THERE IS A STRONG CURRENT of nostalgia for the late ’70s and early ’80s in New York, even among those who never lived through it — the era when the city was edgy and dangerous, when women carried Mace in their purses, when even men asked the taxi driver to wait until they’d crossed the 15 feet to the front door of their building, when a blackout plunged whole neighborhoods into frantic looting, when subway cars were covered with graffiti, when Balanchine was at the height of his powers and the New York State Theater was New York’s intellectual salon, when John Lennon was murdered by a Salinger-reading born-again, when Philip Roth was already famous, Don DeLillo had yet to become famous, and most literary insiders were betting on Harold Brodkey’s long-awaited novel, which his editor, Gordon Lish, declared would be ‘‘the one necessary American narrative work of this century.’’ (It flopped when it finally came out in 1991 as ‘‘The Runaway Soul.’’)

对1970年代末、80年代初纽约的怀念，正日渐浓烈，连从未在那个年代生活过的人都参与了进来——那时的纽约躁动而危险，女人出门要带防狼水，连男人下了出租车都会要求司机先别走，要等他们走完从车到家门那5米。那时的一场停电让整片街区陷入疯狂的抢掠，地铁车厢满是涂鸦。彼时，巴兰钦(Balanchine)的权势正如日中天，纽约州剧院成为纽约知识分子沙龙，一个爱读塞林格的重生教徒杀了约翰·列侬(John Lennon)，菲利普·罗斯(Philip Roth)已经成名，堂·德里罗(Don DeLillo)则还没有，文学圈内大多把希望寄托在哈罗德·布洛基(Harold Brodkey)的一本期盼已久的小说上，编辑戈登·理什(Gordon Lish)宣称它将是“本世纪最不可或缺的美国叙事作品”。（待到1991年，这本叫《逃脱的灵魂》[The Runaway Soul]的小说终于发表时，反响十分惨淡。）

This was the last period in American culture when the distinction between highbrow and lowbrow still pertained, when writers and painters and theater people still wanted to be (or were willing to be) ‘‘martyrs to art.’’ This was the last moment when a novelist or poet might withdraw a book that had already been accepted for publication and continue to fiddle with it for the next two or three years. This was the last time when a New York poet was reluctant to introduce to his arty friends someone who was a Hollywood film director, for fear the movies would be considered too low-status.

那是美国文化史上最后一段尚存高雅、低俗之分的时光，无论是写字的、画画的、排戏的，都还希望（或乐意）成为“艺术的殉道者”。那时候还有小说家或诗人会收回一本已经可以出版的书，再花上两三年去摆弄它。那时候，一个纽约诗人会不情愿把一个好莱坞电影导演介绍给自己的艺术圈朋友，因为担心那些电影层次太低。

Recently there’s been, in TV and film and certainly in books, an intense yearning for a specific five-year period in New York City, those years between the blackout in 1977, and 1982, when AIDS was finally named by the Centers for Disease Control. First was Rachel Kushner’s 2013 novel ‘‘The Flamethrowers,’’ whose heroine is a sharp-eyed bystander in the SoHo art scene, and now, the forthcoming novel ‘‘City on Fire’’ by Garth Risk Hallberg, which also concerns itself with the same time period. There are two television series in development that take place in the late 1970s as well, one directed by Martin Scorsese and co-written with Mick Jagger; the other by Baz Luhrmann. Next year, the Whitney will mount the first retrospective of David Wojnarowicz, the ultimate East Village grunge artist, in over 15 years; the work of his lover, the photographer Peter Hujar — which has recently been used both for an advertising campaign for the men’s wear designer Patrik Ervell and on the cover of the T editor Hanya Yanagihara’s novel ‘‘A Little Life’’ — will be the subject of a forthcoming retrospective at New York’s Morgan Library.

近年的一些电视、电影——当然还有书——对那五年的纽约表达了格外强烈的怀念，也就是从发生大停电的1977年，到疾病控制中心正式采纳“艾滋病”这一称呼的1982年。首先是蕾切尔·库什纳(Rachel Kushner)在2013年发表的小说《喷火器》(The Flamethrowers)，书中眼光锐利的女主人公是苏豪区艺术圈的一个旁观者，而加斯·里斯克·哈尔贝格(Garth Risk Hallberg)即将出版的小说《烈火焚城》(City on Fire)也关注了这一段时间。此外，有两部以1970年代末为背景的电视剧正在筹拍中，其中一部由马丁·斯科塞斯(Martin Scorsese)执导，米克·贾格尔(Mick Jagger)是编剧之一；另一部的剧创是巴兹·吕尔曼(Baz Luhrmann)。明年，惠特尼美术馆(Whitney)将为东村肮脏艺术第一人大卫·沃伊纳洛维茨(David Wojnarowicz)举办15年来的首场回顾展；他的恋人、摄影师彼得·胡亚(Peter Hujar)的作品，最近被男装设计师帕特里克·厄维尔(Patrik Ervell)用在品牌广告中，而《T》杂志的副主编柳原樱(Hanya Yanagiharad)的小说《小生命》(A Little Life)，也用他的照片作为封面。现在，纽约摩根图书馆(New York’s Morgan Library)即将举办胡亚回顾展。

