我爱你那不能自制的淫荡
先说明,标题来自小转铃的一篇贴子(http://www.tianyaclub.com/New/PublicForum/Content.asp?flag=1&idWriter=0&Key=0&idArticle=52525&strItem=books),我觉得以此来形容我对菲利普·罗斯的《波特诺的怨诉》也很合适。
先是喜欢他的《垂死的肉身》(吴其尧译,上海译文出版社2004年版),又看了自己以前买的旧书《再见吧,哥伦布》,然后借来了这本《波特诺的怨诉》(Portnoy’s Complaint)。
《再见吧,哥伦布》是罗斯的成名之作,因为它获得了美国图书奖,而《波特诺的怨诉》则一直以来,是罗斯最出名的作品。通篇是三十来岁的叙述者亚历山大·波特诺对心理医生的自白,极为大胆,冲破了不少禁忌,就像伍迪·艾伦的电影,对一些最隐秘的欲望进行了探索和揭示。看了几页的感觉便是:“黄,真是够黄。”几乎与性有关的一切话题都提到了,包括正常的和变态的,几乎可以称它为色情小说。然而与色情小说有别的是,在令人眼花暸乱的性经历、性心理诉说中,书中并未着重感官剌激。客观地说,可以说它是本“成长小说”,人物塑造上颇为成功,内容上除了写到性,还有作为一个犹太人,所承受的宗教和家庭的双重影响,有趣的是,还能隐约看出罗斯对左派思想也了解得不少,书里甚至引用了我们的国歌《义勇军进行曲》的歌词。语言上,罗斯表现得文笔纯熟而且不乏幽默之处,端的是位大作家。
总体感觉是这本书很值得一读,不过中文版我看再过五十年也未必能出。
抄录一段,可以加个小标题,叫“蛋蛋失踪记”,可以体会一下罗斯的幽默:
Sometime during my ninth year one of my testicles apparently decided it had had enough of life down in the scrotum and began to make its way north. At the beginning I could feel it bobbing uncertainly just at the rim of the pelvis – and then, as though its moment of indecision had passed, entering the cavity of my body, like a survivor being dragged up out of the sea and over the hull of a lifeboat. And there it nestled, secure at last behind the fortress of my bones, leaving its foolhardy mate to chance it alone in that boy’s world of football cleats and picket fences, sticks and stones and pocketknives, all those dangers that drove my mother wild with foreboding, and about which I was warned and warned and warned. And warned again. And again.
And again.
So my left testicle took up residence in the vicinity of the inguinal canal. By pressing a finger in the crease between my groin and my thigh. I could still, in the early weeks of its disappearance, feel the curve of its jellied roundness; but then came nights of terro, when I searched my guts in vain, searched all the way up to my rib cage-alas, the voyager had struck off for regions uncharted and unknown. Where was it gone to! How high and how far before the journey would come to and end! Would I one day open my mouth to speak in class, only to discover my left nut out on the end of my tongue? In school we chated along with our teacher, I am the captain of my fate, I am the master of my soul, and meanwhile, within my own body, and anarchic insurrection had been laughed by one of my privates- which I was helpless to put down!
For some six months, until its absence was observed by the family doctor during my annual phycial examination. I pondered my mystery, more than once wondering- for there was no possibility that did not enter my head, none - if the testicle could have taken a dive backwards toward the bowel and there begun to convert itself into just such an egg as I had observed my mother yank in a moist yellow cluster from the dark interior of a chicken whose guts she was emptying into the garbage. What if breasts began to grown on me, too? What if my penis went dry and brittle, and one day, while I was urinating, snapped off in my hand? Was I being transformed into a girl? Or worse, into a boy such as I understood (from the playgound grapevine) that Robert Ripley of “Believe it or not” would pay “a reward” of a hundred thousand dollars for? Believe it or nor there is a nine-year-old boy in New Jersy who is a boy in every way, except he can have babies.
Who gets the reward? Me, or the person who turns me in?
Doctor Izzie rolled the scrtoal sac between his fingers as though it were the material of a suit he was considering buying, and then told my father that I would have to be given a series of male hormone shots. One of my testicles had never fully-descended-unusual, not unheard of… but if the shots don’t work, asks my father in alarm. Wh then-! Here iam sent out into the waiting room to look at a magazine.
