Top 10 Parties in Fiction小說中的十大聚會

伊麗莎白·戴

From Bridget Jones’s curry calamity to Vanity Fair’s historic ball， these social dramas have inspired many novelists. You are invited to enjoy 10 favourites. 從布里奇特·瓊斯在咖喱火雞自助宴上遭遇的倒霉事件，到《名利場》聞名歷史的舞會，這些社會劇給很多小說家帶來了靈感。接下來為您介紹十部我最喜愛的劇。

I’ve always loved a good party. When I was a child， I started planning for my birthday party in July. By August， I’d sent out hand-drawn invitations. By September， I was impatiently dreaming of cake， balloons and pass-the-parcel. I was born in November.

I continue to find them alluring. At a good party， there’s a sense that normal behavioural constraints are relaxed; a feeling that anything goes and that anything could happen. It’s why they make such perfect backdrops for fiction： you see the constant tension between who someone is and who someone wants to be. In life， as in novels， they are the perfect place to people-watch.

That’s why I chose to set my new novel at a party. The story takes place over one evening at a glamorous 40th birthday in a stately home in the English countryside， where two best friends are brought together and reveal dark truths about each other.

A lot of my real-life experiences went into in the scene-setting （I used to be a newspaper diarist—essentially getting paid to party every night）. But I was also influenced by great festivities in fiction. Here are 10 of my favourites.

1. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

Oblonsky’s ball in Anna Karenina is perhaps not as famous as the scene in War and Peace when Andrei and Natasha waltz for the first time， but its impact is as quietly devastating. Kitty （the unwitting rival for Count Vronsky’s affections） has earlier urged Anna to wear a flashy lilac dress. But Tolstoy puts his heroine in a modest black velvet gown. Kitty notes sadly that Anna’s charm “consisted precisely in the fact that she always stood out from what she wore”. Vronsky notices it too and swiftly falls in love. The rest is （doomed） history.

2. The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald

All parties in fiction have a neo-Platonic ideal of the perfect occasion to which they aspire. In my case， it was Jay Gatsby’s parties during the long， hot summer of 1922. Gatsby’s gatherings epitomise the spirit of prohibition-era decadence： endless champagne， chorus girls， flappers and bootleggers. And Fitzgerald writes them like a dream.

3. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

Austen’s books are liberally scattered with wonderfully observed balls and dances. But for my money， the most memorable is the one at Meryton where Mr Darcy refuses to dance with glorious Lizzy Bennet， dismissing her as “tolerable， but not handsome enough to tempt me”. He sees the error of his ways before long.

4. The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst

There’s a magnificent scene in Hollinghurst’s Booker-winning novel in which his hero， Nick Guest， ends up dancing with the then prime minister Margaret Thatcher while off his face on cocaine and booze. Thatcher is dressed in a “wide-shouldered white and gold jacket， amazingly embroidered， like a Ruritanian1 uniform” and the unlikely duo take to the dancefloor “to the thump of Get Off of My Cloud”.

5. The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe

When Wall Street trader Sherman McCoy and his wife Judy attend a Fifth Avenue dinner party thrown by egregiously sophisticated hosts， he finds himself awkwardly sitting next to his secret mistress. The dinner is referred to as The Masque of the Red Death （a nod to the Edgar Allen Poe story of the same name） and the other guests are the usual Wolfeian mix of pretentious aristos， supposedly sophisticated celebrities and “social x-rays in puffed dresses… starved to near perfection”.

6. Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

Woolf follows a day in the life of London socialite Clarissa Dalloway as she makes last-minute preparations for that evening’s gathering， where the novel’s cast will be brought together in a final tying-up of narrative threads. Woolf is excellent at conveying the noise， smells and rhythm of a party， with all its mannered fraudulence and dramatic ironies.

