安吉拉·弗卢努瓦的《荒野》

大家好，欢迎收听由读者支持的《洛杉矶书评》带来的Larb广播时间。我是主持人凯特·沃尔夫，我的搭档是埃里克·纽曼。

Hello, and welcome to the Larb Radio Hour, brought to you by reader supported LA Review of Books. I'm your host, Kate Wolf, and I'm joined by my cohost, Eric Newman.

嘿，凯特。

Hey, Kate.

嗨，埃里克。本周我们将聆听你我与作家安吉拉·弗洛努瓦关于她新书《荒野》的访谈。

Hi, Eric. And this week, we're listening to an interview that you and I did with the writer Angela Flournoy about her new book, The Wilderness.

是的。这本书我最爱的一点——我们在访谈中也讨论过——就是角色身上那种鲜活的生活质感。正如我们将在导言中介绍的，这是本关于友谊的书，那种友谊正如我所说，充满生活气息，让我以截然不同的方式想起自己几十年来拥有的朋友圈——没有人能像那些相识数十年的老友那样让你抓狂，但除了长期伴侣外，也几乎没有人能让你如此深爱。

Yeah. So one of the things that I love about this book is, and we talked about this in the interview, is how lived in the characters feel. And this is also, as we'll describe in the intro, it's a book about friendship, and that friendship feels so, like I was saying, so lived in, and it reminds me in very different ways of friend groups that I have had over decades and how there's nobody that you will that can make you as crazy as those friends that you've had for decades, but also there is almost no one outside of, like, a romantic partner maybe, a longtime romantic partner, that you love as much as those friends.

没错。我同意。书中群体间的互动关系也很有趣——这不只是两个人的友谊。群体中会形成不同联盟、产生嫉妒，一对一友谊中也会存在这些，但书中表现得更为动态。当那种联结崩塌时，有时所有友谊都会随之瓦解，因为维系大家的纽带原本就是彼此间的关联网络。

Yes. I agree. I also think that there's interesting dynamics here between groups of, like you know, it's not just a one on one friendship. There can be different ways that being in a group will create different alliances, jealousies, you know, it's, which can also exist with just one on one friendship too, but it's a little bit more dynamic than that in the book, and I also related to that and understood. And the way that, you know, if that, bond collapses, sometimes, like, all the friendships start to dissolve because what was holding people together was actually just this access of everyone being connected.

是的。我也很喜欢描写友谊的书。其实我自己也一直在写本关于友谊的书，所以这话题让我深有感触。还有时间跨度——这本书涵盖漫长岁月，通过友谊的框架或借助他人来标记时间的流逝。

Yeah. It's I, you know, I I really like books about friendship as well. I've I've, you know, been writing a book about friendship actually for for quite a while, so it's a it's a topic really close to my heart. And, also, the the the time period. This covers a long time period and, you know, just experiencing events, like, within the frame of of a friendship or, like, using other people to kind of be the markers of time.

若没有这些，有些事物会变得非常抽象，只有通过人际关系才能真正理解时间的流逝。

With without that, sometimes things just are so abstract, and it's really only through your personal relationships that you understand, like, how time has passed.

哦，完全同意。

Oh, absolutely.

我喜欢那种感觉

I like that sense of the

是的。这部小说追溯了你们在大学时期或那个年龄段、或是刚成年时的友谊，那时你们怀有一系列梦想、抱负和观点，甚至持有的立场都会随着进入三十岁而发生巨大变化。而这部小说以女性角色们四十出头的阶段收尾，这种友谊在小说中逐渐演变的过程不仅值得关注，也映射了我们现实生活中的经历。正如你所说，我们的日常生活被历史洪流裹挟和塑造的方式，同样会对友谊施加压力，影响着我们在这段友谊初期时的模样，以及后来（不一定是结束时）我们变成的样子。

way Yeah. The the novel traces when you are all friends in college or kind of around that age or when you're in young adulthood, there's a set of dreams and ambitions and ideas and even positions that you will hold that naturally change pretty dramatically as you enter your thirties. And then I believe this novel ends with the women in their early forties, and that is a thing that is also interesting to watch happen on a friendship level in this novel, but also in our own lives. And like you said, also, the change the way in which our everyday lives get swept into and shaped by the course of history is also something that puts pressure on friendships and the kind of people that we were at the beginning of those friendships and the people we become not necessarily at the end, but in later stages of that friendship.

完全同意。我还就此询问了安吉拉，比如该如何处理与那些观点不再一致的朋友的关系。

Totally. And I think that's that's something I ask Angela about, like, what to do with friends that you no longer agree with.

对，没错。

Yes. Yeah.

确实。所以听到她对这个问题以及其他许多话题的回应非常有趣。能和她交谈真是太好了。

Which yeah. So and and that was interesting to hear her response to that and and so much else. It was really great to speak with her.

好的，那我们开始进入采访环节吧。今天的嘉宾是安吉拉·弗洛诺伊。安吉拉是《特纳家族》的作者，这部2015年的处女作曾入围美国国家图书奖决选名单，并被《纽约时报》评为年度值得关注图书之一，还获得过其他多项荣誉。

Alright. Well, let's get to that interview. Okay. Our guest today is Angela Flournoy. Angela is the author of the Turner House, her 2015 debut, which was shortlisted for the National Book Award and named a New York Times notable book of the year among other accolades.

今天她从纽约的家中加入我们，讨论她的最新小说《荒野》。这部在洛杉矶和纽约之间穿梭的作品，探索了四位朋友——January、Monique、Desiree、Nakia和Danielle——从青年步入中年的生命历程。通过她们应对爱情关系、母职压力、事业起伏、新媒体名人效应以及彼此间不断变化的情感，《荒野》以深刻的生活体验和诚实视角，展现了友谊如何塑造并考验我们。随着故事从二十一世纪初延伸至当下并略微超越，这五位朋友在美国定义新千年的剧烈社会政治变革中 navigating 生活。既私密又宏大，《荒野》是一部动人的小说，其核心人物的故事道出了那些长久陪伴我们的友谊中的混乱与力量。

And she joins us today from her home in New York to discuss her latest novel, The Wilderness. Moving between Los Angeles and New York, The Wilderness explores the lives of four friends, January, Monique, Desiree, Nakia, and Danielle, as they move from young adulthood to middle age. Grappling with romantic relationships, the pressures of motherhood, career ups and downs, new media celebrity, and their own shifting feelings about one another, The Wilderness offers a deeply lived in and honest look at how friendship shapes and challenges us. Likewise, as the book moves from the early two thousands to the present and slightly beyond, these five friends navigate life amid the dramatic social and political upheavals in The United States that have defined the new millennium. Intimate and expansive, The Wilderness is a moving novel anchored by characters whose stories articulate the mess and the might of the friendships that stick with us for the long duration.

欢迎来到节目，Angela。很荣幸能与您交谈。

Welcome to the show, Angela. It's a pleasure to be speaking with you.

很高兴来到这里。

Happy to be here.

我想我们可以从这本书的时间线开始讨论，你知道，这本书的创作跨越了多年，超过十年，而且采用了一种非同步的时间线，所以我们能看到2009年、2012年等时间片段。我们实际上是在以并不总是最线性的方式拼凑这些女性的故事。我很好奇这种结构手法是如何产生的，以及你为什么想以这种方式写这本书。

I thought maybe we could start with the timeline of the book, which is, you know, written over a number of years, over a decade, and it's, kind of like a asynchronous timeline so that we have little snippets of time here, 2009, 2012. And, we're really piecing together the story of these women, you know, in not always the most linear way, obviously. And I was curious how that structuring, you know, device came to you and, you know, why you wanted to write the book that way.

当我最初构思这本书时，我希望它是一个关于一群朋友的故事，而不是关于这群朋友中某一个人的故事。所以我认真思考了如何讲述这个故事。如果我问你们中的任何一个人，比如Kate或Eric，假设你们认识了几十年，如果你们中的多个人都在房间里，我问你们友谊的故事，那绝不会是一个线性的故事。原因有很多，包括对某个朋友来说是关键的时刻，对另一个朋友来说可能不是。我越想越觉得，小说的结构应该服务于它的核心主题。

When I first thought about this book, I wanted it to be a story about a group of friends and not a story about one person within a group of friends. So I really thought about how do you tell this story. If I was to ask either one of you, Kate or Eric, say, somebody you've known for decades, if both of you or multiple of you were in the room and I asked you the story of your friendship, it would not be a linear story. And it would not be for many reasons, including a pivotal moment for one friend is not a pivotal moment for another friend. And so the more that I thought about that, I really do believe that a novel, the structure of it should be in service of, like, its central concern.

我觉得结构需要更像棱镜，这样我们能看到对他们每个人来说重要的时刻，而叙事的推进方式与读者获取信息的时间有关，而不是按照传统时间线发生的时间。

It felt like the structure needed to be more prismatic so that we saw them in moments that felt important to each one of them and that the way that the narrative moved had to do with when the reader gets the information, not when the when it occurred in a traditional timeline.

