Top 10 Parties in Fiction小说中的十大聚会

伊丽莎白·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·琼斯在咖喱火鸡自助宴上遭遇的倒霉事件，到《名利场》闻名历史的舞会，这些社会剧给很多小说家带来了灵感。接下来为您介绍十部我最喜爱的剧。

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.

我一向喜歡宴会。小时候，7月我就开始策划生日聚会;到了8月，我已经寄出了手写邀请函;9月的时候，我迫不及待地幻想蛋糕、气球和礼物，而我的生日11月才到。

我依然喜欢各种宴会。在美好的宴会上，平时被约束的各种行为都会得到释放，感觉人们什么都能做得出来，任何事都有可能发生。这也是人们以其为场景创作诸多小说的原因：你能看到一种持续不断的张力，存在于某人的本性以及他向往的姿态之间。与小说一样，现实生活中的宴会是观察人的最佳场所。

这是我把宴会作为我的新小说发生背景的原因。故事发生在英国乡村的一所豪宅，当晚某人正在举办一场美妙的40岁生日宴会。两个好朋友参加了这场宴会，并互揭对方的短。

我的很多现实生活经验被用作了小说场景（我曾做过报社的日记作者，几乎每晚都会参加派对）。但我也曾受小说中的重大宴会影响，以下是我最喜爱的十大宴会。

1.列夫·托尔斯泰的《安娜·卡列尼娜》

虽然不如《战争与和平》里安德烈和娜塔莎的首支华尔兹舞那般著名，但《安娜·卡列尼娜》中奥布隆斯基举办的舞会却也令人印象极为深刻。起初，基蒂（因想博得渥伦斯基的爱意而无意中成了安娜的情敌）建议安娜穿华丽的淡紫色连衣裙。但托尔斯泰却让女主角穿上了一件简朴的黑色天鹅绒礼服。基蒂黯然发现，安娜的魅力“恰恰在于她无论身着何种服装都能引人注目”。渥伦斯基也注意到了这点，并迅速爱上了安娜。接下来的（悲剧）故事，就是众所周知的了。

2. F.斯科特·菲茨杰拉德的《了不起的盖茨比》

小说中描写的舞会都渴望成为新柏拉图式理想中的完美之所。在我看来，达成此想的就是杰伊·盖茨比在1922年那个漫长炎热的夏天举办的那些舞会。他的舞会是美国禁酒令时期颓废之态的缩影：数不尽的香槟、歌女、时髦女郎和私酒贩子。菲茨杰拉德把它们描写得如梦如幻。

3.简·奥斯丁的《傲慢与偏见》

各种绝妙的舞会和宴会在奥斯丁的书中随处可见。但依我看，最令人印象深刻的是在麦里屯的那场舞会，达西先生拒绝与美丽的莉齐·班纳特跳舞，贬损她“长得还行，但不足以吸引到他”。但不久，他就意识到自己错了。

4.阿兰·霍灵赫斯特的《美丽线条》

霍灵赫斯特的这部小说获得了布克奖，其中有这样华丽的一幕：主人公尼克·格斯特与时任首相的玛格丽特·撒切尔一起跳舞，他当时在吸食可卡因，还喝了很多酒。撒切尔穿着一件“白金相间的宽肩夹克，上面还有精美的刺绣，就像鲁里坦尼亚王国的制服一般”。两个看似不可能的搭档走向舞池，“和着《远离尘嚣》的节奏共舞”。

5.汤姆·沃尔夫的《虚荣的篝火》

华尔街的交易员舍曼·麦科伊和妻子朱迪一起参加由极其世故的主人在第五大道举办的一次晚宴时，他尴尬地发现自己坐在其秘密情妇旁。这场晚宴被称为“红死魔的面具”（向埃德加·爱伦·坡的同名小说致敬），其他客人则是沃尔夫笔下常见的各种自命不凡的贵族，或是世故的社会名流，或是“身穿蓬蓬裙的骨感名媛……为近乎完美而忍饥挨饿”。

6.弗吉尼娅·吴尔夫的《达洛维夫人》

吴尔夫以伦敦社交名媛克拉丽莎·达洛维为当晚宴会做最后准备为中心线索，叙述了达洛维一天的生活。所有的叙事线索汇总于晚宴，小说中的人物将因此齐聚于此。她善于利用矫饰和戏剧讽刺来表现聚会中的喧闹、气息和旋律。

7.威廉·萨克雷的《名利场》

这不完全是虚拟的宴会，而是对真实事件的再创造。1815年，为威灵顿公爵效力的军官们驻扎在布鲁塞尔，为振奋军心，里士满公爵夫人举办了这场宴会。正是在这里，威灵顿收到拿破仑军队长驱直入的消息。故事的结局是，很多嘉宾身穿晚礼服去参战了。爱米丽亚·赛特笠的丈夫乔治·奥斯本（与当今的前财务大臣没有关系）也是参战的嘉宾之一：“乔治走了，他激动地颤抖着……”

8.海伦·菲尔丁的《BJ单身日记》

又是“达西”，但这次却穿着难看的高尔夫套头衫（“虽然从后面看像一件普通的海军风格毛衣，其实是件黄蓝相间的菱形格子V领毛衣”），前来参加杰弗里和尤娜夫妇举办的可怕的新年咖喱火鸡自助餐会。可怜的大龄女郎布里奇特经历了宿醉还迟到，因为她在高速公路上迷路了。当达西问她最近在看什么书的时候，她都不知道如何应答。

9.爱德华·圣奥宾的《一线希望》

圣奥宾是现代文学领域杰出的一大散文家，经常无情地讽刺势利小人。讨人厌的花花公子桑尼·格雷夫森德举办的生日派对就是最好的证明。玛格丽特公主参加了这场派对，并“谈论这个国家的平民，对他们表示‘极大的信任’，因为她完全不了解他们的生活，且相信他们站在保皇党这边”。

10.罗莎蒙德·莱曼的《邀舞华尔兹》

17岁的奥利维娅·柯蒂斯已经准备好参加人生中第一场舞会了，这部富有洞察力的小说以此为开端。她在舞会上遇到了英俊潇洒的贵族男子罗洛·斯潘塞，这个男人将影响她未来几十年的人生。奥利维娅羞涩、忸怩，并长期处于善于社交的妹妹的阴影下，她将自己即将成熟的女性特质包裹起来，担心喜欢的男孩子会不喜欢她。我们在莱曼的续集《街上的天气》再见到奥利维娅时，她已开始与有妇之夫有染，其中穿插着各种复杂情结。

[译者单位：中国矿业大学（北京）]