美國總統(tǒng)是怎樣煉成的
The Making of the President
美國總統(tǒng)是怎樣煉成的
During his 2008 campaign, Barack Obama so often stressed the improbability of his story that we have grown inured to how unlikely it really is. Everyone knows that his name, along with his inexperience, was an electoral handicap; that his mixed-race background made his victory historic; and that his transformation within five years from local Illinois politician to the most famous person on earth (and first incumbent president since Woodrow Wilson to win the Nobel Peace Prize) has no obvious parallel. The great virtue of David Maraniss’s huge and absorbing new biography is to demonstrate that Obama’s saga in its full and previously unexplored detail is more surprising and gripping than the version the world is familiar with.
在2008年的總統(tǒng)選戰(zhàn)中，巴拉克·奧巴克常常強調自己的經歷有多不尋常，于是我們漸漸習慣了他不凡的過去。大家都知道，因為他的名字，因為經驗不多，在競選中他并不占優(yōu)勢;大家也知道他的混血背景使得他的成功具有歷史意義;并且僅僅花費五年就從伊利諾伊州的地方政客變成了地球上最有名的人(他還是繼伍德羅·威爾遜之后第一個在任內獲得諾貝爾和平獎的總統(tǒng))，這樣的經歷幾乎無人能及。大衛(wèi)·馬拉尼斯(David Maraniss)的這本新傳記恢宏、引人入勝，它的出色之處在于通過詳盡的、首次公開的細節(jié)來呈現奧巴馬的傳奇經歷，書中所講述的故事與世人熟知的版本相比，稱得上更扣人心弦。
The engrossing parts of “Barack Obama: The Story” are not the ones that created the most pre-publication buzz: the diary entries from one of Obama’s girlfriends in his New York days in the early 1980s. This was Genevieve Cook, a white Australian, who let Maraniss quote the notes she made during her infatuation with Obama and eventual estrangement — including the judgment that for all his initial charm, he proved to be too cool and distant. In the context of current politics, that may seem a relevant insight. But in the context of this book, those entries are almost ho-hum, precisely because they could have come from any troubled “it’s not about you . . . ” relationship. The rest of Maraniss’s chronicle, which very minutely traces the president’s African and American lineages back for more than a century, is far more unusual.
《巴拉克·奧巴馬：他的故事》(Barack Obama: The Story)最吸引人的，并不是尚未出版就引來最多熱議的那部分內容： 1980年代初，奧巴馬在紐約時的一個女友寫了日記。她叫吉娜維芙·庫克(Genevieve Cook)，是澳大利亞白人，她允許馬拉尼斯在書中引用了自己與奧巴馬相戀到最終分手期間的日記內容——當中包括了她對奧巴馬的評價，開始的時候她認為他很有魅力，但事后證明他為人過于冷淡漠然。放到當今政治的上下文來看，這個判斷似乎有些洞察力。不過比起整本書其它內容，這些日記幾乎沒多大意思，因為這些話可以來自任何一段不開心的、 無疾而終的戀情。馬拉尼斯這部總統(tǒng)編年史的其他部分要有意思得多，他詳細追溯到了一個多世紀前總統(tǒng)在非洲和美國的家族譜系。
Maraniss, a Washington Post veteran and author of a celebrated biography of Bill Clinton and other works, has (with assistants whom he credits) applied a version of the Robert Caro treatment to a politician who, unlike Caro’s Lyndon Johnson, is still in his functioning prime. The book begins with people Barack Obama never met and certainly knows less about than Maraniss does, his great-grandparents on both sides. Nearly 600 pages later it ends with the current president, at age 27, driving a used yellow Datsun away from Chicago, where he had been a community organizer, to Harvard Law School and what Maraniss presents as the end of his search for identity and the beginning of a purposeful political career.
