When you are dying of old age, how will you look back on your life? In 2013, at the age of 88, James Sauter published his last novel, All This.
The story begins with a ship bound for Okinawa at the end of World War II, and the protagonist, Bowman, is a young naval officer. In the decades that followed, he returned to New York to become an editor at a publishing house, settling into book deals, literary careers, and dinner parties after dinner parties. He married and divorced, new loves followed, flesh passions began and he experienced cruel betrayal. Old friends drift apart, houses are bought and sold, parents die, and the bonds of love fade. When we last met Bauman, he was old enough to think seriously about death: he wanted to return to the Pacific, where "there was the only brave part of his life."
After watching "All This", it is difficult not to feel sad - it turns out that a person's life has passed like this, and all this has been given an epic quality by Sauter.
The protagonist and Souter's experience is so similar, in the real world, Souter first became a soldier, and then became a novelist, translator Liu Wei wrote in today's article: "At the end of his life, Sauter seems to exhaust the appearance of his life, he created his last protagonist, let him set foot on the New and Old World again, and taste the love and death he tasted again." ”
He created the last protagonist
Taste the love and death he has tasted again
Text/"All This" translated by Liu Wei
01
In 1998, the 73-year-old American writer James Salter published a memoir called Burning the Days. In this book, he depicts his origins, his teenage years, and his adult days in the world of film and literature. He also devoted considerable space to the Air Force years.
Sauter followed his father's wishes to attend West Point, and by the time he graduated, World War II was over, but he remained in the military and traveled to Europe, North Africa, and South Korea as an occupation force. His military career was inevitably filled with harsh setbacks and real sacrifices, but it also saved him from the constraints of everyday life. He soared over the mountains during the day and lived a life of indulgence and pleasure for American soldiers at night. The long-cherished wish of writing also bore fruit during this time. Sauter completed his first novel, The Hunters, set in the Korean War, which for many years gained a reputation in U.S. military circles for its brilliant depictions of flight.
In 1956, Sauter's debut film The Hunters
Still, looking back on the days, Mr. Souter always had a hint of bitterness in his tone, saying that he had had a bad time, and that the unpleasantness might mean that he was not as accomplished as he had expected, at least not as good as his comrade-in-arms Ed White, who was good enough to represent the United States on the first spacewalk mission. When Sauter saw this historic scene on television, he wrote a word of jealousy, its truth and sharpness, worthy of being quoted here:
I was nervous and depressed. I felt a pain in my chest and felt like I had a white head all night. White, tied to the spacecraft by a loose rope, was slowly turning around, head upside down. I was jealous to death–he was destroying hope. Whatever I do in the future, it won't be so shocking. I felt a sense of loneliness and fear. I wanted to go home, I wanted to see the kids again before it was over, and I was sure it was going to end. I felt like I had suicidal thoughts and was ready to shed tears. He did all this to me unconsciously, like a woman crossing the road, crushing her heart with the heel of her shoe.
He submitted his resignation to the Pentagon. But long after that, he still seemed to wake up in a big dream. "Everything that meant anything to me — the Pentagon, Georgetown, Fly out of Andrews, everything I did in life — I threw it all away. I felt absolute sadness – sorrow and failure. ”
Such a strong bitterness is so impressive that it even makes me lament why things are so, isn't he determined to become a professional writer? Is there anything more important than writing something like Lightyear? Perhaps, the impact of his military career on Sauter is greater than we think, and perhaps any subsequent period of life is that the detachment he later embodies in his works is not innate, and there are various turbulence behind it. He entrusted himself to chance, but he could not fail to notice, and he cared about his place in the torrent of the times, and he also cared about the contingency of every life driven by the historical order. Perhaps, it is this kind of care that makes a writer.
02
In 2013, at the age of 88, Sauter published his last novel, "All This." The book begins with war, and is the most brutal and intense part of the Pacific theater of World War II.
