A novelist, if he is talented and lucky, may in the course of a lifetime's work offer up one or two characters who enter the exclusive pantheon of the unforgotten. A novelist's characters hope for immortality; a profile journalist's, perhaps, for celebrity. We worship, these days, not images but Image itself: And any man or woman who strays into the public gaze becomes a potential sacrifice in that temple. Often, I repeat, a willing sacrifice, willingly drinking the poisoned chalice of Fame. But for many people, including myself, the experience of being profiled is perhaps closest to what it must feel like to be used as a writer's raw material, what it must feel like to be turned into a fictional character, to have one's feelings and actions, one's relationships and vicissitudes, transformed, by writing, into something subtly—or unsubtly—different. To see ourselves mutated into someone we do not recognize.
一个小说家，如果他有天赋又有运气，可能会在其毕生的作品中创作出一两个千古流芳的人物形象。小说家笔下的人物渴望的是永垂不朽；人物特写记者笔下的人物也许则期望着声名大振。如今，我们推崇的不是品格形象，而是形象本身：任何一个在不经意间成为大众眼中焦点的人都可能会成为那独一无二的“先贤祠”中的一员。我要重复一点：一个自愿成为被祭奠着的人通常会心甘情愿地饮下那承载着盛名的圣餐杯里的毒酒。但是对于许多人来说，包括我自己在内，被人大写特写的经历也许就如同被当成了作家的素材，被变成了有着自己的感受、行动、人际关系和悲欢离合的虚构人物，经过一番描写后自己被改头换面，其中的差异要么是微妙的，要么是毫无微妙可言的。结果只能看到自己变成了一个连我们自己都辨认不出的家伙。
For a novelist to be thus rewritten is, I recognize, a case of the biter bit. Fair enough. Nevertheless, something about the process feels faintly—and I stress, faintly—improper.
作为一个小说家，我认为自己被别人这样写来写去，不无讽刺意味。这很公平。不过对于这一系列的变化感觉上还是有点儿——我强调的是有点儿——不恰当。
In Britain, intrusions into the private lives of public figures have prompted calls from certain quarters for the protection of privacy laws. It is true that in France, where such laws exist, the illegitimate daughter of the late President Mitterrand was able to grow up unmolested by the press; but where the powerful can hide behind the law, might not a good deal of covert ostrich farming go undetected? My own feelings continue to be against laws that curtail the investigative freedoms of the press. But speaking as someone who has had the uncommon experience of becoming, for a time, a hot news story—of, as my friend Martin Amis put it, "vanishing into the front page"一it would be dishonest to deny that when my family and I have been the target of press intrusions and distortions, those principles have been sorely strained.
在英国，对公众人物私生活的侵犯已经促使某些方面呼吁出台对个人隐私进行保护的法规。在法国就存在这样的法规，已故法国总统密特朗的私生女就的确可以在不受媒体干扰的环境中长大；但是在权势可以得到法律庇护的地方，难道就不可能隐藏着无法受到追査的大量鸵鸟养殖事件吗？依我个人的感受而言，我仍旧反对那些剥夺媒体享有调査自由的法规。但是，作为难得地经历了一度成为新闻热点人物的人——正如我的朋友马丁·埃米斯所说，成为“在头条新闻里真实的自己不复存在”的人，就我来说，当我和我的家庭成为媒体侵扰和歪曲的目标时，否认那些法规已被迫走上了极端就未免不够坦诚了。