What a Long, Strange Trip一段漫长而离奇的旅程

Grace Krilanovich’s new novel reads as if the Summer of Love took a time machine back to the 19th century.格蕾丝·克里拉诺维奇（Grace Krilanovich）的新作读起来，仿佛“爱之夏”（Summer of Love）搭乘时光机回到了19世纪。

By J. W. BonnerSeptember 8, 2026作者：J. W. 邦纳（J. W. Bonner），2026年9月8日

• Fiction小说

GRACE KRILANOVICH’S SOPHOMORE novel, Acid Green Velvet, appears 16 years after her debut, The Orange Eats Creeps (2010), a surreal book that may have a vampire as its protagonist, though it’s certainly no Twilight knockoff. There’s nothing flashy or posh about the Pacific Northwest setting of The Orange Eats Creeps or its characters. Instead, we’re given a world of dope-fueled vagrancy and sexual predation—dumpster diving and bus station hookups and convenience store hustles—written in a plotless, dense psychedelic style that approximates Djuna Barnes’s Nightwood (1936) or the earliest fiction of John Hawkes.格蕾丝·克里拉诺维奇的第二部长篇小说《酸绿天鹅绒》距离她的处女作《橙子吃掉怪胎》（The Orange Eats Creeps，2010年）已过去16年。那是一本超现实主义著作，主角可能是一名吸血鬼，尽管它绝非《暮光之城》的仿作。《橙子吃掉怪胎》中太平洋西北地区的背景及其角色毫无浮华或时髦可言。相反，我们看到的是一个充斥着毒品驱动的流浪和性掠夺的世界——翻找垃圾箱、在公交车站搭讪、在便利店行骗——书写风格是一种无情节、密集且迷幻的文体，类似于朱娜·巴恩斯（Djuna Barnes）的《夜林》（Nightwood，1936年）或约翰·霍克斯（John Hawkes）的早期小说。

Elements of the earlier novel work their way into Krilanovich’s latest, set in the late 19th century. At its heart lies a conflict between drifters and hoboes on the one hand and the moneyed classes on the other, as epitomized by the Hasleys, whose physical and moral decline is as precipitous as the Compsons’ in William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury (1929). Krilanovich sets the novel again on the West Coast, but, unlike The Orange Eats Creeps, her new work has a plot and several interesting, tangible characters. (The characters in her debut tended toward the abstract, as if they were disembodied spirits—or vampires.)前作中的元素融入了克里拉诺维奇这部以19世纪末为背景的最新作品中。故事的核心是流浪者与富裕阶层之间的冲突，后者以哈斯利（Hasley）家族为代表，其身体和道德的衰落与威廉·福克纳《喧哗与骚动》（1929年）中的康普生（Compson）家族一样急剧。克里拉诺维奇再次将小说背景设定在西海岸，但与《橙子吃掉怪胎》不同，她的新作有情节，且有几个有趣、真实的角色。（她处女作中的角色往往趋于抽象，仿佛他们是无形的灵魂——或者是吸血鬼。）

Multiple points of view broaden the narrative scope, but the diffusion doesn’t always advance the narrative. The child of a grifter father, Paulette is presented, via the novel’s opening scenes and through the use of first person, as if she’s the central character, serving as paramour to young Hasley scion Johnny, a doper and failed, if talented, musician. Paulette seems primarily committed to attaching herself to Johnny—and his money. Her attempts to seduce him constitute the main plot thread through the novel’s initial two-thirds. The Hasleys inhabit a grand house on a hill, though there’s a gothic element to it: creepy basements and attics, rumors of guns buried on the property. Paulette is not alone in finding a use for Johnny: a series of hangers-on wander through the house day and night. And there’s Kenneth, Paulette’s early partner in crime, who remains enamored of her.多视角的运用拓宽了叙事范围，但这种分散性并不总是能推动叙事发展。作为一名骗子的女儿，波莱特（Paulette）在小说开篇通过第一人称叙述出现，仿佛她是中心人物，担任着年轻的哈斯利家族后裔约翰尼（Johnny）的情人，而约翰尼是一个吸毒者，也是一个有才华但失败的音乐家。波莱特似乎主要致力于依附于约翰尼——以及他的钱财。在小说前三分之二的篇幅里，她诱惑约翰尼的尝试构成了主要情节线。哈斯利一家住在一座山上的宏伟宅邸中，尽管它带有一种哥特式色彩：阴森的地下室和阁楼，以及关于房产下埋有枪支的传闻。波莱特并不是唯一一个利用约翰尼的人：一系列寄生虫日夜在房子里徘徊。还有肯尼斯（Kenneth），波莱特早期的犯罪同伙，他依然迷恋着她。

