【 [美]罗恩·拉什《美好的事物无法久存》Nothing Gold Can Stay 】
★当代美国南方文学代表作家、《炽焰燃烧》作者罗恩·拉什最新短篇小说集
★周嘉宁翻译，阿乙、张悦然、陶立夏推荐
★2013诺贝尔文学奖得主 艾丽丝·门罗：这些故事真精彩。我的心为之一痛，我必须坐下来，望着窗外，沉思许久。
《美好的事物无法久存》是罗恩·拉什2013年出版的短篇小说集，故事背景从美国内战时期一直延续至今，描述了粗粝生命纠缠于暴力与柔情、希望与恐惧，荒凉的美感令人难忘。罗恩·拉什这次又将目光投向阿巴拉契亚山区，每个故事都像一枚钻石，结构精致，纯净，冰冷，闪光，珍贵，以不可思议的方式，照亮我们这个世界。
From Ron Rash, PEN / Faulkner Award finalist and New York Times bestselling author of Serena, comes a new collection of unforgettable stories set in Appalachia that focuses on the lives of those haunted by violence and tenderness, hope and fear—spanning the Civil War to the present day. The darkness of Ron Rash’s work contrasts with its unexpected sensitivity and stark beauty in a manner that could only be accomplished by this master of the short story form. Nothing Gold Can Stay includes 14 stories, including Rash’s “The Trusty,” which first appeared in The New Yorker.
【作品名称】：美好的事物无法久存 Nothing Gold Can Stay
【丛书名称】：上海文艺版（短经典·第4辑31）/ 99经典文库
【作 者】：[美] 罗恩·拉什（Ron Rash）
【译 者】：周嘉宁
【出 版 社】：上海文艺出版社
【出版时间】：2015-06
【页 数】：221页
【I S B N 】：9787532156788
【定 价】：￥ 28.00
【目 录】：
I
模范囚犯 The trusty………………………………………………………………………… 003
美好的事物无法久存 Nothing gold can stay …………………………………………… 025
丰饶而陌生 Something rich and strange ………………………………………………… 040
切罗基 Cherokee …………………………………………………………………………… 047
地图终结的地方 Where the map ends …………………………………………………… 062
II
历史的仆役 A servant of history…………………………………………………………… 077
二十六天 Twenty-six days ………………………………………………………………… 090
一种奇迹 A sort of miracle ………………………………………………………………… 099
死者直到现在才被宽恕 Those who are dead are only now forgiven ………………… 117
III
魔法巴士 The magic bus ………………………………………………………………… 135
嫁妆 The dowry …………………………………………………………………………… 160
池塘边的女人 The woman at the pond ………………………………………………… 179
夜鹰电台 Night hawks …………………………………………………………………… 194
凌晨三点，星星不见了 Three A.M. and the stars were out ………………………… 210
【相关评论】：
和他伟大的前辈——福克纳、弗兰纳里·奥康纳，尤其是尤多拉·韦尔蒂一样，罗恩·拉什的短篇小说植根于美国南方。他根据自己的观察和想象，从那个地方和人群中提炼丰富而扣人心弦的生活精华。《美好的事物无法久存》中的每一个故事都是一颗珍珠，光彩夺目，真实，直接。
——艾德娜·奥布莱恩
罗恩·拉什的这部小说集有尤多拉。韦尔蒂作品的腔调和温度，但情节更胜一筹。
——Elle
拉什可以用一句话写活一个人物。这是美国最好的短篇小说。
——《泰晤士报》
罗恩·拉什最好的作品，有种无以名状的辛酸之感。
——《华盛顿邮报》
这些故事真精彩。我的心为之一痛，我必须坐下来，望出窗外。反复思量。
——艾丽丝·门罗（2013年诺贝尔文学奖得主）
今年最期待的一本书，罗恩·拉什真是把短篇的能量凝聚和发挥到极致，十四篇故事可谓渐入佳境，迥异的节奏，时而悠远，时而跌宕，每篇都可当作教材般细细分析品味。他对贫苦受难、落魄潦倒或行为有瑕疵的人物的刻画，不时有出人意料之处，他对人物的理解和关怀，常常藏着叫人哭笑不得的黑色幽默。
——书评人（张芸）
The Washington Post - Michael Lindgren
With Nothing Gold Can Stay, Ron Rash cements his reputation as one of the foremost chroniclers of that mythic uber-America known as the South. Rash's new stories depict, with almost anthropological precision, a proud, poverty-scarred milieu "where checkbooks never quite balanced and repo men and pawnbrokers loomed one turn of bad luck away."
