Liars in Love《Welcome to the Real World》

（读书笔记，有严重剧透，阅读请慎重）

《Liars in Love》，理查德·耶茨1981年出版的短篇小说集。耶茨出版过两本短篇集，另一本即为《十一种孤独》（上海译文出版社年内出版）。他的短篇小说在2001年出了全集，收入的内容除了以前出的两个集子，另收进以前未入集的几篇。

耶茨的这本，收入七个短篇。

1． Oh Joseph I'm So Tired. 这一篇最为人称道，的确特别令人回味无穷。题目是圣母玛利亚在生耶稣前逃难途中对约瑟夫说的。这篇初看有种怀旧味道，回味之下却令人心酸，说的是一个失婚女艺术家带着一对儿女的一段生活时期（离婚家庭在耶茨小说中一再出现，他本人也来自一个离婚家庭，自己也两度离婚），她本人在艺术和生活上的双重失败令人绝望。

抄一段：''She must have sat staring straight ahead or out the dirty window seeing nothing her eyes round and her face held in a soft shape of hurt. Her adventure with Franklin D. Roosevelt had come to nothing. There would be no photographs or interviews or feature articles no thrilling moments of newsreel coverage; strangers would never know of how she'd come from a small Ohio town or of how she'd nurtured her talent through the brave difficult one-woman journey that had brought her to the attention of the world. It wasn't fair.''

2． A Natural Girl。主人公身上颇有耶茨小长篇《复活节游行》中主角艾米莉的影子，她独立、知性，做事多少有点随心所欲。先是伤害了钟爱她的父亲，后来生了孩子后又毅然离开了丈夫（她上大学时的老师），走向未知的将来。

3． Trying Out for the Race。两位失婚女士为朋友，带着她们的儿子合租一套房子，本来安排不错，矛盾却逐渐显现出来，最终两家人决裂，结束了合租。讲的是友情的丧失。

4．Liars in Love。恋爱中的说谎者（这个译法很笨）。这篇肯定是耶茨也较喜欢的，否则不会拿来当书名。讲的是一个获得富布赖特奖学金的美国人沃伦携妻女来伦敦闲居，婚姻却出现问题，妻携女回到纽约。沃伦百无聊赖之际，去找妓女，却与一苏格兰来的妓女产生了感情，其实也是相互慰籍。这一段，是耶茨小说中难得出现的温情片段。但是好景不长，两人相处一段时间后，性格等方面的冲突开始揭示出来，其中之一是那个妓女撒的一些无伤大雅的小谎话。无论如何，两人的感情变味，最终不欢而散。沃伦自己的妻子却迈出和解一步，婚姻好像又有了希望，篇末，沃伦准备回纽约。

5．A Compassionate Leave。二战结束后，一位驻在法国的士兵休假去英国看望他的母亲及妹妹，他的父母离婚，妈妈带着女儿回到英国定居。用笔较淡，有淡淡的伤感。

6．Regards at Home. (代问家人好)。又是几个失意人的故事，包括叙述者的艺术家的母亲，叙述者夫妻两人及其一位同事。最后叙述者夫妇去了巴黎，寻找新机会，就像《革命之路》中。巴黎在耶茨的作品中一再出现，代表的是希望。

P301写两个孤独的人遇到一起后，写得令人心酸：

From the beginning and for the whole of the next year we were hardly ever apart except during working hours. It may not have been love but we couldn’t have been persuaded of that because we kept telling each other and telling ourselves that it was. If we often quarelled the movies had proved time and again that love was like that. We couldn't keep away from each other though I think we both came to suspect after awhile that this might be because neither of us had anywhere else to go.

P315

Well I think Phil's got a fairly good chance of getting in there maybe even on a scholarship. It sound's fine; still all I know about Harvard is the reputation you know? – the outside view. And that's sort of like the Empire State Building right? You see it from a distance maybe at sunset and it's this majestic beautiful thing. Then you get inside you walk around a couple of the lower floors and it turns out to be one of the sleaziest office buildings in New York: there's nothing in there but small-time insurance agencies and costume-jewelry wholesalers. There isn't any reason for the tallest building in the world.

P324 这一段说的就是耶茨自己：

Then in a long-familiar pattern he began to worry about himself: maybe his nature would always seek darkness and confinement and decay. Maybe – and this was a phrase then popular in national magazines – he was self-destructive personality.

7．Saying Goodbye to Sally。耶茨曾经像他的偶像菲茨杰拉德一样，去好莱坞写过剧本，在洛杉矶待了几个月。这篇较长的短篇写的就是“我”在那里跟一位秘书发生的恋情。这其实也是一次漫长的告别。

P356 在“我”表现得过于自高自大时，倒是Sally点明了真相：

“God” she said. You've got an ego that nobody'd believe. Tell me something: If you're so great how come your clothes are all falling apart? And how come you've got snails in you shower stall? Huh? And how can your bed smells like death?