Most startling is Paulette’s father, Rodney, who had been presumed dead but who reappears to serve as a kind of King of the Hoboes, leading a 19th-century version of Occupy Wall Street. The tramps who wander into town seem to be called there in an almost mystical way, taking over flophouses and squats, setting up encampments that have the feel of Gold Rush shantytowns, newly sprung and impermanent as stage sets. Orators speak in the public squares, music plays, food is served. It’s as if the Summer of Love had jumped into a time machine. But another Altamont looms.最令人吃惊的是波莱特的父亲罗德尼（Rodney），他本被认为已死，却重新出现并担任起某种“流浪者之王”的角色，领导着一场19世纪版本的“占领华尔街”运动。漫步进城的流浪汉似乎以一种近乎神秘的方式被召唤到这里，占领了廉价旅馆和非法居所，建立起具有淘金热时期棚户区感的营地，这些营地如同舞台布景般刚刚搭建起来，且转瞬即逝。演说者在公共广场上发言，音乐响起，食物供应。仿佛“爱之夏”跳进了时光机。但另一场“阿尔塔蒙特”（Altamont）演唱会式的悲剧正在酝酿。

There’s a great deal of narrative simmering, but the story never really comes to a boil. Much talk about an uprising of the dispossessed seems to promise a dramatic climax, but that possibility dissipates, and the lack of reference to it later in the book suggests it was all bluster, if not a red herring. Characters frequently speak a kind of cosmic mysticism, what Paulette aptly labels “Madhouse banter.” Paulette is the only character given a first-person narrative, but that ostensible primacy shifts as Krilanovich starts to use limited third person for the other characters and largely adopts the same for Paulette later in the story. These perspectival shifts seem haphazard rather than crucial to the narrative flow.叙事中蕴含着大量的情绪，但故事从未真正达到高潮。关于被剥夺者起义的讨论似乎预示着一个戏剧性的高潮，但这种可能性消散了，且书后对此缺乏提及，暗示这不过是虚张声势，甚至是一个误导信息。角色们经常谈论一种宇宙神秘主义，波莱特恰如其分地将其称为“疯人院式的闲聊”。波莱特是唯一使用第一人称叙述的角色，但随着克里拉诺维奇开始为其他角色使用有限的第三人称，并在故事后期主要对波莱特也采用这种叙述方式，这种表面的优先地位发生了偏移。这些视角的转换看起来显得随意，而非对叙事流程至关重要。

Temporal shifts are also frequent. There’s a tidal sense of time, moving forward and back. Early foregrounding helpfully facilitates the reader’s understanding of later scenes and cultivates curiosity to see how the early passages will develop. Yet the reader struggles to make sense of “cosmic convergence” in a narrative that can seem at times entirely unmoored. “We’re moving into the future now,” the narrator proclaims at one point, depicting the community as a site “where anarchists in calico loincloths performed rituals on the plaza green, seeking to reupholster society, then sleep forever.” Aside from personal conflicts, the larger tension is between this influx of the dispossessed and the business interests that cringe at their takeover of the city streets and surrounding countryside. It’s a class conflict straight out of Howard Zinn—or Donald Trump’s America.时间上的转换也很频繁。有一种潮汐般的时间感，向前又向后移动。早期的铺垫有助于读者理解后来的场景，并培养了读者想看早期段落如何发展的兴趣。然而，读者在努力理解一个有时显得完全脱节的叙事中的“宇宙汇聚”时感到吃力。“我们现在正走向未来，”叙述者在某一时刻宣称，将这个社区描述为一个“穿着印花布腰布的无政府主义者在广场绿地上举行仪式，试图重塑社会，然后永远沉睡”的地方。除了个人冲突，更大的张力在于这些涌入的被剥夺者与那些对他们占领城市街道和周边乡村感到战栗的商业利益集团之间。这是一场出自霍华德·津恩（Howard Zinn）——或者唐纳德·特朗普治下的美国——的阶级冲突。