COLLECTIVELY, THESE WORKS express a craving for the city that, while at its worst, was also more democratic: a place and a time in which, rich or poor, you were stuck together in the misery (and the freedom) of the place, where not even money could insulate you. They are a reaction to what feels like a safer, more burnished and efficient (but cornerless and predictable) city. Even those of us who claim not to miss those years don’t quite sound convinced. ‘‘Well, I sure don’t have nostalgia about being mugged,’’ John Waters told me. Though then he continued: ‘‘But I do get a little weary when I realize that if anybody could find one dangerous block left in the city, there’d be a stampede of restaurant owners fighting each other off to open there first. It seems almost impossible to remember that just going out in New York was once dangerous. Do any artistic troublemakers want to feel that their city may be the safest in America? Who’s going to write a book about walking the safe streets of Manhattan? It’s always right before a storm that the air is filled with dangerous possibilities.’’

综合来看，这些作品表达了对这座城市的眷恋，它正处在最糟糕、却又更平等的时期：当此时世，无论穷人富人，都被困在这个不幸（与自由）的地方，连金钱都无法带来豁免。它们似乎是对一座更安全、更闪亮、更高效（但又没有秘密、很容易看透）的城市的抗拒。即便是我们这些声称并不怀念那个年代的人，听起来也没有那么笃定。“被打劫的经历我肯定是不怀念的，”约翰·沃特斯(John Waters)对我说。不过他接着又说：“但是，如今只要有人发现，这座城市里还有哪个街区是不安全的，立刻就会有大把餐馆老板赶来，争着要开第一家餐馆，一想到这一层，我觉得还是挺烦人的。似乎已经很难想象，在纽约出门曾经是一件危险的事。作为爱惹事生非的创作人，有谁会喜欢生活在美国最安全的城市呢？在曼哈顿街头平平安安地走着，谁能用这种事写出一本书来呢？当空气里弥漫着危险的可能性时，就是一场风暴即将到来了。”

THEN, THERE WERE only possibilities. The cultural world — at least the cultural world that mattered — was much smaller then. Painters knew musicians knew writers, and they were all accessible. ‘‘It was easy then to meet John Ashbery or Jasper Johns,’’ says Brad Gooch, the author of the recent memoir about love and loss in the ’70s, ‘‘Smash Cut.’’ ‘‘Not that we took them for granted.’’ According to Fran Lebowitz, everyone who read Andy Warhol’s Interview knew one another, and yet this small world had a lasting influence on American taste and music and painting and poetry and amusements. These years held the origins of the Downtown Scene, a multidisciplinary, simultaneous movement that was headquartered in the East Village and was characterized by the birth of punk music, gonzo journalism and disposable painting; by body art and the messy theatrical antics of La MaMa. At its height in the mid-’70s, Max’s Kansas City, on Park and 18th, was a home to the New York Dolls, the Ramones, Blondie, Klaus Nomi and Sid Vicious. In the East Village, on Bleecker and Bowery, was CBGB, which was home to Television, Patti Smith and many of the bands that also played at Max’s. Little temporary art galleries were opening and closing every week in the East Village.

那时候处处都是可能性。文化圈子，至少是重要的文化圈子，比现在要小得多。画家音乐家作家彼此都认识，都能接触到。“那时候要跟约翰·阿什伯里(John Ashbery)或贾斯培·琼斯(Jasper Johns)见个面很容易，”布拉德·古奇(Brad Gooch)说，他最近出版的一本回忆录《Smach Cut》讲的是70年代的爱与迷失，“但不等于我们当时觉得这没什么大不了。”据弗兰·勒博维茨(Fran Lebowitz)说，安迪·沃霍尔(Andy Warhol)的《访问》(Interview)杂志的读者，相互都是认识的，然而就是这么一个小小的圈子，对美国的品味、音乐、绘画、诗歌、娱乐产生了经久不衰的影响。以东村为中心、多领域同时进行的下城运动(Downtown Scene)，就在此时萌发，孕育了朋克音乐、冈佐新闻报道(gonzo)和一次性绘画；身体艺术和乱哄哄的La MaMa戏剧实验也是这一运动的重要组成部分。这股风潮在1970年代中期达至顶峰，公园大道和第18街的Max’s Kansas City是New York Dolls、the Ramones、Blondie、Klaus Nomi和Sid Vicious的据点。东村的布里克街和包厘街有CBGB，Television、帕蒂·史密斯(Patti Smith)以及许多同时也会去Max's的乐队在那里演出。在东村的角角落落，每周都会有各种小型临时画廊出现、消失。

