Starting Over at 85.doc

James Michener began life as a foundling and started with absolutely nothing. Later, he became a successful writer, with an estimated 50 million copies of his books sold. He made millions of dollars and donated much of his wealth. In 1992, when he was 85, he gave away his last 15 million dollars and started all over again. 詹姆斯麦切纳刚生下来就成了弃儿，他完全是白手起家。后来，他成为了一位颇有名气的作家，据估计，他的书已售出五千万册。他赚了好几百万美元，也捐赠了很多财产。1992年，他85岁高龄时，捐出了所剩的全部财产一千五百万美元-并且重新开始创业。In the summer of 1992, I arranged to visit James A. Michener in Brunswick, Maine. I was then collaborating with the renowned author on a book of conversations. Could we meet him?” my younger daughter, Hana, asked. She was only eight at the time, but Hana knew Michener was someone special. Shed seen how carefully Id arranged all the first editions of his books on our bookcase. Each was personally inscribed and redstamped with the initials JAM. That would depend on his schedule, I said. Hes a very busy man.1992年夏天，我计划好去拜访住在缅因州布伦斯威克市的詹姆斯A麦切纳。当时我正与这位知名作家合作编著一本谈话类的书。“我们可以见见他吗？”我的小女儿海娜问。她当时只有八岁，可她却知道麦切纳是不同寻常的人物。她以前见过我如何小心翼翼地把麦切纳的所有初版书都摆放书架上。每一本书上都写有赠言，并印上了作家姓名的首字母JAM。“那要看他的日程安排了，”我说，“他很忙。”Nevertheless, Hana told me it was really important that she talk to him. Then she went to work to prepare for the meeting. She took a two-inch blank book and began to write and illustrate stories about seals, one of which was called The Adventure of Taking Erny the Seal to School. To encourage her, I told her that Michener liked to write about animals. 尽管这样，海娜还是告诉我说，能与麦切纳交谈对她来讲真的很重要。之后，她便去为此次见面做准备。她拿来一本两寸厚的空白薄，开始在上面写海豹的故事，其中一则名叫恩尼上学历险记。她还为故事画了插图。为了鼓励她，我告诉她，麦切纳喜爱用动物作写作题材。On July 17 I took my family to the simple house where Michener and his wife, Mari, lived. Jim remembered holding my older daughter on his lap when she was a baby. But this was the first time he had met Hana, who told him that she, too, was a writer and had brought her work with her. Jim smiled. Well, he said, I wonder if youll let me see it. He sat down on his couch, and Hana joined him. He opened to the first page and read out loud, Seals, by Hana Grobel. The first 12 pages of Hanas book were about the nature and history of seals. Just before Jim got to the story about Erny going to school, the phone rang. 七月十七日，我携家人前往麦切纳和他的妻子玛丽居住的简朴房子。吉姆还记得当年把我的大女儿抱在膝上的情景。不过，他那是第一次见海娜。海娜告诉他，她也是一位作家，而且还随身带来了自己写的书。吉姆笑了，“噢，”他说，“能让我看看吗？”他在沙发椅上坐了下来，海娜坐到了他的身旁。他翻开第一页，大声读道，“海豹，作者是海娜格罗贝尔。”海娜这本书的前十二页讲述海豹的习性与进化历史。吉姆刚读到恩尼上学历险记时，电话铃响了。Im reading an original story by a young writer, he told the caller. Hana beamed. Then Michener excused himself to take the call in his study. When he returned, it seemed as if a weight had been lifted from his shoulders. Ive just given away my last 15 million dollarsall my money, he confided to me. Id better be nice to Mari. Im going to have to make do with what shes got and with whatever I can earn from future books. I was stunned. He was 85 years old and about to start all over. “我正在读一位年轻作家富有新意的作品，”他对通话者说道。海娜开心地笑了。然后麦切纳歉意地说，他要到书房去听电话。他从书房回来时，一副如释重负的样子。“我刚刚捐出了我最后的一千五百万美元那是我所有的钱。”他对我推心置腹地说。“我得对玛丽好一点。我以后得靠她的收入和我写书赚的钱过活。”我大吃一惊。他已经85岁高龄，竟还要一切从头开始。I first met James Michener in the spring of 1981 when I went to interview him for a national magazine. Our talks led to friendship. Over the following years I would see him wherever he was living and many times at airports as he traveled to and from the Far East and South Pacific, recording his adventures. 我第一次遇见詹姆斯麦切纳是在1981年的夏天。当时我代表一家全国性杂志对他进行采访。交谈使我们建立了友谊。在后来的岁月里，无论他身居何处我都会去看望他，并记录下他的冒险经历。有许多次我们是在机场见面，因为他要穿梭于远东与南太平洋地区。