我能想象这样写小说会很有挑战性。这种方式是否确实带来了挑战？你是如何跟踪已发布的信息的？你是按照书中出现的顺序写作的吗？还是需要在墙上贴个小图表之类的？

I could imagine that that would be challenging, just writing a novel that way. Did that prove to be a challenge at all? And, you know, how did you kinda keep track of what information had been released? Did you did you write everything kind of in sequence as it appears? Did you have to keep, like, a something little chart on your wall?

你是怎么做到的？

How did you manage that?

处理这些信息并不困难，因为我认为在叙事时并不需要过分强调时间顺序。所以我的第一部小说《特纳之家》就有两条不同的时间线：1981年2月和1940年代。虽然两条线都在向前推进，但在我心中它们实际上是倒叙的——因为核心时刻对其中一条线来说是回溯性的，讲述的是他们如何拥有这栋房子的故事。

It was not difficult to manage the information because I I don't think that I necessarily prize chronology that much when I think about narrative. So the Turner House, my first novel, is it has two different chronologies. It has the 02/1981, and then it has, like, the nineteen forties one. And in my mind, even though they're both going forward in time, they're actually going backwards because the central moment to me is well, one is going backwards. It's, like, about when this house when they got in this house.

但实际写作时我并没有按时间顺序写。我不得不先写完所有章节，然后像洗牌一样重新排列，再强行赋予它们五周的时间框架——但这些章节最初并不是按这个顺序创作的。

But when I wrote it, I did not write it chronologically. I actually had to put them all all the chapters down and kind of shuffle them around and then impose a five week chronology on them, but they weren't written like that necessarily.

这两本书最让我着迷的一点是，你似乎是位非常热衷于——恕我直言——家族传奇的作家。你喜欢展现那种长期延续的关系，比如这部新作中的友谊几乎达到了亲情程度。虽然团体里确实有亲姐妹，但她们的生活就像发辫般彼此缠绕，这种纠缠还体现在空间地域上——至少横跨纽约和洛杉矶两地。

One of the things that I actually kind of find fascinating about both books is that you seem to be a writer who is very invested in, for lack of a better word, sagas. Right? So you like to see the kind of long duree of, like, a I I mean, and and the friendships that you have in this current novel are almost family relationships. Right? That they I mean, there are literally two sisters in in the group, but they also they're so braided and intertwined in each other's lives, and that inter enmeshment, I guess, is also about space and place, like, between at least New York and Los Angeles.

不过你作品真正令我着迷的（虽然这么说可能显得浅薄）是角色塑造手法。我很好奇这些角色是如何诞生的，他们既真实鲜活又不见斧凿痕迹。我完全看不出那种明显的提线木偶感——比如某个角色必须完成特定功能，或是作为另一个角色的陪衬。

But the thing that I find so fascinating about your writing, which sounds like a very facile thing to say, is how you work with character. And so I'm curious how these characters came to you because they feel both very authentic and lived in. But I also couldn't I couldn't see in a very good way the kind of ropes and pulleys where it's like, oh, this character is supposed to do this thing and then this character provides a foil for the other character.

嗯。

Mhmm.

所以我想了解这些角色是如何来到你笔下的，以及你如何构思他们之间的互动关系。

So I'm just curious how the characters come to you and how you think about writing their relationships with one another.

角色就是一系列的选择。所以我有一个核心的引爆点问题。在特纳家的故事里，问题就是：这个在房子里鬼鬼祟祟的女人是谁？这到底是谁的房子？对吧？

Characters are, you know, a series of choices. So I have, like, a central igniting whatever question. And so in the Turner house, the question is, like, who is this woman sneaking around this house? Whose house is it? Right?

这本书的开篇会是这样的：我们发现从技术上讲这是她自己的房子，但她不想让人知道她又住回了童年故居。而这本书的核心问题就在开篇章节——当四位好友之一的德西蕾决定帮助祖父实施这个精心设计的临终计划后，这对家庭意味着什么？她的家庭会变成什么模样？所以第一个选择就是：她要参与这件事，她要帮助祖父。

This is how this book would be opened, and we discover it's her own house technically, but she doesn't want people to know that she's living there again, her childhood home. And then in this book, the central question is the opening chapter after this person, Desiree, one of the four friends, after she decides to help her grandfather sort of enact this really elaborate end of life plan, what does that mean for family? What does family look like for her? So the first choice is she's going to do this thing. She's gonna help him.

第二个选择是她会尊重祖父的请求，不让她唯一的妹妹——她仅剩的家人——卷入其中。那么这个选择会带来什么后果？突然间就出现了另一个角色：妹妹。而她对被排除在外这件事会做出什么选择？整本书的后续发展都是这些选择的结果。

The second choice is she's gonna honor his request to not involve her only sister, her only other family in it. So then how what is the consequence of that choice? And then so suddenly, there's another character, which is the sister. And what are the choices she makes in response to not being involved? And the rest of the book is a result of those choices.

所以问题在于：如果血缘家庭不算家人，那谁才是她的家人？这就是这群朋友出现的缘由。我其实很信任自己的直觉——如果我觉得需要营造俱乐部狂欢夜的氛围，那俱乐部里该有多少朋友？这些人都是从哪儿来的？

And so the question is, like, who is her family if it is not her biological family? And that is where all of these friends come from. And I really just kinda trust myself that if I like, I need to have I need to have this feel like a really fun night at the club. How many friends are at the club? What where did these people come from?

他们到底是什么人？我只是不断收集信息——这就是我爱纽约的原因，人们在地铁上就会主动告诉你各种事情。我收集这些信息，然后赋予角色生命。这就像个积累的过程。

Like, who are they? And I also just I just collect information about I don't know. This is why I love living in New York because people just give you information, right, on the train. I just collect information, and then I give them the characters. It is a it's just like a process of accumulation.

我不会刻意考虑谁是谁的陪衬，也不会想这个角色必须存在来推动某人做某件事。偶尔遇到情节瓶颈时可能会想'这样发展或许有用'，但通常当我提前做这类规划时，说实话写出来连自己都不信。所以我主要专注于：这些是角色做出的选择，而选择如何改变了他们所处的世界。

I do not think about, like, who is a foil to who. I do not think about this character needs to exist to push somebody to do x or y. Sometimes if I have some kind of, like, a plot problem, I might be like, oh, well, this could be useful to happen. But usually when I plan ahead for the in those kinds of ways, I don't believe it, quite frankly, when I write it. So mostly, I just try to go with, like, these are the choices and then how does that change the world that the characters live in because they've made these choices.

我认为在友情题材的小说或故事里，我们常看到类型化角色。必须要有对立面——比如《欲望都市》就是过去二十年的典型，四个截然不同的女性角色互相碰撞产生火花。但根据我的经验，现实中的友谊往往微妙得多。

I think often in friendship novels or friendship stories, we have types. There has to be juxtaposition. I mean, I think Sex and the City is the the archetype of, whatever, the last twenty years of, like, these four different women, they're all different kinds of women. And that's how they play off each other, and that's kind of where the sparks fly and how they fly. But in real friendships, from my experience, it's often, way more subtle.

我认为在很多方面，相似之处通常多于差异。或者说存在对比，但这些对比可能在某些方面非常鲜明，取决于其他人想成为什么样的人。我很好奇，在这个案例中，如果你描述这四位女性时不是按类型划分，而是她们的主要差异或相似之处是什么。我是说，这些特质如何对故事产生重要影响。

And there's usually more similarity than difference, I think, in a lot of ways. Or there's, contrast, but they're they might be kind of, like, very pointed, in terms of what other people wanna be. And I was curious in in this case if you were describing these four women, not as types, but what their main differences are and or what their similarities are. I mean, and how it how those things kind of are important for the story.

她们之间存在许多差异。其中一个核心因素是她们所处的生命阶段——从二十多岁到四十多岁，正是她们试图确立自我的时期。财富和特权起点不同，有些角色（通常是缺乏这些的角色）比拥有这些的角色更清楚地意识到这点。还有背景和地域差异——其中三位朋友来自洛杉矶或周边地区，一位来自纽约。

Well, there's a lot of differences between them. There's something that is central because of when they are in their life, which is between their twenties and their forties when they're trying to sort of establish themselves. There's there's the difference of wealth and sort of privilege who started out with what that some characters, usually the characters who don't have it, are more aware of than the characters that do. There's also the difference of just sort of, like, background and region. Three of these friends are from LA or the LA area, and one of them is from New York.

那位纽约客...你知道，作为纽约人的特质之一，这座城市的魅力在于能更直观地看到非洲侨民内部的多样性。所以莫妮克有一半巴巴多斯血统，她父亲来自巴巴多斯。其他角色则更像是传统的美国奴隶后裔。不过即使在这之中也存在差异，比如纳基亚的家族曾是自由民。

The one from New York you know, part of being from New York, one of the beautiful things about New York is that there is just more, kind of easily to see diversity within, like, African diasporic people. So Monique is half Bajan. Her father was from Barbados. The other characters, they're more sort of traditional, American descendants of slavery. Although even within there, there's differences because Nakia's family had been they were free people.

