Alice Munro:The Nobel Literature Prize Winner

By Hillel Italie and Malin Rising

If there were a literary award bigger than the Nobel Prize, Alice Munro would probably win that, too.

“Among writers, her name is spoken in hushed1. hushed: 小聲的，低聲的。tones,” fellow Canadian author Margaret Atwood once wrote. “She’s the kind of writer about whom it is often said—no matter how well known she becomes—that she ought to be better known.”

Munro, 82, was awarded literature’s highest honor, saluted by the Nobel committee as a thorough but forgiving chronicler of the human spirit, and her selection marks a number of breakthroughs.2. 82歲的門羅被授予了文學(xué)界的最高獎(jiǎng)項(xiàng)，這是諾貝爾獎(jiǎng)委員會(huì)對(duì)她全面而寬容地記錄人類精神的致敬，她的獲選也標(biāo)志著一系列的突破。salute: 向……致意；forgiving: 寬大的，仁慈的；chronicler: （事件的）記錄者。She is the first winner of the $1.2 million prize to be fully identified3. identify: 使與……有關(guān)聯(lián)。with Canada. Saul Bellow won in 1976,but though he was born in Canada, he moved to the U.S. as a boy and is more closely associated with Chicago.

Munro is also the rare author to win for short stories.

“When I began writing there was a very small community of Canadian writers and little attention was paid by the world. Now Canadian writers are read, admired and respected around the globe,” Munro said in a statement issued4. issue: 發(fā)表，發(fā)布。by her publisher, Alfred A. Knopf. She said she hopes the Nobel “fosters further interest in all Canadian writers” and “brings further recognition to the short story form.”5. 她說(shuō)，她希望這個(gè)諾貝爾獎(jiǎng)“能激發(fā)所有加拿大作家更大的興趣”，并“讓短篇小說(shuō)這一文學(xué)形式得到更多的認(rèn)可?！眆oster: 培養(yǎng)，促進(jìn)。

82歲的愛(ài)麗絲·門羅被譽(yù)為“加拿大的契訶夫”，她獲得了2013年諾貝爾文學(xué)獎(jiǎng)。這個(gè)結(jié)果在宣布時(shí)讓人稍感意外，或許是因?yàn)殚T羅本人太低調(diào)了，或許是因?yàn)槎唐≌f(shuō)好久沒(méi)有受到如此的重視了。然而，認(rèn)識(shí)門羅的人都會(huì)覺(jué)得她再出名也不為過(guò)……

Her books having sold more than 1 million copies in the U.S. alone, she has long been an international ambassador for the short story, proof that the narrative depth of characterization6. characterization: （小說(shuō)、戲劇等中的）人物塑造，性格描繪。expected from a novel can be realized in just 30 to 40 pages.

Critics and peers have praised her in every way a writer can be praised: the precision of her language; the perfection of detail; the surprise and logic of her storytelling; the graceful, seamless shifts of moods; the intimacy with every shade of human behavior.7. 評(píng)論家和同行們給予了她作為一個(gè)作家所能得到的所有贊揚(yáng)：用詞精準(zhǔn)、細(xì)節(jié)完善，故事出乎意料卻在邏輯之中，氣氛轉(zhuǎn)換流暢自然，人物行為的刻畫溫暖親切。seamless: 過(guò)渡自然的，不突兀的。Her stories are usually set in Ontario8. Ontario: 安大略省，位于加拿大南部。, her home province. Among her best-known is The Bear Came Over the Mountain, about a woman who begins losing her memory and agrees with her husband that she should be put in a nursing home.

The narrative begins in a relatively tender, traditional mood. But we soon learn that the husband has been unfaithful in the past and didn’t always regret it—“What he felt was mainly a gigantic increase in well-being.”9. unfaithful: 不忠的，通奸的；gigantic: 巨大的，龐大的。The wife,meanwhile, has fallen for10. fall for: 對(duì)……傾心，迷戀。a man at the nursing home.

In the story Dimensions, Munro introduces a chambermaid named Doree, who needs to take three buses for a visit to a “facility” outside Clinton, Ontario.11. chambermaid: 女服務(wù)員；facility: 機(jī)構(gòu)，場(chǎng)所。Munro explains that Doree is happy in her work, that she has been told she is “young and decent looking” and that her picture was once in the newspaper, in the days when her spiked blonde hair was wavy and brown.12. decent: 相當(dāng)漂亮的；spiked: 有尖頂?shù)模叔F形的，此處指高高挽起的；wavy: 波浪形的。

Dimensions begins in close-up13. close-up: 特寫鏡頭，接近的觀察。, then steadily pulls back. With every page, the story darkens, and terrifies. The “facility” is an institution where Doree’s husband is held. Doree’s picture was in the paper because her husband murdered their children.

