美国国家公共电台 NPR Francine Prose's 'Mister Monkey' Novel Inspired By Her Granddaughter's Cheeky Comment

Francine Prose's 'Mister Monkey' Novel Inspired By Her Granddaughter's Cheeky Comment

play pause stop mute unmute max volume 00:0006:42repeat repeat off Update Required To play the media you will need to either update your browser¹ to a recent version or update your Flash plugin. SCOTT SIMON, HOST: 

Francine Prose's his new novel is the backstage story of a threadbare musical made from a shopworn children's book that's performed by a ragged² group of actors in a remote-from-Broadway theater that will soon be rubble³ below condos beneath Manhattan's High Line. What's not to love? "Mr. Monkey" is the new book by Francine Prose, who's the author of 21 novels, including a scad of bestsellers. She's the former president of the PEN American Center and a distinguished⁴ visiting writer at Bard⁵ College and joins us from New York. Thanks so much for being with us.

FRANCINE PROSE: Thanks for having me on the show.

SIMON: A remark from your grandchild inspired this story?

PROSE: (Laughter) Yeah. I took my granddaughter, who's nine at the time, but she was about four or five, to a play that was very much like "Mr. Monkey," but it wasn't "Mr. Monkey." And it was a children's musical, and it was way off Broadway. And it was supposed to be bright and funny and raucous⁶ and delightful⁷. And I kept thinking it was kind of tragic⁸ because the budget was so low that the actors' costumes were falling apart, and the lighting⁹ director couldn't find the actors. And I think even my granddaughter sensed that something complicated was going on.

SIMON: Everyone's a critic, aren't they?

PROSE: Everyone's a critic. So at some point in the play, my granddaughter said, in what she thought was a very noisy, loud moment in the play - she said, Grandma, are you interested in this?

SIMON: (Laughter).

PROSE: And - yeah. And it turned out to be a completely silent moment in the theater, and everyone heard it. The actors clearly heard it. And my granddaughter was horrified¹⁰. Even she knew. And I said very loud, yes, I am. So then I had to write the novel so I wouldn't have been lying to her.

SIMON: At the center of much of the story is Margot. Yale School of Drama grad, just like Meryl Streep, I guess.

PROSE: (Laughter) Not exactly.

SIMON: Well, I mean, the Yale part.

PROSE: (Laughter) Right.

SIMON: And she plays Portia (laughter). But Mr. Monkey's Portia, not Shakespeare's - Mr. Monkey's lawyer. What does this play mean to - you mean to Margot in her life - at this point in her life?

PROSE: Well, Margot is really kind of amazed to find herself playing Portia since she had dreams. I mean, she was the star of her Yale Drama School class, and her dreams were of playing Chekhov. She was played Sonya in the in her school production of "Uncle Vanya." And now somehow the mysterious thing has happened, which is decades have gone by, and she's playing Portia McBailey (ph), who is defending a monkey from charges of petty larceny¹¹.

SIMON: A monkey played by a boy in a monkey suit, which is actually a chenille bedspread, right?

PROSE: Yeah, it's a brown chenille bedspread. I mean, that's how low the budget. The heroic costume director, Lakshmi, has had to make a costume out of it - out of a bedspread that she got at Goodwill¹².

SIMON: Could I ask you to read a section?

PROSE: Sure.

SIMON: It's on page 7. I think it's the second full paragraph. The one that begins - they are in this together.

PROSE: Sure.

(Reading) They are in this together. Everyone is happy to be here and disappointed to be here, glad to have a part in a play, glad to work for scale, but truthfully not all that overjoyed to be working in an off-off-off-off-Broadway production of "Mr. Monkey," the umpteenth¹³ revival¹⁴ of a cheesy-but-mysteriously-adorable musical based on the children's classic novel. The actors and the stagehands behave as if they've taken the blood oath not to complain, except for 12-year-old Adam, who whines¹⁵ because his monkey suit smells, and he can't breathe. Only the interns¹⁶ are cheerful, as are Jason (ph) and Danielle (ph), who have taken a break from their drama class to play the Jimson (ph) kids. By the end of the play, their widowed father, Mr. Jimson, marries Portia the lawyer, played by Margot. Jason and Danielle have no idea that "Mr. Monkey," the musical, is not the beginning of something, but rather the middle. Margot hopes it's the middle of something, that something being the bewildering stall in which Margot's life is circling.

