アメリカ文学史へのアプローチ : 作品100選

アメリカ文学史へのアプローチ : 作品100選

著者 多田 敏男, 中山 喜代市, 谷口 義朗

発行年 1995‑03‑28

URL http://hdl.handle.net/10112/00020091

第

1 3

章 第二次世界大戦後の文学

第二次世界大戦後アメリカ合衆国は、経済学者ジョン・ケネス・ガルプレイ ス(JohnKenneth Galbraith)の書の表題どおりの「豊かな社会」であり、大国

としてその繁栄をほしいままにした。だが、それはアメリカにとって政治的不 安の時代でもあった。ソビエト連邦と原子爆弾を使った第三次世界大戦が必ず 勃発するという不安と共産主義に対する不安である。上院議員ジョウゼフ・

マッカーシー(JosephMcCarthy)が共産党の恐怖を煽りたて、大学教授や作家 などの知識人を対象とした、いわゆる「赤狩り」を行なって、共産党員でない 人までも査問したため、往時の「魔女狩り」のような異常な恐怖の旋風が吹き 荒れたのであった。

しかし若い作家や詩人にとって、このような政治的不安は彼ら自身の哲学的 心理的問題ほど深刻ではなかった。また彼らは芸術の技巧的実験にもあまり興 味を示さなかった。彼らは新たな重要なテーマを展開しようとしていたが、そ のテーマは、いってみれば、昔ながらの「私とは何者なのか？」といった問題 にほかならなかった。そして黒人作家やユダヤ系作家は彼らの文化的民族的背 景にその解答を求めようとしたが、他の作家は現代の哲学や心理学にそれを求 めようとした。そして若きビート族は東洋の宗教に、特に日本の禅に解答の糸 口を求めようとしたのは興味深い。

黒人作家とユダヤ系作家のことはあとに譲って、まず「ビート・ジェネレー ション」の文学活動について簡単に述べると、戦後の繁栄の社会にあって、そ の物質主義に背を向けて、貧困に甘んじ、ひたすら思索し行動する若者による 芸術家の集団が誕生したことに、その非生産性を批判する人もあるかもしれな いが、まず第一の意義を認めたい。彼らが自らを「ビート」と呼ぶのは、彼ら がbeat(en)された、つまり「疲れ果てた」、「打ち負かされた」存在であると 意識するからであり、また彼らはジャズの激しいリズムの打つ音(beat)を好む からだともいう。彼らは未来の不安を捨てて現在の瞬間の喜びに生き、麻薬と セックスと放浪を楽しむ。このように述べてくると、かつてのロスト・ジェネ レーションの作家らと共通する傾向が少なくない。ただ同じ傾向を一歩突き進 めたところが認められるだけであろう。当然彼らはロスト・ジェネレーション の作家と比較され、後者よりも低く評価されがちである。彼らのなかから フィッツジェラルドもヘミングウェイもまだ育っていないというのである。長 らく海外生活をして大胆にセックスの解放と自由の追求を表現してきたヘン リー・ミラー(HenryMiller, 1891‑1980)が帰国して、カリフォルニア州のビッ グ・サーに落ち着くと途端に、彼はビート族にとって教祖的存在となり、多く のビート族の若者が教えを求めて訪れたという風聞もあった。ここではジャッ ク・ケロアック(JackKerouac, 1922‑69)の作品、ビート・ジェネレーションの 聖書というべき『路上』(Onthe Road, 1957)を紹介しておこう。

マッカーシー旋風の吹き荒れた50年代の「閉ざされた」順応の時代から、政 治的にも文化的にも「開かれた」 60年代に入ると、アメリカ合衆国はヴェトナ ム戦争の泥沼にのめりこむ。国内における反戦運動、公民権運動とあいまって、

反体制運動の気運が一気にたかまり、激動の時代を迎えることになる。奴隷解 放宣言から100年目の1963年8月に黒人の公民権運動のためのデモンストレー

ションとしてワシントン大行進が行われたが、この時のキング牧師のスピーチ は世界の歴史に残るものであった。

だが、当時の一般的な文学的状況としては、従来の、特に30年代の政治やマ ルキシズム色の濃い小説からの脱皮がはかられ、「ティファニーで朝食を

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(Breakfast at Tiffany's,  1958)で知られるトルーマン・カポーテイ(Truman Capote, 1924‑84)が『冷血J(InCold Blood, 1966)のような、小説とジャーナ

リズムの境界の不明確ないわゆるノンフィクション・ノヴェルを書いて脚光を あび、ウィリアム・スタイロン(WilliamStyron,  1925‑ )は大部な「ナット・

