主题：孤独、恐惧、迷茫。成名的作家是这样，未成名而成为记者的作家也这样。旅行采访过程中两人微妙的关系不断转变，直至最后互相理解。吸引我的是，结局David自杀后，卷西在悼念文中念到：“如果我可以，我想告诉David和他在一起的那段时光，提醒了我真正的生活应该是什么样子的。而不是从生活中寻求解脱。认识到这点让我感觉没那么孤单了。”
So, what life is like?
我的理解是：生活没那么多想象，比起嫉妒别人的成功，认识到自己的平凡，才能继续生活。
然而，人是不可能改变的。即使David明白这一点，还是选择了自杀。我觉得要“承认自己平庸”这件事会很痛苦。毕竟我也不想变得和大多数人一样普通。曾经，我也觉得自己很了不起，和别人不一样，无视别人，但人和人是相对的，如果我无视别人，别人也会无视我。剩下的，只有孤独。（扯远）
所以，到底什么才是生活？
台词经供参考（据说这字幕翻译得有点渣，英语不精深勉强看）：
＊I do not have a tv.Because if I had a tv,I would watch it all the time.I don't even know if I would watch it all the time，but it would be on all the time.
我没有电视。因为如果我有电视的话，我会一直看。我甚至都不知道自己会不会经常都看。不过肯定会经常都开着。
＊When I want to be alone,like,to write,I really do want to be alone.I think if you dedicate yourself to anything.one facet of that is that if makes you very,very self-conscious.And you end up using people,wanting them around when you want them around,and then sending them away.There's good self-consciousness.Then there's also a toxic,paralyzing,"raped by psychic bedouins" kind of self-consciousness.
当我想独自一个人写作的时候，我确实想独自一个人。我认为如果你把自己献身于某件事了，而这事就会让你变得自我意识非常强。然后你就会变得喜欢利用别人，当你需要他们的时候才找他们，事后就会赶走他们。有种是好的自我意识。另一种是有毒的，会伤害别人的自我意识。
＊At that point,my ego was all tied up in my writing.It's the only thing that i'd gotten any,like,food pellets from the universe for.And i felt very trapped."oh,my five years are up and i gotta move on""i don't want to move on".And i felt stuck.And it's not like i felt stuck because i drank.It was like I felt my life was over at 28.and i felt really bad.i did not want to feel that,so i did all sorts of stuff.
当时，我的文章里透露出我的自负，这是我唯一，不满意自己的地方。而且我感到很无助。“5年合约快到了，我得写新作了”。我不想继续。我感到被困住了。而且并不是因为我酗酒才觉得被困住了。而是我觉得我的人生要在28岁时就结束了。我感到很遗憾。我不想有这种感受，所以我做了各种各样的事情。
＊I think that if there's a sort of sadness for people under 45,it has something to do with pleasure and achievement and entertainment like a sort of emptiness at the heart of what they thought was going on, and maybe i can hope that some parts of the book...speak to their nerve endings a little bit.if you quote any of this,by the way,you'd do me a great favor by saying...this is what i hope for the book....If everybody had hated it,i wouldn't have been thrilled.i don't think i would have been devastated either.when you're used to doing,heavy-duty literary stuff that doesn't sell well，being human animals with egos,you accommodate that fact by the following equation.if something sells really well,get a lot of attention,it's gotta be shit,right?the ultimate irony is,if your thing starts selling well,gets a lot of attention，the very mechanism you used to shore yourself up...when your thing didn't sell well,doesn't work anymore.it's now part of the darkness,nexus when it does,so you're totally screwed. you know,you can't win.
我认为，如果45岁以下的人生活得很痛苦的话，那肯定是和享受、成就和娱乐有关，他们的生活很空虚，我希望我的书可以带给他们一些慰籍。如果你要引用我说的话，我希望你告诉人们，这就是我对这本书的期望。如果大家不喜欢这部作品，我肯定不会很开心，但是我也不会太难过。当你习惯了，自己的文学作品默默无闻的时候，作为一个有自尊心的人类种族一份子，我们会通过跟随一个规则来安慰自己。如果一个文学作品大卖，那是因为这个文学作品很棒，不是吗？讽刺的是，如果你的作品大卖，你站在聚光灯下面，你之前在作品不成功的时候，相信的规则就不再适用。所以如果你下一部作品，不够成功的话，你就完蛋了。你没法赢这场游戏。
＊i don't think writers are smarter than other people,i think they may be more compelling in their stupidity,or in their confusion.but i think one of the real ways i have gotten smarter is i don't think i'm that much smarter than other people.there are ways in which other people are a lot smarter than me.and i gotta tell you,it makes me feel kinda lonely.I just think that to look across the room and to automatically assume that somebody is less aware or that their interior life is somehow less rich and complicated and acutely perceived as mine,makes me not as good a writer.because it means i'm gonna be performing for some faceless audience instead of trying to have a conversation with a person.
