翻译练习：What Are The Best First Lines In Fiction(3)

What Are The Best First Lines In Fiction(3)

最好的小说开场是什么（3）

Another approach is to state plain 'facts'. "I am an invisible man" makes a bluffly apt beginning to Ralph Ellison's The Invisible Man. Equally concise is the start of Renata Adler's cult classic, Speedboat: "Nobody died that year", a line that instantly prompts questions which can only be answered by reading on. Donna Tartt's The Secret History manipulates the reader still more deftly: "The snow in the mountains was melting and Bunny had been dead for several weeks before we came to understand the gravity of our situation".

另一种手法是直奔显见的“事实”。“我是一个隐形人”这样的开场让拉尔夫・埃里森的《隐形人》显得虚幻。同样简明的开场还有雷娜塔・阿德勒的“邪教”经典《快艇》：“那一年没有死人”，一句话立即引发你一系列的疑问，而你只能继续读下去才能知晓答案。唐娜・塔特的《校园秘史》则更加熟练地玩弄读者于股掌：“山里的雪正在融化，邦尼去世了好几个星期后，我们才开始明白事情的严重性。”

Anomalies can be especially alluring when paired with the humdrum, as George Orwell knew. "It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen", begins Nineteen Eighty-Four. Or how about Jeffrey Eugenides' Middlesex? "I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day of January 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974."

正如乔治・奥威尔所了解的，反常与单调搭配尤其惹人注意。“这是一个四月里晴朗而寒冷的日子，时钟敲了13下”，这是《一九八四》的开场白。而杰弗里・尤金尼德的《中性》又是怎么样的呢？“我出生了两次：第一次是个小女孩，在1960年一月底特律一个罕见的没有霾的日子，第二次是个少年，出生在1974年八月密歇根州佩托斯基市附近的一个急诊室里”

Other authors choose to accentuate the fictional nature of their work. Anne Tyler is among the multitude who've used the four words that captivate every budding bookworm. "Once upon a time, there was a woman who discovered she had turned into the wrong person," opens Back When We Were Grownups. Similarly, Annie Proulx nods to her literary forbears when she declares in The Shipping News, "Here is an account of a few years in the life of Quoyle, born in Brooklyn and raised in a shuffle of dreary upstate towns".

其他作家选择强调他们作品的虚构性。安妮・泰勒是他们其中的一员，她能用四个词就抓住每一个读到她的书的书虫。她写的《回到我们成长的时候》是这样开场的“很久以前，有个女人被发现她变成了错误的人”。还有安妮・普鲁克向她的文学前辈致敬时，她在《船讯》用相似的手法声明：“这是一个讲述奎尔生平的几个片段的故事，他出生于布鲁克林，生长于北部沉闷而混乱的小镇”。