“Shred Sisters”是Betsy Lerner的首部小说，其开头宛如一场爆炸：年轻叙述者所敬爱的老姐在起居室撞入了玻璃窗内，满身伤痕和鲜血。
对于Lerner而言，《Shred Sisters》的面世对她而言也是出乎意料。她曾在出版界工作多年，担任代理人、编辑，并撰写了非虚构作品，“就像一个隐形的自我出现了”，仿佛打开了一个门户。“我不知道自己原来拥有想象力。”
尽管在出版行业工作数十年，但Lerner从未考虑过创作小说。她对事实情有独钟，“我为什么还要选择虚构？”她说：“有时候我甚至不明白人们为什么要写小说？”
然而，新冠疫情与长期的隔离让情况有所改变。在一段异常艰难的时期里，Lerner与两位姐妹通过FaceTime一起锻炼保持彼此联系。共同经历的悲剧和困难、她们意识到即使不时产生摩擦但也需要相互依赖——这一切都渗透进她内心深处，并开始影响她的潜意识。
这次危机激发了Lerner新的创造潜力。但当她坐下来写下《Shred Sisters》的第一句话时，这位64岁的作家甚至不清楚自己正在着手的是一本小说项目，更不用说一部关于成长的故事了。
她的写作生涯起始于诗歌，在哥伦比亚大学获得了M.F.A.学位，却在毕业后即停止了诗歌创作。但那个年轻的自己从未真正离开她，并将这本小说视作“对我的20年代和在曼哈顿的孤独的一封情书”。
小说以Amy Shred为主角，描写这个害羞而聪慧的女孩在其姐姐OLLIE阴影下的成长经历。OLLIE美丽且充满魅力，但也时而操纵他人、情绪狂躁——这些症状是由她所患的精神疾病引发，彻底扰乱了全家人的生活。
从青少年时期到成年，《Shred Sisters》讲述了Amy的婚姻起步、恋爱关系、职业转变从科学转向出版业，以及最重要的是，如何理解家庭动态塑造了自己的人生。
OLLIE会不定期出现——在某一场景中误被办公室同事认为是流浪汉，但通常最终都会逃离。 Amy对OLLIE说：“我想你安全。”而OLLIE的回答则是，“那根本不存在。”
虽然这本书纯属虚构，Lerner与自己的生活经历之间却有着密切的联系。“大家都在说我就是Amy”，她说。“我准时、尽职、自律。但我也像OLLIE一样，充满波折。”
她对OLLIE精神疾病的真实描绘来自于她对这种疾病的深刻了解：Lerner自己被诊断出患有双相情感障碍，并以此为题撰写过2003年的自传《美食与疯狂》。“我读过有关双相情感障碍的每一份资料，从诗人到神经科学家。”
作为编辑和代理人的身份，Lerner曾参与过多本自传作品的创作，包括“蓝野兔”和“一面之缘”。她表示，“我和很多混乱的人和故事都有交集，并不害怕接触他们。”她的一个最具个人意义的工作是帮助Patti Smith撰写获得国家图书奖的作品《刚子与孩子》。
作为长期粉丝，Lerner曾给Smith的律师写信希望合作，当时并不知道Smith承诺在摄影师Robert Mapplethorpe去世时写关于她们友情的故事。这封信成为了“天赐良机”，当Smith得知此事时，她正沉浸在丈夫离世后的悲伤中，并在努力应对家庭的压力。“我被这个未为人知的书项目缠绕着”，她说。
尽管对撰写非小说类作品充满担忧，“我已经明确知道想要传达的信息”，Smith表示。这本自传经过几年的努力最终完成。作为代理人的Lerner，“明白任务的重要性，她帮助我完成了每一个字，包括当第一出版社放弃这个项目时。” Smith称这部书是“我们的书”。
Lerner是一位热衷于为所代表的作者辩护的代理人，在提交给出版商之前会编辑稿件，并提供情感支持。“因为她就是一名作家”，已经认识了40年的作家Rosemary Mahoney表示，“她特别擅长帮助那些有抑郁问题的人，因为她在这些问题上有着深入的理解。”
在过去的一年里，Lerner在TikTok上建立了一群忠实的追随者，分享20岁时日记中的片段。这些充满孤独、焦虑和不确定性的条目与众多年轻用户产生了共鸣，他们从她的视角中找到了安慰。
在这段视频中，“这是我找到理解那个过去自我的途径”，Lerner说道，“找到了对她一些痛苦的理解。”她最初加入TikTok是因为对这个应用在出版业可能带来的影响感到好奇。“在我摆脱裸体牛仔和猫咪之后，我发现了一群热爱书籍的人。这让我重新爱上了出版。”
分享关于心碎与绝望的私人经历，并非让她觉得脆弱，而是让她感激能与过去的自己交流。“她一直伴随着我。”
创作《Shred Sisters》在她的生命中尤其具有情感意义，在这个阶段让她有机会将过去认识并珍惜的人物融入虚构故事之中。简单来说，“她让她们在我心中停留更久的时间。”而关于读者的期望，则是“让他们笑，也让他们流泪”。
新闻来源：www.nytimes.com
原文地址：A 64-Year-Old Literary Agent and TikTok Star Adds ‘Novelist’ to Her Résumé
新闻日期：2024-10-01
原文摘要：
The opening of Betsy Lerner’s debut novel, “Shred Sisters,” is literally explosive: The adolescent narrator’s glamorous older sister has crashed into their living room window, and is covered in glass shards and blood. For Lerner, the arrival of the novel in her life was nearly as surprising. “It was like a shadow self that came out,” Lerner said, “like some portal opened. I did not know that I had an imagination.” Lerner has worked in publishing for decades, as an agent, editor and author of nonfiction. But she never considered writing a novel. “I like the truth. Sometimes I don’t even understand why people write fiction,” she said. “Why not just stick with what’s there?” Then came the pandemic and long months of lockdown. She and her two sisters started exercising together via FaceTime, a way to keep an eye on each other during a profoundly upsetting time. Sisterly bonds — the tragedies and difficulties Lerner and her siblings had gone through together, along with the realization that “we needed each other, even when we couldn’t stand each other” — were on her mind and filtering into her subconscious. That crucible unlocked a new creative side. But even when she sat down to write the first sentence of what became “Shred Sisters,” Lerner, 64, had no idea she was embarking on a book project, let alone a novel or a coming-of-age story. Her beginnings as a writer were in poetry; she received an M.F.A. in the discipline from Columbia, though she “stopped writing poetry the day I graduated.” That young version of herself never left Lerner, and she calls her novel “a love letter to my 20s and my loneliness in Manhattan.” “Shred Sisters” is told by Amy Shred, a shy and brilliant young woman growing up in the shadow of her older sister, Ollie. Ollie is gorgeous and charismatic, but can also be manipulative and profoundly erratic — symptoms of a mental illness that upends the lives of everyone in her family. The novel follows Amy from her teenage years