とにかく散歩いたしましょう

by Yōko Ogawa, 小川 洋子

人気作家の日常。締切を前に白紙の恐怖に怯え、店員とのやりとりに傷つき、ハダカデバネズミに心奪われる。
たとえ何があっても、愛犬と散歩すれば前に進める・・・心温まるエッセー集。

＜目次＞
「る」と「を」
ハンカチは持ったかい
イーヨーのつぼの中
本の模様替え
散歩ばかりしている
ポコポコ頭を叩きたい
盗作を続ける
長編み、中長編み、長々編み
肉布団になる
自分だけの地図を持つ〔ほか〕

（本文より）
”夜眠れない時、世界のどこかで一生懸命働いている人のことを考える。
コインを洗ったり、魚を数えたり、自分に与えられた役目をきちんと果たしている人の姿を思い浮かべる。
すると、明日また、自分は小説を書こうという気持ちになれる。

Genres: Japan

155 pages, Kindle Edition

First published July 9, 2013

About the author

Yōko Ogawa (小川 洋子) was born in Okayama, Okayama Prefecture, graduated from Waseda University, and lives in Ashiya. Since 1988, she has published more than twenty works of fiction and nonfiction. Her novel The Professor and his Beloved Equation has been made into a movie. In 2006 she co-authored „An Introduction to the World's Most Elegant Mathematics“ with Masahiko Fujiwara, a mathematician, as a dialogue on the extraordinary beauty of numbers.

A film in French, "L'Annulaire“ (The Ringfinger), directed by Diane Bertrand, starring Olga Kurylenko and Marc Barbé, was released in France in June 2005 and subsequently made the rounds of the international film festivals; the film, some of which is filmed in the Hamburg docks, is based in part on Ogawa's "Kusuriyubi no hyōhon“ (薬指の標本), translated into French as "L'Annulaire“ (by Rose-Marie Makino-Fayolle who has translated numerous works by Ogawa, as well as works by Akira Yoshimura and by Ranpo Edogawa, into French).

Kenzaburō Ōe has said, 'Yōko Ogawa is able to give expression to the most subtle workings of human psychology in prose that is gentle yet penetrating.' The subtlety in part lies in the fact that Ogawa's characters often seem not to know why they are doing what they are doing. She works by accumulation of detail, a technique that is perhaps more successful in her shorter works; the slow pace of development in the longer works requires something of a deus ex machina to end them. The reader is presented with an acute description of what the protagonists, mostly but not always female, observe and feel and their somewhat alienated self-observations, some of which is a reflection of Japanese society and especially women's roles within in it. The tone of her works varies, across the works and sometimes within the longer works, from the surreal, through the grotesque and the--sometimes grotesquely--humorous, to the psychologically ambiguous and even disturbing.

Reviews

[ツバキ · Rating 4 out of 5]

我覺得滿有趣的。老實說我不算是小川洋子粉絲，雖然滿喜歡她作品中的氛圍，但仔細用現實眼光來看都是些可怕的故事。不過這本散文挺有趣的，可以稍微感受到身為小說家的小川洋子到底都在想些什麼，也稍微能窺見她感受世界的方式。

紀錄一下印象比較深刻的內容。書裡有提到小川洋子經常把一些故事記錯，其中提到她一直記得《奔跑吧，梅洛斯》是一個悲劇，只記得最後梅洛斯雖然完成約定卻精疲力盡而死，但重讀之後卻發現豈止沒有梅洛斯的屍體，最後還有少女遞上衣服，讓人嗅到戀愛的味道。這個經驗實在是太有趣了，雖然不多，但我也有過把某些故事套上自己幻想的劇情，最後還直接塗抹在記憶上的經驗，也有讀過同一個作者用類似的設定、同樣的名字寫出兩篇相似但細節卻不同的書，我翻了寫成長篇的A，卻找不到記憶中該有的片段，最後才發現原來那段是在寫成短篇中的B裡。

另外有一篇小川洋子提到當她書寫不順的時候會讀一本關於裸鼴鼠的書。雖然光看那個名稱我就覺得應該是我腦中浮現的那個生物，但我還是試著google一下，看了圖片之後果然就是！

忘記幾年前，我一時心血來潮看完了《來自新世界》的動畫，裡面就出現了外型跟生態與裸鼴鼠相似的生物，在故事裡面，這群生物為主角們帶來各種災難，讓我打從心底感到害怕，但最可怕的還是主角在故事的最後得知關於這些生物的真相。作者就是用一個故事在鋪陳一個很可怕的真相，看完動畫我整整一個禮拜都睡不好。

光看到裸鼴鼠這三個字又勾起了我上述的回憶，但在小川的眼中這樣的生物似乎還滿治癒的（她是沒精準地用到治癒這個字，但看描述似乎是），讓我再次體會到「我的毒藥可能是你的蜜糖」這句話的確是對的。

[yoshim · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was surprised at Ogawa's dog had been 40kg. My dog is 3kg...

[Ally Yang · Rating 4 out of 5]

【taaze 訂130 -得84】