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.

遇到那个面色焦虑的女人时，我正在拥挤不堪的地铁车厢里看书。

“求求你，帮帮我吧，”她说道，“求你了。我需要买一些花来筹备一个葬礼。”

睁着一双大眼睛的她是个非裔美国人（译者注：即黑人），已到中年。她并不是在对着我，而是对整个地铁车厢说话。她身形纤弱，声音却异常有力量。眼下濒临死亡的东西如此之多---整个挥霍无度的时代都正在告逝---所以我想知道她说的具体是哪个葬礼。

“我表弟是一个好孩子，”她说。“求求你们帮帮我吧。我需要花来办葬礼。”

人们纷纷把目光移开。傍晚时分的身心疲惫加上不胜城市喧嚣之扰，他们不想听人谈论葬礼，更不想帮助支付葬礼费用。他们赶着回家听一位新总统为美国听诊把脉。一些人摇着头，心想，“她疯了么！”

我把注意力收回到《纽约客》杂志上来，我读的这篇是英国作家伊恩·麦克尤恩（Ian McEwan）的简介。我崇拜麦克·尤恩，喜爱他的小说，常常一两口气就读完一本，但并不会为他心旌摇荡。

他展示出来的一些东西过于精心安排，使得他的魅力不能所向披靡。他深思熟虑的智慧从来没有完全登上“伟大”的巅峰。尽管如此，他对性欲和沉迷暴力这些生活黑暗面的剖析还是非常吸引人的。

我读到麦克·尤恩的这句话---“故事扣人心弦主要是靠埋下伏笔因为接下来将发生什么尚是未知数” ---时，点了点头。

犹抱琵琶半遮面吊起胃口，一窥全貌的欲望油然而升。我好奇：这个步履蹒跚的地铁女人的表亲是谁，“这个好孩子”是怎么死的，是械斗中刀致死还是因为一场无药可医的大病，她想要的是什么样的花（菊花？剑兰？）---或者整个故事都是编的，只是一个骗局而已。

我们正在进行拼图，画面从我们在"大幻想"中的出现开始---那时人们在一望无垠的草原上嬉戏---直到庞氏承诺的诱人声音。 就如在阅读时试图根据各种线索拼出完整情节一样，我们现在也正（根据一点一滴的真相揭露）拼出事实全貌：不久前我们还沉陷在大幻梦之中，在庞氏承诺花言巧语的诱惑下，我们像羊群在一望无垠的草原上撒欢般无忧无虑。

我们正在努力找准自己的位置，找出底部在哪以便于一步一步地前进。马道夫（Bernard Madoff）的投资公司这13年来都没有为客户购买过任何证券。而并没有人注意到这点。

你编不出这样的故事来。这不只是通过卖关子赋予故事紧张感;它是500亿美元一夜之间灰飞烟灭。

这件事发生的那个早上，我一直在看《纽约书评》上麦克·尤恩对已故作家约翰·厄普代克（John Updike）的评论：对一个评论员的评论。他引用厄普代克描述的生活真相“是无法承受之重，重若将要一直伴随着我们到死。写作，使得世界变轻松---通过编纂、歪曲、粉饰、赞美它---几近亵渎。”

但这是多么美好多么必要的"亵渎"啊！

也许过剩时代不结束，我们就无法反观内心而足以再次发现这个完美表述的黄金法则，并再度产生联系。麦克·尤恩从厄普代克的《夫妇》中选了这句话：“自然用性做诱饵，使得我们走向了悬崖”来描述自己的作品。

自然也用机会做诱饵。

同期的《纽约书评》上还有一篇姬兰·德赛（Anita Desai）对阿飒儿·纳菲西（Azar Nafisi）的评论，后者的作品中以大受欢迎的《在德黑兰读洛丽塔》（Reading Lolita in Tehran）最为著名。我刚从德黑兰回来，如饥似渴地读起这篇对纳菲西新书《一些我沉默以对的事：回忆》（Things I’ve Been Silent About: Memories）的评论。

《读洛丽塔》正是关于反观内心，远离令人绝望的事件---在这本书中是指一场革命，这场革命背叛了其许多支持者的本意，给人们提供的是压抑人性的面纱，而不是长期以来所追求的自由---并从伟大的西方文学中获得慰藉。这是一部充满激情的个人超越之书。

纳菲西的新书实质上是一本家庭回忆录，但在伊朗的动荡时期，她的故事和国家的命运交织在一起。她暗示在1979年的革命热潮中伊朗民主党和左派对阿亚图拉·霍梅尼（Ayatollah Khomeini）有重大误解：

“太过自负而没把他视为一个威胁，故意装作不知道他的企图，我们支持了他。我们欢迎了霍梅尼反对帝国主义和伊朗王的激烈演说并愿意忽略这个事实：这些演说并不是出自一个自由主义者之口。”

那些伊朗人为这个如此悲惨的幻想付出了沉重代价。他们的祖国现在七零八落地分布在从加利福尼亚到澳大利亚的一片地区。许多伊朗人仍常为此悲恸仍渴望回到祖国的怀抱。

相比之下，美国幻想的代价就是小巫见大巫了。401K计划（译者注：美国的一种养老金计划）的养老金大幅缩水是令人痛苦的，但没有人流亡失所。这是个事实，正如总统奥巴马在国会两院联席会议上的首次讲话： “我们将重建;我们将复兴。”至少，这在美国历史上是有迹可寻的。

那个女人下车以后，我还能听到这句话在耳边一遍又一遍地响起--- “求你了。我需要买一些花来筹备一个葬礼。” ---直到最后它湮没在嘈杂声中，一个悦耳的录音播报取而代之：“礼貌能够感染人。从你做起吧。”

从内心开始的改变亦是如此。

更多信息请查看英语美文写作