邁克爾•傑克遜的另一面：一個安靜的讀者

來源：MJJCN.com/Southern Bound  編譯：小麥

 Michael Jackson: "我看卡通片，也打電子遊戲，有時候我也看書。
Paul Theroux: "你的意思是說你有看書的習慣？"
MJ: "是的，我喜歡短片小說，閱讀任何類型的書籍."
PT: "有沒有特別喜歡的作家？"
MJ: "索默塞特•馬海姆（Somerset Maugham） ... 惠特曼（ Whitman）.海明威（ Hemingway）. （馬克•吐溫）Twain."

 

(Paul Theroux 保羅•泰魯 出生於1941年4月10日 美國著名的旅行作家，小說家）

誰能一下子反應過來？邁克爾•傑克遜是個真正的讀者麼？這個問題在倫敦電訊報發表的一篇保羅•泰魯回憶傑克遜的文章中被提到，並且6月27日 的洛杉磯時報也有消息稱，流行樂天王確實像文章中描述的那樣，有持續閱讀的習慣。傑克遜絕對不是唯一一個有文學愛好的流行樂歌手--凱斯•理查茲，是個出了名的書呆子，娜塔莉•莫什特，當她在‘10,000狂熱者樂隊’的時候，曾經在演出中把一本簡裝版“On the Road”拋給台下的觀眾 –但是，說到傑克遜絕對會讓你大吃一驚的。
也許，有人不會吃驚。眾所周知，傑克遜一直是個愛找麻煩的人。儘管加利福尼亞擁有一大群專家、診所，各種藥品應有盡有，然而文學作品中對於人類生存環境這個難題上的糾結卻僵持了幾個世紀之久。顯而易見的是，邁克爾•傑克遜在文學作品中找到了慰藉。

在洛杉磯時報的那篇文章中講到，好幾位加州南部的圖書商透露，傑克遜經常光臨他們的書店，並且一買就是4-5本。有些時候書店甚至為了讓傑克遜安靜的選購書籍同時不會被瘋狂的歌迷認出來而提前關門。他經常在幾個強壯的保鏢的跟隨下來到店裏，隔著特大號的太陽鏡，或者是外科手術用的口罩亦或者是打著太陽傘仔細流覽書架上的書籍。他很少說話，但是一旦開口，准是安靜且彬彬有禮的。一個店員回憶道，傑克遜非常喜歡詩歌。另一個店員向時代週刊透露：“傑克遜很喜歡愛默生，他對傑克遜說 ‘我感覺你一定有很多關於先驗主義的書籍，愛默生的詩詞中很多都富有哲理’。”

傑克遜喜歡把自己所讀到的東西拿出來跟其他人討論，儘管他周圍的那些可以信賴的人中只有極少部分能夠達到他的水準。“我們談論心理學，談論佛洛伊德和容格，霍桑，社會學，黑人的歷史和種族主義問題，”鮑勃•桑格，傑克遜的律師之一，在接受洛杉磯週刊採訪中講述到。傑克遜精通所有學科的經典著作，相比之下，你可以走在街上隨便找幾個路人問問，看看有幾個能說出點關於佛洛依德和榮格的評論來。”令泰魯十分驚訝的是他在與傑克遜討論實質性問題的時候，對方總是語出驚人。一天早上快要天亮的時候，泰魯被電話鈴聲叫醒，是傑克遜打來的（他說起話來聲音輕而連貫，像大男孩一樣）。泰魯通常把傑克遜和伊莉莎白•泰勒的關係比作溫蒂和彼得•潘，在聊了一些他們兩人的事情之後，話題轉向家庭和事業上，最終他們聊到了失去童年這個話題上。

泰魯援引了一句愛爾蘭詩人喬治•威廉•拉塞爾的詩句:“In the lost boyhood of Judas/ Christ was betrayed。”傑克遜輕輕地“喔”了一聲，然後問了一系列關於這個詩句的含義以及猶大的童年和人生的問題。“我告訴他，”泰魯說到“猶大的頭髮是紅色的，身為基督教傳教士，他很可能是Sicarii—一個極端的猶太人團體中的一員，他本應該被處以絞刑，但是最後不知道為何被炸死了，身體支離破碎。”接著泰魯又花了20分鐘時間跟傑克遜在猶大是如何失去童年這個問題上對“偽聖經”展開了討論。
當他獨自一人安靜地閱讀時，他總是看一些深奧而冗長的著作，從中汲取知識和養分，這是精神上的昇華。那麼為什麼在眾多次關於Neverland莊園的報導中（包括傑克遜去世前和去世之後），只是重點描述了嘉年華遊樂場，動物園裏的飛禽走獸，噴泉，園藝花鐘，壯觀的整體建築和私人電影院，卻對傑克遜的藏書房如此冷落甚至是隻字未提呢？有知情人向洛杉磯週刊透露，這位流行樂天王的書房裏大概有1萬冊精裝的藏書。
文章落筆於此，我想，對於那些圍繞在傑克遜身上的種種疑惑，大概此時又多了一些答案。

  Southern Bound: The reader, a quieter side of Michael Jackson

Published: Sunday, August 23, 2009

http://blog.al.com/entertainment-press-register/2009/08/southern_bound_the_reader_a_qu.html

Michael Jackson: "I watch cartoons. I love cartoons. I play video games. Sometimes I read."
Paul Theroux: "You mean you read books?"
MJ: "Yeah. I love to read short stories and everything."
PT: "Any in particular?"
MJ: " Somerset Maugham ... Whitman. Hemingway. Twain."