馬拉尼斯在《華盛頓郵報》工作多年，比爾·克林頓那本著名的傳記等等都是他的作品(在其他共同作者的協(xié)助下)。在這本傳記中他運用了羅伯特·卡羅處理政治人物的手法，不過跟卡羅筆下的林登·約翰遜不同，他筆下的主人公仍在執(zhí)政生涯鼎盛時期。本書的序幕始于巴拉克·奧巴克父母的曾祖輩，這些人恐怕連奧巴馬本人也從未遇見，甚至了解的還不如馬拉尼斯深入。之后作者又用了近600頁篇幅，以時年27歲的奧巴馬開著一輛二手黃色達特桑離開芝加哥作結。這一年，他結束了社區(qū)組織者的工作，前往哈佛法學院讀書，在馬拉尼斯筆下，奧巴馬在此時終于結束了對個人身份的探求，開始了他志在必得的政治生涯。
To my taste the book has two imperfections. First, details pile up in encyclopedic volume sometimes unrelated to their significance. One example, of a large number I noted: It is important to know what Obama’s American grandfather and great-uncle did in combat during World War II, less so to see a list of people from the same Kansas county who were killed. Perhaps Maraniss wanted to leave no doubt about the thoroughness of his research, but even at half the book’s length that would have been clear. Also, when Maraniss departs from narrative and steps in to “tell” rather than “show,” his presentation of themes can sound balder than the subtle complexities evident from the tale itself. For instance, about Obama’s Kenyan grandfather, Hussein Onyango Obama: “There were times, foreshadowing the circumstances of his American grandson, when he was dismissed by some of his own people for acting white, or not seeming black enough.” The “foreshadowing” part is evident without belaboring.
在我個人看來，這本書有兩個不足之處。首先，那些如大百科全書般堆起來的種種細節(jié)，有時過于瑣碎。比方說，我注意到：了解奧巴馬的美國外祖父和舅姥爺曾參加過“二戰(zhàn)”的確重要，但看一長串來自堪薩斯州同一個郡的烈士名單，就沒那么重要了。也許，馬拉尼斯希望自己的調查在深入透徹方面不留任何把柄，不過哪怕這本書只有現在篇幅的一半，這方面也已經體現得很清楚了。此外，當馬拉尼斯偏離敘事，進行“講述”而非“展現”時，他對主題的呈現比故事本身微妙的復雜性來得更為大膽。舉例來說，在談到奧巴馬肯尼亞的祖父侯賽因·奧尼揚戈·奧巴馬(Hussein Onyango Obama)時他說：“有時，他會因為表現得像白人或者看起來不是那么黑，而遭人不屑，這為他孫子在美國的遭遇埋下伏筆。”“埋下伏筆”這部分顯然是過度闡釋了。
Nonetheless, this is a revelatory book, which anyone interested in modern politics will want to read, and which will certainly shape our understanding of President Obama’s strengths, weaknesses and inscrutabilities. Every few pages Maraniss offers a factual nugget that changes or enlarges the prevailing lore. For example: Obama’s Kenyan grandfather, who had five wives, was apparently not involved in Kenyan insurgencies or ever tortured by British colonialists during the Mau Mau era. (Indeed, he remained a trusted figure among white Kenyans — and although himself a convert to Islam, he sent his son to a Christian school.) Similarly: Obama’s mother was named Stanley Ann Dunham not at the perverse insistence of her father, Stanley, but because her mother was taken by the sophistication of a Bette Davis character, a woman named Stanley, in the movie “In This Our Life,” which she saw while pregnant.