The New York Times - Janet Maslin
Ron Rash's new short story collection…is this Appalachian author's best book since his 2008 Serena…Nothing Gold Can Stay is excitingly versatile, covering time periods from the Civil War to the present and ranging in mood from wryly comic to brutal. The 14 stories are united by clean, tough specificity, courtly backwoods diction, and a capacity for sending shivers.
Richmond Times - Dispatch
“[Rash] bears comparison to the world’s truly great story writers—particularly Nathaniel Hawthorne for the gothic horrors that lie in the human heart and Anton Chekhov for his unflinching eye and his ability to capture a character in a single gesture.”
St. Louis Post - Dispatch
“Each of the stories in this collection comes to life under the power of Rash’s muscular way with words...The author creates a slice of life so authentic you can hear the rushing water and see the falling tears.”
Elle
“Ron Rash’s fifth story collection, NOTHING GOLD CAN STAY, set in hardscrabble Appalachia, has a tone and temperament like that of his compatriot Eudora Welty, with a twist of Barry Hannah.”
Wall Street Journal
“Crime, with its violence, threads through the butcher’s-dozen of stories in the author’s masterly 14th book, Nothing Gold Can Stay, as inexorably as it winds through the problematic lives of his Appalachian-dwelling characters.”
Atlanta Journal - Constitution
“[Rash’s] starkly beautiful prose has mapped the heart and soul of southern Appalachia in a way few writers of his generation can match. . . A splendid new collection. . . shimmering, liquid poetry. . .”
Kansas City Star
“Nothing Gold Can Stay is a gripping collection, raw and real, that solidifies Rash as a powerful and imaginative storyteller.”
Janet Maslin
“Ron Rash’s Nothing Gold Can Stay is [his] best book since Serena. Excitingly versatile. . . The stories are united by clean, tough specificity, courtly backwoods diction, and a capacity for sending shivers. (Alfred Hitchcock would have loved the story ‘A Sort of Miracle’).”
New York Magazine
A collection of short stories about Appalachia that are actually more like diamonds: cold, glittering, valuable.”
Washington Post
“With NOTHING GOLD CAN STAY, Ron Rash cements his reputation as one of the foremost chroniclers of that mythic uber-America known as the South. . . At his best, Rash evokes an understated poignancy that is genuinely affecting. . .
Washington Independent Review of Books
“Masterfully crafted. The best of Rash’s stories, written in a spare prose style, have an aching lyricism as they chronicle the hard times and hard fall of his characters. The best of the best will haunt the reader long after they’re done.”
Miami Herald
“The stories of Nothing Gold Can Stay are tough-minded, surprising, illuminating even when Rash leaves much unsaid (often the reader comprehends more than the characters can). But no matter when they are set or who they concern, these stories are kin to each other.”
Scott Simon
“Mesmerized by Ron Rash’s new NOTHING GOLD CAN STAY. Short stories that play on for a long time in your mind.”
Booklist
“. . . a wonderful collection.”
Boston Globe
“A lovely, essential new collection of stories . . . lyrical and honest, grounded in place yet sweeping in scope. . . . .[Rash’s] prose is elegant, suggestive, and Hardyesque.”
Minneapolis Star Tribune
“Striking . . . engaging . . . mesmerizing . . . After finishing this collection, one simply just wants to read more of Ron Rash.”
Charlotte Observer
“In his new collection of stories, Ron Rash stunningly renders his native Appalachia as an exotic planetoid governed by its own peculiar orbital laws . . . Rash is a fast-rising superstar in the North Carolina literary constellation that includes such luminaries as Michael Parker, Clyde Edgerton and Phillip Gerard.”