into adulthood, touching on her starter marriage and various romantic entanglements, a career swerve from science to publishing, and perhaps most important, her path to understanding how her family dynamic shaped her. Ollie shows up at various intervals — she’s mistaken as a homeless woman at Amy’s office in one scene — but usually flees in the end. “‘I want you to be safe,’” Amy tells Ollie, who responds, “‘There’s no such thing.’” Though the book is strictly a work of fiction, there are parallels with Lerner’s life. “Everyone thinks I’m Amy,” she said. “I’m punctual, I’m dutiful, I’m disciplined. But I’m also Ollie.” In her depiction of Ollie’s turbulence, Lerner drew on deeply personal experience. Lerner received a bipolar diagnosis and has managed the condition for decades; she’s written about her own struggles and eventual stability in “Food and Loathing,” her 2003 memoir. “I’ve read everything there probably is to read about bipolar illness, from the poets to the neuroscientists,” she said. As an editor and an agent, Lerner has worked on many memoirs, including “Prozac Nation” and “Autobiography of a Face” — “a lot of very messy people and stories,” she said. “I’m not afraid of them.” One of the most personally meaningful projects she handled was Patti Smith’s National Book Award-winning memoir, “Just Kids.” Lerner, a lifelong fan of Smith’s, sent an unsolicited letter to Smith’s lawyer to see if she might like to write a book; Lerner had no idea at the time that Smith had vowed to the pioneering photographer Robert Mapplethorpe on his deathbed that she would write the story of their friendship. Lerner’s letter was a “godsend,” Smith recalled in a recent interview. When she learned of it, she was reeling in the wake of her husband’s death and struggling to figure out how to support her family. And while she was straining under grief and newfound responsibility, she was “haunted by this book project that no one knew about.” Though she had a clear idea of what she wanted to convey, “I had never written nonfiction before,” Smith said, and was daunted by the project. The manuscript took years to complete. But Lerner, who had become Smith’s agent, “understood the task, and she helped me to the very last word,” she said, including when Smith’s first publisher dropped the project. Smith still calls it “our book.” Lerner is a fierce advocate for the authors she represents, editing manuscripts before they’re sent out to publishers for consideration, and offering emotional ballast. “She has a lot of understanding and compassion for writers, because she is one,” said Rosemary Mahoney, an author who’s known Lerner for 40 years. “She’s particularly good at helping other people with depression, because she understands it so intimately.” Over the past year, Lerner has built a following on TikTok, where she’s shared passages from the diaries she kept in her 20s. The entries are lonely, angsty and uncertain — hallmarks of early adulthood that resonate with plenty of younger users who take comfort in her perspective. “The most profound thing that’s come out of these diaries is finally finding compassion for the girl that I was,” Lerner says in one video. She first dipped a toe into TikTok because she was curious about what the app might mean for publishing. “After I got past the naked cowboys and kitty cats and all that, I found the BookTok people, and I was blown away,” she said. “It’s just people loving books. And it’s actually made me love publishing again.” Rather than feeling vulnerable about sharing intimate experiences of heartbreak and despair on such a public platform, Lerner is grateful to commune with her younger self. “She is with me all the time.” Writing “Shred Sisters” was particularly poignant at this stage of her life, an opportunity for her to weave elements of people she once knew and loved into fictional compositions, she said. Put simply: “getting to keep them around a little longer.” But as for her hopes for her readers? “I just want to make people laugh and cry.”
