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New Japanese fiction
新晉日本小說
Slightly off A haunting introduction to the work of an important Japanese author
傷感自難忘—日本知名作家小川洋子作品的簡略介紹
Revenge: Eleven Dark Tales. By Yoko Ogawa.
《復仇：十一個暗黑傳說》，作者小川洋子；
AN ELDERLY man who curates a museum of torture. A landlady who grows carrots shaped like hands. A woman who buys a birthday cake for her dead son. The odd stories of Yoko Ogawa, a Japanese author, irrupt into the ordinary world as if from the unconscious or the grave. “Revenge”, the latest collection to be translated into English, offers a short and haunting introduction to her work.
在傳說中，年老的男人管理著收藏煎熬的博物館，女房東種著人手形狀的胡蘿卜，婦女為死去的兒子購買生日蛋糕。日本作家小川洋子的這些奇特故事，仿佛從墳墓中破土而出或者由無意識逃逸而出，侵入正常的世界。《復仇》，作為小川洋子最新一本被翻譯為英文的合集，讓我們可以一窺其作品那縈繞其中的美麗哀傷，經久難忘。
Nameless narrators describe strange and often shocking encounters in cool, almost ordinary language. The characters suffocate, are stabbed to death, die crushed by the detritus of the world. Ms Ogawa has said her work is influenced by Haruki Murakami's magical-realist style. There are fantastic flashes, such as a woman born with a heart outside her body. Yet the overall effect is more David Lynch: the rot that lurks beneath the surface of the world.
佚名敘述者描述了離經叛道甚而多是駭人聽聞的故事，用語卻是冷淡，或可以算上平常的語句。故事人物或死于窒息，或被刺而亡，或被塵世碎石壓碎而亡。小川女士曾說過，她的作品深受村上春樹魔幻現實風格影響。奇異畫面閃爍作品其中，如一位婦女與身體之外的心共降臨于世。然而整體效果其實更像大衛·林奇的現實主義：發掘潛藏在世界表面之下的腐爛。
Ms Ogawa has written more than 20 books and won every big literary prize in Japan. The English translation of her novel “The Housekeeper and the Professor” in 2009 brought her attention and success in America. Publishers keen to spot the next Murakami have now released four of her books in English. Her translator, Stephen Snyder, describes her work as remarkably diverse.
小川女士已著有20本書，并包攬了每一個日本文學大獎。2009年，她的小說《女管家和教授》的英譯版讓她在美國贏得了巨大的關注和成功。那些熱衷尋找下一位“村上春樹”的出版商已經出版了四本她的小說的英譯版。她的譯者，斯蒂芬·斯奈德認為小川洋子的作品極其與眾不同，獨一無二。
Her novels range from tender to sadomasochistic; her stories are more straightforwardly disturbing. This weird otherworldly quality is deeply Japanese, says Mr Snyder. It is in part a reaction to the glassy perfection of this self-conscious society. Ms Ogawa's fiction considers what is out of place. She is less concerned with brutality than with loss and absence.
她的小說文筆波詭，基調可由溫柔細膩轉至施虐受虐，更多是直截了當的讓人煩躁不安。斯奈德先生認為，這種奇異，難以理解，超脫世俗根植于日本。這種風格是小川女士對這個過于關注他人評價的社會，纏繞其間那如玻璃般的完美的反應。小川女士的小說關注的是那些和完美世界格格不入的東西。她不是為了書寫殘酷故事而創作，迷失和缺席才是她更加關心的事。
Yet there is a steadying effect in her stories through repeating motifs—a classic technique of Japanese poetry. Rotting food and body parts recur; actors in one story reappear obliquely in others. The result is a spectral connectedness. Ms Ogawa understands the consolation of order within apparent randomness. One story describes a dying man's cluttered house: “As I studied the mass more closely, I began to feel that it was not the product of random accumulation but that it actually had a coherent form all its own.”
通過重復主題這一經典的日本詩歌技巧，她的故事有種穩定的效果。正在腐爛的食物和尸體反復出現，在一個故事出現的角色會在另一個故事里間接地出現，這些都是冥冥之中早注定。表面雜亂無章，小川女士卻深諳順序的藝術。她有個故事，描述了一個將死男人，凌亂不堪的房間。 “當我對于“亂”有更深的理解，我開始意識到它不是隨意積累的產物，而事實上，它有著自己條理性的形式。”