SIMON: Has Margot, this creature of the theater, stopped hoping for greatness?

PROSE: (Laughter) No. She still thinks that something could turn around.

SIMON: Yeah.

PROSE: I mean, all the characters in the novel have reached a point at which - or many of them - at which things aren't going exactly the way they planned. But I didn't know what I was doing when I wrote this novel. I really had no idea where it was going. But what kept shocking me as I wrote it was that everybody's life was turning out kind of better than they had imagined - or, frankly¹⁷, that I had imagined. So it never occurred to me that this book would have a kind of hopeful, redemptive, happy ending, but that's where it turned out it was going.

SIMON: Was it fun to come up with the story of "Mr. Monkey" - scenes and occasional lines?

PROSE: (Laughter) Yeah. I mean, I had to write in my head. I could tell you, you know, songs from this musical that never made it onto the page. But I had to write in my head the whole musical. And also, my worst fear was that someone - one of the actors from the actual play - some of them might recognize themselves in the novel.

SIMON: Oh, yeah.

PROSE: So I had to change it so completely that no one would ever know what I'd based it on.

SIMON: Francine, what kind of people wind up in the theater?

PROSE: People who like being other people, I think, which is something that they have in common with novelists. And, also, I think actors are very observant. I know a few actors. I don't know very many. But one of the things that I'm fascinated by is the way they watch people in the same way writers do, picking up little gestures or little - the way they walk or the way they talk, hoping that they can use those things in - when they're called on to play a certain part. And writers do the same thing. I mean, writers are watching to see how people behave and so forth¹⁸.

SIMON: Yeah. Question for you, as the former president of the PEN American Center - is it going to be possible in the future for someone to make a life as a writer when there's so much free stuff out there?

PROSE: (Laughter) I hope so. I hope so. I mean, I think it'll be easier. I mean, what happens to writers is not as bad as what happens to musicians with Spotify. And so for them, it's - you still have to pay something. But people still obviously think that that's possible. I mean, MFA programs are full of young people wanting to be writers. I keep meeting kids who want to be writers, so - and it's all - it's very - it makes me very hopeful. I mean, there's some - somebody's out there still reading, and somebody's still out there wanting to write. So, you know, the novelist Richard Price had said something like the novel will be around at our funeral, so I assume that's true.

SIMON: Francine Prose - her novel "Mr. Monkey" - thanks so much for being with us.

PROSE: Thank you.

1 browser   

n.浏览者

参考例句：

• View edits in a web browser.在浏览器中看编辑的效果。
• I think my browser has a list of shareware links.我想在浏览器中会有一系列的共享软件链接。

2 ragged   

adj.衣衫褴褛的，粗糙的，刺耳的

参考例句：

• A ragged shout went up from the small crowd.这一小群人发出了刺耳的喊叫。
• Ragged clothing infers poverty.破衣烂衫意味着贫穷。

3 rubble   

n.（一堆）碎石，瓦砾

参考例句：

• After the earthquake,it took months to clean up the rubble.地震后，花了数月才清理完瓦砾。
• After the war many cities were full of rubble.战后许多城市到处可见颓垣残壁。

4 distinguished   

adj.卓越的，杰出的，著名的

参考例句：

• Elephants are distinguished from other animals by their long noses.大象以其长长的鼻子显示出与其他动物的不同。
• A banquet was given in honor of the distinguished guests.宴会是为了向贵宾们致敬而举行的。

5 bard   

n.吟游诗人

参考例句：

• I'll use my bard song to help you concentrate!我会用我的吟游诗人歌曲帮你集中精神！
• I find him,the wandering grey bard.我发现了正在徘徊的衰老游唱诗人。

