日誌

今天讀的書：

Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates

香港的書店有點不濟。Richard Yates 的作品，只 carry 了一本《浮生路》，而且還是 movie-tie-in 版本！真係冇嘢講！

看了約四分一，果然名不虛傳，文字相當優美、準確而映像化。開章寫 April Wheeler 在蹩腳的社區劇團演出 Robert E. Sherwood 的三幕劇《The Petrified Forest》（1936年被荷里活搬上銀幕），April 演比堤 • 戴維絲 （Betty Davies）的角色，一出場時教人驚艷，但越演卻越泄氣，還有寫那群無可救藥地沾沾自喜、衣冠楚楚但卻沉悶死板的偽善的 suburban 中產階級，幾乎立刻便把讀者牽進去那個正在富起來、但卻叫人逐漸窒息的五十年代美國社會。不妨試看這段文字：

"At intermission the audience straggled out to smoke and wander in uncomfortable groups around the high-school corridor, examining the high-school bulletin board and wiping damp palms down their slim-cut trousers and their graceful cotton skirts. None of them wanted to go back and go through with the second and final act, but they all did." （劇團借了一家中學的禮堂作演出地點。）

再看他怎樣形容一名 Wheeler 夫婦（留意這個姓氏對這對一度對自己的才能與未來充滿著不切實際的憧憬的年輕夫婦來說，是如何的 ironical）的典型的中產階級鄰居，Mrs. Givings （同樣 ironical 的姓氏）：

“Mrs. Givings's cosmetics seemed always to have been applied in a frenzy of haste, of impatience to get the whole silly business over and done with, and she was constantly in motion, a trim, leather-skinned woman in her fifties whose eyes expressed a religious belief in the importance of keeping busy. Even when she stood still there was kinetic energy in the set of her shoulders and the hang of her loose, angrily buttoned-up cloths; when sitting was inevitable she always chose straight chairs and used them sparingly, and it was hard to imagine her ever lying down. Nor was it easy to picture her face asleep, free from the tension of its false smiles, its little bursts of social laughter and its talk."