美国国家公共电台 NPR Herman Koch Gets Meta In 'Dear Mr. M'

Herman Koch Gets Meta In 'Dear Mr. M' 

play pause stop mute unmute max volume 00:0006:04repeat repeat off Update Required To play the media you will need to either update your browser¹ to a recent version or update your Flash plugin. LINDA WERTHEIMER, HOST: 

"Dear Mr. M" is a new novel by the Dutch writer Herman Koch. It is a thriller² of the brainy and psychological sort with shifting points of view. And with each shift, reality - or perhaps truth - shifts as well. To brutally³ simplify, this is a book about a writer who has put real people into his novels. One of them takes it so personally that at various points along the way we feel the younger man may do something violent. Herman Koch joins us from Amsterdam, where he lives. Good morning. Welcome.

HERMAN KOCH: Good morning.

WERTHEIMER: Now, in your book, a teacher has a brief affair with a student. She breaks it off. And then the teacher disappears and no one knows what happened to him. And then a famous writer you call M writes a novel about it.

KOCH: Right (laughter).

WERTHEIMER: So you're starting out with a book that's about a book.

KOCH: Yeah, I did - I were thinking about the little defense⁴ people have who are used in let's so call it true fiction, or at least fiction that is based on so-called true facts. So when a writer writes about somebody who is a suspect of maybe the disappearance⁵ of this teacher, in this case - because there's never a body found, nobody knows where he is and you fill in the gaps with your imagination and your fantasy, the public might believe more in the fiction - particularly when it's a successful novel - than in the real and true facts. So your life as a suspect - you're worse off maybe than when you would be really convicted.

WERTHEIMER: But, of course, the plot of your novel is much more complex even than that. I wonder if you could just sort of unpack⁶ a few layers of what you did here.

KOCH: OK. First of all, I am not a great planner, so I have just a vague idea. And then I start to find out what kind of book I actually want to write. So I started off with the idea of this person, Herman, who has this famous older writer living above him as his upstairs neighbor, addressing himself to this writer, in the beginning only accusing him of being a mediocre⁷ writer.

And then I started going further and further and thinking, well, maybe this voice is not enough. So then I started to build more layers. Then I thought the downstairs neighbor 40 years ago had a 17-year-old girlfriend. I thought, now I want to hear the girlfriend as well. So it went from there.

One thing I can tell you about, you know, like, planning this novel is that until a few months before ending it or at least trying to end it, I still didn't have a clue as to where this teacher's whereabouts - where he ended up. So this is the way I keep the suspense⁸ in the writing myself as well.

WERTHEIMER: You appear to critique this sort of book in the book when the older author argues with the younger man about the difference between filling up a book with a crowded cast of characters and alternatively concentrating on a few characters. Your fictional⁹ author is in the small group camp. Your own book goes way the other way. You have so many interesting and well-developed characters and relationships. Why did you do that?

KOCH: Maybe because myself, when I'm writing - or even sometimes when I'm reading - but when I'm writing I get easily bored. So changing perspectives, for me, was more like writing five short novels and packing them all into one. And I thought it just became a richer book.

WERTHEIMER: Why, then, did you include so much criticism of doing that? You critique yourself in the book.

KOCH: Oh yeah, I do. Yeah. But this is, you know, like making a wink¹⁰ at yourself, a bit like self-irony. There's this whole lot of thing that what literature should do - you know, you should forget yourself and it's - that's the only objective it has. But all these things are theories that go around and that we read in interviews with writers and that I sometimes believe and I sometimes don't. And I just put them all in there. And it's up to the reader to decide which side he is on.

WERTHEIMER: You talk in the book about how M, the writer, rearranges real life for the sake of his plot. We hear him being interviewed about it. We hear him speaking to an audience at a library. He has a very low opinion of interviewers like me.

KOCH: (Laughter).

WERTHEIMER: So is this your life?

KOCH: No, no, it isn't. The thing is that this writer - for me, he's 80 years old, which means that it's - for me, it would be still 20 years away. I was just filling in in my fantasy the way I would feel in 20 years' time, if I would still be excited going to an interview or speaking in front of an audience or going to a literary festival. I hope I won't end up as the writer M does.

WERTHEIMER: (Laughter).

KOCH: Also, it's not - you're interviewing me now, but it's not a general criticism of interviewers. It's just a writer who already - you know, he hears himself talk. M gets tired of his own voice. Sometimes I get tired of my own voice as well (laughter) but I try to - you know, to sound if I'm still interested.

WERTHEIMER: Herman Koch. His new book is called "Dear Mr. M." We do appreciate you talking to us. Thank you.

KOCH: You're welcome. Thank you.

1 browser   

n.浏览者

参考例句：

• View edits in a web browser.在浏览器中看编辑的效果。
• I think my browser has a list of shareware links.我想在浏览器中会有一系列的共享软件链接。

2 thriller   

n.惊险片，恐怖片

参考例句：

• He began by writing a thriller.That book sold a million copies.他是写惊险小说起家的。那本书卖了一百万册。
• I always take a thriller to read on the train.我乘火车时，总带一本惊险小说看。

3 brutally   

adv.残忍地，野蛮地，冷酷无情地

参考例句：

• The uprising was brutally put down.起义被残酷地镇压下去了。
• A pro-democracy uprising was brutally suppressed.一场争取民主的起义被残酷镇压了。

4 defense   

n.防御，保卫；[pl.]防务工事；辩护，答辩

参考例句：

• The accused has the right to defense.被告人有权获得辩护。
• The war has impacted the area with military and defense workers.战争使那个地区挤满了军队和防御工程人员。

5 disappearance   

n.消失，消散，失踪

参考例句：

• He was hard put to it to explain her disappearance.他难以说明她为什么不见了。
• Her disappearance gave rise to the wildest rumours.她失踪一事引起了各种流言蜚语。

6 unpack   

vt.打开包裹（或行李），卸货

参考例句：

• I must unpack before dinner.我得在饭前把行李打开。
• She said she would unpack the items later.她说以后再把箱子里的东西拿出来。

7 mediocre   

adj.平常的，普通的

参考例句：

• The student tried hard,but his work is mediocre. 该生学习刻苦，但学业平庸。
• Only lazybones and mediocre persons could hanker after the days of messing together.只有懒汉庸才才会留恋那大锅饭的年代。

8 suspense   

n.（对可能发生的事）紧张感，担心，挂虑

参考例句：

• The suspense was unbearable.这样提心吊胆的状况实在叫人受不了。
• The director used ingenious devices to keep the audience in suspense.导演用巧妙手法引起观众的悬念。

9 fictional   

adj.小说的，虚构的

参考例句：

• The names of the shops are entirely fictional.那些商店的名字完全是虚构的。
• The two authors represent the opposite poles of fictional genius.这两位作者代表了天才小说家两个极端。

10 wink   

n.眨眼，使眼色，瞬间；v.眨眼，使眼色，闪烁

参考例句：

• He tipped me the wink not to buy at that price.他眨眼暗示我按那个价格就不要买。
• The satellite disappeared in a wink.瞬息之间，那颗卫星就消失了。