《當哈里遇見薩利》 一切皆是素材嗎 Is everything copy

Five years ago, I met Nora Ephron, the journalist-cum-film-maker (then 70) at a dinner party in New York. I was starstruck. That was partly because Ephron created some of my favourite films, such as When Harry Met Sally (1989). But in her life (she died in 2012) she was also that rare creature: a potent female role Model for young wannabe journalists. She started working in the mail room of Newsweek in the 1960s, when women were rare in media, and then fearlessly ascended the career ladder to become one of the most trenchant, respected essayists of her time. Ephron’s hallmark was collecting threads from her own life — and from the lives of others — to weave provocative literary tapestries and films.

5年前，我在紐約的一個晚宴派對上遇到了記者和電影製作人諾拉•埃夫龍(Nora Ephron)，當時她70歲，是我崇拜的偶像。部分原因是埃夫龍創作了一些我最喜歡的電影，例如《當哈里遇見薩利》(When Harry Met Sally)（1989年）。但在她的人生中（她在2012年去世），她也是一種稀有動物：她是夢想成爲記者的年輕人的偉大女性楷模。上世紀60年代，她開始在《新聞週刊》(Newsweek)的郵件收發室工作，當時從事媒體行業的女性很少，接着她無畏地攀登職業階梯，成爲她那個時代筆鋒最爲犀利、最受尊敬的散文家之一。埃夫龍的特點是從她自己以及其他人的生活中收集素材，然後編織成吸引人的文學作品和電影。

But did she have the right to use those threads of private human life in her essays? Where do the boundaries of privacy lie for Ephron — or any other writer? It is an intriguing question, and one that is doubly pertinent now since, this weekend, HBO is releasing a documentary about Ephron, made by her son, Jacob Bernstein.

但她是否有權在她的散文中使用私人生活的素材？對於埃夫龍或者其他任何作家而言，個人隱私的界限在哪裏？這是一個耐人尋味的問題，而且現在變得愈發相關，因爲最近美國有線電視頻道HBO發佈了一部有關埃夫龍的紀錄片，該片由她的兒子雅可布•伯恩斯坦(Jacob Bernstein)製作。

I attended a preview of the movie, Everything is Copy, last week in New York (which, in a surreal twist of life-meets-art-inspires-life was also attended by many of those featured in the movie, such as Ephron’s ex-husband Carl Bernstein, Meg Ryan and the New Yorker’s Ken Auletta). I can report that the portrait is compelling. But it is also sobering for writers — of either sex.

我最近在紐約出席了《一切都是拷貝》(Everything is Copy)的預映式（片中出現的很多人物也參加了那次預映式，例如埃夫龍的前夫卡爾•伯恩斯坦(Carl Bernstein)、梅格•瑞恩(Meg Ryan)以及《紐約客》(New Yorker)的肯•奧萊塔(Ken Auletta)，這簡直是一件超現實的事情：生活遇到藝術，藝術啓迪生活。）我可以告訴大家，該片引人入勝。但對於作家（無論男女），它也發人深省。

Most notably, the title of the film refers to the dictum that Ephron’s mother reportedly lived by: namely that a writer should welcome good and bad things that happen to them (or to people they know), because it provides valuable “copy”, or material for stories and films. Indeed, Ephron’s mother lived by this rule so fervently that she told her daughter to “take notes” on her own deathbed.

最引人注目的是，該片的片名取自埃夫龍的母親據稱遵循的格言：作家應該歡迎發生在自己（以及他們認識的人們）身上的好事和壞事，因爲這提供了對故事和電影有價值的“拷貝”，即素材。的確，埃夫龍的母親如此熱忱地遵循這條準則，以至於她在臨終前還叮囑女兒“記下來”。

Ephron did. During her career she wrote frankly about all aspects of her public and personal life; most famously, she penned a book on the high-profile break-up of her marriage to Bernstein, the brilliant journalist who helped uncover the Watergate scandal. When the book, Heartburn, was published, some considered it to be revenge but Ephron’s son and others suspect it was also driven by a need to exert control — with words. “By making it funny, she won,” a friend observes. Or, as Ephron herself once wrote: “When you slip on the banana peel, people laugh at you. But when you tell people you slipped on the banana peel, it’s your laugh. So you become the hero, rather than the victim, of the joke.”