In a rhythm as condensed as a history book, the protagonist Bowman appears. He was a naval officer who fought in the Battle of Okinawa; he was very loyal, dutiful in his mission, and had deep feelings for his superiors and comrades-in-arms. Although he witnessed the worst aspects of the war, he represented the victor of justice and returned to his homeland with heroic glory.
"All This"
By James Sauter; translated by Liu Wei
The positive description of the war is only the prelude to the book, and in the later pages, the war flashes back like a repetitive dream, reinforcing the character's self-identity, shaping his sense of time, and helping him find his kind in life, distinguishing between the real heroes and the speculators: "He participated in the war, and his life became more complete." "The war he escaped unscathed gave him the legitimacy to survive." Even the determined, joyful parts of life are more or less due to the gifts of war. This is somewhat glaring compared to the history of suffering after World War II, but it forms part of the postwar American social atmosphere.
As Tony Judt put it, in World War II, the United States avoided everything, and Americans lived through the 20th century with far more certainty than others. America's role in the two world wars made him richer, not poorer. As a consequence, Tony Judt went on to say, the United States is the only developed country that still gives its military might its glory and exalted status. This glory also often flashed on Bowman, explaining his inexplicable, even somewhat naked sense of superiority.
Choosing to start with a real war is destined to be tinged with some realistic hues and inextricably linked to history. Unlike Lightyear, who is so preoccupied with his private life, this time, Sauter's characters also have real historical geographical coordinates and are forced to experience reality.
In 1975, at the age of 50, Sauter
Just published Light Years
He did not shy away from putting Nazi officers and well-known writers in front of people to talk about, testing their reactions with regional, racial, and class conflicts; he talked openly about money, which drives the actions of many of the characters in the novel; he mentioned several years frugally, in addition to establishing a more solid structure for the narrative, but also played a kind of "scrubbing" role, scrubbing the camera clean and making the vision clearer. Even if history is just a shadow, it is projected on the surface of life and changes the direction of the ripples:
In late autumn, he returned to the office after lunch. It was getting colder, and the faces on the street were blown more clearly by the wind. The sky was colorless, and the glass of the building shone with light, as it had been earlier in each day. The office is surprisingly quiet, is everyone out? Frightening stagnant. They didn't go out, they were listening to the news. A terrible thing happened. The president was shot in Dallas.
This is a typical Soltian depiction, the passage of time is not linear, the occurrence of events is no longer driven by verbs alone, the events become pictures, flowing forward between the light and dark transitions of tones, and finally extinguished. This passage appears at the end of a certain chapter, in which Bowman's extramarital affair with the English woman Enid develops to its peak, but also hides uneasiness, this relationship pins on Bowman's desire for European life, but also on his yearning for a wandering life, both of which are like dreams, covering real life.
But at the end of such a chapter, Sauter inserts a real event, a sentence as short as a news headline. The narrative tightens like a rope, put on the protagonist, but also on the reader, the fictional world and the real world merge, cold and warm interlaced, the story bumps a little, you feel a trance, and feel suddenly back to God, you will involuntarily return to the starting point of the book, pinch your fingers to calculate the real scale corresponding to the story, and feel that Bowman has taken us out of this far.
03
In a sense, we can think of "All This" as a male coming-of-age novel, but it goes in the opposite direction of the traditional coming-of-age novel: it has a violent, furnace-like beginning, and the protagonist's personality takes shape quickly, but his subsequent experience is no longer an adventure, but falls into the subtle waves of everyday life, challenging the original heroic image. Most of these challenges come from others. No character in this novel is purely functional, and they exist not only for Bowman, but also for the southern plantation owners who appear only once, Greek gamblers, young girls who have become the Nth wife of others, and even the waiter at the wedding, all with their inviolable integrity.
Especially women. We see that whether it is Vivian, or Enid, or Christine, they carry a rich sociality as soon as they appear. They have a family of birth, a natural environment to grow up, a variety of social class marks, and even the most important thing in their lives is not Bowman, this person or thing that is not Bowman constitutes their core personality, and it is doomed to end their love with Bowman. But in any case, they all have real desires and have nothing to do with morality, but they never shy away from it until they taste the last taste of life, and this "straight way" makes us see the shadow of Redena in "Lightyear" again.
