A Conversation with David Foster Wallace By Larry McCaffery

From "The Review of Contemporary Fiction," Summer 1993, Vol. 13.2

LARRY McCAFFERY

Your essay following this interview is going to be seen by some people as being basically an apology for television. What's your response to the familiar criticism that television fosters relationships with illusions or simulations of real people (Reagan being a kind of quintessential example)?

接著本篇訪談刊出的隨筆，在某些人眼中恐怕是在為電視的脫罪。常聽到的批評是，電視助長人跟真人的幻象或模擬產生關係（雷根算是一種入木三分的例子），你怎麼回應這種批評？

DAVID FOSTER WALLACE

It's a try at a comprehensive diagnosis, not an apology. U.S. viewers' relationship with TV is essentially puerile and dependent, as are all relationships based on seduction. This is hardly news. But what's seldom acknowledged is how complex and ingenious TV's seductions are. It's seldom acknowledged that viewers' relationship with TV is, albeit debased, intricate and profound. It's easy for older writers just to bitch about TV's hegemony over the U.S. art market, to say the world's gone to hell in a basket and shrug and have done with it. But I think younger writers owe themselves a richer account of just why TV's become such a dominating force on people's consciousness, if only because we under forty have spent our whole conscious lives being "part" of TV's audience.

那篇隨筆不是要開脫，我嘗試作徹頭徹尾的診斷。美國觀眾跟電視的關係說到底是既童騃又依賴，一如所有從勾引開始的關係。這誰都知道。然而，沒人承認電視的勾引有多複雜而別出心裁，觀眾跟電視的關係固然低劣，卻也錯綜複雜、根深蒂固。年紀大一點的作家謾罵電視支配美國藝術市場，世界已經爛到臭酸，肩一聳說老子不玩了，這很容易。可是電視究竟為什麼能成為凌駕人的意識的支配力量？我認為年紀輕一些的作家有責任提出比較經得起推敲的說法，畢竟我們這些還沒四十歲的人，好歹是把有意識的生命全都拿去當「一部分」的電視觀眾了。

LM

Television may be more complex than what most people realize, but it seems rarely to attempt to "challenge" or "disturb" its audience, as you've written me you wish to. Is it that sense of challenge and pain that makes your work more "serious" than most television shows?

也許電視比多數人所了解的更為複雜，但它鮮少嘗試「挑戰」或「干擾」觀眾，而你在信裡說你想做的就是[挑戰和干擾讀者]。你的作品是因為那種挑戰和痛苦的意義而比多數電視節目「嚴肅」嗎？

DFW

I had a teacher I liked who used to say good fiction's job was to comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable. I guess a big part of serious fiction's purpose is to give the reader, who like all of us is sort of marooned in her own skull, to give her imaginative access to other selves. Since an ineluctable part of being a human self is suffering, part of what we humans come to art for is an experience of suffering, necessarily a vicarious experience, more like a sort of "generalization" of suffering. Does this make sense? We all suffer alone in the real world; true empathy's impossible. But if a piece of fiction can allow us imaginatively to identify with a character's pain, we might then also more easily conceive of others identifying with our own. This is nourishing, redemptive; we become less alone inside. It might just be that simple. But now realize that TV and popular film and most kinds of "low" art—which just means art whose primary aim is to make money—is lucrative precisely because it recognizes that audiences prefer 100 percent pleasure to the reality that tends to be 49 percent pleasure and 51 percent pain. Whereas "serious" art, which is not primarily about getting money out of you, is more apt to make you uncomfortable, or to force you to work hard to access its pleasures, the same way that in real life true pleasure is usually a by-product of hard work and discomfort. So it's hard for an art audience, especially a young one that's been raised to expect art to be 100 percent pleasurable and to make that pleasure effortless, to read and appreciate serious fiction. That's not good. The problem isn't that today's readership is "dumb," I don't think. Just that TV and the commercial-art culture's trained it to be sort of lazy and childish in its expectations. But it makes trying to engage today's readers both imaginatively and intellectually unprecedentedly hard.

有個我喜歡的老師說過，好小說的任務是安慰情緒困頓的人，同時干擾那些安逸的人。讀者跟我們全體一樣，像是被孤囚於她的頭顱裡，我想嚴肅小說的宗旨多半是提供讀者通往其他自我的一條想像的過道。身為人類的自我，痛苦在所難免，所以我們人類投向藝術，一部分就為了受苦的經驗，而且必然是越俎代庖的經驗，更接近受苦的「歸結」。這說得通嗎？在真實世界裡我們全都獨自受苦，真正的共感是不可能的。然而，如果一篇小說能讓我們藉著想像而認同一個角色的痛苦，或許我們也會更容易設想其他人認同我們自己的痛苦。這很給力，也救贖人心；心理的孤單消減了。或許事情就這麼簡單。可是，要知道電視和通俗電影和大部分「低俗」藝術類型－－這意思只是說首要目標是賺錢的藝術－－都明白，觀眾偏愛百分百愉快的實在，儘管實在通常是49%的愉快加上51%的痛苦。反觀「嚴肅」藝術首先不是要賺你的錢，它更習慣讓你不舒服，或者逼你發奮，撬開作品的樂趣所在，這種情形就跟真實人生一樣，真正的愉快通常是下苦工、不安逸的副產品。因此要藝術的觀眾閱讀、欣賞嚴肅小說十分困難，尤其年輕的藝術觀眾從小就期待藝術是百分百讓人愉快，還要不費吹灰之力就到手。這不是好現象。問題不在於今日的讀者群「魯」，我不這麼認為。終歸電視和商業藝術的文化，把讀者群的期望養得有點懶惰又孩子氣，嘗試從想像和智識兩方面推坑今日的讀者，是前所未有地困難。