The business interests hire a group of paramilitary goons to harass the tramps, beat them, drive them from the town. “You hear stories of them busting down doors in the middle of the night and then wagging their nightsticks wildly into the dark,” a character acknowledges. It’s a vigilante rampage—or the depredations of ICE agents in almost any American city. The wealthier citizens employ the rhetoric Trump and others have used against immigrants from at least the 19th century onward: “The tramp comes […] with zero notions of moral conduct. […] They may look familiar but these tramps, these Austrians, Italians, and whatnot, they’ve got a European style anarchism and they’re using our railroads to spread it.” In addition to the hired thugs, seemingly supernatural wolflike creatures attack and kill the tramps’ sympathizers—bizarre werewolf-style killings that go ultimately unexplained. It’s as if the author lacks the will to push her novel to an additional plane of unreality suitable to the West Coast weirdness she chronicles.商业利益集团雇佣了一群准军事暴徒来骚扰流浪汉，殴打他们，将他们赶出城镇。“你听到关于他们在深夜破门而入，然后疯狂地挥舞警棍冲进黑暗中的故事，”一个角色承认道。这是一场治安维持者的暴行——或者说几乎在任何美国城市中都能见到的移民执法局（ICE）特工的掠夺行为。富裕的市民使用特朗普和其他人至少从19世纪起就针对移民使用的修辞：“流浪汉来了……毫无道德行为的概念。[……]他们看起来可能很熟悉，但这些流浪汉，这些奥地利人、意大利人什么的，他们有一种欧洲式的无政府主义，并且正在利用我们的铁路来传播它。”除了受雇的暴徒，看似超自然的狼形生物袭击并杀害了流浪汉的同情者——这种怪异的狼人式杀戮最终没有得到解释。仿佛作者缺乏将小说推向适合她所记录的西海岸怪异风格的另一个非现实层面的意愿。

Krilanovich certainly has her fans. Steve Erickson and Laura van den Berg have lauded her novels and the hallucinatory Western-noir worlds they evoke. But my readings have left me more puzzled than impressed. Significant themes do emerge relating to community, family, and heritage. The sins of the fathers loom large, with the Hasley mansion echoing Poe’s House of Usher—just as eerie, though without a tarn in which to disappear. The characters are freaks in both the Gothic and the 1960s sense, and there is a true glee and abandon in the way Krilanovich evokes them. But Acid Green Velvet is overlong and never fully coheres. It does improve on the author’s debut effort: there’s an actual plot this time, even if a wandering one, and sharper characterization. And the conclusion is both emotionally moving and stylistically impressive. I’m curious to see what Krilanovich achieves in her next book, but this novel doesn’t fully compel.克里拉诺维奇当然有她的粉丝。史蒂夫·埃里克森（Steve Erickson）和劳拉·范·登·伯格（Laura van den Berg）都称赞过她的小说以及它们所唤起的幻觉般的西部黑色世界。但我的阅读体验让我感到困惑多过钦佩。关于社区、家庭和遗产的重要主题确实出现了。父辈的罪孽阴影笼罩，哈斯利宅邸呼应了爱伦·坡的《厄舍府的倒塌》——同样阴森，尽管没有一个可以让人消失的池塘。这些角色在哥特式和1960年代的意义上都是怪胎，克里拉诺维奇在唤起他们时确实有一种真正的欢愉和放纵。但《酸绿天鹅绒》篇幅过长，且从未完全融为一体。它确实比作者的处女作有所进步：这次有了一个实际的情节，即使是一个游离的情节，且人物刻画更鲜明。结尾在情感上令人动容，在风格上也令人印象深刻。我很好奇克里拉诺维奇在下一本书中会有什么成就，但这部小说并没有完全吸引住我。