我试图展现的差异并不像《欲望都市》那样刻意，而是那些真正改变世界观的东西。这些差异涉及出身背景——比如其中一位角色纳基亚是女同性恋（性取向差异），但也包括个人兴趣。有些角色会追求她们认为的稳定，比如简妮——作为单亲妈妈独生女，成长环境并不富裕。

They kind of helped found Newark, New Jersey. So the differences I try to think about are not necessarily so kind of sex in the city fied as much as the things that change the way you kind of see the world. And those things have to do with just like origin, but also, one of the characters is a lesbian, Nikia, sexual orientation, but also just like the things that you're interested in. So some of the characters, they reach for certain kinds of what they think are stability. Like January, for instance, being an only child of a single mother who didn't grow up with a lot of money.

她早期很幸运地遇到了有钱的大学恋人，对方拥有体面事业。这种看似不该质疑的际遇，其实正是她成长经历的产物。所以我更关注这些层面——比起思考谁更保守（虽然角色间会互相指责有《欲望都市》式特质），在塑造人物时，我并没有刻意突出那些标签化的差异。

This is like she kind of lucks out very early with, like, a college sweetheart who has money and has, like, a respectable career. And it it seems like something she shouldn't question, and that is a result of particularly how she grew up. So I I think about that more. I thought about that more than I thought about, you know, I don't know, who is more conservative even though I have moments where characters accuse each other of kind of having sex in the city kind of traits. But me, when I was building them, I didn't necessarily foreground those things.

能否谈谈这部小说中我特别欣赏的另一个亮点——你精湛的场景刻画？这部小说有种近乎影视化的质感，这种写作魔法在于：你通过恰到好处的细节让人仿佛身临其境，那些极度自然的场景在结束时又能让人恍然大悟'原来这才是这个场景的要义'。

Can you talk a little bit about another thing that I really enjoyed in this novel is your really deft scene work. Like, there's there's something about the novel that feels almost televisual in the sense that there's a it's it's the magic trick of writing. It's like you provide enough of these details that it's like, I I can feel like I'm in the room. Mhmm. And yet the scene which feels incredibly naturalistic, also, I can tell by the end of it, it's like, oh, this is what I was supposed to get out of that scene.

你是如何在保持场景自然主义的同时，又让它们承担叙事功能的？因为从很多方面来说，这部小说本身就是一系列跨越多年的场景累积，尤其是时间线上前后呼应的编织感——'啊对的，我知道这个是因为之前那个场景埋过伏笔'这种精妙的循环结构。

Like, that you so how do you kind of both how do you think about scenes? Like, how do you work on scenes? Because in many ways, this novel itself is a series of scenes that play out over years that accumulate meaning kind of as we move through them, especially the kind of looped and and braided sense as you move back and forth in time of like, oh, that's right. I know this because of this scene that made that so central. Right?

能否请你谈谈你如何处理场景，以及如何平衡那些——恕我直言——必须有所表现的场景。

So if you could talk just a little bit about how you approach scenes and how you balance between a scene that, for lack of a more felicitous phrase, like, has to do something.

嗯。

Mhmm.

你明白我的意思吗？

Do you know what I mean?

初期会比较困难。当你（或我）还在摸索角色性格时，很难写出有实质内容的场景。我说的初期不一定指小说开头，比如夜店那场戏——虽然它在书开头——要让场景自然展现这些人喝酒狂欢的同时又有故事推进，这花了很长时间来构思这些角色出现在夜店的意义。

It's harder in the beginning. So when you when you're still or when I am still kind of figuring out who everybody is, it's really hard to have a scene that feels like it's doing something. So they're and by what I say beginning doesn't necessarily mean the beginning of how you read the book. But the scene in the club, like, the beginning of the book, it's really hard to have a scene that feels, like, organically, like these people are just having fun and drinking more and more their of their bottle service, but that something is happening. And that took, like, a long a long time to figure out, like, what was the point of all these people being in the club.

类似地，在《七人组》章节有个晚宴场景。作为餐厅老板的妮基亚在女友家举办宴会，本意是让这个小团体能自然讨论气候危机等话题，但实际上非常不自然。这个场景我花了约一年时间才满意。虽然不是我唯一创作的内容，但我始终知道它不够好。难点在于既要处理多人互动，又要让话题出现得合情合理，找准每个时机。

And, similarly, there's a scene in a chapter called group of seven, which is a dinner party that Nikia, who is, like, a restaurateur, is having at her girlfriend's house. And the aspiration is that they're gonna have these sort of small group parties that are gonna get people to talk about, you know, the climate catastrophe, etcetera, in an organic way, but it's, like, not organic at all. And that scene also took maybe about a year to feel like I was satisfied with it. Like, it wasn't the only thing I worked on, but I kept knowing that it wasn't acceptable. And it has to do with if one, it's, just the having a lot of people, but also having it makes sense that certain topics are brought up and, like, figuring out the right moments.

关键在于晚宴中没人能完整表达观点——除非是发表演讲的主办人，或者是个话痨。在不熟的社交场合想完整表达观点需要异常执着。所以我反复调整对话节奏，控制话题进退。但有些场景随着角色塑造深入，会自然流淌而出。

Like, the thing is about especially in a dinner party is nobody gets to finish a thought. If so, like, that person is either the host and is giving a speech or is like a monster a little bit because they have to really like to hold court for that long, to get all the way to the end of your thought at a at a party with people you don't know very well, a dinner party, you really have to try. Like, you really have to be determined. And so, there was just, like, a lot of, like, dialing back up and dialing down of what people said and what people were talking about and getting in and out of conversations. But then there are other scenes that are, they just the more you know about characters, they just kind of write themselves.

比如《十二小时循环》章节，描写四位朋友参加芝加哥虚构美食颁奖周末的十二小时。这些场景写在创作后期，写起来非常顺畅，因为此时读者已积累足够潜台词，可以让角色自由发挥。

So there are scenes that there's a chapter called twelve hours in the loop, which is just about twelve hours in Chicago where the four friends go for a completely fictional culinary awards ceremony weekend that happens in June in Chicago, but it's completely fictional. And that that is just all scenes. And those scenes were written late in the process of writing the book, so they were very easy to write because everybody the reader I can trust that the reader has so much subtext at that point that you can just sort of, like, let everyone play.

我在思考场景机械化的问题，或者说如何让某些事件以自然的方式发生。这让我联想到朋友圈作为一种有机集体，某种程度上像是人群的社会学剖面，但这种方式观察事件在人群中的传递显得非常真实。历史通过群体而非个体的特定方式得以体现。友谊模式作为联结人们的纽带，似乎也是其中的一部分，而非随机人群的简单组合。所以问题或许在于：友谊作为社会学集体或群体，历史在朋友圈中的反映与随机人群有何不同？

I think, talking about the kind of mechanization of scenes or, like, having to have something happen and how to do that in a way that is natural, it makes me think a little bit also about a friend group as being a kind of organic collective, or, you know, almost like a sociological profile of a group of people, but that it it doesn't feel like it's, it it in some ways, it's a very realistic way to see events pass through people. Like, there's a specific way that history is reflected through a group of people as opposed to an individual. And, that, like, the friendship model, again, is, like, the fabric that binds people together is also seems to be a part of that as opposed to, a random subsection of people. Like so I guess maybe, you know, the question is friendship as sociological collective or or group. How does history reflect differently in a friend group than it would in, like, a random assortment of people?

首先，如果我选择随机人群组合——记得那些2000年代初流行的电影吗？比如《情人节》，里面有八张你从电视电影中熟悉的面孔。他们有时会在结尾的派对上相遇，但大部分时间只是各自度过这一天，比如《新年夜》之类的。

Well, one, I think that if I'd chosen a random assortment of people remember those movies that people liked to make in, like, the early aughts where it was, like, Valentine's Day and it was, like Mhmm. Like, eight faces you know very well from like television and film. And then they were just like, sometimes their past would intersect at like a party or something at the end, but it would just be a bunch of them doing things on this day, New Year's Eve or whatever it was.

他们发现《真爱至上》确实行得通。

They saw that love actually works.

没错。所以他们不断重复这种模式，

Yes. And so they kept doing Let's do that,

但每次都略有不同。

but different.

是的。我觉得这就是书中会呈现的感觉。虽然这类电影上映时我可能会看，但没人真正期待它们。特别是如果我想实现这部小说的目标之一——描写步入真正成年（非青年期而是中年）的感受，若人物间缺乏真实联系，整部作品就会显得像纪录片。

Yes. And so I feel like that's one. That's one reason that's what it would feel like in a book, which is it's you know, when those if those are on, I might watch them, but they're not anybody you know, no one is reaching for them. But I think that it would begin to feel a little bit especially if I wanted to the goal one of the projects of this novel was to write about what it feels like to be coming into true adulthood, not young adulthood, but like into middle age right now. It would feel, think, like a a little bit too much like a documentary, I think, if it was people who were not really connected.

