," says Yanagihara. "One of the things that I really did fight against with this book was the sense of subtlety. I wanted to go all the way to the limit of good taste. If it comes to wobbling over that line, then I wanted to be willing to wobble and not have it be seen as chilly or remote. I wanted it to be really maximalist, which is not typically how I am on the page, but I wanted to defy my own instincts.”

“我觉得，认为读者受不了一些事情是个似是而非的观点。我自己确实与这本书做过斗争，而其中之一就是那种微妙的感觉。 我想一路走到好的极限。 如果读这本书的感觉在边缘线的地方摇摆，那么我愿意让它摇摆，而不是让它变得寒冷或遥远。 我希望这本书展现的是真正的极端主义，这通常不是我展现在书面上的形式，但我想要违抗自己的直觉。”

2、“One of the things my editor and I did fight about,” she says, “is the idea of how much a reader can take. To me you get nowhere second guessing how much can a reader stand and how much can she not. What a reader can always tell is when you are holding back for fear of offending them. I wanted there to be something too much about the violence in the book, but I also wanted there to be an exaggeration of everything, an exaggeration of love, of empathy, of pity, of horror. I wanted everything turned up a little too high. I wanted it to feel a little bit vulgar in places. Or to be always walking that line between out and out sentimentality and the boundaries of good taste. I wanted the reader to really press up against that as much as possible and if I tipped into it in a couple of places, well, I couldn’t really stop it.”

“我的编辑和我的确就一件事争吵过，”她说，“那就是一个读者可以接受多少。对我来说，你无法猜测读者能接受多少，不能接受多少。 读者总会说的是你因为害怕得罪他们而退缩。我希望在这本书中展现很多关于暴力的东西，但我也希望夸大一切，夸大爱情、同情、怜悯和恐惧。我希望一切都变得有点脱轨。 我希望这本书在某些地方会让人感觉有点粗俗，或者总是在让人‘感伤’以及‘觉得这本书很好’的边缘之间摇摆。我希望读者能够尽可能地反对这一点。如果我在这本书的某些地方倾向于这种想法，那么我无法阻止它。”

不知道读到这里的小伙伴有什么想法，反正我读到作者的这些想法时很愤怒，不是因为觉得自己像是作者的小白鼠，而是为了生活中的“裘德”、“房思琪”、“伊藤诗织”们。我们为什么会读小说？因为我们能够通过阅读主人公的生活，体会到另一种生活。我们为什么会为了小说中的人物的经历而欢笑、痛苦？因为我们拥有共情，这种人类的情感本能。我们会不会因为小说中的主人公跟自己经历的痛苦相同而去阅读一本书？非常可能会。至于作者，她似乎从未认真思考过最渴望读到这本书的读者，是生活中的“裘德”们。也许是因为这样，她才可以心安理得地觉得自己的暴力情节描写只是游走在读者觉得好不好边缘的一种试探。而也许正是因为她从来没有考虑过生活中的“裘德”们，所以当记者问道裘德能否有其他结局时，她回答得非常肯定：裘德不可能有其他结局。我真的很想当面问她一句，身为一个作者，她难道不明白当这本书上市的时候，裘德就已经不是她一个人的裘德，而是所有读者们的裘德了吗？她真的不明白裘德已经是某个群体的符号代表了吗？她回答的关于裘德的问题，已经不单纯只是关于裘德这个角色的问题了。她真的没有意识到这一点吗？她觉得自己这样回答，对生活中的“裘德”们不是一种伤害吗？

以下是两段采访的问答。

1、“Jude’s story is heart-breaking. Did you know from the outset to what degree, if any, Jude might recover from his childhood trauma and abuse?”

“Yes. I always knew that the book would be his slow awakening to the fact that he's just too damaged to recover, that he is, in a fundamental sense, irreparable. I wanted his recognition of this to mirror the reader's: there are points in the book in which the reader knows more than the characters, and points in which the characters know more than the reader. But I wanted the reader to come to this particular realization in tandem with Jude.”

“裘德的故事令人心碎。 从一开始你就知道裘德可能从童年的创伤和虐待中恢复到什么程度吗？”

“是，我一直都知道裘德在这本书里会缓慢地了解到他受的伤太深了没有办法治愈，他从根本上无法挽回一切的事实。我希望他对这一点的认识能够反映读者的观点：书里表达了一些观点，有的时候读者比角色更清楚，有的时候角色比读者更清楚。不过我希望读者可以和裘德一同认识到这个事实。”

2、“Why did you resist giving him the happy ending that seemed at least at one point to beckon so strongly? It feels as if some kind of recovery or at least reconciliation was so close, were it not for the intervention of a purely external event.”

“I don't think Jude's story could've ended any other way. Even without that last death (trying not to be spoilery here!), I think his past would've become so overwhelming that he only had one option available to him. And I think it was the right one, the only one.”

“为什么你拒绝给他一个幸福的结局呢？至少在某个时刻似乎强烈地让人觉得他就要拥有幸福的结局了，那种感觉就像某种治愈或者和解离他非常近，如果没有发生纯粹的外部事件干预的话。”

“我认为裘德的故事不会有任何其他方式的结局。即使没有最后的死亡（试图不要在这儿剧透！），我认为他过去的经历把他压垮了，以至于他只有一个选择。我认为这是正确的结局，唯一的结局。”

至于这本书的创作意图、四个角色的事业都成功得不像话，我已经无力吐槽了，贴上外网的资料供大家参考吧。下面这段话有空的话我会整理出来，看了这段话更加觉得这本书只是作者的试验田。

One of the things I wanted to do with this book was create a protagonist who never gets better. I also wanted the narrative to have a slight sleight-of-hand quality: The reader would begin thinking it a fairly standard post-college New York City book (a literary subgenre I happen to love), and then, as the story progressed, would sense it was becoming something else, something unexpected. I turned repeatedly to two pieces of art to remind myself of this sensation. One of the ways I’d always described the book (to my editor and to my agent) was as a piece of ombré cloth: something that began on one end as a bright, light bluish-white, and ended as something so dark it was nearly black. I wanted it to approximate in language and feeling the pieces in Prada’s fall/winter 2007 ready-to-wear collection: skirts and jackets of heat-set, wrinkled woolen silks, their colors shading from pumpkins and greens into deep blacks. The other piece I returned to was Chip Kidd’s 1996 cover for aNew York Times Magazinearticle by Andrew Sullivan about how combination therapies could mean the cessation of widespread death from AIDS in the United States, particularly among gay men. I remember being fascinated by the article, of course, but also by the cover, which remains one of my all-time-favorite pieces of editorial art: In it, the type starts out as “sick” — blurry, clotty, barely decipherable — and then, as it moves down the page, gets healthier, crisper, brighter, more legible. I wantedA Little Lifeto do the reverse: to begin healthy (or appear so), and end sick— both the main character, Jude, and the plot itself.

这张图片是根据《渺小一生》改编的舞台剧剧照。我们总说让性侵受害者报案讲述自己的经历是一种二次伤害，难道作者本人对这本书的创作不是对性侵受害者们的二次伤害吗？难道把这本不成熟的书搬上舞台不是对性侵受害者们的二次伤害吗？