My favorite female character in the whole book is Vivian, and this isn't the first time it's formed. In the process of revising the translation, I followed her back to Virginia again and again, back to the mansion with the dry hidden behind the couch, the hazy May Gold Cup, and we saw her through the judge's eyes, as if she were looking through a piece of fate, and later, when Bowman's mother described her as soulless, I thought this evaluation was really unfair. She married Bowman with inexplicable passion, and chose to take the initiative to quit, what is this passion?
We remember that Bowman had twice gone to dinners at the home of his employer, Baum, the first with his new wife at the time, Vivian, and the second with his newly acquainted female companion Christine, and that the two dinners were long apart but in a similar atmosphere: the cultural people talked, and Baum's solid family atmosphere encouraged this open discussion. After the dinner, however, Vivian and Christine reacted in starkly different ways, with Christine following the topic and asking with great interest for what she longed for: sex, and in the end she succeeded; while Vivian spent the rest of her nights full of bitterness, which became a turning point in her marriage to Bauman.
We see from Bowman's perspective that she turns around and begins to emit a sense of alienation. She couldn't fit into Bowman's world. Bowman is the man she knows in the bar, "seems to have depth and creativity", completely different from the men in her own world, and marrying him is a symbol of courage, and courage, in her society, is regarded as an important virtue. Vivian, a woman who was always silent, showed this courage in many ways: she refused to do housework, did not want to be a traditional wife; she took on the responsibility of caring for her mother, very conscientiously; she took the initiative to end her marriage to Bowman, the farewell letter was written very frankly, one of many thrilling fragments in the book, when Bowman chose to escape in secret, it was she who broke the essence of their relationship; she returned to Virginia, but refused to go along with the old life, she refused the judge's tireless pursuit , and disappeared from the book.
Souter did not arrange a clear ending for Vivian, she always maintained that bright and stubborn image in our hearts. Maybe Sauter doesn't know either, and no one can know. Because it's hard to say what Vivian is rebelling against, and it's not about what she's doing, but we can feel what she's defending, not her father, not some ancient Southern value, maybe the ego that's still in the shadows. Bauman once said somewhere: "Vivian will follow her father's example and become herself." ”
04
In his emotional life, Bauman does not lack insight, he sees Vivian's alienation, Enid's nostalgia and Christine's material (sexual) desires, he falls in love with these women for different reasons, but can never reach the core of their lives. They formed his encounter, helped him swim across a certain section of the river, and then went down the river to pursue his fate. What about Bowman? And what constitutes the core of his life?
After the publication of All This, Sauter attended a readers' meeting. Someone mentions the book's inscription, "One day you will realize that everything is a dream, and only those things that remain in writing can be real." The reader asked, but your protagonist is an editor, and he didn't write anything down. Sauter pretended to be shocked, but I wrote it. The audience burst into laughter.
Here, Sauter seems to acknowledge the autobiographical color of the book. Indeed, many of the details that appear in Burning Days reappear in the book, and those untouched borrowings are beyond the reach of a well-known writer's self-esteem, because few people are willing to reveal the source of the material in this way. At the end of his life, Sauter seems to be exhausting the appearance of his life, and he creates his last protagonist, allowing him to set foot on the Old and New Worlds again, to taste the love and death he has tasted again.
The biggest difference is their profession. Since leaving the Air Force, Souter has been a professional writer and screenwriter, with successes and failures, but he has always been a creative subject, playing a "God"-like role. But Bowman was an editor who stumbled upon the profession and quickly settled in it. There are all kinds of people in the publishing industry who have different careers, but Bowman's idea has always seemed simple: this profession satisfies his love of books and provides him with a stable financial source to live a comfortable life. He himself said:
As an editor, you have to do the opposite. You have to be open to what other people write. That's not the same thing. I can write too. In the beginning I wanted to be a journalist. I can write cover recommendations, but I can't write anything that really shines. To do that, you have to be able to keep other people's work out of the atrium.
