Brautigen (left). This photo is the cover photo of the 1967 English edition of Trout Fishing in america.
布劳提根画作，配文为：Shadow of a Car in the Eye of a Trout。
Trout Fishing in America
Author: (U.S.) Richard Brautigan
Translator: Chen Xi Xiao Shui
Edition: Xinmin Said, Guangxi Normal University Press
May 2018
Faulkner, Hemingway, Lawrence, Joyce, Márquez, all wrote poetry in the early days, Andersen also wrote poetry, Abbas also wrote poetry, michelangelo also wrote poetry. The poet Kerouac's "On the Road" and "Dharma Wanderer" have already been in traditional Chinese, and the novels of Bukowski, William Burroughs, and Brautigan are still on the way to find translations. My friend Ah Huang's ideal in life is to translate the complete works of Bukowski throughout his life. The publisher Liu is looking around for someone to translate William Burroughs' Naked Lunch. The Guangxi poet Lao Luo was ecstatic because of Brautigen. At that time, it was still the blog period, and Lao Luo posted every song he translated into the blog, and we gathered like fish waiting to be fed at a fixed point. At that time, I remember what Ah Huang and Lao Luo often said: Bu (Bukowski and Brautigan) novels are also excellent, and when I finish translating some more poems, I will start translating one or two of his novels.
I don't know who said it. Unsuccessful poets are likely to become great novelists after switching careers. And a novel written by a successful poet will boldly jump out, not follow the rules, and present crazy and neurotic characteristics, which is unforgettable. "Bitter Water Music", "Nude Lunch", "Trout Fishing in America" are not the same. Don't forget that Brautigan was the first and always poet who wrote poems like "In the Cafe": "I saw a man folding a slice of bread in a café / as if he were folding a birth certificate or looking at a lover's last photograph." ”
Cold, absurd, poetic
Brautigan's Trout Fishing in America is so grotesque that it's hard to classify. It looks like a collection of 47 short stories of its own—more like a handwritten genre—expository text, diaries, correspondence, jokes, jokes, and so on— somewhat similar to Lydia Davis's novel style, but after reading it, it feels more like a self-contained novel, with "I" running through the entire text, dominated by "Trout Fishing in America." Although the expression "fishing for trout in America" is confusing, it has a variety of strange doppelgangers: a communicator, a foodie, a poet Byron, a line of words written behind a schoolboy, a nickname for a dwarf, a clothing brand, a hotel, a place name, a parade, all of which are magical like a kaleidoscope of fickle, but always changeable, with fixed attributes, exuding a cold, absurd, poetic atmosphere.
I suspect that Brautigan had no intention of telling us honestly a serious story. Even if there is a narrative support point, or a complete story core, he always unfolds the story at will, not to get to the point, but to smile, appearing to be free, flickering, one-sided, each individual novel is like a marble, with centrifugal force, put together to form a closed loop, and then produce a centripetal force that is difficult to get rid of. It's as if "I" was poisoned by trout fishing in childhood, and as an adult, I was keen to go fishing for trout on top of streams. Fishing for trout turns into non-stop trout fishing, and it's hard not to be metaphorical. For example, death, the image of death abounds in the novel, shooting rats, poisoning coyotes, cemeteries, hot spring slaughterhouses; such as the ego, the ego is like the trout that can never catch the particularly intelligent; such as the prank, writing "Fishing for trout in America" behind the back of a first-grader, and pouring a trout into Port wine until it is drunk to death. These are crazy and cruel, but yet light, exuding purity and innocence. In other words, very Brautigan.
Quiet irony
There are three chapters that deserve to be caught like trout fishing, namely Cleveland Dismantling Field, Trout Fishing on Eternity Street, and Knocking on Wood.