盡管如此，這仍是一本具有啟發(fā)性的著作，任何對現代政治感興趣的人都有必要一讀，這本書必定會加深我們對于奧巴馬總統(tǒng)的優(yōu)點、缺點和深藏不露個性的理解。每隔幾頁，馬拉尼斯就會拋出一點珍聞，改變或擴展了此前最普遍的認知。比方說，奧巴馬在肯尼亞的祖父曾娶了五位妻子，在茅茅黨(Mau Mau)時期，他顯然并未參與肯尼亞暴亂，也沒有遭到英國殖民者的酷刑(盡管他皈依了伊斯蘭教，在肯尼亞白人中，他仍是個靠得住的角色，不過他把兒子送到了基督教學校讀書)。還有這個：奧巴馬的母親取名為斯坦利·安·鄧漢姆(Stanley Ann Dunham)，這并不是因為她父親斯坦利堅持要給她取這個名字，而是因為她母親在懷孕時看了電影《姐妹情仇》(In This Our Life)，結果喜歡上了劇中由貝蒂·戴維斯(Bette Davis)飾演的那個工于心計的角色——斯坦利。
The entire tale is too vast to summarize, but four narratives dominate. The most tragically self-destructive is that of Obama’s own father, who dazzled people in Africa and America with his intelligence and eloquence but ruined other lives and finally his own with his irresponsibility. He had a wife in Kenya, with two children, when at the University of Hawaii he met, romanced and impregnated the 17-year-old Stanley Ann Dunham in 1960. They married, but she went home to Seattle a month after the birth of “Barry” in 1961. (The book’s details about a doctor who remembered the case would change the minds of any “birthers” open to factual evidence.) Maraniss says that “perhaps the luckiest thing” in young Obama’s life was that afterward he saw almost nothing of his father, “sparing his mother and him years of unpredictability and potential domestic violence.” On his return to Kenya, the senior Barack Obama went into a debauched alcoholic spiral and was involved in countless car crashes before the one that killed him in 1982, when he was 48 and his son was 21.
這本書敘事之宏大以致無法概述，不過主要還是講了四個故事。其中最具悲劇感和自毀性的，要屬奧巴馬的親生父親。他腦子聰明嘴又甜，在非洲和美國傾倒眾人，但也因為他的不負責任，毀掉了別人以及自己的生活。他在肯尼亞有一個妻子，并育有兩個子女，1960年，他在夏威夷大學認識了17歲的斯坦利·安· 鄧漢姆，她愛上了他，懷上了他的孩子。兩人結了婚，但在1961年，生下“巴里”(Barry)才一個月，她就回到了西雅圖的家中(書中詳細引述了一位醫(yī)生關于此事的回憶，任何對奧巴馬的出生存疑的人，只要愿意接受書中提供的證詞，他們的態(tài)度都會改變)。馬拉尼斯說，在小奧巴馬的生命中，“或許最幸運的恰恰是如此”——此后他幾乎再未見過父親，“這讓他母親和他在未來幾年里，免于遭受種種不可預知的事件，以及可能的家庭暴力。”老巴拉克·奧巴馬回到肯尼亞后，濫飲成性，牽扯進多起車禍，最終在1982年因車禍去世。這一年，他48歲，兒子奧巴馬21歲。
Obama’s two American grandparents, Madelyn Payne and Stanley Dunham, are also compelling figures. On the surface they are Greatest Generation stalwarts: he a combat veteran, she a bomber-plant worker, young sweethearts from small-town Kansas secretly married on the night of a high school banquet. (Grandfather Stanley, with his long face and big ears, is also the forebear with the most striking physical resemblance to Barack Obama; the president looks almost nothing like his African father.) Under the surface, the Dunhams’ life was tense. Stanley’s childhood had been shattered when his mother killed herself. As an adult, he was increasingly a big-talking but disappointed salesman, while his wife, who became a bank official, took responsibility for the family and for the grandson who came to live with them rather than his mother.
奧巴馬的美國外公外婆，分別是斯坦利·鄧漢姆和瑪德琳·佩恩(Madelyn Payne)，他們同樣是書中相當引人矚目的角色。表面上看，他們是“最偉大一代”的中堅分子：他是參加過戰(zhàn)爭的老兵，她是生產轟炸機的工人，兩人在堪薩斯小鎮(zhèn)讀高中時相戀，在高中的一次晚會之夜秘密結婚(外公斯坦利生著長長的面孔和大耳朵，巴拉克·奧巴馬長得像他，與在非洲的父親一點都不像)。深入表相之下，鄧漢姆一家的生活卻處于緊張之中。斯坦利的母親自殺，粉碎了他的童年。成年后他擔任銷售員，只會夸夸其談，事業(yè)讓人失望，而他的妻子成為銀行職員，接過了養(yǎng)家和照料外孫的重任——外孫并沒有和媽媽一起生活，而是搬過來與外公外婆同住。
Maraniss’s portrayal of Obama’s mother, which complements that of Janny Scott in her 2011 book “A Singular Woman,” makes clear that even for her time Stanley Ann Dunham was a romantic and a risk taker. She sought adventure and was “afraid of smallness.” She married a Kenyan at 18 and an Indonesian at 22. She placed her son in elementary school in Jakarta — a school for the country’s academic elite, Maraniss shows, not an Islamic madrassa — and then sent him away, to her parents, as she delved deeper into Javanese culture. I will not be the only reader to finish this book feeling acute loss that Stanley Ann Dunham, who died of cancer at 52 before her son’s first run for any office, is not around to behold and explain the man he has become.