7. Vanity Fair by William Thackeray

Not strictly a fictional party， but a fictional rendering of a real-life event， namely the Duchess of Richmond’s Ball， held in 1815 as a celebration for the Duke of Wellington’s officers in Brussels. It was here that Wellington received word that Napoleon’s forces were on the march. As a result， the story goes， many of the guests ended up fighting in evening dress. Amelia Sedley’s husband， George Osborne （no relation to the former chancellor）， is one of those called to battle： “Away went George， his nerves quivering with excitement…”

8. Bridget Jones’s Diary by Helen Fielding

Another Darcy2， but this time dressed in a horrible golfing jumper （“what seemed from the back like a harmless navy sweater was actually a V-neck diamond-patterned in shades of yellow and blue”） and a guest at Geoffrey and Una Alconbury’s horrific New Year turkey curry buffet. Poor old Bridget is hungover and late because she got lost on the motorway and can’t think of anything to say when Mark Darcy asks her what books she’s read lately.

9. Some Hope by Edward St Aubyn

St Aubyn， one of the greatest prose stylists in modern literature， is merciless in his satirising of snobs. Nowhere is this more in evidence than at the birthday party of ghastly toff Sonny Gravesend. Here Princess Margaret makes an appearance， talking “about ‘the ordinary people in this country’ in whom she had ‘enormous faith’ based on a combination of complete ignorance about their lives and complete confidence in their royalist sympathies”.

10. Invitation to the Waltz by Rosamond Lehmann

This wonderfully perceptive， intelligent novel opens with 17-year-old Olivia Curtis readying herself for her first ball. Once there， she meets the dashing， aristocratic Rollo Spencer： a man who will influence her life for decades to come. Shy， self-conscious and constantly in the shadow of her more socially adept sister， Olivia encapsulates what it is to be on the brink of womanhood， worried that the boy you like won’t like you back. When we meet her again in Lehmann’s sequel， The Weather in the Streets， Olivia is about to embark on an affair with a married man—with all the emotional complexity that entails.

我一向喜歡宴會。小時候，7月我就開始策劃生日聚會;到了8月，我已經寄出了手寫邀請函;9月的時候，我迫不及待地幻想蛋糕、氣球和禮物，而我的生日11月才到。

我依然喜歡各種宴會。在美好的宴會上，平時被約束的各種行為都會得到釋放，感覺人們什么都能做得出來，任何事都有可能發生。這也是人們以其為場景創作諸多小說的原因：你能看到一種持續不斷的張力，存在于某人的本性以及他向往的姿態之間。與小說一樣，現實生活中的宴會是觀察人的最佳場所。

這是我把宴會作為我的新小說發生背景的原因。故事發生在英國鄉村的一所豪宅，當晚某人正在舉辦一場美妙的40歲生日宴會。兩個好朋友參加了這場宴會，并互揭對方的短。

我的很多現實生活經驗被用作了小說場景（我曾做過報社的日記作者，幾乎每晚都會參加派對）。但我也曾受小說中的重大宴會影響，以下是我最喜愛的十大宴會。

1.列夫·托爾斯泰的《安娜·卡列尼娜》

雖然不如《戰爭與和平》里安德烈和娜塔莎的首支華爾茲舞那般著名，但《安娜·卡列尼娜》中奧布隆斯基舉辦的舞會卻也令人印象極為深刻。起初，基蒂（因想博得渥倫斯基的愛意而無意中成了安娜的情敵）建議安娜穿華麗的淡紫色連衣裙。但托爾斯泰卻讓女主角穿上了一件簡樸的黑色天鵝絨禮服。基蒂黯然發現，安娜的魅力“恰恰在于她無論身著何種服裝都能引人注目”。渥倫斯基也注意到了這點，并迅速愛上了安娜。接下來的（悲劇）故事，就是眾所周知的了。

2. F.斯科特·菲茨杰拉德的《了不起的蓋茨比》

小說中描寫的舞會都渴望成為新柏拉圖式理想中的完美之所。在我看來，達成此想的就是杰伊·蓋茨比在1922年那個漫長炎熱的夏天舉辦的那些舞會。他的舞會是美國禁酒令時期頹廢之態的縮影：數不盡的香檳、歌女、時髦女郎和私酒販子。菲茨杰拉德把它們描寫得如夢如幻。