The shots work. I am spared the knife.
先是喜欢他的《垂死的肉身》(吴其尧译,上海译文出版社2004年版),又看了自己以前买的旧书《再见吧,哥伦布》,然后借来了这本《波特诺的怨诉》(Portnoy’s Complaint)。
《再见吧,哥伦布》是罗斯的成名之作,因为它获得了美国图书奖,而《波特诺的怨诉》则一直以来,是罗斯最出名的作品。通篇是三十来岁的叙述者亚历山大·波特诺对心理医生的自白,极为大胆,冲破了不少禁忌,就像伍迪·艾伦的电影,对一些最隐秘的欲望进行了探索和揭示。看了几页的感觉便是:“黄,真是够黄。”几乎与性有关的一切话题都提到了,包括正常的和变态的,几乎可以称它为色情小说。然而与色情小说有别的是,在令人眼花暸乱的性经历、性心理诉说中,书中并未着重感官剌激。客观地说,可以说它是本“成长小说”,人物塑造上颇为成功,内容上除了写到性,还有作为一个犹太人,所承受的宗教和家庭的双重影响,有趣的是,还能隐约看出罗斯对左派思想也了解得不少,书里甚至引用了我们的国歌《义勇军进行曲》的歌词。语言上,罗斯表现得文笔纯熟而且不乏幽默之处,端的是位大作家。
总体感觉是这本书很值得一读,不过中文版我看再过五十年也未必能出。
抄录一段,可以加个小标题,叫“蛋蛋失踪记”,可以体会一下罗斯的幽默:
Sometime during my ninth year one of my testicles apparently decided it had had enough of life down in the scrotum and began to make its way north. At the beginning I could feel it bobbing uncertainly just at the rim of the pelvis – and then, as though its moment of indecision had passed, entering the cavity of my body, like a survivor being dragged up out of the sea and over the hull of a lifeboat. And there it nestled, secure at last behind the fortress of my bones, leaving its foolhardy mate to chance it alone in that boy’s world of football cleats and picket fences, sticks and stones and pocketknives, all those dangers that drove my mother wild with foreboding, and about which I was warned and warned and warned. And warned again. And again.
And again.
So my left testicle took up residence in the vicinity of the inguinal canal. By pressing a finger in the crease between my groin and my thigh. I could still, in the early weeks of its disappearance, feel the curve of its jellied roundness; but then came nights of terro, when I searched my guts in vain, searched all the way up to my rib cage-alas, the voyager had struck off for regions uncharted and unknown. Where was it gone to! How high and how far before the journey would come to and end! Would I one day open my mouth to speak in class, only to discover my left nut out on the end of my tongue? In school we chated along with our teacher, I am the captain of my fate, I am the master of my soul, and meanwhile, within my own body, and anarchic insurrection had been laughed by one of my privates- which I was helpless to put down!
For some six months, until its absence was observed by the family doctor during my annual phycial examination. I pondered my mystery, more than once wondering- for there was no possibility that did not enter my head, none - if the testicle could have taken a dive backwards toward the bowel and there begun to convert itself into just such an egg as I had observed my mother yank in a moist yellow cluster from the dark interior of a chicken whose guts she was emptying into the garbage. What if breasts began to grown on me, too? What if my penis went dry and brittle, and one day, while I was urinating, snapped off in my hand? Was I being transformed into a girl? Or worse, into a boy such as I understood (from the playgound grapevine) that Robert Ripley of “Believe it or not” would pay “a reward” of a hundred thousand dollars for? Believe it or nor there is a nine-year-old boy in New Jersy who is a boy in every way, except he can have babies.
Who gets the reward? Me, or the person who turns me in?
Doctor Izzie rolled the scrtoal sac between his fingers as though it were the material of a suit he was considering buying, and then told my father that I would have to be given a series of male hormone shots. One of my testicles had never fully-descended-unusual, not unheard of… but if the shots don’t work, asks my father in alarm. Wh then-! Here iam sent out into the waiting room to look at a magazine.
The shots work. I am spared the knife.
有关键情节透露