重讀《毛二世》

從書中描述的萬人宗教集體結婚、球場上暴動的球迷、天安門廣場示威的民眾……我們可以體驗到，現代世界是個集體陷入狂熱的時代，也是個集體陷入危險的時代。

唐．德里羅以《毛二世》點出了人類瘋狂偶像崇拜、集體狂熱的危機。本書以故事主角，一位越隱匿便越引起熱烈追隨的作家角色為隱喻，寫出追隨者的盲目，以及被追隨者的焦慮與不安。在唐．德里羅獨特的幽默對白與驚人的情節推動下，一幅幅屬於現今人類的荒誕景象活現眼前，讓人不禁驚覺：當我們隨著心中那至高無上的夢想和信仰而轉動時，會不會突然有一天，夢和信仰會突然變成毫不留情把我們毀滅的巨獸？

《毛二世》的書名，它乃取材自普普藝術家安迪．沃荷的同名絲印畫。據本書「導讀」介紹，安迪．沃荷的藝術，是透過攝影複製的風格，將藝術作品以商品複製的形式瓦解其獨特性。畫家將毛澤東、瑪麗蓮．夢露，甚或可口可樂罐裝圖畫以這種複製的方式呈現，一方面用商業顛覆了藝術，另方面也等於用庸俗顛覆了政治的擬神聖性。

而唐．德里羅採用毛澤東的這幅絲印畫題目為書名，可以想像得到他是要把毛澤東這種偶像式的人物，透過反諷、嘲謔、複製等方式，將他的偶像性抹除，使它成為歷史過程中的一則笑談。有書評認為，《毛二世》從書名開始，即顯露出作者那種「塗抹」的後現代風格。「塗抹」是把從前過度渲染，因而蓋住別的頁面的油彩抹消抹掉，其他被蓋掉的才可重見天日。

但如果我們深入去讀《毛二世》，即可發現唐．德里羅做為當今後現代主義的寫作大師，他其實並沒有如此狹窄，而且有關毛澤東這個題材只不過是書中的一部分而已。當代美國主要文學理論家之一──杜克大學教授林特濟查（Frank Lentricchia）乃是唐．德里羅權威學者，他即指出，如果讀者只是想在他的作品裡尋找容易辨認的道德中心，那就一定會覺得很受挫折，因為他的作品實在太易讀太難懂了。

現在的時代變了，個人主義的作家時代噎結束，代之而起的乃是集體主義的群眾瘋狂甚至恐怖主義。本書藉著霍梅尼死亡時群眾瘋狂的場景畫面、毛澤東發動群眾的盛大場景，以及黎巴嫩那個綁架人質的毛派小組織頭目的表現，呈現出另一個宏大歷史的走向：現在的歷史這個鐘擺，已往群眾這邊擺動。群眾不只是人多，群眾是一種意識，恐怖主義的綁架人質，只不過封閉群眾型國家的一種微型預演而已。唐．德里羅在《毛二世》里，一方面討論個人主義的沒落及邊緣化，另方面則談到集體主義這邊被操弄的群眾瘋狂開始興起，他為什麼從早年開始就一直關心「藝術」和「恐怖」這兩個問題，並對這兩個問題保留了兩個檔案夾，他的心情之沉重已不言自明。

美國的文學評論家這樣評述唐．德里羅的作品：他是對這個讓我們快樂不起來的世界做著文化解剖，而同時這個解剖家又對語言中的句子和辭彙深深愛好，當他在描述不同的聲音時顯露出極大的睿智，並且有真正的蓬勃活力。他的作品除了實況的景象外，還有一種文學的愉悅感。因此作品最後的視野是既可怕又具有美感的。「他的作品代表了美國文學上的一種罕有成就。小說家的想像和文化批判有了完美的混合。」

[原題]諷喻人類瘋狂偶像崇拜的經典力作《毛二世》

[小說情節簡介]

A reclusive novelist named Bill Gray works endlessly on a novel which he chooses to not finish. He has chosen a lifestyle secluded from the outside world in order to try to keep his writing pure. He, along with his assistant Scott, believes that something is lost once a mass audience reads the work. Scott would prefer Bill didn't publish the book for fear that the mass-production of the work will destroy the "real" Bill. Bill has a dalliance with Scott's partner Karen Janney, a former member of the Unification Church who is married to Kim Jo Pak in a Unification Church Blessing ceremony in the prologue of the book.

Bill, who lives as a complete recluse, accedes to be photographed by a New York photographer named Brita who is documenting writers. In dialogue with Brita and others, Bill laments that novelists are quickly becoming obsolete in an age where terrorism has supplanted art as the "raids on consciousness" that jolt and transform culture at large. Gray disappears without a word and secretly decides to accept an opportunity from his former editor Charles to travel to London to publicly speak on the behalf of a Swiss writer held hostage in war-torn Beirut.

Meanwhile Karen ends up living in Brita's New York apartment and spends most of her time in the homeless slums of Tompkins Square Park. In London, Bill is introduced to George Haddad, a representative of the Maoist group responsible for kidnapping the writer. Bill decides to go to Lebanon himself and negotiate the release of the writer. Cutting himself off from Charles, he flees to Cyprus where he awaits a ship that will take him to Lebanon.

In Cyprus, Bill is hit by a car and suffers a lacerated liver which, exacerbated by his heavy drinking, kills him in his sleep while en route to Beirut. In the epilogue, Brita goes to Beirut to photograph Abu Rashid, the terrorist responsible for the kidnapping. The fate of the hostage is never revealed, though the implication is grim. The plot unfolds with DeLillo's customary shifts of time, setting, and character.

[中譯本簡介和節錄]

 [關於作家的寫作風格的批評]

Critics of DeLillo argue that his novels are overly stylized and intellectually shallow. Bruce Bawer famously condemned DeLillo's novels insisting they weren't actually novels at all but "tracts, designed to batter us, again and again, with a single idea: that life in America today is boring, benumbing, dehumanized...It's better, DeLillo seems to say in one novel after another, to be a marauding murderous maniac – and therefore a human – than to sit still for America as it is, with its air conditioners, assembly lines, television sets, supermarkets, synthetic fabrics, and credit cards."[72] George Will proclaimed the study of Lee Harvey Oswald in Libra as "sandbox existentialism" and "an act of literary vandalism and bad citizenship."[72] DeLillo responded "I don't take it seriously, but being called a 'bad citizen' is a compliment to a novelist, at least to my mind. That's exactly what we ought to do. We ought to be bad citizens. We ought to, in the sense that we're writing against what power represents, and often what government represents, and what the corporation dictates, and what consumer consciousness has come to mean. In that sense, if we're bad citizens, we're doing our job."[72] In the same interview DeLillo rejected Will's claim that DeLillo blames America for Lee Harvey Oswald, countering that he instead blamed America for George Will. DeLillo also figured prominently[clarification needed] in B. R. Myers's critique of recent American literary fiction, A Reader's Manifesto.