My life has been, in its way, a fable1 for our times, he told me. For a guy like me starting with absolutely nothing to wind up giving away a fortune is incredible. It was incredible. Michener began life as a foundling. Mabel Michener, a poor widow in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, took him in. Like her own child and the others she cared for, he wore secondhand clothes and sometimes went without food. “从某个角度讲，我的生活已经成为我们这个时代的一个神话，”他告诉我。“在人们看来，象我这样从身无分文起，到最终馈赠大笔财富的人是不可思议的。”的确不可思议。麦切纳生下来就成了弃婴。宾夕法尼亚州多利斯镇的一名贫穷的寡妇玛贝尔麦切纳收养了他。象她自己的孩子和她收留的其他孩子一样，麦切纳穿的是旧衣服，有时还要挨饿。He never discovered his birth date (perhaps 1907) or the place. I could be Jewish, part Negro, probably not Oriental, but almost anything else, he said. A bright student, Jim yearned to see America. As a kid of 14, he said, I bummed across the country on nickels and dimes. Before I was 20, I had seen all the states but Washington, Oregon and Florida. I had an insatiable love of hearing people tell stories and what they didnt tell, I made up. A scholarship3 permitted him to attend Pennsylvanias Swarthmore College, and although he was suspended twice (I was quite a radical in those days), he graduated with highest honors in 1929. 他从未弄清楚他的出生日期（可能是1907年）和地点。“我可能是犹太人，可能有一部分黑人血液，除了不大可能是东方人之外，可能是任何人种，”他说。吉姆是一位聪明伶俐的学生，他渴望见见美国是什么样子。“十四岁的时候，”他说，“我一路乞讨，靠一角和五分的硬币走遍了整个美国。不到二十岁，我就去过了除华盛顿、俄勒冈、弗罗里达之外的所有州郡。我总是听不够人们讲故事，他们没讲到的部分，我就自己编出来。”一笔奖学金使他得以进了宾夕法尼亚的斯沃斯摩尔学院。尽管他两次被勒令休学（“我那时是个激进分子”），他还是于1929年以优异成绩毕业。Like the stories he told, his life was filled with extraordinary twists and turns. Between conventional jobs such as teaching and editing books, Michener traveled with Spanish bullfighters, worked on a coal barge in the Mediterranean and collected folk songs near Scotland. He joined the Navy during World War II, where he compiled colorful fictional accounts based on the exotic people he encountered in the South Seas. 他的一生也象他写的故事那样，充满了非同一般的曲折与坎坷。除了从事教师、编辑这类常规性的工作之外，麦切纳与西班牙斗牛士一同旅行，在地中海的一艘煤船上工作，还曾在苏格兰附近收集民歌。二战时他当过海军，在军队里他以自己在南部海区遇到的异族人为原型，编写了诸多丰富多彩的故事。In 1948 his collection of 18 stories Tales of the South Pacificwon a Pulitzer Prize. The book soon became a best-seller. For Michener, it signaled a new beginning, launching him in his 40s on a spectacular career. By 1959 Hawaii appeared, Micheners first in a series of blockbuster4 sagas, those well-loved historical epics spanning generations of families that became his trademark. 1948年，他的收入十八篇故事的小说集南太平洋故事集，荣获了普利策奖。这本书很快便成为了畅销书。对于麦切纳来说，这标志着一个新开端，使他在四十多岁时踏上了事业的光明大道。1959年，夏威夷问世了，这是麦切纳一系列成功作品中的第一部，这些成功的作品皆是传奇故事，是深受大众喜爱的历史传记，书中的家庭跨越了几代人，这业已成为他作品的主要特征。His life, however, wasnt entirely focused on writing. In 1962 he ran for Congress, thinking hed give up his writing career if elected. Thank goodness he lost, or we wouldnt have had what he considered his two best books, The Source and Iberia, not to mention the othersa total of 44 books, translated into many languages, with an estimated 50 million copies sold. 不过，他的生活并非完全以写作为主。1962年，他曾参加国会竞选，当时他决定一旦入选便放弃创作生涯。感谢上帝，他没有入选，否则我们就看不到他个人认为自己创作的两部最佳作品，源泉和依比利亚，更不用说其他的作品了合计有四十四本，被译成多种语言，据估计已售出五千万册。Michener lived modestly, and his money accumulated. What to do with it seemed obvious, at least to him: with no children of his own, he would give to others. His desire to donate came from two life-changing incidents in his own childhood. One involved a set of Honor de Balzac5 books that a salesman sold to his aunt, who then sent them on to young Jims mother. 麦切纳生活俭朴，他逐渐积累起一笔财富。至少对他来说，如何处理这些钱是很清楚的一件事：由于他膝下无儿无女，他打算把钱捐给别人。他的捐款欲望得自他孩童时代的两次扭转生活的事情。一件事情是一位书商把一套巴尔扎克的书籍卖给了他的姑姑，而他的姑姑又把它们转送给了小吉姆的妈妈。The fortunate person, Michener told me, is the one who reads or hears music or sees art or has an experience that resonates with his position as he is at that time. In my case, some clown comes through town and sells my aunt a set of Balzac. What for? She is not into Balzac; she cant spare the money. But I read the whole bunch, and it hit me like an explosion! If a man could write just as he wished, hed write like Balzac.