在馬拉尼斯筆下，奧巴馬母親的形象對于簡妮·斯科特(Janny Scott)2011年的著作《奇女子》(A Singular Woman)是個補充。很顯然，即使身處她那個年代，斯坦利·安·鄧漢姆也稱得上浪漫主義者，或者是一名冒險家。她追尋歷險，“害怕渺小”。18歲時她嫁給了肯尼亞人，22歲嫁給印尼人。她讓兒子在雅加達上小學——馬拉尼斯解釋說，這并非一所伊斯蘭教學校，而是為該國培養(yǎng)學術精英設立的學校——之后又將他送走，送到了外祖父母身邊，自己好潛心研究爪哇文化。斯坦利·安·鄧漢姆52歲那年死于癌癥，當時她兒子還未參與任何職位的競選，她始終不在兒子近旁，也無法為兒子長成今日的模樣作一個旁注。在得知了這位母親的故事后，我想我應該不是唯一一個感到極度失落的讀者。
And the narrative of her son: The evidence Maraniss has collected about this pre-law-school stage in Barack Obama’s life suggests a richer view of the man we have become familiar with, without really knowing. The years as a boy in Indonesia, where chubby Barry Soetoro (his stepfather’s last name) with his curly hair was assumed to be from Ambon or some other nearby island of darker-skinned people. Adolescence in Hawaii, where he was thought of as one of many hapa, or multiracial, people rather than placed on the unavoidable black-white grid of mainland America. Maraniss explains how Obama entered Occidental College as Barry and left as Barack, having decided on his first exposure to mainland culture that he must be black rather than white, a decision ratified through his time at Columbia and in Chicago. And yet, as Maraniss says, a “recurring theme is his determination to avoid life’s traps.” These include “the trap of his unusual family biography . . . in terms of stability and psychology. Then the trap of geography,” from being raised in Hawaii, and “finally the trap of race in America, with its likelihood of rejection and cynicism.” Anything that might have seemed odd in Barack Obama’s demeanor, from his studied unflappability to his sometimes unappealing coldness, seems instead a miracle of normality and adjustment after the story recounted here.
最后，是關于她兒子的故事。馬拉尼斯搜集到了巴拉克·奧巴馬讀法學院之前的資料，讓我們看到了一個讓我們既熟悉又陌生的男人更為豐富的一面。他的童年在印尼度過，巴里·索托羅(這是他繼父的姓)，這個圓乎乎的孩子長著一頭卷發(fā)，人們想當然地認為他來自安汶或其他鄰近的、膚色較深的人定居的小島。他青少年時期住在夏威夷，人們并沒有把他當成是美國大陸很常見的黑白混血，而是把他看成是hapa，也就是多種族混血兒。馬拉尼斯解釋了奧巴馬在進洛杉磯西方學院(Occidental College)時是“巴里”，而在離開時則轉變成為“巴拉克”——在初次受美國大陸文化影響后，他已經認準了自己應是黑人，而不是白人，在讀哥倫比亞大學和芝加哥大學時，這個決定不斷得到強化。馬拉尼斯說，“在他的決心中，一個反復出現的主題是要避免生命中的陷阱”。這包括“他不尋常的家族陷阱……牽涉穩(wěn)定性和心理層面。之后是地緣方面的陷阱”，這跟他在夏威夷長大有關，以及“最后是美國的種族陷阱，因為這有可能招致排斥與譏諷”。在巴拉克·奧巴馬的態(tài)度中，從他刻意的鎮(zhèn)靜到有時令人反感的冷酷，看似奇怪，恰恰是他在應對傳奇經歷和各種變故中調整后的結果。
