摘要：在高档餐厅的燥热厨房里，她是最可靠的员工，也是所有人情感剥削的对象。《坎农》（Cannon）是创作者李莱（Lee Lai）笔下的一部尖锐又充满张力的图像小说，以黑白为主、点缀惊红，讲述一个亚裔女厨师在职场压榨、家庭责任与暧昧友谊间的艰难平衡。这不仅是一个关于崩

有趣灵魂说

译文为原创，仅供个人学习使用

The New York Times ｜Book Review

纽约时报｜书评

An Edgy Comedy About Sex, Duty and Food Service

一部关于性、责任与餐饮服务的尖锐喜剧

In Lee Lai’s “Cannon,” a lonely, repressed line cook allows herself to be taken advantage of by several people in her life, until she can’t stand it any longer.

在李莱（Lee Lai）的《坎农》（Cannon）中，一位孤独压抑的厨师任由生活中多人利用自己，直到她再也无法忍受。

By Sam Thielman

Sam Thielman is a reporter and critic based in Brooklyn. He writes about comics and graphic novels for The Times and is working on a book about the history of DC Comics.

作者：萨姆·希尔曼（Sam Thielman）

萨姆·希尔曼是驻布鲁克林的记者兼评论家。他为《纽约时报》撰写漫画与图像小说相关文章，目前正在撰写一部关于DC漫画历史的著作。

CANNON, by Lee Lai

《坎农》（CANNON），李莱（Lee Lai）著

没有什么压力比厨房工作更令人窒息。在李莱的新图像小说《坎农》中，标题人物是一位模范员工——总是有解决方案，从不尖锐回击，每道菜都精准把控时间——而她工作的场所是蒙特利尔一家高档餐厅，老板盖伊（Guy）试图尽可能利用她。因此，坎农有些高度紧张或许是很自然的。或者说，考虑到每当她接近崩溃边缘时都会看到一群不祥的鸟儿出现在眼前，她可以说是极度紧张。

我很欣慰地说，《坎农》在很大程度上是一部喜剧。内向的女主角和她以自我为中心的朋友特莉什（Trish）之间有一种尖锐的亲密感，这种关系源于多年来的相互依赖，始于高中时期，当时特莉什巧妙地撕碎了一个试图欺凌没有朋友的坎农的同学。尽管这些角色中有一些行为恶劣，但书中真正的对立面是惯性：有一种感觉是，生活总是会有点难以忍受，除非人们开始足够关心彼此以做出改变。“我不能失去那段友谊！”特莉什在书的后半部分宣称。“坎农是我认识的最好的人。我喜欢她的一切。而我不喜欢别人。”（“坎农”是个昵称——她的本名是露西（Lucy），特莉什将其简称为“卢斯（Luce）”，然后是“卢斯·坎农（Luce Cannon）”，这是对她可靠性的一种讽刺。）

但后者最终的崩溃也部分归咎于特莉什——这有点像观看那些YouTube上的慢动作视频，其中液压机压碎了某种以坚固著称的物品。破坏在书的序言中已有预兆，该序言展示了坎农在她憎恨的工作场所中横冲直撞的后果；有趣的部分是观看前奏，既有的裂痕如何发展成为分裂和分离。当然，还有欣赏那些幸存下来的碎片。

过度紧张的关系在坎农的生活中无处不在。她与外公的关系——一个难以相处的老人，他的官能正在衰退，而昔日对女儿的残忍使他如今由女儿的孩子照顾。他越来越不公平地依赖坎农，因为他退回到自己的第一语言中文，使他与雇佣的看护人员疏远。

特莉什利用坎农对她的吸引力却从不回报的方式也不公平：她向坎农抱怨各种自己造成的浪漫问题，然后突然出去与她的炮友进行无负担的性行为，而炮友理所当然地对被分类对待感到恼火。还有坎农的母亲詹妮弗（Jennifer），她一直躲避她的短信和电话，这样她就不必照顾她的父亲。然后还有盖伊（Guy），这里最让人难以同情的角色，一个由种种卑劣行径和特权意识拼凑而成的人类“红灯区”招牌。

李莱生动地描绘了这些角色，并让他们以不同的速度和不同的原因相互碰撞。盖伊不断试图强迫坎农既过度工作又进行性行为，自信他的权威会使他免受任何后果。特莉什是一位作家，其导师认为她是“新一波酷儿文学的一部分”，她在小说中秘密窃取坎农的家庭历史；甚至那位导师乔伊斯（Joyce）也担心自己曾经拥有的文学声望会随着年龄增长而消失，并将特莉什的潜力视为保持她日益减弱的相关性的一种方式。所有的成功难道都只是剥削吗？

关键在于，特莉什和坎农都不觉得自己有多少选择。特莉什知道她必须挖掘朋友的私生活来提高她的写作水平，而乔伊斯也在鼓励她这样做。盖伊从不问坎农是否能加班并忽略她的外公，或者她是否想吻他；他只是强迫她。詹妮弗不问坎农是否能照顾她的外公；她只是消失，留下女儿来填补空缺。只有通过抵抗为他们设定的条件，特莉什和坎农才能保持她们最亲密的关系，包括彼此之间的关系。