6 raucous   

adj.(声音)沙哑的，粗糙的

参考例句：

• I heard sounds of raucous laughter upstairs.我听见楼上传来沙哑的笑声。
• They heard a bottle being smashed,then more raucous laughter.他们听见酒瓶摔碎的声音，然后是一阵更喧闹的笑声。

7 delightful   

adj.令人高兴的，使人快乐的

参考例句：

• We had a delightful time by the seashore last Sunday.上星期天我们在海滨玩得真痛快。
• Peter played a delightful melody on his flute.彼得用笛子吹奏了一支欢快的曲子。

8 tragic   

adj.悲剧的，悲剧性的，悲惨的

参考例句：

• The effect of the pollution on the beaches is absolutely tragic.污染海滩后果可悲。
• Charles was a man doomed to tragic issues.查理是个注定不得善终的人。

9 lighting   

n.照明，光线的明暗，舞台灯光

参考例句：

• The gas lamp gradually lost ground to electric lighting.煤气灯逐渐为电灯所代替。
• The lighting in that restaurant is soft and romantic.那个餐馆照明柔和而且浪漫。

10 horrified   

a.(表现出)恐惧的

参考例句：

• The whole country was horrified by the killings. 全国都对这些凶杀案感到大为震惊。
• We were horrified at the conditions prevailing in local prisons. 地方监狱的普遍状况让我们震惊。

11 larceny   

n.盗窃（罪）

参考例句：

• The man was put in jail for grand larceny.人因重大盗窃案而被监禁。
• It was an essential of the common law crime of larceny.它是构成普通法中的盗窃罪的必要条件。

12 goodwill   

n.善意，亲善，信誉，声誉

参考例句：

• His heart is full of goodwill to all men.他心里对所有人都充满着爱心。
• We paid ￡10,000 for the shop,and ￡2000 for its goodwill.我们用一万英镑买下了这家商店，两千英镑买下了它的信誉。

13 umpteenth   

adj.第无数次（个）的

参考例句：

• W; `Qmp`tinW/ pron, det: For the umpteenth time, I tell you I don't know! 我告诉你多少次了，我不知道！ 来自辞典例句
• Vera: That's the umpteenth suggestion I've made which you've turned down. 薇拉：这不知是我提出的第几个建议了，你全部不接受。 来自互联网

14 revival   

n.复兴，复苏，（精力、活力等的）重振

参考例句：

• The period saw a great revival in the wine trade.这一时期葡萄酒业出现了很大的复苏。
• He claimed the housing market was showing signs of a revival.他指出房地产市场正出现复苏的迹象。

15 whines   

n.悲嗥声( whine的名词复数 )；哀鸣者v.哀号( whine的第三人称单数 )；哀诉，诉怨

参考例句：

• The colony whines a centerless loud drone that vibrates the neighborhood. 蜂群嗡嗡喧闹的哀鸣振动邻里。 来自互联网
• The web whines with the sound of countless mosquitoes and flies trapped in its folds. 蜘蛛网内发出无数只被困在蜘蛛丝间的蚊子与苍蝇所发出来的声音。 来自互联网

16 interns   

n.住院实习医生( intern的名词复数 )v.拘留，关押( intern的第三人称单数 )

参考例句：

• Our interns also greet our guests when they arrive in our studios. 我们的实习生也会在嘉宾抵达演播室的时候向他们致以问候。 来自超越目标英语 第4册
• The interns work alongside experienced civil engineers and receive training in the different work sectors. 实习生陪同有经验的国内工程师工作，接受不同工作部门的相关培训。 来自超越目标英语 第4册

17 frankly   

adv.坦白地，直率地；坦率地说

参考例句：

• To speak frankly, I don't like the idea at all.老实说，我一点也不赞成这个主意。
• Frankly speaking, I'm not opposed to reform.坦率地说，我不反对改革。

18 forth   

adv.向前；向外，往外

参考例句：

• The wind moved the trees gently back and forth.风吹得树轻轻地来回摇晃。
• He gave forth a series of works in rapid succession.他很快连续发表了一系列的作品。