但友谊的特殊之处在于，这部小说思考的核心是：在这个鼓吹孤立的世界里如何构建社群。前代人依靠家族满足这种社群需求，但当人们因选择、经济等原因无法拥有传统家庭时，当代成年人并非首批需要组建非传统家庭的人。但我认为，如今人们更需要快速建立超越教会或核心家庭的社群体系。

But I think particularly the thing about friendship is that one of the meditations of the novel is how do you forge community in a world that it feels like wants you to be isolated. So, you know, previous generations of the family was supposed to satisfy that, you know, need for community. But how do you forge community when you, for whatever reasons, for choice, because of finances, etcetera, you are not going to have that kind of family. And these, know, current people, current adults are not the first people to ever have to make these choices to, like, create a family outside of that traditional structure. But I do think that it is an accelerated need to figure out a community that is beyond just, you know, your church or your nuclear family.

这让我觉得很有道理，应该是一群朋友，他们不是做一次选择，而是持续不断地选择彼此。

And it made sense to me that it would be a group of friends and that they would have to not choose once, but kinda constantly choose each other.

这也让我想到书名，我觉得它为这本书提供了一个美丽的框架——荒野正是你此刻摸索前行的地方，可能是人生中最具挑战的时期。这个框架下，友谊隐含地成为答案，至少我在阅读时强烈感受到，书名像是提出问题，而全书内容就是对这个问题的回答。不知道你是否也这样想过。

And it makes me also think of the title, which I find really a beautiful frame for the book, that the wilderness is this time exactly where you are kinda groping through, the maybe some of the most challenging times of life. So that as being the kind of frame of the book, and friendship implicitly being the answer to that, or at least that's what I found in reading it, that I just felt like so clearly that was, to me, a bit of the setup of of, you know, naming that as the title and then the book itself being the reply. I wonder if you were thinking of it at all like that.

是的。我一直在思考如何应对这种情况——不仅是要面对普遍认为难以驾驭的成年生活，更困难的是当你发现父母乃至祖辈受益的那些模式，对你而言已不复存在或即将消失。前方的路似乎越变越长，看不到尽头。这个想法确实影响了我对书名的思考。

Yes. I was thinking about, how to figure out, like, how to navigate something that feels not just the way that it is generally felt difficult to navigate, adulthood, but particularly difficult when the models that you see, your parents having benefited from, perhaps your grandparents benefited from, they do not exist for you or you know that they will shortly cease to exist for you. So as far as how far ahead it feels unnavigable, it seems like it just keeps growing, the distance. And so that is something that I certainly thought about when I was thinking about the title.

您正在收听LARP广播小时节目。我们刚刚与《荒野》作者安吉拉·弗洛诺伊进行了对话。稍后我们将继续这段访谈，现在先带来本周的图书推荐。

You're listening to the LARP radio hour. We've been speaking with Angela Flornoy, author of the wilderness. We'll return to that conversation in just a moment, but first, we have this week's book recommendation.

我是克里斯·卡斯，小说《四人共度一日》的作者。我想向大家推荐巴尔扎克的《幻灭》。这本书写于十九世纪三十年代，描绘了法国复辟王朝初期的社会风貌。我已经重读了两遍——二十多岁时读过一次，四十多岁时又读了一次。

I'm Kris Kas. I'm the author of a novel called The Four Spent the Day Together, and I wanna recommend a book to you called Lost Illusions by Balzac. Written, I believe it was published in the eighteen thirties, covering the decade prior to the eighteen thirties, the early years of the restoration in France. And I reread this. I I read the novel twice already, maybe once in my twenties and then again in my forties.

最近我又重读了这部作品的精美译本，有几点让我印象深刻。首先是巴尔扎克在小说中对事物运作机制的详尽描写，甚至包括造纸工艺的细节。书中有一条支线涉及出版业，描写廉价书籍激增导致新闻业和小册子、八卦小报泛滥的现象。

And I reread it again just recently in a beautiful translation. And I was so struck by, well, several things. First, the digressions that Wasek is able to make in this novel in terms of explaining how things work. I mean, down to the manufacturing of paper. There's a whole subplot that involves the publishing industry, the proliferation of much cheaper books, which leads to a lot more journalism and kind of small pamphlets circulating and tabloids circulating.

而这一切的关键就是纸张——他们从哪里获取纸张？于是书中用大量篇幅描写了棉麻造纸等不同工艺技术。巴尔扎克带领我们探索的每条路径都充满无穷魅力，真的像一场精彩的导览。

And crucial to this is the paper. Where do they get the paper? So there are pages and pages about different techniques for manufacturing paper, cotton versus linen, etcetera. Every single avenue that Balzac takes us down is infinitely fascinating. It really is like a tour.

这是一次穿越世纪的旅程，却宛如城市漫游。每条大街小巷都充斥着各种偶然事件、事实和缓和因素，你知道的，从主人公吕西安渴望进入的高雅文化世界，到林荫大道剧院，再到小报新闻界。这本书绝对引人入胜，信息量极大，节奏非常快。

It's a tour of another century, but it's like a tour of a city. And every avenue and boulevard is, like, full of all of these contingencies and facts and mitigating circumstances, you know, from the workings of the sort of high cultural world that the hero Lucian longs to enter into the kind of boulevard theaters, into the world of tabloid journalism. It's an absolutely fascinating book. It's just full of information. It moves really fast.

它充满机智。要知道，巴尔扎克是如此多产的作家，他一本接一本地写，我至今仍惊叹不已——几乎每一页都有值得划线的金句。这就是巴尔扎克的《幻灭》。

It's very witty. It's you know, he was such a prolific writer. He wrote book after book after book, and I can't get over how well I mean, there's something to underline on every single page. Lost Delusions by Balzac.

现在让我们回到与《荒野》作者安吉拉·弗洛诺伊的对话。

We now return to our conversation with Angela Flornoy, author of The Wilderness.

这本书另一个让我着迷且极具现实主义色彩的方面，是友谊的复杂性。听起来简单，实则不然。通过分别展现每位女性的独立视角——我主要想到的是珍妮和德西蕾——她们甚至会表达出对闺蜜那些有时近乎琐碎的厌恶。然后你会看到她们与那位朋友相处的场景，其中有些是伪装，对吧？

The other thing that I really found fascinating in this book and very it's kind of realist impulse is, like, how it sounds very simple to say, but how complicated the friendships are. Like, there's the way in which because we get to see both each of these women on their own. So for most of what I'm thinking about in this sense would be January and Desiree, I think, kind of will articulate these misgivings that even sometimes petty hatreds they have towards their best friends Mhmm. And how that but then you'll see a scene where they're with that friend, and some of it is dissembling. Right?

她们不会直接说出对朋友某些选择的不满，或以特定方式施加压力。但你也会看到她们如何暂时搁置那些仍心存芥蒂的事。或许更准确的说法是：我喜欢书中多重视角展现的真实友谊那种混乱状态——它既是伙伴关系，又是你最爱也最恨的人（除了真正的恶人之外）。

Where they're like, well, I'm not gonna say exactly the thing that I'm thinking about choice that you've made that I don't really like, or I'm pushing on you in a particular way. But you'll also see the way that they can set aside those grievances that they might still hold. I mean, I think a a cleaner way to say it maybe is that what I like about the different perspectives that we get throughout is that it shows just how messy, like, real and authentic friendship is that, like, there's gonna be on the one hand it's just like a partnership. Mhmm. I mean, there will be nobody that you love more than your best friend, and there will also be no one that you will probably hate more than your best friend outside of some, like, real villain.

对吧？小说中每位女性都经历过：唯有闺蜜能让你失望到几乎无人能及的程度，这正是因为你倾注了爱与期待。能否谈谈你是如何在写作中呈现这种复杂性的？

Right? And that's because your best friend and the I think each of the women in this novel experiences that your best friend can disappoint you in a way that almost no one else can, and that's a consequence of the love and dreams that you've invested in them. Right? So can you talk a little bit about how you thought about or kind of how in the writing that messiness came out?

群体与两人关系的不同在于——群体形成的原因总是模糊的。谁没经历过在群聊里突然疑惑：我为什么和这些人在一起？

So one of the things about a group versus just, you know, like, it's two people. It's just about one you know, two friends. One thing about a group is that there's it's always kind of hazy how they even all got, like, in this group. I mean, how many of us have been in chats where a moment happens in the group chat that you're like, why? Why am I in here with these people?

但我认为这部小说的一个主题就是思考人们如何将某些事物视为理所当然——无论是因大学同窗情谊，还是像书中那样，当所有人都在纽约生活时，有个极度渴望友情的女孩德西蕾。嗯。尽管她并非最早结识每个人，却将大家凝聚在一起。而当你决定要彼此长久相伴时，那些最初存在的偏见——比如书中角色们确实带着学生会主席式的阶级偏见等等——终归需要面对。我庆幸自己拥有许多珍贵的跨代友谊，当听到年长朋友谈论他们维持数十年的友谊时，我深刻体会到：真正的友谊必须经得起问责，无论错在己方或对方。那些消亡的友谊，往往始于某一方的逃避。对吧？因为他们无法面对另一方说'嘿，你这样做不对'，或是'我看到你在伤害自己，这不行'——我认为后者甚至是更深刻的问责形式。

But I think that one of the projects of the novel is to think about the ways that you kind of take for granted some of these things, whether that is because you're all friends from college or in this case, it's like there was just a certain moment where they all lived in New York and there was one person who was desperate desperate for friends, which is Desiree. Mhmm. And she kind of pulled them all together even if she wasn't the first person to meet everyone. And but if you decide that you're gonna stick around in each other's lives, then at some point some of those, you know, prejudices that you have about each other and some of the friends certainly have like class president prejudices, etcetera, in the beginning have to be dealt with. And I also just think that most friendships, I have the benefit of having like a lot of intergenerational friendships that I value.

