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I was reading on the crowded subway when a distraught-looking woman stumbled into me.

“Please, please help me out,” she said. “Please. I’m trying to buy flowers for a funeral arrangement.”

She was African-American, middle-aged, wide-eyed. Her words were not addressed to me but to the whole subway car. The slightness of her build belied the strength of her voice. So many things are dying at the moment — an entire free-spending epoch is being laid to rest — that I wondered which particular burial she had in mind.

“My cousin was a good kid,” she said. “Please, please. For the funeral arrangement, I need flowers.”

People averted their eyes. Early-evening fatigued, city-churned, they did not want to hear talk of funerals, much less help pay for them. They were headed home to hear a new president diagnose the state of America. Some shook their heads, thinking, “She’s crazy!”

I returned to my reading, a profile of the British author Ian McEwan in The New Yorker. I admire McEwan, enjoy his novels, often read them in a sitting or two, but do not feel transported by him.

There is something too carefully plotted in his effects that precludes falling under his spell. His studied brilliance never quite attains greatness. Still, he takes a scalpel to sexual need and obsessive violence, the dark undertows of life, in ways that can be utterly compelling.

I read this phrase from McEwan — “Narrative tension is primarily about withholding information” — and nodded.

Having part of the picture incites an anxiety, the desire to see it whole, completed. I wondered who the stumbling subway woman’s cousin was, how “the kid” died, in a knife fight or from withering illness, what flower arrangement she had in mind (chrysanthemums? gladioli?) — or whether the whole story was made up, just a scam.

Piecing together fragments is what we do right now as we emerge from the Grand Illusion, a time when the human herd frolicked in limitless pastures to the seductive lilt of Ponzi promises.

We are trying to get our bearings, find out where the bottom is in order to put one foot in front of the other. Bernard Madoff’s investment firm did not buy any securities for clients in 13 years. And nobody noticed.

You couldn’t make this stuff up. It’s not only narrative tension that withheld information produces; it’s $50 billion going poof in the night.

As it happened, I’d been reading McEwan that morning on the late John Updike in The New York Review of Books: the profiled as profiler. He quotes Updike describing the facts of life as “unbearably heavy, weighted as they are with our personal death. Writing, in making the world light — in codifying, distorting, prettifying, verbalizing it — approaches blasphemy.”

But what beautiful, what necessary, blasphemy!

Perhaps the Age of Excess had to end before we could all turn inward just enough to rediscover the gold standard of the perfectly formed phrase, and make connections again. McEwan chooses a sentence from Updike’s “Couples” that could describe his own work: “Nature dangles sex to keep us walking toward the cliff.”

It dangles chance,too.

In the same New York Review was Anita Desai’s piece on Azar Nafisi, best known for her much-loved “Reading Lolita in Tehran.” I’d just returned from Tehran and devoured the review of Nafisi’s new book, “Things I’ve Been Silent About: Memories.”

“Reading Lolita” was precisely about turning inward, away from desperate events — in this case a revolution that had betrayed many of its protagonists, offering veils of repression rather than long-sought freedom — to the consolation of great Western literature. It was a book of passionate personal transcendence.

Nafisi’s new book is essentially a family memoir, but in the tumult of Iran, her story and the nation’s overlap. She alludes to the terrible misconceptions of Iranian democrats and leftists about Ayatollah Khomeini in the revolutionary fervor of 1979:

“Too arrogant to think of him as a threat and deliberately ignorant of his designs, we supported him. We welcomed the vehemence of Khomeini’s rants against imperialists and the Shah and were willing to overlook the fact that they were not delivered by a champion of freedom.”

This was truly a tragic illusion for which a heavy price has been paid by Iranians, their nation now scattered in a diaspora stretching from California to Australia. Many ache still for their homeland.

By comparison, the cost of American illusions pales. A decimated 401(k) is painful, but no exile. It is true, as President Obama said in his first address to a joint session of Congress: “We will rebuild; we will recover.” That, at least, is what American history suggests.

As the woman proceeded down the car, I could hear that phrase being repeated — “Please I’m trying to buy flowers for a funeral arrangement” — until at last it grew muffled in a kind of ruckus and a smooth-voiced recorded announcement overwhelmed it: “Courtesy is contagious. It begins with you.”

So does change from within.

遇到那個面色焦慮的女人時，我正在擁擠不堪的地鐵車廂里看書。

“求求你，幫幫我吧，”她說道，“求你了。我需要買一些花來籌備一個葬禮。”

睜著一雙大眼睛的她是個非裔美國人（譯者注：即黑人），已到中年。她并不是在對著我，而是對整個地鐵車廂說話。她身形纖弱，聲音卻異常有力量。眼下瀕臨死亡的東西如此之多---整個揮霍無度的時代都正在告逝---所以我想知道她說的具體是哪個葬禮。

“我表弟是一個好孩子，”她說。“求求你們幫幫我吧。我需要花來辦葬禮。”

人們紛紛把目光移開。傍晚時分的身心疲憊加上不勝城市喧囂之擾，他們不想聽人談論葬禮，更不想幫助支付葬禮費用。他們趕著回家聽一位新總統為美國聽診把脈。一些人搖著頭，心想，“她瘋了么！”

