七八十年代的紐約爲何讓人念念不忘

THERE IS A STRONG CURRENT of nostalgia for the late ’70s and early ’80s in New York, even among those who never lived through it — the era when the city was edgy and dangerous, when women carried Mace in their purses, when even men asked the taxi driver to wait until they’d crossed the 15 feet to the front door of their building, when a blackout plunged whole neighborhoods into frantic looting, when subway cars were covered with graffiti, when Balanchine was at the height of his powers and the New York State Theater was New York’s intellectual salon, when John Lennon was murdered by a Salinger-reading born-again, when Philip Roth was already famous, Don DeLillo had yet to become famous, and most literary insiders were betting on Harold Brodkey’s long-awaited novel, which his editor, Gordon Lish, declared would be ‘‘the one necessary American narrative work of this century.’’ (It flopped when it finally came out in 1991 as ‘‘The Runaway Soul.’’)

對1970年代末、80年代初紐約的懷念，正日漸濃烈，連從未在那個年代生活過的人都參與了進來——那時的紐約躁動而危險，女人出門要帶防狼水，連男人下了出租車都會要求司機先別走，要等他們走完從車到家門那5米。那時的一場停電讓整片街區陷入瘋狂的搶掠，地鐵車廂滿是塗鴉。彼時，巴蘭欽(Balanchine)的權勢正如日中天，紐約州劇院成爲紐約知識分子沙龍，一個愛讀塞林格的重生教徒殺了約翰·列儂(John Lennon)，菲利普·羅斯(Philip Roth)已經成名，堂·德里羅(Don DeLillo)則還沒有，文學圈內大多把希望寄託在哈羅德·布洛基(Harold Brodkey)的一本期盼已久的小說上，編輯戈登·理什(Gordon Lish)宣稱它將是“本世紀最不可或缺的美國敘事作品”。（待到1991年，這本叫《逃脫的靈魂》[The Runaway Soul]的小說終於發表時，反響十分慘淡。）

This was the last period in American culture when the distinction between highbrow and lowbrow still pertained, when writers and painters and theater people still wanted to be (or were willing to be) ‘‘martyrs to art.’’ This was the last moment when a novelist or poet might withdraw a book that had already been accepted for publication and continue to fiddle with it for the next two or three years. This was the last time when a New York poet was reluctant to introduce to his arty friends someone who was a Hollywood film director, for fear the movies would be considered too low-status.

那是美國文化史上最後一段尚存高雅、低俗之分的時光，無論是寫字的、畫畫的、排戲的，都還希望（或樂意）成爲“藝術的殉道者”。那時候還有小說家或詩人會收回一本已經可以出版的書，再花上兩三年去擺弄它。那時候，一個紐約詩人會不情願把一個好萊塢電影導演介紹給自己的藝術圈朋友，因爲擔心那些電影層次太低。

Recently there’s been, in TV and film and certainly in books, an intense yearning for a specific five-year period in New York City, those years between the blackout in 1977, and 1982, when AIDS was finally named by the Centers for Disease Control. First was Rachel Kushner’s 2013 novel ‘‘The Flamethrowers,’’ whose heroine is a sharp-eyed bystander in the SoHo art scene, and now, the forthcoming novel ‘‘City on Fire’’ by Garth Risk Hallberg, which also concerns itself with the same time period. There are two television series in development that take place in the late 1970s as well, one directed by Martin Scorsese and co-written with Mick Jagger; the other by Baz Luhrmann. Next year, the Whitney will mount the first retrospective of David Wojnarowicz, the ultimate East Village grunge artist, in over 15 years; the work of his lover, the photographer Peter Hujar — which has recently been used both for an advertising campaign for the men’s wear designer Patrik Ervell and on the cover of the T editor Hanya Yanagihara’s novel ‘‘A Little Life’’ — will be the subject of a forthcoming retrospective at New York’s Morgan Library.

近年的一些電視、電影——當然還有書——對那五年的紐約表達了格外強烈的懷念，也就是從發生大停電的1977年，到疾病控制中心正式採納“艾滋病”這一稱呼的1982年。首先是蕾切爾·庫什納(Rachel Kushner)在2013年發表的小說《噴火器》(The Flamethrowers)，書中眼光銳利的女主人公是蘇豪區藝術圈的一個旁觀者，而加斯·里斯克·哈爾貝格(Garth Risk Hallberg)即將出版的小說《烈火焚城》(City on Fire)也關注了這一段時間。此外，有兩部以1970年代末爲背景的電視劇正在籌拍中，其中一部由馬丁·斯科塞斯(Martin Scorsese)執導，米克·賈格爾(Mick Jagger)是編劇之一；另一部的劇創是巴茲·呂爾曼(Baz Luhrmann)。明年，惠特尼美術館(Whitney)將爲東村骯髒藝術第一人大衛·沃伊納洛維茨(David Wojnarowicz)舉辦15年來的首場回顧展；他的戀人、攝影師彼得·胡亞(Peter Hujar)的作品，最近被男裝設計師帕特里克·厄維爾(Patrik Ervell)用在品牌廣告中，而《T》雜誌的副主編柳原櫻(Hanya Yanagiharad)的小說《小生命》(A Little Life)，也用他的照片作爲封面。現在，紐約摩根圖書館(New York’s Morgan Library)即將舉辦胡亞回顧展。