Meanwhile, there was also the High Mandarin moment, which has scarcely been isolated or studied as a single impulse, but was the last gasp of both a late-age Modernism and a 1960s-era radicalism: a paradoxical combination of elitism in aesthetics and an egalitarianism bordering on socialism and utopianism in politics. The representative figures of this New York were Susan Sontag, Jasper Johns, George Balanchine, Robert Wilson, Robert Mapplethorpe, Richard Sennett, Richard Howard, John Ashbery and many other cultural arbiters — Barbara Epstein and Robert Silvers, the editors of the New York Review of Books; Bob Gottlieb at Knopf; the critic Richard Poirier. Some of these people weren’t interested in politics at all, but if they were, their politics were radical. Mapplethorpe — with his lubricious African-American nudes, portraits of society ladies and still lifes of ‘‘New York flowers’’ (as he once called them) — was one of the few people of the period who braided these high and low strands of New York culture. Could such a phenomenon occur today? Maybe in Berlin. But not in New York.

此外还有所谓的“高绝派”(High Mandarin)，这场运动甚少被独立出来，作为一个单独的流派进行研究，但它是晚期现代主义和1960年代激进主义的最后一丝存在：它将美学上的精英主义和政治上近乎社会主义与乌托邦思想的平等主义吊诡地合而为一。在纽约，这场运动的代表人物包括苏珊·桑塔格(Susan Sontag)、贾斯培·琼斯、乔治·巴兰钦(George Balanchine)、罗伯特·威尔逊(Robert Wilson)、罗伯特·梅普尔索普(Robert Mapplethorpe)、理查德·桑内特(Richard Sennett)、理查德·霍华德(Richard Howard)、约翰·阿什伯里，以及《纽约书评》(New York Review of Books)编辑芭芭拉·爱泼斯坦(Barbara Epstein)和罗伯特·锡尔弗斯(Robert Silvers)、Knopf出版社的鲍勃·戈特利布(Bob Gottlieb)、评论家理查德·波里尔(Richard Poirier)等等文化权威。这些人要么对政治完全不感兴趣，要么就是政治激进人士。以淫秽的非裔美国人裸体、社交女伶肖像和被他称为“纽约花朵”的静物照著称的梅普尔索普，是当时少数能将纽约文化的高低两界连接起来的人。这样的现象，今天还会有吗？柏林也许可以。纽约不会了。

THOSE WERE YEARS when rents were low, when would-be writers, singers, dancers could afford to live in Manhattan’s (East, if not, West) Village, before everyone marginal was further marginalized by being squeezed out to Bushwick or Hoboken. Face-to-face encounters are essential to a city’s vitality, even among people who aren’t sure of each other’s names, for the exchange of ideas and to generate a sense of electricity. In the ’70s, creative people of all sorts could meet without plans, could give each other tips or discuss burgeoning theories or markets or movements.

那时候房租便宜，做着作家、歌手、舞者梦的人们，尚能在曼哈顿（东村，西村是不太可能的）找到栖身之地，不像到后来所有边缘人类被进一步边缘化，只能住到布什维克(Bushwick)或霍博肯(Hoboken)。一座城市要有炽烈的交流，才能产生一种激越的活力，面对面的相遇是至关重要的，哪怕你连对方名字都叫不上来。在70年代，从事各类创作的人们可以一时兴起去见个面，分享一点小建议，讨论新兴的理论、市场或运动。

In gay life, that’s called ‘‘cruising’’ (although the French equivalent, draguer, applies to all denominations). In the period before AIDS, the heyday of Studio 54 and Mineshaft, gays were on the verge of being dubbed trend-setters and tastemakers; Frank Rich even wrote a retrospective article for Esquire in 1987 in which he looked back at ‘‘the homosexualization of America.’’ But the outbreak of the plague in 1981 changed all that. Suddenly the glamour boys, with their showboat bodies and high-paying jobs, were Auschwitz skeletons covered with black spots, like Canova’s unfinished marble statues. No one wanted to exchange kisses with someone infected, especially not before the path of transmission was identified (Poppers? Mustaches? Mosquitoes? Tears?). Whereas straight guys had been intrigued with gay life before and could (almost) contemplate experimenting, suddenly the barrier between the two orientations shot up, higher than the Iron Curtain.