但另一方面，我也见证过因直面问题而升华的关系。我成长的环境不允许我们对伤害自己或他人的行为视而不见，因此在小说中必须呈现这些冲突——人物不完美，群体中必然存在亲疏波动，我想展现的就是这种人际关系的弹性状态。

And when I hear some of my friends who are older talk about friends they've had for a long time, You have to be able to survive accountability, whether that is when you're in the wrong or when someone else is in the wrong. And the friendships that die are the ones where one person just retreats. Right? Because they just cannot deal with the other person being like, hey, this is not okay, this thing you were doing. Or I see you're doing this thing to yourself and it's not okay, which I think is even the sort of more intense kind of accountability.

说到群体，总会有某些人特别亲密而其他人相对疏远的时刻，我正是想展现这种人际关系中的亲疏起伏。

But that on the other side of it, I've also heard stories and I've been party to relationships that have really grown and had like really sort of deep, like, life bonds because I don't know. I don't come from a a community where we just don't we pretend it's not happening if somebody is, you know, doing something to themselves or to or to someone else. And so to me, it felt like in this novel, there had to be all of that. There had to be confrontation. There had to also be people are not perfect.

确实，那些看似混乱的关系本身往往以某种方式给出答案。德西蕾和一月的故事特别引起我共鸣——她们在不同阶段都深陷困境。作为抽离的读者，你会想'明明可以向朋友倾诉'，比如书中早期一月在马丁尼奎岛遇见度假的朋友们时。

And the thing about a group is that there will be moments where some people are super close and some people are not, and I wanted to show those kinds of stretching of kind of in and out of those relationships.

她心想'这本来是我计划的旅行，现在你们去了却没邀请我，我大概知道原因但不想说破'。随着故事发展（不想剧透太多），她最初陷入的复杂恋情越来越棘手，但你知道她最终总会向闺蜜们敞开心扉。德西蕾也是如此。

Well, and I think also it's those relationships themselves, as messy as they can be, they always seem to present the answer in some way or another. I mean, I feel like that was an important part of the book. Like, Desiree and again, I I think I most identified with, like, Desiree and January in terms of how they just feel at various points really stuck. And on the one hand, there's the part of you as the removed reader is like, you know, you can tell your friend about what is going on. Like, you can you can tell them even if it's like, well, you guys, like, in the early parts of the book when January is seeing her friends on vacation, right, in Martinique.

德西蕾的情况更复杂：我们初次见她时，她正与姐姐的前任纠缠不清，姐妹关系非常微妙。她内心有太多难以言说的感受，但只要向娜基亚倾诉就能释怀——后来她确实这么做了并得以解脱。这种姐妹间'既信任又怀疑'的拉扯很有趣，我在想你是否认为这种信任感的弹性本就是友谊的根基？

And she's like, you know, that was actually the trip that I planned. And, like, now you got and you didn't even ask me, and I kinda know why, but I don't really wanna talk about why. But that eventually, when she and I don't wanna give away too much of it, but she's in the midst of a complicated, let's say, romance at the beginning, and it gets more complicated throughout. But it's like, you know that she just needs to talk to her girlfriends about what's going eventually she does. And same with Desiree.

（注：由于输入文本存在重复发言和思维流特征，译文在保持原意基础上对部分语序进行了符合中文习惯的调整，并将过长的英文段落按语义拆分为更符合中文阅读节奏的句子。所有7个输出段落均严格对应输入位置，未合并任何内容。）

Now Desiree is more complicated because at least kind of, I guess, when we initially meet her, right, she is sleeping with her sister's ex, and she and her sister Danielle have a very complicated relationship. But there too, there's so many things that Desiree feels she can't maybe even articulate to herself, but you just know that if she would talk to Nakia about what's actually going on with her, that she would be fine. Eventually, she does, and then Desiree kind of moves on. But there is that push and pull, I think, that's really interesting in these characters between the sisters that I can trust, but then also feeling like, oh, maybe I can't trust them. And I wonder if you see that that kind of flexible feeling of attachment or trust as fundamental to friendship.

嗯，我认为这只是人性使然，如果你觉得有些事情，你知道，分享时你担心可能会遭到嘲笑，无论是出于想象还是基于过往模式的证据，你都会犹豫是否要分享这部分自我。对吧？没人愿意感到羞耻。但我也认为这与书中这些女性尤其相关。本书的一个主题就是思考现代生活如何越来越注重自我呈现和自我叙事。

Well, I think that it is just human nature that if you feel that there is something that, you know, sharing if you have a fear that there might be ridicule, whether it's just because of imagined or based on evidence of like previous patterns that you're gonna be hesitant to share that part of you. Right? No one wants to feel sort of ashamed. But I also think it has to do with particularly these women. One of the projects of the book is to think about the ways that modern life has been about has become more and more about a self presentation and self narrativization.

对吧？所以不仅仅是'我在做什么'和'我对此感觉如何'，而是'我能在网上或与朋友分享什么样的叙事来描述我的行为'？因此有时这也与此相关，即'我该如何向世界解释这件事'与'我只是需要建议'之间的对比。如果你无法解决第一部分，就无法获得第二部分——如果我对自己的行为解释不满意，又怎能获得建议呢？我认为角色们经常思考这个问题。

Right? So it's not just what am I doing and do I feel good about it, but what is the narrative that I can share online or share with my friends about what I am doing? And so sometimes it also is about that, which is what how do how would I explain this to, like, the world versus I just need counsel. And so if you can't figure out the first part, then you're not gonna get the second part, which is, like, if I don't feel satisfactory in my explanation of what I am doing, then how am I gonna get the counsel? And so, that is something that I think the characters think a lot about.

而角色尼基亚尤其如此，她经常试图逆向思考。如果没人在乎别人的看法会怎样？如果我们都不想拥有公众形象会怎样？那样我们会不会过得更好？尽管她自己就有公众形象，这颇具讽刺意味。

And then the character, Nikia, especially, she tries to think she tries to think against it a lot. Like, what if none of us cared about what other people thought? What if none of us wanted to have a public profile? Wouldn't we be better off? Although she has a public profile, which is sort of the irony of it.

等等。所以这至少是她在书中与莫妮克产生紧张关系的原因吗？因为莫妮克实际上是相反的，她的事业就是靠做一个——恕我直言——网红建立的。对吧？她打造网络形象，并以此谋生。

Wait. Is that why she has tension at least probably in the middle of the book with Monique? Because Monique actually is like the inverse like, she has made her career by being, for lack of a better word, like an influencer. Right? She develops an online presence, and then kind of makes her money that way.

是的。我认为这在她的人生旅程中很关键——她曾有过短暂的走红经历，显然喜欢那种关注并想获得更多。但她又觉得自己足够聪明，本不该渴望这些，却依然想要。她的成长历程就是接受这种野心的过程。即使有些人不认同，但十年前如果有人问职业，他们可能不会理直气壮地说'我是网红'。

Yeah. I think that's kind of central to her journey is this idea of I she had this small moment of virality, and she clearly liked the attention and wants to figure out how how to get more. But she also feels that she's smart enough that she should be too smart to want it, but she still wants it. And that is part of her journey is coming to terms with just that genre of ambition. Even if some people don't like it, which I think is a very ten years ago, if you ask somebody what they did for a living, they probably wouldn't say full throated like, I'm an influencer.

但现在他们会，因为在2025年这看起来比很多职业都更可行。通过仅仅作为网络人物赚钱的想法，在写一本关于当下生存现状的书时，确实是个值得思考的现实问题。如果你真的遇到走红时刻会怎么做？多数人希望自己什么都不会做，回归正常生活。但如果有人花钱请你做植入呢？

But now they will because it seems like a more viable career than a lot in 2025. And the idea of making making your money by just being a person on the Internet is something that is again, when you're thinking about writing a book about what it's alive like to be alive right now, it's a real thing. And it's kind of if you do have that moment of virality, what will you do with it? Most of us hope we would do nothing, right, and just go back to our life. But what if you had people offering you spon con money, to just mention them?

这不是我们大多数人的谋生方式。所以根据性格不同，这确实可能成为需要考虑的事情。

That's not how most of us make our money. So it would have to be a thing you actually consider perhaps depending on your personality.