COLLECTIVELY, THESE WORKS express a craving for the city that, while at its worst, was also more democratic: a place and a time in which, rich or poor, you were stuck together in the misery (and the freedom) of the place, where not even money could insulate you. They are a reaction to what feels like a safer, more burnished and efficient (but cornerless and predictable) city. Even those of us who claim not to miss those years don’t quite sound convinced. ‘‘Well, I sure don’t have nostalgia about being mugged,’’ John Waters told me. Though then he continued: ‘‘But I do get a little weary when I realize that if anybody could find one dangerous block left in the city, there’d be a stampede of restaurant owners fighting each other off to open there first. It seems almost impossible to remember that just going out in New York was once dangerous. Do any artistic troublemakers want to feel that their city may be the safest in America? Who’s going to write a book about walking the safe streets of Manhattan? It’s always right before a storm that the air is filled with dangerous possibilities.’’

綜合來看，這些作品表達了對這座城市的眷戀，它正處在最糟糕、卻又更平等的時期：當此時世，無論窮人富人，都被困在這個不幸（與自由）的地方，連金錢都無法帶來豁免。它們似乎是對一座更安全、更閃亮、更高效（但又沒有祕密、很容易看透）的城市的抗拒。即便是我們這些聲稱並不懷念那個年代的人，聽起來也沒有那麼篤定。“被打劫的經歷我肯定是不懷念的，”約翰·沃特斯(John Waters)對我說。不過他接着又說：“但是，如今只要有人發現，這座城市裏還有哪個街區是不安全的，立刻就會有大把餐館老闆趕來，爭着要開第一家餐館，一想到這一層，我覺得還是挺煩人的。似乎已經很難想象，在紐約出門曾經是一件危險的事。作爲愛惹事生非的創作人，有誰會喜歡生活在美國最安全的城市呢？在曼哈頓街頭平平安安地走着，誰能用這種事寫出一本書來呢？當空氣裏瀰漫着危險的可能性時，就是一場風暴即將到來了。”

THEN, THERE WERE only possibilities. The cultural world — at least the cultural world that mattered — was much smaller then. Painters knew musicians knew writers, and they were all accessible. ‘‘It was easy then to meet John Ashbery or Jasper Johns,’’ says Brad Gooch, the author of the recent memoir about love and loss in the ’70s, ‘‘Smash Cut.’’ ‘‘Not that we took them for granted.’’ According to Fran Lebowitz, everyone who read Andy Warhol’s Interview knew one another, and yet this small world had a lasting influence on American taste and music and painting and poetry and amusements. These years held the origins of the Downtown Scene, a multidisciplinary, simultaneous movement that was headquartered in the East Village and was characterized by the birth of punk music, gonzo journalism and disposable painting; by body art and the messy theatrical antics of La MaMa. At its height in the mid-’70s, Max’s Kansas City, on Park and 18th, was a home to the New York Dolls, the Ramones, Blondie, Klaus Nomi and Sid Vicious. In the East Village, on Bleecker and Bowery, was CBGB, which was home to Television, Patti Smith and many of the bands that also played at Max’s. Little temporary art galleries were opening and closing every week in the East Village.

那時候處處都是可能性。文化圈子，至少是重要的文化圈子，比現在要小得多。畫家音樂家作家彼此都認識，都能接觸到。“那時候要跟約翰·阿什伯裏(John Ashbery)或賈斯培·瓊斯(Jasper Johns)見個面很容易，”布拉德·古奇(Brad Gooch)說，他最近出版的一本回憶錄《Smach Cut》講的是70年代的愛與迷失，“但不等於我們當時覺得這沒什麼大不了。”據弗蘭·勒博維茨(Fran Lebowitz)說，安迪·沃霍爾(Andy Warhol)的《訪問》(Interview)雜誌的讀者，相互都是認識的，然而就是這麼一個小小的圈子，對美國的品味、音樂、繪畫、詩歌、娛樂產生了經久不衰的影響。以東村爲中心、多領域同時進行的下城運動(Downtown Scene)，就在此時萌發，孕育了朋克音樂、岡佐新聞報道(gonzo)和一次性繪畫；身體藝術和亂哄哄的La MaMa戲劇實驗也是這一運動的重要組成部分。這股風潮在1970年代中期達至頂峯，公園大道和第18街的Max’s Kansas City是New York Dolls、the Ramones、Blondie、Klaus Nomi和Sid Vicious的據點。東村的布里克街和包釐街有CBGB，Television、帕蒂·史密斯(Patti Smith)以及許多同時也會去Max's的樂隊在那裏演出。在東村的角角落落，每週都會有各種小型臨時畫廊出現、消失。