在同性恋者的生活中，这种见面方式叫做“cruising”（巡游，不过它在法文的对应词draguer是各方人士都会使用的）。那时，AIDS时代尚未到来、Studio 54和Mineshaft等夜店正值鼎盛，同性恋者即将建立起风尚和品位引领者的名声；弗兰克·里奇(Frank Rich)甚至在1987年给《时尚先生》(Esquire)杂志写了一篇纪念文章，称那是“美国同性恋化”时期。然而1981年的疫情爆发改变了一切。转眼之间，身材俊美、从事高薪工作的小鲜肉们，成了全身长着黑斑、骨瘦如柴的奥斯维辛集中营囚犯，就像一座座卡诺瓦的未完成大理石雕像。谁也不愿意跟感染了病毒的人亲吻，尤其是要知道当时尚未明确传染的方式（男同使用的硝酸戊酯溶剂？胡子？蚊子？眼泪？）。有异性恋者一度被同性恋者生活所吸引，本来（几乎）打算做一点尝试，但突然间，两种性取向中间筑起了比“铁幕”还高的壁垒。

Now, with the Supreme Court’s decision legalizing marriage equality and with what might be called ‘‘the banalization of gay life,’’ the imp of the perverse has made ’70s-style queers look mighty attractive. Brad reminded me that the young gays of that decade had been ruthlessly oppressed when they were growing up in Eisenhower’s or Nixon’s America. ‘‘Finally they were free to be open,’’ he says. ‘‘And we felt that we were glamorous and attractive.’’ Certainly this very romantic view of gay life has come back into currency — and it is in the possession of straight as well as gay artists, male or female. It’s a view I subscribe to myself, and that permeates my memoir about the period, ‘‘City Boy.’’

随着最高法院裁决同性婚姻合法，以及“同性恋生活的寻常化”，“悖理的恶魔”令70年代风格的酷儿显得分外迷人。布拉德·古奇提醒我，那个年代的同性恋者，是在艾森豪威尔或尼克松时代的高压下长大的。“当他们终于可以公开的时候，”他说，“我们会觉得我们浑身散发着魅力与诱惑。”这种对同性恋生活的浪漫观感，显然正在重新兴起——在艺术家中十分普遍，无论男女弯直。这也是我本人所认同的，在我对那个时期的回忆录《城市男孩》(City Boy)中时有体现。

BUT THOSE DAYS, those years, are gone. ‘‘Love Among the Ruins,’’ one might have called it, a time when young unknowns could achieve fame or at least rub shoulders with it, if they didn’t mind the rats galloping underfoot or a stickup in broad daylight on busy Christopher Street.

但那些岁月，那个年代，已经远去了。有人说，那是“废墟间飘荡的爱情”，在那个时期，只要不介意脚下乱窜的老鼠，或大白天在繁华的克里斯托弗街被打劫，籍籍无名的年轻人也可以取得声名，或者至少跟名人站在一起。

That delicate ecology has now been irreparably damaged. Of course there are still wonderfully intelligent people around; as you walk past tables in a New York restaurant, you want to join in three out of four conversations. And half the people you meet here would be interviewed or arrested in any other city. But the cultural flame that passed to New York from Europe with all the refugees in World War II and burned bright in the ’50s with the Abstract Expressionists and the New York School poets — and brighter still in the late ’70s — now feels as if it’s been doused. As a group movement, at least — though individual sparks still glimmer here and there. Only the happy few would say the excitement was worth the danger, the ambient ugliness and the poverty.

这种脆弱的生态，如今已经遭到无法修补的破坏。当然，强闻博识的人还是有；当你走在一间纽约餐馆里，听着邻桌的对话，其中有四分之三是乐意参与的。你在这里遇到的人，放在任何别的城市，有一半会被人采访或逮捕。然而，由“二战”欧洲难民带到纽约，在50年代抽象表现主义绘画和纽约学派诗歌中熊熊燃烧，一直延续到70年代末的文化之火，似乎是被浇灭了。至少作为群体的运动是这样——虽然还时不时会有一些个别的火花。只有极少数的乐天派会认为，用危险、贫穷和脏乱差的环境换来激越的生活是值得的。