文艺；书评；戴安娜·阿西尔的信；致亲爱的爱德华；

　　Instead of a Book: Letters to a Friend. By Diana Athill.

　　并不是一本书，只是些给朋友的信。戴安娜·阿西尔著。

　　Diana Athill was well past normal retirement age when she wrote a series of memoirs that made her a cult figure. As a young woman she had written a novel, a collection of short stories and a cathartic memoir about being jilted by her lover. But her literary skills went mainly into editing the books of others at André Deutsch, a London publisher, where she worked for decades until she was 75. Near the end of this career she started writing again, and over the next 22 years she produced five more memoirs, including “Stet”, an acclaimed account of her editing life, working with authors such as Philip Roth and John Updike, published when she was 83. She finished with “Somewhere Towards the End”, about getting old, for which she earned the Costa Biography prize as well as an OBE in 2009.

　　当戴安娜·阿西尔完成自己的系列回忆录，备受追捧的时候，她早已经过了正常退休年龄。年轻的时候，她也写过一部小说，一本短篇故事集，还有一本宣泄感情的回忆录，记述的是她被爱人抛弃的故事。但是她在伦敦André Deutsch出版社工作期间，其文学上的天赋主要投入了编辑出版别人的书，而这一做就是几十年，直到她七十五岁才退休。在她职业生涯结束之际，她重新执笔开始创作，在接下来的22年间先后又出版了五部回忆录。其中包括她83岁那年出版的回忆录《留存》。这本书记录了她当年和像菲利普.罗斯、约翰·厄普代克这样的作家一起共事的记忆，称颂了自己的编辑生活。此后，她凭借《终点前某处》（有关老年生活）的创作，于2009年获得科斯塔文学奖同时被授予大英帝国勋章。

　　Now 93, Miss Athill still takes speaking engagements, but her writing seems to be behind her. So it is good to have this new collection of her letters to Edward Field, a close friend, spanning a period of 26 years. This is not just squeezing the lemon for a bit more juice. By their nature these letters are quite different from the polished prose of the memoirs. They are spontaneous and unstructured, full of daily minutiae (visits to the dentist, car trouble, useless builders) and delightful snippets from her colourful personal life. She gossips about mutual friends and tells stories about the literary world she is immersed in (“I am going to have an interesting lunch tomorrow with the mistress dumped by Vida Naipaul when he married his Indian wife”). Mr Field, a poet six years her junior, is gay, so he was never one of her many lovers, but the relationship is clearly very close, both personally and professionally.

　　现龄93岁的阿西尔女士仍然会去做演讲，不过她在写作方面似乎没有跟上。所以说这本新鲜出炉的书信集是一次很好的尝试。其收信人是阿西尔女士一位的密友爱德华·菲尔德，信件的时间跨度则有26年之长。这可不只是为了多榨点汁而去挤柠檬。从其本质来说，这些书信与回忆录里那些优美的散文可谓是大相径庭。这都是发自肺腑之言，随性而为的叙述，满是日常生活的细枝末节（像看牙医，交通纠纷，失效的洗选强化剂），还有她丰富多彩的私生活里那些幸福的片段。她闲话自己的好朋友，也会说些关于那个她所沉浸其中的文学世界的故事（“我明天要和被韦达·奈保尔抛弃的那个女人一起吃午饭，这一定很有趣，要知道韦达要娶个印度女人”）。菲尔德比阿西尔小六岁，是一位诗人，不过是同性恋，因此他也绝不会成为阿西尔的众多情人之一，但是很显然他们之间的关系不论是私交还是在专业领域都非常亲密。

　　For all Miss Athill's pleas of relative poverty, hers has been a privileged life. Raised in a grand country house, she lived for decades in Primrose Hill, a salubrious bit of London, in a house belonging to a cousin (a journalist at The Economist, it so happens), with weekends in the cousin's Norfolk cottage and lots of trips to places like Venice and the Caribbean. When money seemed tight, cash always turned up from somewhere. Her voice on the page is that of an upper-middle-class Englishwoman—good things are “dear” or “darling”, bad things are “tiresome”, “horrid” or “vile”. But she also swears like a trooper and does not care what people think.

　　尽管阿西尔一直声辩自己比较穷困，她的生活其实非常优越。在豪华的郊区住宅长大的她，之后在伦敦环境宜人的樱草花山也住了有几十年。房子是她一个表兄妹的（经济学人的记者，很巧），周末则到她表兄妹的诺福克别墅去小住，没事就去像威尼斯、加勒比海这样的地方旅行。手头紧的时候，钞票总是又会在哪冒出来。字里行间透露的是那种中上层阶级英国女性的调调：好的事情则叫“宝贝”呀，“亲爱的”呀，糟糕的事情则说“讨人嫌”呀，“讨厌”呀，或者是“糟透了”。但是她也会像巡警一样破口大骂，完全不在乎别人怎么想。

　　Miss Athill did not keep the letters she received from Mr Field. When he suggested that hers be made into a book, she had reservations about “publishing one's private conversation”, particularly if it meant printing only “half the conversation”. Luckily he persuaded her, and the result makes for addictive eavesdropping. Miss Athill writes beautifully, even about mundane subjects, and it is fascinating to follow the change in her preoccupations with advancing years. The letters are frank about the indignities of getting old, from hearing aids to cataract operations, and about the burdens of looking after Barry, her increasingly ailing Jamaican partner.

　　阿西尔女士并没有保留菲尔德给她写的信。最初还是菲尔德建议她把自己那部分的信件整理出来出本书，但阿西尔对于“公开私人谈话”的做法还是有所保留，尤其如果是要仅仅发表“一半的谈话内容”。幸亏菲尔德说服了她，结果这本书出来让人们迷上了“窃听”。阿西尔的文字非常漂亮，即使是写微不足道的小事也毫不逊色。读者会情不自禁地跟随她，关注她一直所关心的事情随着年华逝去将会如何变化。阿西尔在信中坦率地表达了老年生活的窘困，从助听器到白内障手术，还有照顾她那位病情日甚一日的牙买加伴侣——巴里。

　　But Miss Athill is too clear-eyed to become a bore about such things. Her correspondence with Mr Field continues, now by e-mail, but the letters in the book end in 2007. She explains in a postscript that this is “because we have become old and…too often the experience old people have to share is wobbly health.” Enough said.

　　但是阿西尔的头脑可是相当精明，她才不会对这种事情一钻到底。她与菲尔德的通信一直在继续，只是现在改成发电子邮件，但是书中的信件则截止到2007年。她在附言中解释到，这是因为“我们都年事已高，而且……老年人之间能够分享的无非就是不稳定的健康问题”。说得应该够多了吧。