埃夫龍記下來了。在她的職業生涯期間，她率真地寫到了自己的公衆和私人生活的方方面面；最著名的是，她以自己與伯恩斯坦的高調離婚爲素材，撰寫了一本書，伯恩斯坦是一名才華橫溢的記者，當年幫助揭露了水門事件(Watergate)。《我心欲焚》(Heartburn)發表後，一些人把它視爲報復，但埃夫龍的兒子和其他人則認爲，撰寫這本書也受到藉助文字施加控制的需要的驅使。一個朋友觀察道：“通過讓一切變得有趣，她贏了。”或者，正如埃夫龍自己曾寫的：“當你因爲踩香蕉皮而摔倒時，人們會嘲笑你。但當你告訴人們你因爲踩了香蕉皮而摔倒時，就該輪到你笑了。就這樣，你成了那個笑話中的英雄，而不是受害者。”

There was a dark side to this: “She was mean,” some of Ephron’s friends complain in the film. Sometimes she could seem excessively frank. Her saving grace was that she was funny; and was as harsh — and honest — about herself as others.

這裏有陰暗的一面：“她很刻薄，”埃夫龍的一些朋友在影片中抱怨道。有時，她可能顯得過於直率了。她的可取之處在於她很會逗樂；並且對自己和對其他人一樣尖刻和誠實。

But there was a rub: when, in 2006, Ephron discovered that she had an incurable type of leukaemia, she kept her illness a secret. These days, when her friends reread her works, they can see hints of a “goodbye” in her 2010 collection of essays I Remember Nothing; but she, like David Bowie, told almost nobody that she was about to die. This caused hurt among friends and family. Some felt betrayed. Indeed, this seems to be one reason why her son has turned his mother’s death into “copy” by making this film (ultimately, he concluded Ephron’s silence about her impending death was because it was the one part of her life that words could not control).

但最終還是有一個問題：2006年，當埃夫龍發現自己患上了一種無法治癒的白血病時，她隱瞞了自己的病情。如今，當她的朋友們重讀她的作品時，他們可以在埃夫龍2010年的散文集《我什麼都不記得》(I Remember Nothing)中讀到“告別”的暗示；但與大衛•鮑伊(David Bowie)一樣，她幾乎沒有告訴任何人她即將過世。這讓她的朋友和家人受到了傷害。一些人感覺遭到背叛。的確，這似乎是她的兒子通過製作這部影片把母親的死變成“拷貝”的一個原因（最終而言，他總結稱，埃夫龍對自己將死一事保持沉默，是因爲死亡是詞語無法控制的那部分人生）。

That revelation is moving. It also raises questions for anyone — myself included — who makes a living by weaving stories from the threads of life: do we have the right to weave with other people’s threads? How much should we reveal about our own lives? I do not have any easy answers. Weaving linguistic tapestries is a wonderful, compelling art; indeed, if you are curious about life, it is almost addictive. But it is also risky — my own mistakes are seared into my brain. And, as Ephron once observed, we can turn into “cannibals”, eating the world around us. Even now, two decades into my career, I still hold my breath every time I press “send” on a story.

這一點令人感動。它還給所有那些依靠從生活素材改編故事、並以此爲生的人（包括我自己）提出了問題：我們是否有權利用別人的素材來創作？我們應該在多大程度上暴露我們自己的生活？我沒有現成的答案。編織文學作品是一門美妙的引人入勝的藝術；的確，如果你對人生感到好奇，它幾乎會讓你欲罷不能。但它也是危險的，我自己的錯誤被深深刻入我的大腦。而且，正如埃夫龍曾經指出的，我們可能會變成“食人族”，吞噬我們周圍的世界。甚至在我工作了20年後的現在，每次按下文章“發送”鍵時，我仍會屏住呼吸。

But, if nothing else, Everything is Copy should remind us to feel grateful for the writers who have blazed a trail, amid their mistakes. I only wish that I’d had the foresight to ask Ephron to explain her idea of “privacy” when I met her at dinner, all those years ago. She might have offered me some trenchant advice. And some great “copy”.

但是，如果別無其他，《一切都是拷貝》應該會提醒我們對那些在犯錯誤的同時開闢出一條道路的作家們心存感激。我只希望自己早有先見之明，在多年前的那次宴會上請她解釋一下對“隱私”的看法。她可能會給我一些犀利的建議。還有一些不錯的“拷貝”。