Library Journal
His previous novels Serena and The Cove are set in the Appalachian Mountains of North Carolina, so it is no surprise that Rash (Appalachian studies, Western Carolina Univ.) sets this collection of short stories in the same loosely defined but culturally abundant geographic region of the eastern United States. He captures this richness in "A Servant of History," wherein a capricious young scholar attempts to record lost British ballads from the memory of an elderly Appalachian woman before she passes away. At the same time, the stories also articulate revelations of human vulnerability to the surrounding environmental conditions. In "A Sort of Miracle," an accountant dies of hypothermia after falling into a frozen lake. Rash's short stories thematically paint Appalachia not as a definitive place but as a series of many interconnected ways of relating to human and environmental frailty. VERDICT Another fine addition to the Rash bibliography, and a great entry point for the uninitiated reader. Those who enjoy the writing of Silas House and Sharyn McCrumb will be drawn into Rash's Appalachia. —Joshua Finnell, Denison Univ. Lib., Granville, OH
【作者简介】：
罗恩·拉什（1953— ），美国当代诗人、小说家，目前在西卡罗来纳大学担任“阿巴拉契亚文化研究”杰出教授。拉什出生于南卡罗来纳州，在北卡罗来纳州度过童年，毕业于加德纳-韦伯大学和克莱门森大学。自从1994年出版首部短篇小说集《新耶稣呱呱落地之夜》起，创作不断，目前已经出版五部长篇小说，六部短篇小说集和四本诗集。
拉什的文学创作受到评论界的高度评价，获得过舍伍德·安德森奖，两次获得欧·亨利短篇小说奖，并凭借短篇小说集《化学》和长篇小说《萨琳娜》两度入围福克纳奖决选。2010年，《炽焰燃烧》荣获世界短篇小说最高奖——弗兰克·奥康纳国际短篇小说奖。
Ron Rash is the author of the 2009 PEN/Faulkner finalist and New York Times bestselling novel Serena, in addition to four other prizewinning novels, including One Foot in Eden, Saints at the River, The World Made Straight, and The Cove; four collections of poems; and six collections of stories, among them Burning Bright, which won the 2010 Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award; Chemistry and Other Stories, which was a finalist for the 2007 PEN/Faulkner Award; and most recently, Something Rich and Strange. Twice the recipient of the O. Henry Prize, he teaches at Western Carolina University.
《美好的事物无法久存》瞧那绳圈在勒紧
美国作家罗恩·拉什借鉴诗人罗伯特·弗罗斯特的同名诗歌，将其新作命名为《美好的事物无法久存》（以下简称《美好》）。弗罗斯特原意是指自然界的一切美好物事都难逃枯萎败落的宿命：“她初发的叶子如同一朵花，然而只能持续若此一刹那”。到了拉什这里，诗句里的悲剧性意味被大大强化，更深化为对世界、对人性的观察。不过，说起来，拉什的“世界”其实很小。他生于美国南方阿巴拉契亚山区，论出身和写作都是标准的南方作家。和大多数南方作家一样，拉什着迷于这一块巴掌大的原乡。无论走到哪里，笔下始终锁定于此。
阿巴拉契亚山区地广人稀，生存环境极为恶劣。同时因为地理位置的偏僻，民风较东北部的大城市保守得多。即使如此，生活在其中的人们也尽力从中发掘希望。只是，希望也好，美好也罢，都是脆弱易逝的物事，经不起极端环境的一再蹂躏。好比《在地图终结的地方》里，失去妻子的老农夫家中房梁上还留着一截绳圈。这是他内心的隐痛。但他不知道的是，阿巴拉契亚山区才是那根隐形的绳圈。它就在那儿，悬在所有人心上，一点、一点收紧，勒得人无法呼吸。
