Longreads Best of 2015: Under-Recognized Books

We asked our book editors to tell us about a few books they felt deserved more recognition in 2015.

我们请图书编辑告诉我们一些他们认为 2015 年值得更多认可的图书。

Here they are.

他们在这里。

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Anna Wiener@annawiener

安娜维纳@annawiener

## Rules for Werewolves (Kirk Lynn, Melville House)

## 狼人规则（Kirk Lynn，Melville House）

I read this book in one fast gulp, anxious fingers poised to flip the page.

我一口气读完这本书，焦急的手指准备翻页。

In Kirk Lynn’s debut novel, a band of young runaways moves swiftly through the suburbs, squatting in foreclosed houses and in the homes of unwitting vacationers, wild eyes trained on the promise of a self-made utopia.

在柯克·林恩的处女作中，一群年轻的逃亡者迅速穿过郊区，蹲在取消抵押品赎回权的房屋和不知情的度假者的家里，狂野的目光注视着白手起家的乌托邦的希望。

The thrills and pleasures of this new society are the benign trappings of suburbia (well-stocked refrigerators, lavender soap, the privacy of closed doors) coupled with the first bright licks of freedom.

这个新社会的刺激和快乐是郊区的良性装饰（储备充足的冰箱、薰衣草肥皂、紧闭的门的隐私）以及最初的明亮自由。

As the pack grows tighter, defining the boundaries of its own morals and ideology, it also grows more feral.

随着群体变得越来越紧密，定义了自己的道德和意识形态的界限，它也变得更加野性。

Unbridled idealism and independence begin to unravel into violent and irreparable ends.

肆无忌惮的理想主义和独立开始走向暴力和无法挽回的结局。

Structurally, Rules for Werewolves seems to borrow from Lynn’s background as a playwright: the book is composed of alternating sections, some of which are monologues from shifting perspectives; the rest is raw dialogue, high velocity and high stakes, deftly capturing the insecurities, intoxication, and desperation of people determined to survive on their own terms.

从结构上看，《狼人规则》似乎借鉴了林恩的剧作家背景：这本书由交替的部分组成，其中一些是不同视角的独白；其余的都是原始的对话，高速度和高风险，巧妙地捕捉了决心按照自己的方式生存的人们的不安全感、陶醉和绝望。

From the pack’s pastoral vision to Kirk’s unsettling depiction of the waning American suburbs—littered with empty houses, an echo of unrealized aspirations—the book reminds that utopia’s volatility comes always from within.

从群体的田园风光到柯克对衰落的美国郊区的令人不安的描述——到处都是空荡荡的房子，回响着未实现的愿望——这本书提醒我们，乌托邦的波动总是来自内部。

## Tender Points (Amy Berkowitz, Timeless, Infinite Light)

## 温柔点（艾米·伯科维茨、《永恒》、《无限之光》）

I found this book on the Staff Picks shelf at Green Apple Books in San Francisco, and, like all of the worst bookstore customers, read most of it right on the spot.

我在旧金山青苹果书店的员工精选书架上发现了这本书，并且像所有最糟糕的书店顾客一样，当场阅读了其中的大部分内容。

Tender Points is short and tough, a personal but unsentimental chronicle of trauma and chronic pain, delivered in a series of blunt, intimate fragments.

《温柔点》短小精悍，是一部关于创伤和慢性疼痛的个人但不带感情色彩的编年史，以一系列直率、亲密的片段呈现。

Berkowitz has fibromyalgia, the primary symptom of which is easy articulated: sweeping, persistent, full-body pain.

伯科维茨患有纤维肌痛，其主要症状很容易表达：全身持续疼痛。

But pain is of course internal, and this particular illness lacks any attendant external indicators, making it subject to skepticism and dismissal in the medical community.

但疼痛当然是内在的，而且这种特殊的疾病缺乏任何伴随的外部指标，使其受到医学界的怀疑和忽视。

It’s also crucial to mention that fibromyalgia disproportionately affects women, many of whom have a history of sexual abuse; it quickly becomes clear that this is a nightmare illness to explain to colleagues and acquaintances, let alone a male doctor.