“幸运的人”，麦切纳对我说，“指的是读书人，听音乐的人，观赏艺术的人，和那些在人生特定时期得到了与自己当时生活状态相呼应的生活体验的人。就我来说，有一个小丑走过小镇，把一套巴尔扎克的书卖给了我姑姑。为什么？她对巴尔扎克并不热衷，她也没有那个钱。但我读了整套书之后，我太震憾了！如果一个人可以随心所欲地写作，那他就会写得与巴尔扎克一样好。”The other incident occurred when Michener received a scholarship to Swarthmore. The principal of his secondary school came to see Mabel Michener. He was convinced that the boy would not be a credit to that university and should instead become a plumber. He despised poor people, Michener recalled. It burned him up that I got that scholarship.另一件事情发生在麦切纳得到了斯沃斯摩尔奖学金之后。他中学时期的校长来看望玛贝尔麦切纳。他坚决认为，这个孩子不会给学院带来荣耀，倒是应该做一名管子工。“他瞧不起穷人，”麦切纳回忆道，“我拿到了奖学金可把他气坏了。”Michener never forgot the importance of his educationand spent a lifetime quietly helping others get theirs. I remember visiting him in June 1983 when he was in Pasadena to deliver an address. There was a knock on the door of his hotel room, and a nervous engineering graduate student entered. He was there to meet his benefactor and thank him for two scholarships. Michener had heard how the talented student had to drop out of school to work. He seemed glad to have helped the young man get back on track. 麦切纳从未忘记教育的重要性他毕生都在默默地帮助别人获得受教育的机会。我记得1983年6月他来帕萨德那作讲演。我去看望他时，旅馆房间的门敲响了，一位神情紧张的工程专业的大学生走了进来。他是来见他的恩人的，感谢他提供的两项奖学金。麦切纳曾经听人讲过这位才华出众的学生是如何被迫辍学去工作。他看上去非常高兴自己能帮助这位年轻人重返校园。Michener and his wife, Mari, also helped educational institutions. The amounts were staggering. The University of Texas alone received a total of $44.2 million. During the week I was with him in Maine, he had been called daily regarding his offer to fund a writing program there. Its part of what I have always believed about the tremendous value of creative writing, he explained. If through some accident you get richly rewarded for it, the only sensible thing is to plow it back into the system.麦切纳与他的妻子玛丽也援助过教育机构。数目颇为惊人。仅德克萨斯大学就收到过总数为四千四百二十万美元的资助。在我与他一同呆在缅因州的一周内，每天都有电话打来，与他商谈他要资助一个当地写作项目的事。“我一向相信创造性写作具有巨大的价值。而这正是这种价值的一部分，”他解释说，“如果你曾有幸从中受益匪浅，那么唯一理智的做法，就是把你的收益重新归植到这个体系中去。”When that final call of acceptance came through in Maine, it was a moment of personal triumph, and I felt privileged to share it. Michener had yet to tell Mari they were suddenly $15 million poorer. But first he had another obligation to fulfill: he hadnt finished reading Hanas story. So he sat down next to her and gave it his full attention. His mission, after all, was to encourage future generations, and here was this eight-year-old looking for encouragement. 对麦切纳而言，在缅因州接到最后一次电话，得知资助被接受的那一刻真是一个胜利的时刻。而我有幸分享了此刻。麦切纳还没有告诉玛丽，他们突然间减少了一千五百万美元。但是他要首先履行另一项义务：他还没有读完海娜的小说。于是他在她身边坐下来，全神贯注地读着。毕竟他的任务是鼓励下一代，而此时此刻一位八岁的孩子正渴求他的鼓励呢。Oh, my, Michener said when he came to the part where the teacher wouldnt let the seal stay in school and had him taken to the zoo. See, hes crying, Hana said, pointing to one of her drawings. On the next page the zoo keeper gave Erny back to the girl, and Michener nodded his approval. This is a very good story, he said, because everybody is happy in the end.读到老师不允许海豹呆在学校里，而要把它送到动物园时，麦切纳叹息道：“噢，天哪。”“你看，他都哭了，”海娜边说边指着一张图画。后一页中动物园管理员把恩尼还给了那个女孩，对此麦切纳点头表示同意。“这故事真不错，”他说，“因为到最后人人都很快乐。”In life, endings arent always so happy. Mari Michener died of cancer in September 1994. Micheners kidneys6 began to fail, and he had to go on dialysis, ending his world travels. He lived then in Austin but continued to write booksseven more, in fact, after he started over in 1992. On October 6, 1997, I called and spoke with his devoted caretaker, Amelia, who said the end was near. She put Michener on the phone. Are you in pain? I asked. Were bearing up under it. Theres not much time, is there, Jim?生活中，结尾并非总是快乐的。玛丽麦切纳于1994年九月死于癌症。麦切纳的肾功能开始衰竭，不得不