評論
打印
New fiction
新小說
Fatty issue
胖子是個大問題
A thoughtful new work by an American original.
具有獨創精神的美國作家帶來富有創見的新作
Big Brother
《老大哥》
LIONEL SHRIVER knows the drawbacks of using her own family in her fiction. Famous for the bestselling “We Need to Talk About Kevin”, which won the Orange prize for fiction in 2005, she once lamented that her parents had not yet forgiven her for an unflattering portrait in an earlier book. The rift was unfortunate, even sad, Ms Shriver noted, but that did not mean she would not do it again. “Real-life people are like carcasses thrown to a carnivorous pet,” she observed.
蘭諾絲薇佛明白，拿自己家人作為小說人物原型問題多多。于2005年獲英國柑橘文學獎小說獎的暢銷書《凱文怎么了》使絲薇佛聲名鵲起，她曾慨嘆，因為自己在一部早期作品中對父母描述直白，雙親一直耿耿于懷。絲薇佛表示，與父母產生嫌隙是令人遺憾的，甚至是令人傷心的，但那并不意味著她不會故技重施。她說，“現實中的人物就像拋給食肉動物的畜體，有血有肉。”
“Big Brother”, Ms Shriver's 12th novel, may be her most plainly autobiographical. The author has written publicly before about her own big brother, an “obscenely smart” man who ultimately ate himself to death. The experience left her with not a few unresolved questions. What moves someone to eat to grotesque excess? Why is it so hard to deal with food in a healthy way in the overabundant 21st century? And what is the duty of kin when it comes to helping someone bent on self-destruction? These concerns drive her new novel, which considers the fate of a morbidly obese man and his sensible, successful 40-something younger sister. Ms Shriver, who has reviewed fiction for The Economist, has a knack for conveying subtle shifts in family dynamics, but this book feels uniquely personal, and is more poignant for it.
《老大哥》是絲薇佛的第12本小說，也可能是她自傳痕跡最明顯的一部小說。作者在以前公開發表的作品中就曾提到她的老大哥，說他“聰明到讓人吃驚”，最后把自己給吃死了。如此經歷給絲薇佛留下了不少困惑。是什么動力使一個人暴飲暴食到近乎荒唐的地步？在物產過剩的21世紀，為何健康飲食如此之難？如果要向一個執意自我毀滅的人施以援手，其親屬又肩負哪些責任？對這些問題的關注推動她完成了這部小說，對一個肥胖病患者和他理智、成功、四十來歲的妹妹的命運做出了思考。絲薇佛曾為《經濟學人》撰寫過小說評論，擅長巧妙傳達家人互動時的微妙變化。但這本書似乎更關懷個人，而且更加切中要害。
Pandora Halfdanarson, the heroine, leads a staid life in Iowa, where ambitions are as modest as the plains are flat. She has a thriving toy business, a contented marriage and a good relationship with her teenage stepchildren. But these dulling comforts have her craving the “splash of anarchy” that a visit from her cool, jazz-playing brother, Edison, would bring.
小說女主人公潘多拉?哈夫達納森在愛荷華州享受著安穩的生活，那里土地平坦，人們甘于平凡。她的玩具店生意興隆，婚姻美滿，和十幾歲的繼子女們相處融洽。但波瀾不驚的安逸生活讓她對“混亂的波瀾”心生向往，這份波瀾，將由愛迪生—她玩爵士樂的哥哥—帶給她。
After years of limited contact, however, the sight of him comes as a shock. Her once handsome and sylphlike brother has become a mountain of flesh in a double-wide wheelchair, his jazz-pianist fingers bulging like bratwurst just before the skin splits. “It was rude to stare, and even ruder to cry.” Struggling, Edison hopes to stay with Pandora and her family for a little while. But his presence is outsized and disruptive, his appetites epic, his boastful stories tinged with resentment (“Hey I've played with some heavy cats, dig?”). Edison's bombast strains Pandora's marriage and disturbs the balance of her life, especially after she hatches a dramatic plan to slim him down in order to save him.
兄妹間多年少有聯絡，再見面時，妹妹被哥哥嚇了一跳。她原本相貌英俊、身形窈窕的哥哥如今成了一座癱在加寬輪椅上的肉山，曾經彈奏爵士鋼琴的手指如今鼓脹得像腸衣即將爆裂的德式香腸。“瞪眼直視儼然成了無禮冒犯，淚流滿面則更甚。”愛迪生努力想同潘多拉一家人待一段時間。但他身形龐大，到處添亂，胃口驚人，自吹自擂的故事里還捎帶著忿恨愛迪生的胡吹亂侃讓潘多拉的婚姻關系變得緊張，擾亂了她平靜的生活。為了挽救哥哥，潘多拉想出了一個戲劇性的方案來幫他減肥，之后一切更是亂了套。
With “Big Brother”, Ms Shriver offers some sage observations on the pleasures of eating, the link between fat and shame and the struggle to lose weight—a “distinctly bourgeois form of suffering”. She suggests that the fundamental problem of food may be that it is “more concept than substance”, an idea of satisfaction if never quite satisfaction itself. The highlight of ingestion is the moment between one bite and the next; actual eating never quite delivers on the tantalising contentment promised between bites.
絲薇佛在《老大哥》中提出了一些富有哲理的看法，涉及飲食的樂趣、肥胖和羞恥的關系以及減肥的努力—她稱減肥為“典型的中產階級痛苦”。她認為食物最根本的問題也許在于它“更多的是一個概念，而非物質”，強調的是滿足感而非滿足本身。攝取食物最令人滿足的時刻在咬一口和下一口之間，而兩口之間那誘人的滿足感并不能通過實際的吃來獲得。
But this book is not just about bingeing and purging. Ms Shriver writes tenderly about marriage, and also about the potency of blood ties, which are wonderful and horrible for the same reason: there is “no natural limit to what these people can reasonably expect of you”. Her interior monologues are pitch-perfect; her dialogue less so. Yet her main gift as a novelist is a talent for coolly nailing down uncomfortable realities—like the feelings of regret that haunt a sister who asks if she did right by her big brother.
但這不只是一本探討暴飲暴食和心靈凈化的書。絲薇佛充滿溫情地描繪了婚姻，也將血緣親情的力量娓娓道來，這份力量既美好又可怕，因為“家人以為對你的期待合情合理，而這份期待其實無邊無際”。絲薇佛筆下的內心獨白精彩異常，對話稍遜一籌。不過，作為小說家，絲薇佛的天賦在于能夠從容地把握令人不安的現實——比如潘多拉不確定自己對哥哥所做的一切是否正確時，那份困擾她的懊悔之情。