3.簡·奧斯丁的《傲慢與偏見》

各種絕妙的舞會和宴會在奧斯丁的書中隨處可見。但依我看，最令人印象深刻的是在麥里屯的那場舞會，達西先生拒絕與美麗的莉齊·班納特跳舞，貶損她“長得還行，但不足以吸引到他”。但不久，他就意識到自己錯了。

4.阿蘭·霍靈赫斯特的《美麗線條》

霍靈赫斯特的這部小說獲得了布克獎，其中有這樣華麗的一幕：主人公尼克·格斯特與時任首相的瑪格麗特·撒切爾一起跳舞，他當時在吸食可卡因，還喝了很多酒。撒切爾穿著一件“白金相間的寬肩夾克，上面還有精美的刺繡，就像魯里坦尼亞王國的制服一般”。兩個看似不可能的搭檔走向舞池，“和著《遠離塵囂》的節奏共舞”。

5.湯姆·沃爾夫的《虛榮的篝火》

華爾街的交易員舍曼·麥科伊和妻子朱迪一起參加由極其世故的主人在第五大道舉辦的一次晚宴時，他尷尬地發現自己坐在其秘密情婦旁。這場晚宴被稱為“紅死魔的面具”（向埃德加·愛倫·坡的同名小說致敬），其他客人則是沃爾夫筆下常見的各種自命不凡的貴族，或是世故的社會名流，或是“身穿蓬蓬裙的骨感名媛……為近乎完美而忍饑挨餓”。

6.弗吉尼婭·吳爾夫的《達洛維夫人》

吳爾夫以倫敦社交名媛克拉麗莎·達洛維為當晚宴會做最后準備為中心線索，敘述了達洛維一天的生活。所有的敘事線索匯總于晚宴，小說中的人物將因此齊聚于此。她善于利用矯飾和戲劇諷刺來表現聚會中的喧鬧、氣息和旋律。

7.威廉·薩克雷的《名利場》

這不完全是虛擬的宴會，而是對真實事件的再創造。1815年，為威靈頓公爵效力的軍官們駐扎在布魯塞爾，為振奮軍心，里士滿公爵夫人舉辦了這場宴會。正是在這里，威靈頓收到拿破侖軍隊長驅直入的消息。故事的結局是，很多嘉賓身穿晚禮服去參戰了。愛米麗亞·賽特笠的丈夫喬治·奧斯本（與當今的前財務大臣沒有關系）也是參戰的嘉賓之一：“喬治走了，他激動地顫抖著……”

8.海倫·菲爾丁的《BJ單身日記》

又是“達西”，但這次卻穿著難看的高爾夫套頭衫（“雖然從后面看像一件普通的海軍風格毛衣，其實是件黃藍相間的菱形格子V領毛衣”），前來參加杰弗里和尤娜夫婦舉辦的可怕的新年咖喱火雞自助餐會。可憐的大齡女郎布里奇特經歷了宿醉還遲到，因為她在高速公路上迷路了。當達西問她最近在看什么書的時候，她都不知道如何應答。

9.愛德華·圣奧賓的《一線希望》

圣奧賓是現代文學領域杰出的一大散文家，經常無情地諷刺勢利小人。討人厭的花花公子桑尼·格雷夫森德舉辦的生日派對就是最好的證明。瑪格麗特公主參加了這場派對，并“談論這個國家的平民，對他們表示‘極大的信任’，因為她完全不了解他們的生活，且相信他們站在保皇黨這邊”。

10.羅莎蒙德·萊曼的《邀舞華爾茲》

17歲的奧利維婭·柯蒂斯已經準備好參加人生中第一場舞會了，這部富有洞察力的小說以此為開端。她在舞會上遇到了英俊瀟灑的貴族男子羅洛·斯潘塞，這個男人將影響她未來幾十年的人生。奧利維婭羞澀、忸怩，并長期處于善于社交的妹妹的陰影下，她將自己即將成熟的女性特質包裹起來，擔心喜歡的男孩子會不喜歡她。我們在萊曼的續集《街上的天氣》再見到奧利維婭時，她已開始與有婦之夫有染，其中穿插著各種復雜情結。

[譯者單位：中國礦業大學（北京）]