同样重要的是，纤维肌痛对女性的影响尤为严重，其中许多人有性虐待史；很快我们就会发现，这是一种向同事和熟人解释的噩梦般的疾病，更不用说向男医生解释了。

If this all sounds a little dark, that’s because it is; there’s no redemption at the end of this tunnel (happy holidays!).

如果这一切听起来有点黑暗，那是因为事实确实如此；这条隧道的尽头没有救赎（节日快乐！）。

But what may scan as bleak is also, in this case, the most honest form of storytelling: the best possible version of chronic illness is successful management, not a cure.

但在这种情况下，最诚实的讲故事形式也可能显得黯淡：慢性病的最佳版本是成功的管理，而不是治愈。

Berkowitz pulls in a wide range of references (noise music, Ice Cube, Anne Carson), and the darkness is buoyed by her deadpan sense of humor: “As I read more about the history of invisible illness,” she writes, “I’m surprised and amused to diagnose myself with hysteria.”

伯科维茨引用了广泛的参考文献（噪音音乐、艾斯·库珀、安妮·卡森），她面无表情的幽默感增强了黑暗：“当我读到更多关于隐形疾病的历史时，”她写道，“我很惊讶也很有趣地诊断自己患有歇斯底里症。”

A.N.

一个。

Devers@andevers

德弗斯@andevers

## The Door (Magda Szabo, NYRB Classics)

## 门（Magda Szabo，NYRB 经典）

Called a masterpiece by Claire Messud in the New York Times Book Review, Hungarian novelist Magda Szabo’s award-winning 1987 novel, The Door, untangles the tangles of female friendship with intensity and insight.

匈牙利小说家玛格达·萨博 (Magda Szabo) 1987 年的获奖小说《门》被《纽约时报书评》称为克莱尔·梅苏德 (Claire Messud) 的杰作，以强烈而深刻的洞察力解开了女性友谊的纠结。

Only now released in America, The Door should signal an alarm that we are overlooking a substantial writer.

《门》现在才在美国上映，这应该给我们敲响警钟，让我们意识到我们忽视了一位重要的作家。

## Rare Books Uncovered (Rebecca Rego Barry, Voyageur Press)

## 善本揭秘（Rebecca Rego Barry，Voyageur Press）

In Rare Books Uncovered, Fine Books magazine editor Rebecca Rego Barry deftly tells the stories of 50 bibliophiles who made discoveries of great, rare, or unusual works of literature.

在《精品图书揭秘》中，《精品图书》杂志编辑丽贝卡·雷戈·巴里巧妙地讲述了 50 位藏书家的故事，他们发现了伟大、稀有或不寻常的文学作品。

Although each story is brief, Barry manages to weave the history and terminology of book collecting into the background while offering an enlivening and adventurous look at the curious lives of book hunters and the dusty tomes they treasure.

尽管每个故事都很简短，但巴里设法将书籍收藏的历史和术语融入到背景中，同时以生动而冒险的方式观察书籍猎人的好奇生活和他们珍藏的尘土飞扬的书籍。

Dustin Kurtz@theunread

达斯汀·库尔茨@theunread

## Supplication: Selected Poems of John Wieners (Edited by Joshua Beckman, CAConrad and Robert Dewhurst, Wave Books)

## 恳求：约翰·维纳斯诗选（约书亚·贝克曼、CAConrad 和罗伯特·杜赫斯特编辑，Wave Books）

I’m embarrassed to say that this was my introduction to the work of Wieners.

我很不好意思地说，这是我对维纳斯作品的介绍。

I don’t know that the book was ignored this year—certainly not among poetry readers—but he deserves to be a household name.

我不知道这本书今年是否被忽视了——当然不是在诗歌读者中——但他值得成为家喻户晓的名字。

As this collection spanning his career makes plain, he was not only a throbbing heart of postwar American poetry, he was a clear and lasting influence on more recent generations of poets.

正如这本涵盖他职业生涯的诗集所表明的那样，他不仅是战后美国诗歌的一颗跳动的心，而且对近几代诗人产生了明显而持久的影响。

Wieners was a member of the last class of Black Mountain College—his early work toys with Creeley—but consensus seems to be that it was his 1958 The Hotel Wentley Poems that made him famous.