Meanwhile, there was also the High Mandarin moment, which has scarcely been isolated or studied as a single impulse, but was the last gasp of both a late-age Modernism and a 1960s-era radicalism: a paradoxical combination of elitism in aesthetics and an egalitarianism bordering on socialism and utopianism in politics. The representative figures of this New York were Susan Sontag, Jasper Johns, George Balanchine, Robert Wilson, Robert Mapplethorpe, Richard Sennett, Richard Howard, John Ashbery and many other cultural arbiters — Barbara Epstein and Robert Silvers, the editors of the New York Review of Books; Bob Gottlieb at Knopf; the critic Richard Poirier. Some of these people weren’t interested in politics at all, but if they were, their politics were radical. Mapplethorpe — with his lubricious African-American nudes, portraits of society ladies and still lifes of ‘‘New York flowers’’ (as he once called them) — was one of the few people of the period who braided these high and low strands of New York culture. Could such a phenomenon occur today? Maybe in Berlin. But not in New York.

此外還有所謂的“高絕派”(High Mandarin)，這場運動甚少被獨立出來，作爲一個單獨的流派進行研究，但它是晚期現代主義和1960年代激進主義的最後一絲存在：它將美學上的精英主義和政治上近乎社會主義與烏托邦思想的平等主義弔詭地合而爲一。在紐約，這場運動的代表人物包括蘇珊·桑塔格(Susan Sontag)、賈斯培·瓊斯、喬治·巴蘭欽(George Balanchine)、羅伯特·威爾遜(Robert Wilson)、羅伯特·梅普爾索普(Robert Mapplethorpe)、理查德·桑內特(Richard Sennett)、理查德·霍華德(Richard Howard)、約翰·阿什伯裏，以及《紐約書評》(New York Review of Books)編輯芭芭拉·愛潑斯坦(Barbara Epstein)和羅伯特·錫爾弗斯(Robert Silvers)、Knopf出版社的鮑勃·戈特利布(Bob Gottlieb)、評論家理查德·波里爾(Richard Poirier)等等文化權威。這些人要麼對政治完全不感興趣，要麼就是政治激進人士。以淫穢的非裔美國人裸體、社交女伶肖像和被他稱爲“紐約花朵”的靜物照著稱的梅普爾索普，是當時少數能將紐約文化的高低兩界連接起來的人。這樣的現象，今天還會有嗎？柏林也許可以。紐約不會了。

THOSE WERE YEARS when rents were low, when would-be writers, singers, dancers could afford to live in Manhattan’s (East, if not, West) Village, before everyone marginal was further marginalized by being squeezed out to Bushwick or Hoboken. Face-to-face encounters are essential to a city’s vitality, even among people who aren’t sure of each other’s names, for the exchange of ideas and to generate a sense of electricity. In the ’70s, creative people of all sorts could meet without plans, could give each other tips or discuss burgeoning theories or markets or movements.

那時候房租便宜，做着作家、歌手、舞者夢的人們，尚能在曼哈頓（東村，西村是不太可能的）找到棲身之地，不像到後來所有邊緣人類被進一步邊緣化，只能住到布什維克(Bushwick)或霍博肯(Hoboken)。一座城市要有熾烈的交流，才能產生一種激越的活力，面對面的相遇是至關重要的，哪怕你連對方名字都叫不上來。在70年代，從事各類創作的人們可以一時興起去見個面，分享一點小建議，討論新興的理論、市場或運動。

In gay life, that’s called ‘‘cruising’’ (although the French equivalent, draguer, applies to all denominations). In the period before AIDS, the heyday of Studio 54 and Mineshaft, gays were on the verge of being dubbed trend-setters and tastemakers; Frank Rich even wrote a retrospective article for Esquire in 1987 in which he looked back at ‘‘the homosexualization of America.’’ But the outbreak of the plague in 1981 changed all that. Suddenly the glamour boys, with their showboat bodies and high-paying jobs, were Auschwitz skeletons covered with black spots, like Canova’s unfinished marble statues. No one wanted to exchange kisses with someone infected, especially not before the path of transmission was identified (Poppers? Mustaches? Mosquitoes? Tears?). Whereas straight guys had been intrigued with gay life before and could (almost) contemplate experimenting, suddenly the barrier between the two orientations shot up, higher than the Iron Curtain.