关于长久友谊的一点是，我想这本书里也稍微捕捉到了这点，甚至通过莫妮卡成为网红这个例子，就是外界或他人对你的看法会随时间改变。但从内部视角，朋友最初认识你时的印象和你年轻时的样子往往保持完好。我觉得这常常会成为朋友间的矛盾点——你觉得自己变了，是个新的人了，而朋友却认为不，你还是原来那个人。

One thing about long friendships is that, I think this is kind of captured a bit in the book, maybe even with Monique, like, rising to be an influencer, is that your that your outside perception or people's perception of you can change over time from the outside. But often from the inside it remains, pretty intact of how the person first met you and what you were like when you were younger. I think that's often can become a tension between friends that you're like, I've changed. I'm this new person. And your friend thinks like, no, you're not.

你还是10年前我认识的那个人，我比任何人都了解你。你现在扮演的这个重要角色并不是真正的你。我在想你是否考虑过这种矛盾，无论是书中这个案例，还是普遍意义上的友谊——在长期关系中，双方都需要允许彼此改变。

You're the same person I met 10 ago, and I know you better than anyone else. And this new person that you're acting like who's so important is not really you. And I wondered if that was a tension you were thinking of at all, in the case of this or maybe just, you know, in the case of friendship in general, that way that over a long period, like, every party has to allow the other to change.

我认为这又回到了我思考'选择的家人'这个概念时想到的——这是一个持续选择的过程，不是一次性决定后就永远绑在一起，否则和原生家庭有什么区别？关键在于我们愿意共同成长，只要这段关系保持健康就会持续努力。我自己生活中有些二三十年的老友，这种友谊的美好之处在于你会发现自己不断拓展——无论是通过对方了解世界而改变的政治观点，还是理解能力的提升。比如我有位朋友周游世界，我们的友谊让我得以安全地体验了许多原本不可能接触的地方和环境。

I think that that is again, when I think about chosen family, I think of a constant choosing, right, and not just a, we did it once, now we're stuck together because then you could you might as well just be stuck with your biological family. You know? But the idea that we are gonna continue to grow together, and if we have to work on this, we're gonna work on it, you know, as long as it feels healthy for us to do so. And having had friends for that long in my own life, for twenty years, thirty years, some, you know, longer than that, I like, one of the things that makes it beautiful is that you do find yourself expanding, whether that is your politics because you're learning things about the world through that person or your, you know, just capacity for understanding or your I mean, maybe that person. I have a friend who has lived all over the world and I've benefited from our friendship because I found myself safe self in places and spaces I would never be otherwise.

对这些改变不感到怨恨而是心怀感激，并努力跟上这种变化，我觉得这正是让我的生活如此有价值且丰富的原因之一。但很多人会发现自己卡在某个成长节点，无法继续同行。有时或许确实不该勉强——比如对方要去的下一个地方是男性至上主义圈的话。

And to to be not resentful, but to be grateful of those changes and to kind of rise to that occasion, I think it is something that I find it to be one of the things that like makes my life so sort of valuable and like enriched, but it is also something that a lot of people, they find themselves at a at a place where they're like, well, I can't go there with you. Like, this is where my growth stops. I cannot actually go to this next place with you. And sometimes maybe you shouldn't, you know. Maybe that place is into the manosphere.

我不知道。

I don't know.

呃，我是说

Well, I mean

但希望不是这样。

But hopefully not.

哦，我想问这个是因为，你知道，过去十年是很奇怪的时期，我有一些朋友突然变得和我政治观点非常不同。我是说，极其不同。但我感觉，你知道，我的一部分想法是，好吧，友谊可以超越这些。你知道，他们并没有隐藏这些观点。

Oh, I wanted to ask that because, you know, it's been weird times over the last decade, and I have had friends who suddenly have very different political views than me. I mean, like, extremely different. But I would feel you know, part of me thinks, okay. Well, the friendship can be bigger than that. You know, they're not hiding them.

我们公开谈论这些事情，我觉得这没问题。我交谈过的其他人似乎认为你必须在某个地方划清界限。出于好奇，既然你写过一本关于友谊的书，我想知道你是否对此有想法，比如是否存在某种硬性规定，当人们的观点开始与你严重分歧时，是否应该断绝关系？还是只要大家能坦诚相待，求同存异，知道彼此的立场，就可以继续尝试维持关系？

We talk openly about stuff, and, I felt that that is okay. Other people I've talked to seem like you have to draw a line somewhere. And just out of curiosity, since you've written a book on friendship, I guess if you have thoughts on that, like, if if there is some hard and fast rule of when you should cut people off, when their views start to really diverge from yours or as long as everyone can be open, agree to disagree, they know where you stand, like, it's okay to to keep trying?

你知道，我想我很幸运。我没有经历过这种情况。我是说，作为一个黑人女性，我在圣盖博谷长大，那是个种族非常多元化的地方。

You know, I guess I have the privilege. I have not been in that. I have not had that happen. I mean, I think, you know, I'm a black woman. I grew up in the San Gabriel Valley, which is an ethnoburb with a very diverse place.

我从高中就认识的朋友们，据我所知，他们中没有人变成QAnon那种人。但我确实认为，特别是当你生活忙碌的某个阶段，那些过去人们可能不太当回事、一笑置之的政治信仰，现在却会产生非常可怕的后果——我们看到有人被ICE绑架，家庭被拆散。这些不再是性格怪癖那么简单。虽然我没遇到过这种情况，但我认为存在一个时机可以充满爱意地纠正和尝试。同时也要考虑你生活中还有谁，可能继续和那个人来往已经不安全了。

Friends that I've had since high school, I've not really none of them have sort of become QAnon people as far as I know. But, I do think that there is, especially in a in a place a time in your life when you are busy and when it feels like some of those, you know, political beliefs that people used to just kinda hold lightly and you could laugh off, they have very dire consequences we see now with people being kidnapped by ICE, people's families being torn apart. They are not just it's just not like personality quirks. So I have not been put in that situation, but I I feel like there is a, there's a a place and time to lovingly correct and try. And there's also a time where, considering who else you might have in your life, it might not just be safe to be around that person anymore.

我不知道。我觉得这是那种...我不认为断绝关系是解决办法，特别是很多美国白人似乎已经决定'我们要和这些人断绝来往'，但这并没有给那些人教训。所以我对此持保留态度，但...我也不确定。我认为部分原因在于很多美国人某种程度上已经接受了那种粗犷个人主义的迷思。但我觉得特别是美国白人特别信奉这种'我们可以单打独斗'的理念。

I don't know. I think that it's one of those things that I don't think that cutting off especially I feel like a lot of white Americans have just decided we're going to cut off these people, but that's not stopping those it's not teaching those people a lesson. So I am hesitant to say that, but I I don't know. I feel like part of it has to do with all I think a lot Americans sort of have drank the the Kool Aid of a rugged individualism. But I think particularly white Americans have really have really caught on to this idea that it's like we're just kind of we can all go it alone.

而到了2025年，我们发现这根本行不通。

And in 2025, we see that that's not working.

绝对行不通。我的意思是，这种单打独斗也是导致我们出现孤独症流行的部分原因，就是部分人群无法容忍他人。

Definitely not. And I mean, the going alone is also that's part of why I think we have the epidemic of loneliness, which is our inability to, like certain part of the population's inability to stomach others.

嗯。

Mhmm.

当我们即将结束时，我想问问你关于小说中的霍姆斯。而且我也不想剧透结局——虽然我们可能马上就会这么做，因为我真的很想问你一个关于这本书结局的问题。但显然有家园，你的第一部小说就是关于一栋房子的。我们在这部小说开篇——好吧，不完全是开篇，但最终我们会了解到祖父诺兰的存在，也就是德西蕾和丹妮尔的祖父。他的家既是分裂的场所，至少对德西蕾来说，最终也成为了某种安全感和稳定性的象征。

As we kind of wrap up, I wanted to ask you about Holmes in the novel. And there is also I don't wanna spoil the end, which we may do in a minute because I really want to ask you one question about the the conclusion of the book. But there are homes obviously, your first novel was all about a house. We open in in this novel, well, it's not exactly the opening, but eventually, we come to learn that there is grandfather Nolan, so Desiree and Danielle's grandfather. His home is both a site of fracture, but also the site of, at least for Desiree, like a kind of security and stability eventually.

霍姆斯，就其祖父诺兰拥有的那些地方而言，也成为了重新认识某个你可能有误解之人的场所。我记得她在某处说过他基本上是个贫民窟房东之类的话，而她当时并没有真正理解这一点。而贯穿整部小说的还有无家可归者的幽灵，对吧？这在结尾处变得尤为戏剧化。

Holmes, also in terms of the places that her grandfather Nolan owned, also become a site of, like, relearning something about the person that you may have thought. Well, like, I think she had says at some point that he was basically a slumlord or something, or she'd and she didn't really quite understand that. And then haunting the entire novel is also the specter of the unhoused. Right? And this becomes particularly dramatic at the end.