维纳斯是黑山学院最后一个班级的成员——他早期的作品与克里利一起玩——但人们的共识似乎是他 1958 年的《温特利旅馆诗集》让他出名。

They are masterful, twisting up Whitman and Williams and Crane and Llorca to stitch out his own confession in the tight queer seams of the American language.

他们很有技巧，将惠特曼、威廉姆斯、克雷恩和略卡的故事扭曲起来，用美国语言的紧密而奇怪的接缝拼凑出他自己的自白。

I have my favorites in the book: the Wentley poems, a facsimile of a brilliant 1975 chapbook Behind the State Capitol: Or Cincinnati Pike, the towering “Here for the Night”, but the real joy of this book is reading it as just that; a book.

书中有我最喜欢的：温特利诗集，这是 1975 年出色的小册子《州议会大厦背后：或辛辛那提派克》的复制品，高耸的“在这里过夜”，但这本书的真正乐趣在于阅读它；它是一本真正的诗集。一本书。

Wieners played with questions of confession and control his entire career, but seeing that borne out over decades in a wild variety of styles, with greater or less force, with a growing deftness that was then eroded by a quietude, a relaxation—there’s a wonder and sorrow in reading a man’s life.

维纳斯玩弄着忏悔问题，控制着他的整个职业生涯，但几十年来，这种风格以各种风格、或大或小的力量、日益增长的灵巧性得到了证实，然后又被宁静、放松所侵蚀——阅读一个人的一生，有一种惊奇和悲伤。

## Genoa (Paul Metcalf, Coffee House Press)

## 热那亚（Paul Metcalf，咖啡屋出版社）

Here’s another deeply American book, reprinted this year on the occasion of its 50th anniversary.

这是另一本深具美国特色的书，今年在其 50 周年之际重印。

Indeed, it may be the most American book I’ve seen in a long time, not counting that children’s series Rush Limbaugh writes where he travels through time to stabs redcoats.

事实上，这可能是我很长一段时间以来看过的最美国化的书了，还不包括拉什·林博（Rush Limbaugh）写的穿越时空刺杀英国士兵的儿童系列书。

Genoa deals in seafaring, in ghosts, in mythmaking and violence.

热那亚涉及航海、鬼魂、神话和暴力。

As with the Wieners collection, this was my introduction to the author, and I was glad for it.

与维纳斯的收藏一样，这是我对作者的介绍，我对此感到很高兴。

Metcalf writes through his corpse, so to speak, in the same style used and advocated by Davenport, Delany and Gass.

可以说，梅特卡夫通过他的尸体进行写作，其风格与达文波特、德拉尼和加斯使用和倡导的风格相同。

In this novel that deep attention to the narrator’s body runs in a feedback loop with excerpts and discursions about and by Herman Melville and Christopher Columbus.

在这部小说中，对叙述者身体的深度关注与赫尔曼·梅尔维尔和克里斯托弗·哥伦布的摘录和讨论形成了一个反馈循环。

The result feels shockingly au courant, as if Maggie Nelson, Eliot Weinberger or Valeria Luiselli had taken it upon themselves to gloss an Updike story.

结果令人震惊地新鲜，就好像玛吉·尼尔森、艾略特·温伯格或瓦莱里娅·路易斯利自己承担了粉饰厄普代克故事的责任。

Metcalf was the great grandson of Herman Melville, and Genoa was his reckoning with that legacy.

梅特卡夫是赫尔曼·梅尔维尔的曾孙，热那亚是他对这一遗产的清算。

The conceit, more or less explicit, is that the narrator and his brother bear out in their flesh and their lives attributes from the work of Melville.

这种自负或多或少是明确的，即叙述者和他的兄弟在他们的肉体和生活中体现了梅尔维尔作品的特征。

The result is odd, at times horrifying, and a marvelous novel that should be recognized as one of the great fever dreams of our nation.

