《当哈里遇见萨利》 一切皆是素材吗 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，我在纽约的一个晚宴派对上遇到了记者和电影制作人诺拉•埃夫龙(Nora Ephron)，当时她70岁，是我崇拜的偶像。部分原因是埃夫龙创作了一些我最喜欢的电影，例如《当哈里遇见萨利》(When Harry Met Sally)（1989年）。但在她的人生中（她在2012年去世），她也是一种稀有动物：她是梦想成为记者的年轻人的伟大女性楷模。上世纪60年代，她开始在《新闻周刊》(Newsweek)的邮件收发室工作，当时从事媒体行业的女性很少，接着她无畏地攀登职业阶梯，成为她那个时代笔锋最为犀利、最受尊敬的散文家之一。埃夫龙的特点是从她自己以及其他人的生活中收集素材，然后编织成吸引人的文学作品和电影。

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.

但她是否有权在她的散文中使用私人生活的素材？对于埃夫龙或者其他任何作家而言，个人隐私的界限在哪里？这是一个耐人寻味的问题，而且现在变得愈发相关，因为最近美国有线电视频道HBO发布了一部有关埃夫龙的纪录片，该片由她的儿子雅可布•伯恩斯坦(Jacob Bernstein)制作。

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.

我最近在纽约出席了《一切都是拷贝》(Everything is Copy)的预映式（片中出现的很多人物也参加了那次预映式，例如埃夫龙的前夫卡尔•伯恩斯坦(Carl Bernstein)、梅格•瑞恩(Meg Ryan)以及《纽约客》(New Yorker)的肯•奥莱塔(Ken Auletta)，这简直是一件超现实的事情：生活遇到艺术，艺术启迪生活。）我可以告诉大家，该片引人入胜。但对于作家（无论男女），它也发人深省。

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，该片的片名取自埃夫龙的母亲据称遵循的格言：作家应该欢迎发生在自己（以及他们认识的人们）身上的好事和坏事，因为这提供了对故事和电影有价值的“拷贝”，即素材。的确，埃夫龙的母亲如此热忱地遵循这条准则，以至于她在临终前还叮嘱女儿“记下来”。

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.”

埃夫龙记下来了。在她的职业生涯期间，她率真地写到了自己的公众和私人生活的方方面面；最著名的是，她以自己与伯恩斯坦的高调离婚为素材，撰写了一本书，伯恩斯坦是一名才华横溢的记者，当年帮助揭露了水门事件(Watergate)。《我心欲焚》(Heartburn)发表后，一些人把它视为报复，但埃夫龙的儿子和其他人则认为，撰写这本书也受到借助文字施加控制的需要的驱使。一个朋友观察道：“通过让一切变得有趣，她赢了。”或者，正如埃夫龙自己曾写的：“当你因为踩香蕉皮而摔倒时，人们会嘲笑你。但当你告诉人们你因为踩了香蕉皮而摔倒时，就该轮到你笑了。就这样，你成了那个笑话中的英雄，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.

这里有阴暗的一面：“她很刻薄，”埃夫龙的一些朋友在影片中抱怨道。有时，她可能显得过于直率了。她的可取之处在于她很会逗乐；并且对自己和对其他人一样尖刻和诚实。

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).

但最终还是有一个问题：2006年，当埃夫龙发现自己患上了一种无法治愈的白血病时，她隐瞒了自己的病情。如今，当她的朋友们重读她的作品时，他们可以在埃夫龙2010年的散文集《我什么都不记得》(I Remember Nothing)中读到“告别”的暗示；但与大卫•鲍伊(David Bowie)一样，她几乎没有告诉任何人她即将过世。这让她的朋友和家人受到了伤害。一些人感觉遭到背叛。的确，这似乎是她的儿子通过制作这部影片把母亲的死变成“拷贝”的一个原因（最终而言，他总结称，埃夫龙对自己将死一事保持沉默，是因为死亡是词语无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.

这一点令人感动。它还给所有那些依靠从生活素材改编故事、并以此为生的人（包括我自己）提出了问题：我们是否有权利用别人的素材来创作？我们应该在多大程度上暴露我们自己的生活？我没有现成的答案。编织文学作品是一门美妙的引人入胜的艺术；的确，如果你对人生感到好奇，它几乎会让你欲罢不能。但它也是危险的，我自己的错误被深深刻入我的大脑。而且，正如埃夫龙曾经指出的，我们可能会变成“食人族”，吞噬我们周围的世界。甚至在我工作了20年后的现在，每次按下文章“发送”键时，我仍会屏住呼吸。

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，如果别无其他，《一切都是拷贝》应该会提醒我们对那些在犯错误的同时开辟出一条道路的作家们心存感激。我只希望自己早有先见之明，在多年前的那次宴会上请她解释一下对“隐私”的看法。她可能会给我一些犀利的建议。还有一些不错的“拷贝”。