美国小说评论：寻找希望之境
在恰当的状况下雄起。 约书亚-费瑞斯 著。Little, Brown出版，352页。26刀，美亚有售。
To Rise Again at a Decent Hour. **By Joshua Ferris. Little, Brown; 352 pages; $26. Buy from Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk
保罗-欧洛克医生成功地经营着他在公园大道旁的牙科诊所。白天，他劝病人用牙线，晚上则边看红袜队的比赛边吃点咖喱，日复一日，大量的空闲时间给他带来了自我存在的焦虑。
DR PAUL O’ROURKE runs a successful dental practice off Park Avenue. He spends his days persuading patients to floss and his evenings watching Red Sox games in the company of a curry, a Groundhog-Day existence that leaves plenty of time for existential angst.
当某人用保罗的名字创建了网站和社交媒体账户时，他开始了与神秘的创建者进行电邮通讯。——一个人用以色列哲人式的口吻告诉保罗，说他是一个据说在圣经时代被根除的古老团体乌尔姆后裔。是否正是在这未知的宗族大迁徙中，保罗的家庭走散了？他总是渴望融入前女友的部族中（去天主教圣十字神殿和犹太教的活动场所）。加入网上这个神秘组织后，他感到了“皈依，回归到大家庭怀抱中，历史感以及永恒感”。
When someone creates a website and social media accounts in Paul’s name, he begins an e-mail exchange with the mystery creator—a philosophical voice from Israel who claims Paul is a descendant of the Ulms, an ancient group supposedly eradicated during biblical times. Could this unknown diaspora be the family Paul has been missing? He always longed to be embraced by the domestic tribes of his ex-girlfriends (the Christian Santacroces and the Jewish Plotzes). By joining the Ulms he could be “sucked up, subsumed into something greater, historical, eternal”.
读约书亚-费瑞斯的小说， 最好暂时不要怀疑那些看似不可能的故事，而在他精巧的散句和诙谐幽默中感受到轻松。关于部族描述中所虚构出的沉重段落，是用保罗无意识而饶有趣味的回忆来展开的。费瑞斯先生有意嘲弄现代人的超级连接，即永远连接的“机器自我”（手机），同时解构了现代人的信仰基础。要成为乌尔姆，保罗必须愿意怀疑上帝的存在。
When reading a Joshua Ferris novel, it is best to suspend disbelief at the unlikely narrative and relax into his geek-smart prose and wry humour. Weighty passages about a fictional Ulm text are leavened by Paul’s unintentionally amusing recollections. Mr Ferris manages to mock the hyper-connected modern world, with people constantly on their “me machines” (mobile phones), while also deconstructing the foundations of religion. To be an Ulm, Paul must agree to doubt the existence of God.
这本小说风格，比费瑞斯先生早期作品更加理性，但仍以倒霉的保罗作为故事人物。他的内心独白异常滑稽：“想象我能把一切抛在一边，晒黑皮肤，攀岩，摘苹果，买地毯，顶沙拉……听“你二”摇滚，喝沙布利？”他为不能够和哥们在酒吧喝酒，在凳子上大喊“爽”和“给老子满上”而恼怒。但是，他推理说，若他完全将自己与世隔绝，便不会时刻提醒自己是如何与世隔绝的方式了。直到保罗完成了所有的驱魔壮举，这段历程昭示出一个深刻而简单的道理：“永远怀有希望，无论多么绝望。”
This is a more cerebral novel than Mr Ferris’s previous works, but the hapless Paul keeps it grounded. His interior monologues are oddly hilarious: “Think I can just toss everything aside and go tanning and rock climbing and pick apples and shop for rugs and order salad…and listen to U2 and drink Chablis?” He is haunted by his inability to hang out with dude buds on bar stools yelling “Yo” and “Beer me”. But if he alienates himself completely, he reasons, then he won’t be constantly reminded of the ways he is alienated. By the time Paul has exorcised his demons this tour de force delivers a profound yet simple message, that for life to have meaning: “There had to be hope, no matter how hopeless.”
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