Bowman is precisely not so exuberant self. He is not a creator, he is just a witness to the scene of life, he meets all kinds of people, can't help but guess the invisible parts of their lives, trying to spell out a picture for them. He has a strong curiosity about people, a direct but profound understanding, and he helps many people to portray their most fundamental image in the blink of an eye, and this image does not exist for any purpose. In other words, the man in his eyes is only an individual, and like himself is a collection of historical contingencies, but not to any kind of history.
I was also struck by some criticism after the publication of All This, one of which impressed me by the fact that it enumerated Bauman's disgraceful behavior and ended up saying that he was not even a "protagonist." In modern fiction, a hero may be the most ordinary person, but he must also have a shoulder, shoulder some events, scenes and encounters, he especially needs to shoulder a mission of discovery, to discover his own personality, to discover the secrets of the world, and even to find that everything is immutable or the final outcome is depraved, this latter discovery, although gloomy, it is still called a "truth", something that both the character himself and the reader can hold in their hands. We can't accept that a protagonist doesn't speak for the reader, doesn't speak for many people. We can't accept that he's just being himself.
But Souter's setting of Bowman as an editor may have been precisely to allow him to live more fully and wander freely in the river of life. I remember chen Yikan said that he felt that Souter might not like writing. I feel similarly, or in other words, writing in the traditional sense—social, dedicated writing—is certainly not the most important thing in Sauter's life. There are many writers (or artists) in All This, who always try to create things outside of life, so that life itself inevitably exudes a sense of misery.
But Editor Bowman is not such a person, and writer Souter may not be such a person. Anthony Burgess wrote about Shakespeare about professional writers, saying that their artistic pursuits were often closely related to how they treated their lives. Sauter is a testament to that. He loved everyday life too much, more specifically—he loved his own life too much, and he wrote for the purpose of preserving the picture of life and not the opposite, even though life often overwhelmed literature, the literary constituent elements of what we call the gist of the gist.
There is no intermediary between Soutert's words and life, he does not need to transcode life into a literary to-do list, the relationship between the two is as swift and direct as photography; he reminds me in many ways of Auerbach's Montaigne: "He presented himself with great seriousness, thus clarifying the general conditions of human existence ... This is the human condition, and all its burdens, its problems, its abysses, and all its uncertainties in principle, and all its biological connections. I also often read Auerbach's comments about Montaigne from Sauter: "He likes himself". And I like that.
As for Baumann, he didn't even need the catalyst of words between him and life, he threw himself into it and didn't rely on other sources of meaning. And he happened to live in a prosperous rising era, a metropolis like New York, and the richness of life was presented from all aspects, and the spirituality of the material and the materiality of the spirit briefly merged, and they did not owe each other in appearance. To be so immersed in life itself without having to face the harsh moral tests is that there are not many such historical opportunities.
Finally, as stubborn readers who don't want to get something out of the book, we'll go back to reality again, or to the war at the beginning of the book. Where does the love of everyday life come from? Is it because of the war? I think it's better not to make such a rough causal link. Perhaps Ben had no cause and no effect, bowman sitting in a bomber and bowman who ate soft-boiled eggs every morning were the same person, and Sauter, who was jealous of his comrades's spacewalk, and Sauter, who wrote a food book with his wife, were also the same person, and their common feat was fidelity to their individual lives. Keeping a loving and discerning eye for everyday life is the least effective way to humble us, and the most effective one is to make us care for each other and human dignity. Surrendering oneself to contingency is not a humiliation; on the contrary, the greatest embrace of contingency may be the source of meaning; and the focus on depicting and defending this contingency is the most moving part of literature.
Edit the typography Bear Mur
Illustrations of "The Aviator", "Big Fish"
James Sauter Series