经济学人46:嬉皮父母与其儿女

搜索关注在线英语听力室公众号：tingroom，领取免费英语资料大礼包。

　　文艺；我的家庭和一些动物

　　Various Pets Alive and Dead. By Marina Lewycka.

　　《活着以及死去的各种宠物》，玛丽娜·柳薇卡著。

　　Not many authors could successfully mix lentils, bra-burning and free love with city traders, quantitative¹ analysts² and the mathematical calculations that supposedly make naked short selling, CDOs and subprime mortgages infallible. But Marina Lewycka is an exception. The bestselling author of a 2005 hit, “A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian”, has set her fourth book in London and Doncaster and uses farce³, irony⁴ and biting wit to explore serious issues.

　　扁豆，激烈到烧掉胸罩的妇女维权运动，自由恋爱，城市贸易商，为裸卖空进行的数量分析和数学计算，债务抵押债券，次级房贷……能把这些成功地混合在一起而不犯错误，这样的作家不多，玛丽娜·柳薇卡就是其中之一。作为一名畅销书作家，她2005年的《乌克兰拖拉机短史》曾经热卖一时。《活着以及死去的各种宠物》是她的第四本书，书中地点设在伦敦和唐卡斯特，用闹剧、讽刺以及辛辣的智慧来探索严肃的议题。

　　“Various Pets Alive and Dead” features a group of sharply drawn⁵ and sharp-tongued characters. Marcus and Doro, elderly ex-hippies from Solidarity⁶ Hall, a left-wing commune, still wear their slogan T-shirts and crave⁷ the “non-bourgeois non-private non-nuclear non-monogamous community” of their past. To make the present bearable, Marcus is writing a never-ending history of the left-wing movement, while Doro looks after the Down's syndrome⁸ child they are raising. She fulfils her longing⁹ for militant¹⁰ action by campaigning to save local allotments.

　　书中这些人物性格特别的鲜明，其言语表达也十分尖酸辛辣。马库斯和多萝，一对年老的前嬉皮士人物，来自左翼社区团结工会，他们仍然穿着写有标语的T恤衫，仍然渴望旧日里“没有资产阶级、没有私有制、没有核能、没有一夫一妻制度的社区”。可当下的现实如此难熬，马库斯只得寄情写作，书写左翼运动没有休止的历史，而多萝的寄托则在照顾他们领养的患唐氏综合症的小孩，另外，她还参加保护当地土地的运动，也算圆了自己参与斗争运动的梦想。

　　Their daughter Clara (named after Clara Zetkin, a German proto-feminist), and son Serge (Victor Serge, a Belgian-Russian revolutionary) are somewhat different. Clara, a Doncaster schoolteacher, battles to educate children who smell of cigarette smoke, chip fat and urine, while craving¹¹ order, clean bathrooms and a man—preferably Mr Gorst, the headmaster, whose hunky presence makes her giddy with girlish desire.

　　一双儿女却与父母不同，女儿名叫克拉拉，取自女权运动先驱人物德国的克拉拉·蔡特金，儿子谢尔盖，取自俄国革命家维克多·谢尔盖。克拉拉在唐卡斯特一所学校教书，她一边要教好这群油腻腻的浑身烟味和骚味的小孩，一边又要在生活中争取一些秩序，争取能有干净的卫生间，一边还在恋着一个男人——近乎完美的古斯特校长，英俊潇洒令她怦然心动。

　　Her brother Serge, whose parents think he is studying for a Cambridge PhD in maths (a worthy¹² validation¹³ of their ideals), has ditched academic life to become a City fat cat at Financial and Trading Consolidated¹⁴ Alliance (FATCA), in London. When he is not fixated by the figures on his computer screen he fantasises about the figure of Maroushka Malko, a haughty¹⁵ eastern European quant in slinky skirts and slingback shoes “you could stab kittens with”.

　　谢尔盖呢，父母引以为豪，以为他在剑桥攻读数学博士学位，实际上他已放弃学术生涯，就业于伦敦金融与贸易统一联盟，成了金融城一名富佬。不用盯着电脑显示器看数据的时候，他就会幻想着Maroushka Malko的身体，Malko是一个骄傲的数据分析师，来自东欧，穿着紧身裙子、露跟女鞋，那鞋跟绝对可以把小猫给砸死。

　　This quartet takes the story from present to past and back again in a series of sparklingly humorous vignettes. The clever bit is that while whooshing¹⁶ the reader along on a tide of wit, the author also neatly¹⁷ explores the morals and values of different generations and the impact that these have on family dynamics¹⁸. Never has reading about something serious been quite so much fun.

　　这样一个四重奏，用一系列幽默的小插曲，把过去与现在穿插起来。比较巧妙的是，作者不仅妙语连珠，让读者感受噼里啪啦的智慧，而且还同时巧妙地探讨两代人的道德观与价值观，以及不同的观点对于整个家庭的影响。如此严肃的问题，也能探讨得饶有趣味，以前还未读过这样的好书。

分享到：