结果很奇怪，有时甚至令人恐惧，这是一部精彩的小说，应该被视为我们国家最伟大的狂热梦想之一。

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I’d also like to take a moment to celebrate some of the newer indie publishers who’ve been putting out some really incredible work in translation this past year, including And Other Stories, Deep Vellum, Phoneme Media, Restless Books and Two Lines Press.

我还想花一点时间来庆祝一些新的独立出版商，他们在过去的一年里推出了一些非常令人难以置信的翻译作品，包括 And Other Stories、Deep Vellum、Phoneme Media、Restless Books 和 Two Lines Press。

The quality of books coming out of all of those houses has been remarkable and I hope you’ll seek them out and badger your local librarian or bookseller into stocking them.

所有这些房子里出的书质量都非常好，我希望你能找到它们，并缠着当地的图书管理员或书商进货。

Dana Snitzky@danasnitzky

达纳·斯尼茨基@danasnitzky

## Katherine Carlyle (Rupert Thomson, Other Press)

## 凯瑟琳·卡莱尔（鲁珀特·汤姆森，其他出版社）

This is a brilliant book, strangely overlooked.

这是一本精彩的书，却奇怪地被忽视了。

It’s UK author Rupert Thomson’s 10th novel, and in it he achieves a sublime nonchalance.

这是英国作家鲁珀特·汤姆森的第十部小说，他在书中表现出了一种崇高的淡然。

He’s not striving.

他不努力。

He’s just an ice floe, pulling incrementally ahead.

他只是一块浮冰，逐渐向前推进。

His language works double-time, both dripping with metaphor and brutally direct.

他的语言具有双重作用，既充满隐喻又残酷直接。

There are some masterful one-liners to be found in these pages—lines like “He…

在这些页面中可以找到一些巧妙的俏皮话，例如“他......

blows out a thin blade of smoke that blunts itself against the night.”

喷出一道薄薄的烟雾，在夜色中变得迟钝。”

Our narrator, Katherine Carlyle, was fertilized in vitro, and spent eight years in a freezer before being implanted in her mother—no spoilers, you find this out on the first page.

我们的叙述者凯瑟琳·卡莱尔在体外受精，在被植入她母亲体内之前在冰箱里呆了八年——不剧透，你可以在第一页找到这一点。

She decides to abandon her life and drift through Europe, as part of a carefully plotted but deeply opaque plan she has concocted in order to grapple with her inner iciness—the cold emptiness that she has always felt because of that early time spent in the freezer.

她决定放弃自己的生活，漂流到欧洲，这是她精心策划但非常不透明的计划的一部分，目的是应对内心的冰冷——由于早年在冰箱里度过的时光，她一直感到寒冷的空虚。

She at least seems to have some sort of plan.

她至少看起来有某种计划。

It could all just be madness or schizophrenia—the reading of signs in all the wrong places.

这可能只是疯狂或精神分裂症——在所有错误的地方解读标志。

In any case the reader is left guessing what Katherine Carlyle will do next, which gives the book the feel of a thriller.

无论如何，读者都会猜测凯瑟琳·卡莱尔下一步会做什么，这给这本书带来了惊悚片的感觉。

Thomson imbues small talk with astonishing tension and the careful detail with which his narrator describes each new room she enters, each new person she meets, creates an ominous sense of hidden meaning and inevitable destiny.

汤姆森在闲聊中注入了惊人的张力，他的叙述者用细致的细节描述了她进入的每个新房间、她遇到的每个新人，营造出一种隐藏意义和不可避免的命运的不祥之感。

Thomson’s cold attention to detail and the incisive metaphors out of which he builds his story are an impressive marriage of content and form.

汤姆森对细节的冷漠关注和他构建故事时所使用的深刻隐喻是内容和形式的令人印象深刻的结合。

Katherine Carlyle’s icy detachment is made crystal clear by how often she tries to make sense of one thing by comparing it to another thing—she has no feel for the world.

凯瑟琳·卡莱尔（Katherine Carlyle）经常试图通过将一件事与另一件事进行比较来理解它，这清楚地表明了她冰冷的超然态度——她对世界没有感觉。

She is cold to its touch.

她摸起来很冷。

I read it as a parable.