李莱对话的简洁性，以及她主要以黑白为主的插图，掩盖了她讲故事中的广度和复杂性。她的角色通过身体语言、随意的观察和短暂的触碰建立了完整的关系历史：在坎农祖母葬礼的闪回中，詹妮弗把手放在父亲的肩上以示安慰，但李莱用一个他扭曲的脸尖叫着她的画面打断了她——这是这本原本无色的书中少数几处红色之一——她退缩了。多年后，当特莉什和坎农观看老恐怖电影时，这些画面也是红色的——一点颜色的注入，以保护她们免受世界上意想不到的红色的伤害。

当然，还有那些想象中的鸟儿。它们起初似乎具有威胁性，但在书的进程中，它们从纯粹的幻觉升级为更重要的东西。这是李莱留下的许多丰富的模糊性之一，未予解决，令读者大为宽慰。 这本书感觉栩栩如生，正是因为它描绘了角色们不令人满意、困难的选择 。在其多种可能性中，《坎农》为完全未预见到的未来提供了希望。◾

Lee Lai

李莱（Lee Lai）

There’s no pressure quite like working in a kitchen. In Lee Lai’s new graphic novel, “Cannon,” the title character is a model employee — always a solution, never a sharp answer, every dish timed to perfection — and her venue is a fancy restaurant in Montreal where her boss, Guy, tries to take every possible advantage of her. So perhaps it’s only natural that Cannon is a little high strung. Or, given that she sees an ominous flock of birds appear before her whenever she approaches a breaking point, very high strung.

I’m relieved to report that “Cannon” is, for the most part, a comedy. The introverted heroine and her self-centered friend Trish have a spiky intimacy informed by many years of codependence, beginning in high school when Trish deftly tore apart a classmate who tried to bully the friendless Cannon. As badly as some of these characters behave, the book’s real antagonist is inertia: There’s a sense that life is always going to be slightly unbearable unless people start caring enough about one another to change. “I can’t lose that friendship!” Trish announces late in the book. “Cannon’s the best person that I know. I like everything about her. And I don’t like people.” (“Cannon” is a nickname — her given name is Lucy, which Trish shortens to “Luce” and then “Luce Cannon,” an ironic poke at her reliability.)

But the latter’s eventual breakdown is also partly Trish’s fault — it’s a little like watching one of those slow-motion YouTube videos of a hydraulic press crushing some object celebrated for its sturdiness. The destruction is forewarned in the book’s prologue, which shows the aftermath of Cannon’s rampage through her hated workplace; the interesting part is watching the lead-up, as established fractures blossom into splits and separations. And, of course, admiring the pieces that survive.

Overstressed connections are everywhere in Cannon’s life. There’s her relationship with her maternal grandfather, a difficult old man whose faculties are failing him and whose long-ago cruelty to his daughter has left him in the care of hers. He increasingly and unfairly relies on Cannon as his retreat into his first language, Chinese, alienates him from hired caregivers.

Nor is it fair the way Trish exploits, but never quite reciprocates, Cannon’s attraction to her: She complains to Cannon about various self-inflicted romantic problems and then abruptly heads out to have no-strings sex with her hookup buddy, who’s predictably irritated about being compartmentalized. There’s Cannon’s mother, Jennifer, who keeps dodging her texts and calls so she won’t have to take care of her father. And then there’s Guy, the least sympathetic character here, a sort of human red flag quilted together from scraps of sleaze and entitlement.

Lai draws these characters vividly, and sets them hurtling toward one another at different speeds and for different reasons. Guy keeps trying to coerce Cannon into both overwork and sex, confident that his authority will insulate him from any consequences. Trish, a writer whose mentor considers her “part of a new wave of queer literature,” is secretly poaching from Cannon’s family history in her fiction; and even that mentor, Joyce, is anxious about aging out of any literary cachet she once had, and sees Trish’s potential as a way to preserve her waning relevance. Is all success simply exploitation?

Crucially, neither Trish nor Cannon feels she has much of a choice. Trish knows she has to mine her friend’s private life to improve her writing, and Joyce is encouraging her to do it. Guy never asks whether Cannon can work late and neglect her grandfather, or whether she wants to kiss him; he simply forces her to. Jennifer doesn’t ask whether Cannon can care for her grandfather; she just disappears and leaves her daughter to fill the absence. It is only by resisting the terms set for them that Trish and Cannon are able to preserve their closest relationships, including with each other.

The economy of Lai’s dialogue, and of her mostly black-and-white illustrations, belies the breadth and complexity in her storytelling. Her characters establish entire relational histories in their body language, casual observations and fleeting touches: In a flashback to Cannon’s grandmother’s funeral, Jennifer puts her hand on her father’s shoulder in a gesture of comfort, but Lai interrupts her with a panel of his distorted face screaming at her — one of the few splashes of red in the otherwise colorless book — and she recoils. Years later, as Trish and Cannon watch old horror movies, these panels too are red — little inoculations of color to protect them from the unexpected redness of the world.

And, of course, there are those imaginary birds. They seem threatening at first, but over the course of the book they graduate from mere hallucination to something more important. It’s one of the many rich ambiguities that Lai leaves unresolved, to the reader’s great relief. The book feels lifelike precisely because of its depiction of the characters’ unsatisfying, difficult choices. And in its multiple possibilities, “Cannon” offers hope for futures completely unforeseen.

来源：左右图史