“In all the time since what had happened, any thought of the children had been something to get rid of, pull out immediately like a knife in the throat,” Munro writes.14.“事情發(fā)生之后的每時(shí)每刻，所有關(guān)于孩子的念頭都必須清除，而清除這些念頭就像瞬間從喉嚨里拔出刀一樣（痛苦），”門羅寫道。

Munro won a National Book Critics Circle prize in 1998 for The Love of a Good Woman and was a finalist in 2001 for Hateship, Friendship,Courtship, Loveship, Marriage.15. National Book Critics Circle prize:（美國(guó)）國(guó)家圖書批評(píng)家獎(jiǎng)，于1974年設(shè)立，旨在獎(jiǎng)勵(lì)優(yōu)秀作家；finalist:參加決賽者，此處指門羅的作品入圍了最終候選名單；courtship:求愛(ài)。She is also a three-time winner of the Governor General’s prize16. Governor General’s prize: 加拿大總督獎(jiǎng)，是加拿大文學(xué)界的最高獎(jiǎng)項(xiàng)。, Canada’s highest literary honor.

Any further awards are likely to be honorary. She told Canada’s National Post that she was “probably not going to write anymore.”

Her most recent collection, Dear Life, came out in 2012.

Starting in the 1960s, when she was first published, she has often contrasted her youth in Wingham, a conservative town west of Toronto,and her life after the social upheaval of the ’60s.17. Wingham: 溫厄姆，位于加拿大安大略??；conservative: 保守的；social upheaval of the ’60s: 20世紀(jì)60年代的社會(huì)突變，劇變。此處指20世紀(jì)60年代婦女運(yùn)動(dòng)、土著居民反對(duì)社會(huì)不公平待遇的運(yùn)動(dòng)等。Munro herself lived out the fears, and celebrated the liberation, of the educated housewives in Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique.18. Betty Friedan: 貝蒂·弗雷頓（1921—2006），美國(guó)作家，社會(huì)活動(dòng)家和女權(quán)主義者，她于1963年發(fā)表了《女性的奧秘》，正是這部作品掀起了美國(guó)第二次女權(quán)運(yùn)動(dòng)，弗雷頓因此也被稱為第二次女權(quán)運(yùn)動(dòng)之母；feminine: 女性的，婦女的。

In an interview in 2003, she described the ’60s as “wonderful.”“Because, having been born in 1931, I was a little old, but not too old,and women like me after a couple of years were wearing miniskirts and prancing19. prance: 大搖大擺地走，神氣活現(xiàn)地走。around,” she said.

The daughter of a fox farmer and a teacher, she was born Alice Anne Laidlaw, a literary person in a nonliterary town, concealing her ambition like a forbidden passion.20. 愛(ài)麗絲·門羅原名愛(ài)麗絲·安·萊德勞，父親以飼養(yǎng)狐貍為生，母親是位教師。她在一個(gè)沒(méi)有多少文學(xué)氣息的小鎮(zhèn)里進(jìn)行文學(xué)創(chuàng)作，她就像掩藏一種禁欲一樣隱藏著她的文學(xué)夢(mèng)想。

She received a scholarship to study at the University of Western Ontario, majoring in journalism, and was still an undergraduate when she sold a story to CBC radio in Canada. She dropped out to marrya fellow student, James Munro, had three children and became a fulltime housewife. By her early 30s, she was so confined, frightened and depressed that she could barely write a full sentence.21. 三十出頭的時(shí)候，她感到十分壓抑、恐懼和沮喪，以至于她幾乎連一個(gè)完整的句子都寫不出來(lái)了。

Her good fortune was to open a bookstore with her husband, in 1963.Stimulated by everything from the conversation of adults to simply filling out invoices, she saw her narrative talents resurface but her marriage collapse.22.周圍的一切，從成人間的談話到簡(jiǎn)單地填寫發(fā)票，都給了她激勵(lì)，她發(fā)現(xiàn)自己的敘事才華再次浮現(xiàn)，但是她的婚姻也在此時(shí)走到了盡頭。invoice: 發(fā)票，發(fā)貨清單；resurface: 再次出現(xiàn)，重新露頭。

Her first collection, Dance of the Happy Shades23. Dance of the Happy Shades: 《快樂(lè)影子之舞》，為愛(ài)麗絲·門羅的第一部短篇小說(shuō)集，發(fā)表于1968年。, came out in 1968 and won the Governor General’s prize.

At least in her work, Munro is among the least political of Nobel winners, who in recent years have included Latin America’s Mario Vargas Llosa and British novelist Doris Lessing.24. Mario Vargas Llosa: 馬里奧·巴爾加斯·略薩（1936— ），擁有秘魯與西班牙雙重國(guó)籍的作家及詩(shī)人，是2010年諾貝爾文學(xué)獎(jiǎng)得主；Doris Lessing: 多麗絲·萊辛（1919— ），當(dāng)代英國(guó)最重要的作家之一，獲得2007年諾貝爾文學(xué)獎(jiǎng)。In 2003, she told the AP she was not inspired by current events but by memories, anecdotes, gossip. The stories themselves have few topical references or famous names.25. topical: 有關(guān)時(shí)事的，時(shí)下關(guān)注的；reference: 提到，論及。

“I don’t do a lot of indicators where you can tell what time it is,because that would impinge on me too much.26. 我不會(huì)（在作品中）給出很多提示，讓你猜出故事發(fā)生的具體時(shí)間，因?yàn)槟菢訒?huì)嚴(yán)重影響到我的寫作。indicator: 指示物；impinge on:影響。Somebody writing about now would have to have Iraq in it. They need to have the right music and right celebrities and right style of clothes,” she said. “In ordinary life I am a fairly active, political person. I have opinions and join clubs. But I always want to see what happens with people underneath; it interests me more.”