我把它当作寓言来读。

You don’t have to spend eight years in a freezer to feel the cold at the bottom of everything, but it is a novel and clever way to talk about it.

你不必在冰箱里呆上八年才能感受到一切底部的寒冷，但这是一种新颖而聪明的谈论它的方式。

## Galileo’s Middle Finger (Alice Dreger, Penguin Press)

## 伽利略的中指（Alice Dreger，企鹅出版社）

This overlooked piece of memoir-cum-true crime-cum science writing is wildly interesting, if a bit messily put together.

这部被忽视的回忆录兼真实犯罪兼科普作品非常有趣，尽管组合起来有点混乱。

And it’s truly fearless, given the kind of public shaming (to reference Jon Ronson’s topically related and more popularly received book also published this year) to which some of Dreger’s antagonists have resorted.

考虑到德雷格的一些对手所采取的公开羞辱（参考乔恩·罗森今年出版的与主题相关且更受欢迎的书），这确实是无所畏惧的。

Her subject matter is that knotty point at which the purview of scientists and activists intersect (mainly around issues of gender and sexuality, it turns out) and the vicious and unfair battles that get fought there.

她的主题是科学家和活动家的权限交叉的棘手点（事实证明，主要围绕性别和性问题）以及在那里进行的恶性和不公平的斗争。

Dreger tells two types of stories in the book (with first hand access, having become a sort of Sherlock Holmes or doctor on call for these situations).

德雷格在书中讲述了两种类型的故事（通过第一手资料，成为夏洛克·福尔摩斯或在这些情况下待命的医生）。

The first type of story is about a scientist who has been unfairly bashed by activists because his or her findings don’t support the activists’ politics.

第一种类型的故事是关于一位科学家因他或她的发现不支持活动人士的政治而受到活动人士不公平攻击的故事。

The second type of story is about activists unable to stop scientists or doctors who actually are engaging in unethical practices (and one story in which they manage to do so).

第二种类型的故事是关于活动人士无法阻止实际上从事不道德行为的科学家或医生的故事（以及他们设法做到这一点的故事）。

For instance, Dreger tells the horribly sad story of the destruction of the reputation of anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon by activist anthropologists who felt that his depiction of native Amazonians as violent and misogynist was itself a violent and misogynist act against the Amazonians and (more far-fetched) believed that he was a mad scientist experimenting on his subjects.

例如，德雷格讲述了人类学家拿破仑·查尼翁的声誉被激进人类学家摧毁的可怕故事，他们认为他将亚马逊原住民描述为暴力和厌恶女性的人本身就是针对亚马逊人的暴力和厌恶女性的行为，并且（更牵强）认为他是一位在他的受试者身上进行实验的疯狂科学家。

It turns out the curmudgeonly Chagnon was elaborately framed by obsessive haters.

事实证明，脾气暴躁的查尼翁是被痴迷的仇恨者精心陷害的。

But then, on the other hand, Dreger reveals, to the reader’s horror, the chilling (and ongoing!) endangerment of fetuses being carried on by an OB/GYN in her quixotic (to say the least) quest to avoid the birth of hermaphroditic children.

但另一方面，令读者感到恐惧的是，德雷格揭示了一名妇产科医生在她不切实际的（至少可以说）避免雌雄同体孩子出生的过程中对胎儿造成的令人不寒而栗（而且持续！）的危险。

Activists have had no luck stopping this doctor.

活动人士没能阻止这位医生。

The yin and yang of these stories is powerfully interesting—the good guys are sometimes the bad guys, and vice versa.

这些故事的阴阳关系非常有趣——好人有时是坏人，反之亦然。

Dreger lands firmly on the side not of scientists or activists, but of sound science, no matter what her political affiliation with the person practicing it.

德雷格坚定地站在科学的一边，而不是科学家或活动家，无论她与实践者的政治立场如何。

Would that we all did!

但愿我们都这么做了！

And she gives fascinating insight into the American propensity for witch hunts, like the one against Chagnon, for giving into that “paranoid style” of American politics.

她对美国政治迫害的倾向提供了令人着迷的见解，就像针对查尼翁的政治迫害，因为他们屈服于美国政治的“偏执风格”。