美国国家公共电台 NPR An Iraq Veteran, Heroin Addict, Bank Robber And Debut Novelist

 

MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:

A debut¹ novel called "Cherry" is getting a lot of buzz ahead of its release tomorrow. It has been called the first great novel of the opioid epidemic², also one of the best war novels in a generation. NPR's Quil Lawrence spoke³ with the author on the phone.

QUIL LAWRENCE, BYLINE⁴: Nico Walker is in jail for robbing banks.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: This call is from a federal prison.

NICO WALKER: All right, good, we got that out of the way.

LAWRENCE: He can use the pay phone for 15 minutes at a time, and then he has to wait half an hour. It took a while to do an interview. And that's also sort of the way he wrote his novel "Cherry" - on a typewriter with a hundred other guys looking over his shoulder.

WALKER: It was something that I was doing, you know, while I was locked up. You know, it was something to pass the time. You know, but I didn't - I wasn't planning to write a novel - you know, autobiographical or anything like that.

LAWRENCE: But it's pretty autobiographical. The unnamed narrator of "Cherry" is naked and vulnerable, literally⁵. In the first pages of the book, he's stripped and gets ice shoved down his underwear. Walker's writing has a similar effect. The narrator and his college girlfriend fall into what they know is love but also know won't last. He drops out of school and joins the Army. Here's Walker reading from his novel over the lousy prison pay phone.

WALKER: (Reading) We would get married before I went to Iraq. She brought it up this time. She said it made practical sense.

LAWRENCE: The sound was so bad we had someone here at NPR read from the novel.

WALKER: (Reading) If we were married, I'd get...

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: (Reading) If we were married, I'd get paid more, and she could be on my health insurance. And I'd get to marry Emily. But we're going to get divorced, she said. I said that was fine. I said, we'll get divorced if that's what you want.

LAWRENCE: The humor works because Walker and his narrator have no pretensions⁶, not about love or about being a combat-decorated Iraq veteran. Even in boot camp and heading for Iraq, Walker's narrator still feels like an impostor, and he suspects everyone around him does, too.

WALKER: (Reading) And Drill Sergeant⁷ Cole...

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: (Reading) Drill Sergeant Cole punched me in the penis for no reason. You'd have that, though. You just have to remember it was all make-believe. The drill sergeants⁸ were just pretending to be drill sergeants. We were pretending to be soldiers. And the Army was pretending to be the Army.

WALKER: (Reading) He had me do pushups till I reached muscle failure. It...

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: (Reading) It didn't take three minutes to get there. Still, I did a lot of pushups. I was good at them. Most of us could do pushups. And were the outcomes of all the wars decided⁹ by pushups and idle talk, America might never lose.

LAWRENCE: Walker writes about Iraq from a grunt's-eye level. The soldiers are playing video games, watching porn, huffing computer duster and also going on mission after mission to kick in doors. The narrator is a combat medic but still feels like a fraud when he fails to save the life of an Iraqi civilian¹⁰. He spends less time treating his fellow soldiers than collecting their body parts after bomb attacks. By the end of his deployment¹¹, he's too tired to pretend.

WALKER: (Reading) The worst possible outcome was to get killed at the end after all the [expletive].

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: (Reading) If you weren't going to go home, it was better to get killed early on. That was the logic¹². You didn't want to get killed at the end. Two from our battalion¹³ were killed that morning.

LAWRENCE: He talks his lieutenant¹⁴ out of a last dangerous foot patrol.

WALKER: (Reading) With all due respect, sir, they've got us...

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: (Reading) They've got us out here with three of the most obese¹⁵ [expletive]-bags in the company, and those are your dismounts. Think about it. Do you think you can take one of those guys dismounted, off road, in the [expletive] dark through all those [expletive] canals for a click?

WALKER: (Reading) That's going to make a lot of noise.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: (Reading) That's going to make a lot of noise. Those hajis will hear us coming all the way. We might as well drag a [expletive] piano with us. I've seen those guys on dismount patrols before, sir. They're a [expletive] disaster. They fall all over themselves. Borges can shoot, but he can't walk for [expletive], and the rest of them are an out-and-out [expletive] liability.

LAWRENCE: The only people who talk about Iraq like that are people who've been to Iraq. But Walker claims no moral authority. After all...

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: This call is from a federal prison.

WALKER: You know, one of the great things about being in prison for armed robbery is you don't really have a lot further down to go on the scale of reputation. You know what I mean?

LAWRENCE: The narrator comes home and gets mostly back together with his wife. They do divorce but then get wedded¹⁶ together by addiction¹⁷, first to pills and then heroin¹⁸.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: (Reading) The story of being a dope fiend is that people will lie to your face. And you can't call them on it lest they not give you what you need when they get around to it.

WALKER: (Reading) Saturday was no different. Emily and I...

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: (Reading) Emily and I awoke and shot up the last of our dope, and the day began. The day didn't begin until we had run out of dope and it was time to get some more.

LAWRENCE: And without any money or any dignity left and without much to go for him except a relatively¹⁹ cool head around guns and a total insensitivity to lawful²⁰ behavior outside a war zone - well, you can see where this is going.

WALKER: (Reading) I had a theory. My theory was that I was a piece of [expletive] that deserved it when bad things happened to me. Was I bitter - a little of course. But a loss was a loss. You didn't ever get it back. Even if you recouped the money, the injury was still done. What was best was to write it off.