我把注意力收回到《紐約客》雜志上來，我讀的這篇是英國作家伊恩·麥克尤恩（Ian McEwan）的簡介。我崇拜麥克·尤恩，喜愛他的小說，常常一兩口氣就讀完一本，但并不會為他心旌搖蕩。

他展示出來的一些東西過于精心安排，使得他的魅力不能所向披靡。他深思熟慮的智慧從來沒有完全登上“偉大”的巔峰。盡管如此，他對性欲和沉迷暴力這些生活黑暗面的剖析還是非常吸引人的。

我讀到麥克·尤恩的這句話---“故事扣人心弦主要是靠埋下伏筆因為接下來將發生什么尚是未知數” ---時，點了點頭。

猶抱琵琶半遮面吊起胃口，一窺全貌的欲望油然而升。我好奇：這個步履蹣跚的地鐵女人的表親是誰，“這個好孩子”是怎么死的，是械斗中刀致死還是因為一場無藥可醫的大病，她想要的是什么樣的花（菊花？劍蘭？）---或者整個故事都是編的，只是一個騙局而已。

我們正在進行拼圖，畫面從我們在"大幻想"中的出現開始---那時人們在一望無垠的草原上嬉戲---直到龐氏承諾的誘人聲音。 就如在閱讀時試圖根據各種線索拼出完整情節一樣，我們現在也正（根據一點一滴的真相揭露）拼出事實全貌：不久前我們還沉陷在大幻夢之中，在龐氏承諾花言巧語的誘惑下，我們像羊群在一望無垠的草原上撒歡般無憂無慮。

我們正在努力找準自己的位置，找出底部在哪以便于一步一步地前進。馬道夫（Bernard Madoff）的投資公司這13年來都沒有為客戶購買過任何證券。而并沒有人注意到這點。

你編不出這樣的故事來。這不只是通過賣關子賦予故事緊張感;它是500億美元一夜之間灰飛煙滅。

這件事發生的那個早上，我一直在看《紐約書評》上麥克·尤恩對已故作家約翰·厄普代克（John Updike）的評論：對一個評論員的評論。他引用厄普代克描述的生活真相“是無法承受之重，重若將要一直伴隨著我們到死。寫作，使得世界變輕松---通過編纂、歪曲、粉飾、贊美它---幾近褻瀆。”

但這是多么美好多么必要的"褻瀆"啊！

也許過剩時代不結束，我們就無法反觀內心而足以再次發現這個完美表述的黃金法則，并再度產生聯系。麥克·尤恩從厄普代克的《夫婦》中選了這句話：“自然用性做誘餌，使得我們走向了懸崖”來描述自己的作品。

自然也用機會做誘餌。

同期的《紐約書評》上還有一篇姬蘭·德賽（Anita Desai）對阿颯兒·納菲西（Azar Nafisi）的評論，后者的作品中以大受歡迎的《在德黑蘭讀洛麗塔》（Reading Lolita in Tehran）最為著名。我剛從德黑蘭回來，如饑似渴地讀起這篇對納菲西新書《一些我沉默以對的事：回憶》（Things I’ve Been Silent About: Memories）的評論。

《讀洛麗塔》正是關于反觀內心，遠離令人絕望的事件---在這本書中是指一場革命，這場革命背叛了其許多支持者的本意，給人們提供的是壓抑人性的面紗，而不是長期以來所追求的自由---并從偉大的西方文學中獲得慰藉。這是一部充滿激情的個人超越之書。

納菲西的新書實質上是一本家庭回憶錄，但在伊朗的動蕩時期，她的故事和國家的命運交織在一起。她暗示在1979年的革命熱潮中伊朗民主黨和左派對阿亞圖拉·霍梅尼（Ayatollah Khomeini）有重大誤解：

“太過自負而沒把他視為一個威脅，故意裝作不知道他的企圖，我們支持了他。我們歡迎了霍梅尼反對帝國主義和伊朗王的激烈演說并愿意忽略這個事實：這些演說并不是出自一個自由主義者之口。”

那些伊朗人為這個如此悲慘的幻想付出了沉重代價。他們的祖國現在七零八落地分布在從加利福尼亞到澳大利亞的一片地區。許多伊朗人仍常為此悲慟仍渴望回到祖國的懷抱。

相比之下，美國幻想的代價就是小巫見大巫了。401K計劃（譯者注：美國的一種養老金計劃）的養老金大幅縮水是令人痛苦的，但沒有人流亡失所。這是個事實，正如總統奧巴馬在國會兩院聯席會議上的首次講話： “我們將重建;我們將復興。”至少，這在美國歷史上是有跡可尋的。

那個女人下車以后，我還能聽到這句話在耳邊一遍又一遍地響起--- “求你了。我需要買一些花來籌備一個葬禮。” ---直到最后它湮沒在嘈雜聲中，一個悅耳的錄音播報取而代之：“禮貌能夠感染人。從你做起吧。”

從內心開始的改變亦是如此。

更多信息請查看英語美文寫作