我不觉得作家比其他人要聪明，我觉得作家反而可能更蠢，更迷惑。如果要说我聪明的话，那也是因为我不觉得我比其他人更聪明。在很多方面，其他人都比我聪明。我不得不告诉你，这让我感觉孤单...我只是认为其他人都是普通人，或是他们的精神生活，比我的要肤浅，比我的要平淡无味，只能说明我不是一个好作家。因为如果我是那样的话，我就只是在表演给自己看。而不是在和别人真正地交流思想。
＊i got a real,serious fear of being a certain way,and a set,i think,of real，convictions about why i'm continuing to do this.why it's worthwhile,why it's not just an exercise in getting my dick sucked
我很害怕一成不变的东西，我对自己的行为，有一定的要求，我有自己的信仰。谈话应该是有价值的，而不只是为了和别人上床而已。
＊i've sort of unplugged myself the past three weeks.meeting a whole lot of new people and having to do stuff. you're in this constant low-level state of anxiety,this deep existential fear,you feel all the way down in your butt hole.the worst?that i really get to like it.that's the worst.the attention?yeah.
这3周里，我有点脱离现实，和这么多陌生人见面，还有一大堆采访要做，我一直觉得有点焦虑不安，一种真真切切的恐惧感，漫布我的全身。最坏的？最坏的情况是我爱上这种感觉，这就是最坏的。别人的注意力？是的。
＊grotesque than somebody going around saying，"i'm a writer,i'm a writer,i'm a writer."I don't mind appearing in rolling stone.i don't want to appear in rolling stone,as somebody who wants to be in rolling stone,if you see me on a game show in the next couple of years, i swear to god.to have written a book about how seductive image is,how easy it is to get seduced off of any meaningful path.because of the way our culture is now.what if i become a parody of that very thing? i go back to knowing,like,20 people.i'm gonna have to decompress from all this attention,because it's like getting heroin injected into your cortex.and where i'm gonna need real balls,is to sit and go through that.and try to remind myself of what the reality is that i'm 34 years old and i'm alone in a room with a piece of paper.
最可笑的就是到处张扬“我是作家..."我不介意上滚石杂志，我只是不希望别人认为是我自己想要上滚石杂志的。如果过几年，你在娱乐节目上看到我，我发誓。我的书写的是图像的强大魅力，被光彩绚丽的东西吸引而走向平庸之路是再简单不过的了。当今社会的文化就是这样。万一我也变成那样怎么办？我一个人回到原来的生活，我的朋友圈有20来人。我要把自己从这些注意力中抽离出来，就好像他们给我注射了hailuoyin一样。我需要鼓起勇气，自己一个人去承受这一切。我要提醒自己现实是什么我已经34岁了，单身。一个人在家里，陪我的是一张纸。
＊it wasn't a chemical imbalance,and it wasn't drugs and alcohol,i think it was much more that i had lived an incredibly american life,this idea that if i could just achieve x and y and z,that everything would be okay,there's a thing in the book about how when somebody leaps from a burning skyscraper,it's not that they're afraid of falling anymore,it's that the alternative is so awful.and so then you're invited to consider what could be awful that leaping to your death would seem like an eacape from it.i don't know if you have any experience with this kind of thing,but it's worse than any kind of physical injury.it may be in the old days what was know as spiritual crisis，feeling as though every axiom in your life turned out to be false and there was actually nothing.and that you were nothing.and that it's all a delusion.and you're so much better than everybody cause you can see how this is just a delusion and you're so much worse because you can't fucking function.it's really horrible.i don't think that we ever change.i'm sure that i still have those same parts of me.guess i'm trying really hard to find a way not to let them drive.
我当时的问题不是化学激素不平衡，也不是dupin和酒精，我觉得问题没那么简单，我一直过得很好，可以说是实现了美国梦，我当时觉得只要拥有了这个还有那个，生活就会变得很美好。在我的书里讲到了当一个人从燃烧的高楼上跳下来，并不是因为他不害怕，而是因为如果不跳楼更可怕。所以你会觉得跳楼和现在的处境比起来其实是一种解脱。我不知道你是不是也有过这种经历，但是这比任何一种身体疾病都可怕。在过去这可能被称为“精神危机”感觉好像你这辈子信奉的原则都是错的，事实是一切都是虚无。你也是虚无。一切都只是我们的错觉。我觉得我比所有人都厉害，因为只有我知道一切都是错觉，但是同时我也很痛苦，因为我不知道该如何继续生活。这是一段很痛苦的经历。我觉得人是不会改变的。 那段经历是我的一部分。我只是在努力不让他们主导我的生活。
＊when i think of this trip,i see David and me in the front seat of his car,we are both so young,he wants something better than he has,and i want precisely what he has already.neither of us knows where our lives are going to go.it smells like chewing tobacco,soda and smoke,and the conversation is the best one i ever had.David thought books existed to stop you from feeling lonely,if i could, i'd say to David that living those days with him reminded me of what life is like，instead of being a relief from it.and i'd tell him it made me feel much less alone.
当我回忆起这段旅程，我看见我喝David坐在车的前座上，我们都如此年轻，他想要更好的东西。我想要他已经拥有的东西，我们对生活都感到很迷茫，这种感觉闻起来像烟草、汽水、和烟，和他的交谈是我这辈子有过最好的一次。David觉得书是用来帮助人感觉不那么孤单的，如果我可以，我想告诉David和他在一起的那段时光，提醒了我真正的生活应该是什么样子的。而不是从生活中寻求解脱。认识到这点让我感觉没那么孤单了。
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