在同性戀者的生活中，這種見面方式叫做“cruising”（巡遊，不過它在法文的對應詞draguer是各方人士都會使用的）。那時，AIDS時代尚未到來、Studio 54和Mineshaft等夜店正值鼎盛，同性戀者即將建立起風尚和品位引領者的名聲；弗蘭克·裏奇(Frank Rich)甚至在1987年給《時尚先生》(Esquire)雜誌寫了一篇紀念文章，稱那是“美國同性戀化”時期。然而1981年的疫情爆發改變了一切。轉眼之間，身材俊美、從事高薪工作的小鮮肉們，成了全身長着黑斑、骨瘦如柴的奧斯維辛集中營囚犯，就像一座座卡諾瓦的未完成大理石雕像。誰也不願意跟感染了病毒的人親吻，尤其是要知道當時尚未明確傳染的方式（男同使用的硝酸戊酯溶劑？鬍子？蚊子？眼淚？）。有異性戀者一度被同性戀者生活所吸引，本來（幾乎）打算做一點嘗試，但突然間，兩種性取向中間築起了比“鐵幕”還高的壁壘。

Now, with the Supreme Court’s decision legalizing marriage equality and with what might be called ‘‘the banalization of gay life,’’ the imp of the perverse has made ’70s-style queers look mighty attractive. Brad reminded me that the young gays of that decade had been ruthlessly oppressed when they were growing up in Eisenhower’s or Nixon’s America. ‘‘Finally they were free to be open,’’ he says. ‘‘And we felt that we were glamorous and attractive.’’ Certainly this very romantic view of gay life has come back into currency — and it is in the possession of straight as well as gay artists, male or female. It’s a view I subscribe to myself, and that permeates my memoir about the period, ‘‘City Boy.’’

隨着最高法院裁決同性婚姻合法，以及“同性戀生活的尋常化”，“悖理的惡魔”令70年代風格的酷兒顯得分外迷人。布拉德·古奇提醒我，那個年代的同性戀者，是在艾森豪威爾或尼克松時代的高壓下長大的。“當他們終於可以公開的時候，”他說，“我們會覺得我們渾身散發着魅力與誘惑。”這種對同性戀生活的浪漫觀感，顯然正在重新興起——在藝術家中十分普遍，無論男女彎直。這也是我本人所認同的，在我對那個時期的回憶錄《城市男孩》(City Boy)中時有體現。

BUT THOSE DAYS, those years, are gone. ‘‘Love Among the Ruins,’’ one might have called it, a time when young unknowns could achieve fame or at least rub shoulders with it, if they didn’t mind the rats galloping underfoot or a stickup in broad daylight on busy Christopher Street.

但那些歲月，那個年代，已經遠去了。有人說，那是“廢墟間飄蕩的愛情”，在那個時期，只要不介意腳下亂竄的老鼠，或大白天在繁華的克里斯托弗街被打劫，籍籍無名的年輕人也可以取得聲名，或者至少跟名人站在一起。

That delicate ecology has now been irreparably damaged. Of course there are still wonderfully intelligent people around; as you walk past tables in a New York restaurant, you want to join in three out of four conversations. And half the people you meet here would be interviewed or arrested in any other city. But the cultural flame that passed to New York from Europe with all the refugees in World War II and burned bright in the ’50s with the Abstract Expressionists and the New York School poets — and brighter still in the late ’70s — now feels as if it’s been doused. As a group movement, at least — though individual sparks still glimmer here and there. Only the happy few would say the excitement was worth the danger, the ambient ugliness and the poverty.

這種脆弱的生態，如今已經遭到無法修補的破壞。當然，強聞博識的人還是有；當你走在一間紐約餐館裏，聽着鄰桌的對話，其中有四分之三是樂意參與的。你在這裏遇到的人，放在任何別的城市，有一半會被人採訪或逮捕。然而，由“二戰”歐洲難民帶到紐約，在50年代抽象表現主義繪畫和紐約學派詩歌中熊熊燃燒，一直延續到70年代末的文化之火，似乎是被澆滅了。至少作爲羣體的運動是這樣——雖然還時不時會有一些個別的火花。只有極少數的樂天派會認爲，用危險、貧窮和髒亂差的環境換來激越的生活是值得的。