Who'd a thunk it? Michael Jackson a serious reader? Paul Theroux's recollection of an old conversation published in a recent London Telegraph indicates, and a June 27 story in the L.A. Times confirms, that the King of Pop was apparently just that. Jackson certainly isn't the only popular musician known to have a literary bent -- Keith Richards is famously bookish, and in her 10,000 Maniacs days, Natalie Merchant flung paperback copies of Jack Kerouac's "On the Road" into the audience -- but he is surely the most surprising.
Or perhaps not. That Jackson was complex and troubled is common knowledge. And though California hosts legions of self-help gurus and clinics and pills of all sorts, great literature has wrestled with the conundrums of the human condition for centuries. Wherever else he may have turned for answers, it is now evident that Michael Jackson found solace in literature.

In the L.A. Times story, numerous southern California booksellers reported that Jackson was a regular customer, and a good one, often leaving with four or five volumes. Sometimes a store would get a request to close early so he could browse without being confronted by fans. He always arrived with beefy bodyguards and sometimes perused the shelves in outsized sunglasses or behind a surgical mask or under a black umbrella. He rarely spoke, but when he did, he was quiet and polite. One clerk recalled that Jackson loved poetry and another that he favored Emerson. "I think you would find a great deal of the transcendental, all-accepting philosophy in his lyrics," one of them told the Times.

Jackson liked to discuss what he had read, though the circle of trusted confidants who could keep up with him was likely small. "We talked about psychology, Freud and Jung, Hawthorne, Sociology, black history and sociology dealing with race issues," one of Jackson's attorneys, Bob Sanger, told the L.A. Weekly. Noting that Jackson was well-versed in the classic works of all those subjects, Sanger concluded, "Go down the street and try and find five people who can talk about Freud and Jung."

Theroux was surprised at how substantive his exchange with Jackson turned out to be. After being vetted for an interview by Elizabeth Taylor ("He'll talk to you if I ask him to"), Theroux was awakened by a telephone call during the wee hours from the King of Pop himself ("the voice was breathy, unbroken, boyish"). After some discussion about Jackson 's close friendship with Taylor , which Theroux likens to the relationship between Wendy and Peter Pan, the talk ranged over issues of fame and family before moving to the theme of lost childhood.
Theroux quoted a line from the Irish poet George William Russell: "In the lost boyhood of Judas/ Christ was betrayed." Jackson 's response was a soft "wow" and then a series of rapid-fire questions about what this meant, and what exactly was known about Judas, his childhood and his life. "I told him," Theroux explained, "that Judas had red hair, that he was the treasurer of the Apostles, that he might have been Sicarii -- a member of a radical Jewish group, that he might not have died by hanging himself but somehow exploded, all his guts flying." This was followed by another 20 minutes of "Biblical apocrypha with Michael Jackson on the lost childhood of Judas" before the star uttered another soft "wow."

So, in his quiet moments Jackson was reading long and deep, seeking inspiration and insight. Then why did those vapid tours of Neverland Ranch (both before and after his death), which highlighted the carnival rides and the zoo animals and the fountains and the floral clock and the palatial mansion and the theater, never show or even mention Jackson's personal library? According to Sanger in the L.A. Weekly, it consists of ten thousand volumes. There, I would humbly suggest, might lie more than a few answers to the many puzzles of Michael Jackson.

 

毛姆（W.Somerset Maugham，1874-1965），二十世紀上葉最成功、最流行的英國小說家和劇作
家，生於巴黎。代表作有《月亮和六便士》和《人性枷鎖》、《尋歡作樂》等。

Walt Whitman，1819年5月31日 －1892年3月26日 ），美國詩人、散文家、新聞工作者及人文主義者。他身處於超驗主義與現實主義間的變革時期，著作兼併了二者的文風。惠特曼是美國文壇中最偉大的詩人之一，有自由詩之父的美譽[1]。他的文作在當時實具爭議性，尤其是他的著名詩集《草葉集》，曾因其對性的大膽描述而被歸為淫穢。

 （Ernest Miller Hemingway，1899年7月21日 －1961年7月2日 ），美國記者和作家，被認為是20世紀最著名的小說家之一。海明威出生於美國伊利諾伊州芝加哥市郊區的奧克帕克，晚年在愛德荷州凱徹姆的家中自殺身亡。海明威一生中的感情錯綜複雜，先後結過四次婚，是美國「迷失的一代」（Lost Generation）作家中的代表人物，作品中對人生、世界、社會都表現出了迷茫和彷徨。
在海明威一生之中曾榮獲不少獎項。他在第一次世界大戰期間被授予銀制勇敢勳章；1953年，他以《老人與海》一書獲得普立茲獎；1954年，《老人與海》又為海明威奪得諾貝爾文學獎。2001年，海明威的《妾似朝陽又照君》（The Sun Also Rises）與《戰地春夢》兩部作品被美國現代圖書館列入「20世紀中的100部最佳英文小說」中。
海明威的寫作風格以簡潔著稱，對美國文學及20世紀文學的發展有極深遠的影響；他的很多作品至今仍極具權威。

馬克·吐溫（Mark Twain，1835年11月30日 －1910年4月21日 ），原名塞姆·朗赫恩·克列門斯（Samuel Langhorne Clemens），是美國的幽默大師、小說家、作家，亦是著名演說家。其幽默、機智與名氣，堪稱美國最知名人士之一。其交遊廣闊，威廉·迪安·豪威爾斯、布克·華盛頓、尼古拉·特斯拉、海倫·凱勒、亨利·羅傑諸君，皆為其友。海倫·凱勒曾言：「我喜歡馬克吐溫——誰會不喜歡他呢？即使是上帝，亦會鍾愛他，賦予其智慧，並於其心靈裡繪畫出一道愛與信仰的彩虹。」[1]威廉·福克納稱馬克·吐溫為「第一位真正的美國作家，我們都是繼承他而來」。