In Cleveland Demolition Yard, Brautigan writes a passage that takes place after "I" visit a strange roof at a friend's house, "I felt like that roof was like a colander." If that roof fights rain at Bay Ranch, I bet rain wins, and I spend the money I win at the Seattle Expo. ”
As a master of the most poignant irony, Brautigan's novels are full of astonishing words. For example, he dreamed that Da Vinci invented spinning bait, which da Vinci named "The Last Supper." The Vatican, which did not have a single trout, ordered ten thousand, and thirty-four former U.S. presidents unanimously praised: "The Last Supper is beyond my imagination." Is the statement that "I will spend the money I bet on the World Expo" a sincere statement or a ridiculous statement?
One of the visions of the 1962 Seattle World's Fair, "Humanity in the Space Age," was that in the future, humans would spend less and less time working and more time on art, sports, and personal hobbies. What could be more appealing to Brautigan than fishing for trout in the United States?
Brautigen's Cleveland dismantling yard is more like a product of the Seattle Expo, a hypermarket that will only appear in the future, where used trout streams and waterfalls are sold by foot, there are a dozen or so waterfalls, and trout streams that are cut into different lengths, and there are good trout in the streams, and there are also cockroaches. Animals, birds, insects, trees, flowers and ferns are also sold.
This is like a dream, or a miniature of the human world that you see after entering the future, whether it is life, the world, or fishing for trout, it is no longer an uncontrollable thing that flows, but a cross-section that can be extracted at will. It's like knocking on wood, where the white wooden ladder and the old woman are seen as streams with trout. The poet Yang Li once had a similar description, "There are fish on the ceiling." This makes me subconsciously wait for the swimming fish to pass by every time I pay special attention to the ceiling. The ceiling is liberated by syntax and poetry, and at any moment it may become a river, flowing above our heads.
Although Brautigan said with the help of a messenger "fishing for trout in America": "I can't turn a wooden ladder into a stream." "But the wooden ladder and the old woman could turn into a stream, and in that case there would naturally be trout in the stream. Even "I" can think of myself as a trout. This is simply a stroke of genius, just like "Zhuang Zhou Xiaomeng fan butterfly", fishing for trout in the United States has also been stained with the brand of finding "self". However, this pursuit tends to fall into greater disorientation and no results. Or as he says in his poem, "[Everything] is just the beginning." ”
Special observations create metaphors
It's like Alonso Hagen's epitaph in Trout Fishing on Eternal Street: "I fished." So far, I have been fishing for trout for seven years and have not caught a single trout. Every trout hooked eventually escaped. ...... But next year someone will have to go trout fishing. There will be people who will come down my path. Alonso Hagen has a diary detailing the number of fish he fished and the number of trout that escaped between 1891 and 1897. The real-life Brautigan also has a notebook on which he records "where I fished for trout": Silver Creek, Copper Creek, Tom Martin Creek, Little Wood Creek, Big Smoke Creek, Paradise Creek, Saltwater Creek, Duck Lake, Little Smoke Creek, Carrie Creek, Queen Creek, Red Trout Creek, Salmon Creek, Little Red Salmon Creek, Yellow-bellied Lake Creek, Stanley Lake and Stanley Lake Creek, Taming Lake, big wood River.
Here, the novel character Alonso Hagen and the author Brautigen form an interesting set of complementarities: the same is fishing for trout in the United States, Alonso Hagen unfolds in time, and Brautigen unfolds in space. Alonso Hagen found nothing, his fishing career was over, and Brautigen was still happy to walk on the road to trout fishing.
From the Cleveland dismantling ground to Alonso Hagen's diary to Brautigan's notepad, the trout fishing became more and more concrete, more and more detailed, the trout creek decomposed into a nice name, and the trout also had specific species and names, such as the small flower lamb red trout, the cut-throat trout, and the humpback trout. If trout fishing in the United States thus has an ambiguous metaphor and meaning, it may simply be because it is placed on a very special observation deck and is led to one heterogeneous result after another.
This may be the old woman in "Knocking on the Wood" in response to "fishing for trout in the United States" seriously. "I'm not (Trout Creek)." She said.
□ Zhao Zhiming