LAWRENCE: Walker has two more years on his sentence, but things are looking up. At last count, his book is sold in eight languages. Nico Walker says he's already using the money to pay back some of the banks he robbed. Quil Lawrence, NPR News.

1 debut   

n.首次演出，初次露面

参考例句：

• That same year he made his Broadway debut, playing a suave radio journalist.在那同一年里，他初次在百老汇登台，扮演一个温文而雅的电台记者。
• The actress made her debut in the new comedy.这位演员在那出新喜剧中首次登台演出。

2 epidemic   

n.流行病；盛行；adj.流行性的，流传极广的

参考例句：

• That kind of epidemic disease has long been stamped out.那种传染病早已绝迹。
• The authorities tried to localise the epidemic.当局试图把流行病限制在局部范围。

3 spoke   

n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说

参考例句：

• They sourced the spoke nuts from our company.他们的轮辐螺帽是从我们公司获得的。
• The spokes of a wheel are the bars that connect the outer ring to the centre.辐条是轮子上连接外圈与中心的条棒。

4 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

5 literally   

adv.照字面意义，逐字地；确实

参考例句：

• He translated the passage literally.他逐字逐句地翻译这段文字。
• Sometimes she would not sit down till she was literally faint.有时候，她不走到真正要昏厥了，决不肯坐下来。

6 pretensions   

自称( pretension的名词复数 )； 自命不凡； 要求； 权力

参考例句：

• The play mocks the pretensions of the new middle class. 这出戏讽刺了新中产阶级的装模作样。
• The city has unrealistic pretensions to world-class status. 这个城市不切实际地标榜自己为国际都市。

7 sergeant   

n.警官，中士

参考例句：

• His elder brother is a sergeant.他哥哥是个警官。
• How many stripes are there on the sleeve of a sergeant?陆军中士的袖子上有多少条纹？

8 sergeants   

警官( sergeant的名词复数 )； （美国警察）警佐； （英国警察）巡佐； 陆军（或空军）中士

参考例句：

• Platoon sergeants fell their men in on the barrack square. 排长们在营房广场上整顿队伍。
• The recruits were soon licked into shape by the drill sergeants. 新兵不久便被教育班长训练得象样了。

9 decided   

adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的

参考例句：

• This gave them a decided advantage over their opponents.这使他们比对手具有明显的优势。
• There is a decided difference between British and Chinese way of greeting.英国人和中国人打招呼的方式有很明显的区别。

10 civilian   

adj.平民的，民用的，民众的

参考例句：

• There is no reliable information about civilian casualties.关于平民的伤亡还没有确凿的信息。
• He resigned his commission to take up a civilian job.他辞去军职而从事平民工作。

11 deployment   

n. 部署,展开

参考例句：

• He has inquired out the deployment of the enemy troops. 他已查出敌军的兵力部署情况。
• Quality function deployment (QFD) is a widely used customer-driven quality, design and manufacturing management tool. 质量功能展开(quality function deployment,QFD)是一个广泛应用的顾客需求驱动的设计、制造和质量管理工具。

12 logic   

n.逻辑(学)；逻辑性

参考例句：

• What sort of logic is that?这是什么逻辑？
• I don't follow the logic of your argument.我不明白你的论点逻辑性何在。

13 battalion   

n.营；部队；大队(的人)

参考例句：

• The town was garrisoned by a battalion.该镇由一营士兵驻守。
• At the end of the drill parade,the battalion fell out.操练之后，队伍解散了。

14 lieutenant   

n.陆军中尉，海军上尉；代理官员，副职官员

参考例句：

• He was promoted to be a lieutenant in the army.他被提升为陆军中尉。
• He prevailed on the lieutenant to send in a short note.他说动那个副官，递上了一张简短的便条进去。

15 obese   

adj.过度肥胖的，肥大的

参考例句：

• The old man is really obese,it can't be healthy.那位老人确实过于肥胖了，不能算是健康。
• Being obese and lazy is dangerous to health.又胖又懒危害健康。

16 wedded   

adj.正式结婚的；渴望…的，执著于…的v.嫁，娶，（与…）结婚( wed的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• She's wedded to her job. 她专心致志于工作。
• I was invited over by the newly wedded couple for a meal. 我被那对新婚夫妇请去吃饭。 来自《简明英汉词典》

17 addiction   

n.上瘾入迷，嗜好

参考例句：

• He stole money from his parents to feed his addiction.他从父母那儿偷钱以满足自己的嗜好。
• Areas of drug dealing are hellholes of addiction,poverty and murder.贩卖毒品的地区往往是吸毒上瘾、贫困和发生谋杀的地方。

18 heroin   

n.海洛因

参考例句：

• Customs have made their biggest ever seizure of heroin.海关查获了有史以来最大的一批海洛因。
• Heroin has been smuggled out by sea.海洛因已从海上偷运出境。

19 relatively   

adv.比较...地，相对地

参考例句：

• The rabbit is a relatively recent introduction in Australia.兔子是相对较新引入澳大利亚的物种。
• The operation was relatively painless.手术相对来说不痛。

20 lawful   

adj.法律许可的，守法的，合法的

参考例句：

• It is not lawful to park in front of a hydrant.在消火栓前停车是不合法的。
• We don't recognised him to be the lawful heir.我们不承认他为合法继承人。