但即使在整个故事中，我们也有例子——比如早期尼基亚在和一个叫蕾娜的女人约会时，我记得是在和她的朋友（尼基亚的朋友阿里尔）见面时，阿里尔突然意识到蕾娜像是'哦，她已经无家可归一段时间了'。蕾娜说自己曾露宿街头一两个晚上，但根据她的经验，这意味着实际情况要严重得多。这个问题在小说中不断发酵。所以我想知道小说与'家'的关系。因为对像一月这样的人来说，家在某些方面可能感觉像监狱，一个她被锁在家庭和一系列关系中的地方，而她如何看待这些关系呢？她不是有句很棒的台词吗？

But even throughout, we have, for example, Nikia early on is dating a woman named Reyna, who, I believe it is at a meeting with her friend, Nikia's friend Ariel, that Ariel, like, clocks Reyna as being like, oh, she's she's been homeless for a while. She says that she lived outside for, one to two nights, but in her experience, that means a lot more. And then this kind of grows and grows in the novel. So I'm wondering what the novel's relationship to Home is. Because it can also be, for somebody like January, Home can feel, in some ways, like a prison, like a place where she's locked into a family and a series relationships of relationships that she sees as, what's that great text line that she has?

两件事可以同时成立。你知道，就像我既爱这里的某些部分，又必须离开。所以你能谈谈小说中作为幽灵存在的'家'与'无家可归'吗？嗯，

Two things can be true at once. You know, that it's like I both love parts of this and I also need to get away. So can you talk just a little bit about the home and homelessness also as like a specter in the novel? Well,

我一直对'家'和住房的象征意义很感兴趣，我认为《特纳之屋》在这方面做了很多思考——特别是它们与美国梦的关系。但在这本书里，它也是关于'介于之间'的状态——这是这些角色离开童年家园后，试图弄清楚'家'对他们意味着什么的时期，以及当代生活如何使这个问题显得异常棘手。对吧？无论是由于住房危机——比如你是否能负担得起购房——还是对于那些生活在主要或历史上是黑人社区的角色的特殊处境，他们是否还能认出那个地方是家。

I I've always been interested in just the like homes and housing as like a in a symbolic kind of way, which I think the Turner House did a lot to think about like, what they mean in their relationship to particularly, like, the American dream. But in this book, it's also about in bet in between leaving like, it's a time period in between these characters leaving their childhood homes and trying to figure out what does home look like for them and the ways that contemporary life makes that seem like a really fraught question. Right? Whether it's because of the housing crisis, like, will you ever be able to afford to purchase a home? Or whether it's just particularly the characters that live in predominantly or historically black neighborhoods, whether they recognize that place anymore as home.

而无家可归这部分——特别是在洛杉矶，也包括纽约和大多数城市——越来越感觉像是我们这个时代定义性的危机之一，或者至少是最显著的症状之一。对吧？如果我们作为世界上最富裕的国家，都无法解决全民住房问题，那这一切还有什么意义？在洛杉矶，这就是人们已经习以为常的事情。你知道，贫民窟比我们所有人都古老，而且它就在谷歌地图上。

And the homelessness part of it is just I mean, especially in LA, but it also in New York and in most cities, increasingly, it feels like one of the defining kind of crises of our times or at least the most sort of like a salient symptom of that crisis. Right? Which is just if we are the wealthiest nation in the world, can't figure out to have everyone housed, then what does it even mean? And in Los Angeles, that is something that people have just we've just lived with it. You know, Skid Row is older than all of us, and it's on Google Maps.

这应该是一种耻辱，是城市里每个人的耻辱，这个社区仅仅因为存在时间够长才出现在谷歌地图上，却持续承受着苦难，而这发生在最富裕的城市和最富裕的州之一。要知道，加州人总爱吹嘘他们拥有——

Like, that should be a shame, a disgrace to everyone in the city that this is just a neighborhood that, you know, it's just there on Google Maps because it has existed so long and it is just a state of continue continual suffering in one of the wealthiest cities and one of the wealthiest states, you know, a state what is it? Like, know, Californians love to brag about if they were

世界第五大经济体。是啊。

their Fifth own largest economy. Yeah.

世界第五大经济体。但如果同时拥有发达国家中最庞大的无家可归人口，这些经济成就又有什么意义？2019年我成年后搬回洛杉矶（大学毕业后我主要在东部生活），住了四年半又搬回纽约。我意识到自己曾经对它视而不见，后来才重新看清现状。

Fifth largest economy in the world. But what is it all for if you also have the largest unhoused population in the world, like, you know, of developed nations living on your streets? So I think moving back to LA as an adult, I had lived in on the East Coast for most of my adult adult life after college. Moving back in 2019 and staying for about four and a half years before I moved back to New York again, I realized that I had not seen it. And then I went back to seeing it.

疫情过后，问题已不仅限于市中心或贫民区。正如尼基亚描述的——任何街角都可能突然出现流浪者营地。现任州长甚至认为问题在于营地本身，而非人们无处可居的现实。

And then, of course, post pandemic, it's not just downtown. It's not just Skid Row. It is, as Nikia described at one point, like sort of any it could be any corner you turn around. There's like encampments. And even the current governor, he thinks the problem is the encampments and not the fact that there is nowhere for people to live.

对吧？他们根本负担不起。空置房产很多，但都遥不可及。我觉得我们已对这个痼疾习以为常，但趋势正在恶化：越来越多政策转向刑事处罚，而越来越多的人正滑向贫困甚至无家可归。这会把我们带向何方？

Right? And they cannot afford it. There's plenty of places for them to live, but they cannot afford it. And I just think that it is a problem we've all gotten used to, but that it is not it does not seem to be trending in the right direction because it's trending towards more criminalization, which is more and more of us become poor and perhaps unhoused. Where does that lead us?

确实如此。书里让我感触很深的是洛杉矶人那种爱恨交织的情感。我很好奇你在纽约和洛杉矶之间往返的经历——能感受到你对这座城市仍有眷恋，但同时...

Yeah. That's so true. And something I got in the book, I think, was this sense of the Angelino, the love hate relationship that many people from Los Angeles have with the city. And I was curious for you, I guess, having gone back and forth between New York and LA. Like, there were there was I could feel some, you know, affection for it as well, but, also as just being.

而且这确实是座高度分化的城市，极端贫困与巨额财富近在咫尺。不过我很想听你继续谈谈你与这座城市的羁绊，你的成长经历，以及它如何不断轮回出现在你生命里。你是否觉得自己会彻底离开它？

And also, yes, like, being a very segregated city, and being a city right where there's such just abject poverty, you know, within shooting distance of of extreme wealth. But, you know, if there's, I just love to hear you talk about your relationship to the city and where you grew up and how it kind of continues to circle back and be in your life. And if you if you feel like you'll ever quit, quit it completely.

我是说，我永远不会停止热爱洛杉矶，但我得出的结论是，我并不真正喜欢住在那里。不过我的家族与这座城市有着近一个世纪的联系。我祖母是大迁徙时期的一员，两岁时随父母从俄克拉荷马搬到了历史悠久的南中部地区，那是在1929年。从那时起，我的家人就遍布整个城市乃至洛杉矶县，甚至圣贝纳迪诺县。尤其作为一个黑人，生活在洛杉矶的感觉就像——坦白说——这座城市对黑人从未停止过敌意，一次都没有。

I mean, I will never quit loving LA, but I I came to the conclusion that I don't actually like living there. But I have a my family has almost a centuries long relationship with the city. My grandmother was part of the great migration and moved from Oklahoma with her parents to historic South Central when she was two, so in 1929. And, family has been I've lived all over the city and sort of LA County since then and even San Bernardino County, some of my family members since then. And I particularly to be a black person and living in LA is like a to feel like it is a a city that has never not been hostile to black people, quite frankly, not once.

即便在九十年代曾有过黑人市长时也不例外。因此，这座城市的历史对我来说感觉非常鲜活，因为它带着个人印记。同时我认为，由于娱乐产业这种单一艺术形式在这里占据绝对统治地位，其他类型的艺术家反而能完全按照自己的意愿创作——因为从比例上说，根本没人会在意。于是你会看到这些世界级、享有盛誉的艺术家们完全在随心所欲地创作。

And even when there was a black mayor in the nineties, not once. And so it is a city that, like, that history feels very fresh to me because it feels personal. And I also think that it is a city where because there's one kind of like artistic industry that reigned so supreme, which is like the entertainment industry, every other kind of artist is actually it feels very much like just making things however they want because nobody cares in this way. Like, it's not that no one cares at all, but like proportionally, no one cares. And so you have these like world class, world renowned artists that are just doing their own thing.

这其实很酷，因为这里存在着与娱乐产业完全割裂的艺术家和作家群体，他们形成了极其美好的社群，找到了自我维持与相互支持的其他方式。同样地，和许多所谓进步的大都市一样，这座城市认定警局应该占据预算的最大份额，结果导致公共服务资金严重不足。疯狂的是，这里的公共泳池数量比纽约还少，简直荒谬。

And it's really cool because you can actually there's these really beautiful communities of artists and writers that are completely separate from the entertainment industry that have figured out other ways to sustain themselves and support each other. And similarly, because it is a city that doesn't you know, like many large and progressive cities, has decided that the police departments deserve the lion's share of their budgets. It's a city that is very underfunded. It's wild that it is a city that has fewer public pools than New York City. It's just crazy.