可以说，《美好》里活跃着不同年代、不同版本的“囚犯”，他们皆受困于现实，在沉闷的山区生活里进也不是、退也不是。首篇《模范囚犯》，拉什以其惯用的阴郁直白的文风为全书定下了基调。一个户外劳动的囚犯向山里一户人家讨口水喝。这户人家有个漂亮的少妇，她还是少女时，心不甘、情不愿地嫁给了中年农夫。囚犯计划越狱，少妇出面指路。不过，潜台词是此路不通，不仅不通向自由，反而直接进入死亡。《历史的仆役》一篇，年轻的英国后生兴冲冲地到美国南方收集英国民谣，拜访当地一位来自苏格兰的百岁老人，却被兜头泼了一盆冰水。因为这首歌唤醒的居然是老人整个家族几乎被灭门的悲惨往事。
如此这般，拉什笔下这些混淆了年代、混淆了身份的囚犯们竟像是走入了危机重重的迷魂阵，究竟真正的对手是出手相助的假好人，还是如影随形的真凶手，或者干脆就是他自己，恐怕到死也说不清。比如《一种奇迹》真的有“奇迹”吗？或者不如说是“灾难”吧。眼高手低的会计师丹顿平日里看不惯两个妻弟，一门心思想着如何对付他们。有一天，三个男人去森林捕熊。丹顿独自进到林子，一头摔进结冰的河里。危急中，他向妻弟电话求救，却被其捉弄。
书如其名，《美好》确实是一部彻头彻尾的惊悚片。在前面提到的诗作里，弗罗斯特将世界比作“伊甸园”。但他也知道，即便是乐土，该走的还是要走。拉什的南方本就满眼荒芜、渺无人烟，又哪来的美好？如果说伊甸园是人类臆想中的乌托邦，那么，《美好》就是反乌托邦寓言了。拉什的故事就这么赤裸裸地摆在你面前，没有媚俗，不加修饰，自始至终流露出若有若无的末世情怀。如果非要他给你一个希望，则难免大失所望。因为拉什的写作根基深深扎根于这片土地。简言之，这是现实主义的写作，它不提供梦想，不供应热腾腾、暖乎乎的“治愈系”甜汤，它永远只会在你习焉不察的时候，狠狠地捅上一刀。《炽焰燃烧》也好，《美好》也罢，不都是这样一把刀吗？
拉什的故事就这么赤裸裸地摆在你面前，没有媚俗，不加修饰，自始至终流露出若有若无的末世情怀。如果非要他给你一个希望，则难免大失所望。
罗恩·拉什最新出版的短篇小说集名为《美好的事物无法久存》，题目来自于诗人弗罗斯特（Robert Frost）一首著名的短诗，此诗中还有另外一句：“绿叶变为落叶，伊甸园沉浸在悲伤之中。”这两句对于理解这部小说集或许更有帮助。
南方阿巴拉契亚山区，也可以看作是罗恩·拉什的伊甸园，他继承福克纳与奥康纳的光荣衣钵，以此地为叙事基础，开始对整个世界进行阐释，其所讲述的故事主题各异，时间跨越数十年，但这些故事也有相通之处，那便是他笔下的人物无一例外地，都在尝试去改变自身的生存状况：被缚者谋划越狱，瘾君子实施盗窃，贫苦的夫妻在赌场孤注一掷，老牧师为促成姻缘进行自我牺牲……他们试图以最笨拙的方式去闯出一条捷径，渴望从此跳出泥潭，但却总是事与愿违。
罗恩·拉什深入至南方区域居民的心理和情绪特质之中，以冷峻、克制、残酷的叙述来完成自己的构建，他从来不会温情脉脉地讲述那些失败者的故事，相反，他只截取那些看似无关紧要的命运片断进行放映，人人如同演员，但只在镜头前匆忙一闪，还来不及讲述身世，便被紧迫的剧情推下舞台。
同名小说里所讲的故事或许更为清晰：两个足够好运的瘾君子，不费吹灰之力盗得一笔意外之财，又即将做成一笔大生意，看似光明而美好的未来，但在字里行间却充斥着焦虑与危机，他们的运气随时都可能用尽，我们唯有寄希望于他们挥霍得能尽量慢一些。而在另一篇总结性的作品《魔法巴士》里，作者则借文中嬉皮士的言语来点明全书的主旨，他说：“我们不寻找命运，命运来寻找我们。”
无论身处哪个时代，阿巴拉契亚山区的人们都有着相似的命运，对抗与起义似乎不曾存在过，人们在这里如同受到诅咒一般，只能被缓缓吞噬，山区也是黑洞，所有凶狠的拳头全都难以逃出落空的命运。或许他们也曾受到鼓舞与激励，并莽撞而热烈地立即付诸行动，在沉溺之前忙于互救与自救，但最终还是失败了，在坍塌之时，甚至都来不及发出一声巨响。如《死者直到现在才被宽恕》里所说的，“这个地方像是蛛网，你在这儿时间一久，就会被永远困住。最后变成她，或者我。”这里是异世界，是红色沙漠，孤立于现实的存在，只有迅速学会新的语言，来消解忧虑，进而适应这里的规则，享受这里的危机与欢愉。
《美好的事物无法久存》所收录的故事并非全是如此晦暗，偶尔也有温情一刻，比如在最后一篇《凌晨三点，星星不见了》里，两位老人回顾那恍惚而漫长的友谊，从战争时期延续至垂暮之年；再比如仍在那篇同名小说里，瘾君子不无骄傲地说：“我们过去总能在天黑前逮到鳟鱼……我觉得年轻的时候简直无所不能。”正是这些疯狂、勇敢、羞怯、不知所措的回忆，化解掉当前的艰难与压抑，让他们即便身处歧路时，也有风景可以回望。
《美好的事物无法久存》（《Nothing Gold Can Stay》）其实是作者向四度斩获普利策奖美国乡村的诗人罗伯特·弗罗斯特的致敬。罗伯特·弗罗斯特于1923年写就诗歌《Nothing Gold Can Stay》，当年十月在《耶鲁杂志（The Yale Review）》上刊印出版，被认为是罗伯特·弗罗斯特的代表作。
原文如下：
Nothing Gold Can Stay.
Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf,
So Eden sank to grief.
So dawn goes down to day,
Nothing Gold Can Stay.
美好的事物无法久存
——罗伯特·弗罗斯特
第一抹新绿如金
最难持久
初生的新叶如花
转瞬即逝
当枝叶归于寻常
如伊甸陷落于悲伤
白驹过隙
好景难长