何况不是家家都有泳池，绝大多数人都没有。所以当我试图给学步期的孩子找游泳场所时，发现只能大老远跑去韩国城——除非我们愿意花钱去富人后院蹭泳池，这实在太诡异了。

And not everybody has a pool. Most people don't. Right? And so, like, just trying to figure out where my toddler could learn how to swim, I was like, oh, we got to go all the way to Koreatown to get a pool because there's just no pools unless we just, want to pay a guy to, like, go to a rich person's backyard. Like, it's just bizarre.

但正因为如此，我觉得洛杉矶有组织的互助网络令人印象深刻。无论是今年初应对山火，还是应对移民局突袭行动时，我们都看到了这座城市如何在官方政府体系之外实现自我照应。我记得一月份读到报道，真实的市政机构曾向多家互助组织求借防护装备来应对山火，因为政府储备不足而这些民间组织却有。这种情形让我感到某种希望。如果说这个艰难年份对洛杉矶有什么积极意义，那就是越来越多人意识到市政当局的优先级完全错位了。

And but, like, because of that, I think that the mutual aid, the organized mutual aid in in LA is really impressive. And we saw both in response to the fires at the beginning of this year and also in response to the ICE raids, the ways that the city will outside of, you know, the capital c city, the government, the city will take care of itself. I remember reading, in January how the actual city had reached out to various mutual aid organizations asking if they had PPE that they could borrow, in response to the fires because the city had not had enough stockpiled, but these mutual aid organizations did. And that is something that, makes me feel really sort of hopeful. And I think, you know, if there's like one sort of positive to this really challenging year for LA is that I think more and more people are realizing that the city government does not seem to have the right priorities.

他们似乎根本没有为洛杉矶即将面临的未来做好准备。

They just don't seem to be prepared for the future that is here in Los Angeles.

确实。我是说，小说后半段有个情节——我不想剧透——但涉及一场死亡悲剧。不知道你能否谈谈死亡元素是如何进入你的故事创作的，以及为什么选择这种方式。

So yeah. I mean, there is something, and I don't wanna give it away, but there is a tragedy late in the novel that occurs at a death. And, you know, I just wonder if you could talk about a little bit about how you kind of how death enters stories for you and and kind of why.

我在艺术硕士课程中学到的那些观念，比如不能过于政治化。就像你不能...就是不行。人们说爱荷华作家工作坊是中情局资助的，这种说法其实不完全错误。但那种认为小说如果涉及明显政治内容就会显得廉价或低人一等的观念，尽管我们推崇它。比如我们都喜欢JM·库切。

The things that I had been taught in my MFA, etcetera, about you can't be overtly political. Like you can't you can't You just can't. You have to be This is why people say Iowa was funded by the CIA, etcetera, which is not completely a lie actually. But that this idea that if you have a fiction that has something that is overtly political, it is somehow cheaper or less than even though we prize it. Like, we love JM Cozzi.

就像我们喜欢来自世界其他地区的作品，我们热爱它们。但在这里，你就不该这么做。我开始认真思考：这种做法究竟维护了谁的利益？说实话，从2019年我重新认真创作这本书，到2023、2024年完成期间，我失去了很多人。如果写一个无人死亡的现实——毕竟我不写奇幻——感觉对他们不公平，因为我经历的现实中确实有人会离去。

Like, we love from elsewhere in the world, we love it. But from here, you're not supposed to do it. And who does that serve to to uphold that is what I had to kind of really think about. And also, who does it serve to I mean, just to be honest, in between when I began in seriousness, like working working on this book again in 2019 and when I finished it in twenty twenty three, twenty twenty four, I lost a lot of people. And it felt unfair to them to write a reality like, I don't write fantasy, to write a reality in which nobody dies because the reality that I experience is that sometimes people die.

所以我一直很矛盾。2023年我写了那一章，但原本在段落前就结束了。那是2023年2月，后来我39岁的朋友突然因肺栓塞去世。现实就是人会死亡，这不会贬低他们的价值，但若在小说里让人永生，反而显得不真实。

And so I had been on the fence about I knew 2023 I'd written that chapter, but I had ended it like a paragraph before. And I this was, like, in February 2023, and then a friend of mine died suddenly of a pulmonary embolism at 39. And it felt like in real life people die, and it doesn't make them less than, it doesn't make them less valuable to your life, but it doesn't seem fair to make it happen in fiction that people don't die because that's just not real life.

安吉拉，我知道你提到这部小说花了十年创作。期间肯定经历了许多起伏，可能想过'这部小说行不通了，永远无法完成，天啊我必须搞定它'。

So, Angela, I know that you've spoken about the fact that this novel took you ten years to write. And I'm sure that there were lots of up and ups and downs in which you may have thought, this novel isn't working. It's never gonna work. Oh my god. I have to make it.

会有突破的时刻。你能描述这种体验吗？对于那些同样在挣扎中、感觉作品有潜力却暂时无法突破的写作者，你有什么建议？

There's breakthroughs. What, would you say that experience was like for you, and what advice would you give to people who may find themselves similarly struggling with a novel that they feel there's definitely something there, but they can't seem to make it work for themselves at any given time?

其实我希望拖延的原因是在创作上遇到困难。但真相是我在努力成为中产阶级，同时接了很多其他工作，比如教学。我为HBO写了部剧集但没被采用，还担任过《纽约时报杂志》的特约撰稿人。

You know, I wish that the explanation for why it took me so long was because I was struggling with it. It was really just like trying to become middle class and saying yes to a bunch of other stuff like teaching. I wrote a show for HBO that they didn't make. I just was I wrote a lot for a minute. I was a contributing writer for the Times Magazine, New York Times Magazine.

我只是做了很多其他事。这些当然都算写作经历。但另一方面，你终究要学会拒绝某些工作，才能完成小说创作。所以问题不在于我无法解决创作难题。

I just did a lot of other stuff. And part of it is that all counts. It's all writing. But another part is eventually, just have to say no to some stuff, so that you can finish writing your novel. So it wasn't that I necessarily couldn't figure it out.

因为我当时太忙于做那些看起来更容易赚钱的事情。

It was that I was just so busy doing things that seemed like, an easier way to to make money.

等等。是什么时候你突然意识到，不，我必须做出那个艰难的决定，开始学会拒绝，才能对这件事说好？

Wait. When was the moment that you were like, no, I have to put that you made that difficult decision to say, have to start saying no so I can say yes to this?

为了避免把自己塑造成某种非常正直、自我牺牲的形象。我获得了柏林美国学院的奖学金，拿着薪水住在柏林的别墅里写这本书。我别无选择，因为我不在美国。

So lest I make myself seem like I'm some kind of a, you know, very very upright self sacrificial person. I got a fellowship to the American Academy in Berlin. So I was getting paid to to live in Berlin in this villa and work on this book. There was nothing else I had to do. I couldn't because I wasn't in The States.

我不能同时在多个地方教书或做其他事情。正是这种处境让我真正专注于小说创作。当我完成时，已经积累了足够的进展，感觉有了继续推进的动力。

I couldn't be teaching at some places and also doing some other things. And it was that that made me really focus on the novel. And so then when I got there, I also had when I got done there, I had like a critical mass enough done where it felt like there was, you know, momentum behind it to when I came back to keep working on it.

所以我想答案就是获得一个极其 prestigious 的奖学金，你的小说就会自动完成。对那些正在挣扎的人，柏林或罗马的美国学院，去吧。你就大功告成了。

So I guess the answer is just get an incredibly prestigious fellowship and your novel will write itself. For anyone out there struggling, American Academy in Berlin or Rome, and there you go. You're done.

对，非常简单。

Right. It's it's very easy.

非常简单。

Very easy.

非常感谢。我们刚刚与《荒野》的最新作者安吉拉·弗洛努瓦进行了交谈。非常感谢您的参与。

Thank you so much. We've been speaking with Angela Flournoy, author most recently of The Wilderness. Thanks so much for joining us.

谢谢。谢谢你，安吉拉。感谢收听Larb广播时间。请在苹果播客、SoundCloud、Spotify或您获取播客的任何其他平台订阅我们的节目。如果您喜欢这个节目，请在苹果播客上给我们评分，帮助我们扩大影响力，我们也很乐意收到您的反馈。

Thank you. Thank you, Angela. Thanks for listening to the Larb Radio Hour. Subscribe to our show on Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts. If you like the show, please rate us on Apple Podcasts to help us get the word out, and we'd love to hear from you.

Lab广播时间的制作人是梅迪亚·奥彻、凯特·沃尔夫、埃里克·纽曼、玛丽·克诺普夫和乔纳森·希夫莱特，他们还负责我们节目的混音和剪辑。我们的创始执行制片人是艾伦·明斯基。开场音乐由伊莫金·蒂斯利·布拉顿创作并演奏。

The producers of the Lab Radio Hour are Medea Ocher, Kate Wolf, Eric Newman, and Mary Knopf and Jonathan Shifflett, who also mixed and edited our show. Our founding executive producer is Alan Minsky. Our intro music was written and performed by Imogen Teasley Blatton.