ターナーの告白』(TheConfessions of Nat Turner, 1967)を世に問うた。また、

風俗小説で知られるジョン・アップダイク(JohnUpdike, 1932‑)は「走れウ サギJ(Rabbit,Run, 1960)を発表し、ひとたび人気をえると、その後「ウサギ・

シリーズ」を10年ごとに次々と発表し、話題となった。

Jack Kerouac (1922‑69) 

Kerouac was born Jean‑Louis Kerouac in  Lowell, Massachusetts, and educated at  Columbia University. After spending some time as a merchant seaman and wandering  around the USA he published the first of his semi‑autobiographical novels,  The Town  and the City (1950), about a family in his home town. On the Road (1957), his best‑ known book, describes the lifestyle and the often aimless search for significant experience  of the Beats. The book established Kerouac as the novelist of the Beats just as Howl  had identified Allen Ginsberg as their poet. The Subterraneans and The Dharma Bums  (both 1958), Tristessa (1960), Big Sur(1962) and Desolation Angels (1965) are all products  of the Beat consciousness; Doctor Sax and Maggie Cassidy (both 1959) and Visions of  Gerard (1963) are evocations of Kerouac's boyhood. Satori in Paris (1966) is  an account  of his quest for his Breton ancestors. Among his other books are Lonesome Traveller  (1960; travel sketches), Mexico City Blues (1959; verse) and Book of Dreams (1961). 

Visions of Cody, written in  1951‑2, was published posthumously in 1972.  On the Road 

In the month of July 1947, having saved about fifty dollars from old veteran  benefits, I was ready to go to the West Coast. My friend Remi Boncoeur had  written me a letter from San Francisco, saying I should come and ship out with  him on an around‑the‑world liner.  He swore he could get me into the engine  room. I wrote back and said I'd be satisfied with any old freighter so long as I  could take a few long Pacific trips and come back with enough money to support  myself in my aunt's house while I finished my book. He said he had a shack in  Mill City and I would have all the time in the world to write there while we went  through the rigmarole of getting the ship. He was living with a girl called Lee  Ann; he said she was a marvelous cook and everything would jump. Remi was  an old prep‑school friend, a Frenchman brought up in Paris and a really mad 

guy - I didn't know how mad at this time. So he expected me to arrive in ten days. My aunt was all in accord with my trip to the West; she said it would do me good, I'd been working so hard all winter and staying in too much; she even didn't complain when I told her I'd have to hitchhike some. All she wanted was for me to come back in one piece. So, leaving my big half-manuscript sitting on top of my desk, and folding back my comfortable home sheets for the last time one morning, I left with my canvas bag in which a few fundamental things were packed and took off for the Pacific Ocean with the fifty dollars in my pocket.

I'd been poring over maps of the United States in Paterson for months, even reading books about the pioneers and savoring names like Platte and Cimarron and so on, and on the road-map was one long red line called Route 6 that led from the tip of Cape Cod clear to Ely, Nevada, and there dipped down to Los Angeles. I'll just stay on 6 all the way to Ely, I said to myself and confidently started. To get to 6 I had to go up to Bear Mountain. Filled with dreams of what I'd do in Chicago, in Denver, and then finally in San Fran, I took the Seventh Avenue subway to the end of the line at 242nd Street, ... (Part I, Chapter 2) :veteran benefits ftE~1J.A~~J / Mill City~ rf 7 7"

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· Henry Miller (1891-1980)

Born in New York, he left college after just two months and took various jobs before moving to Paris in 1930. He lived there until 1939, recording his promiscuous lifestyle in the autobiographical Tropic o/Cancer(l934). Because of its sexual frankness, the book was suppressed in both the USA and England. Black Spring (1936), and Tropic of Capricorn (1939), an account of his years with the Western Union telegraph company, were also suppressed.

Following a trip to Greece in 1939, he produced The Colossus of Maroussi (1941). He returned to the USA in 1940. The Plight of the Creative Artist in the United States of America (1944), The Air-Conditioned Nightmare (1945) and Remember to Remember (1947) all decry the materialism of his native land. Miller was also a painter, and with Hilaire Hiler and William Saroyan he wrote Why Abstmct?(1945), a discussion of modern painting. Among his other notable works are The World of Sex (1940), Books in My Life 0951), The Time of the Assassins: A Study of Rimbaud (1956) and a trilogy - Sexus (1949), Plexus (1953; first published in French, 1952) and Nexus (1960) - collectively

titled The Rosy Crucifixion. My Life and Times, a heavily illustrated volume, appeared in 1971.

Sexus

It must have been a Thursday night when I met her for the first time - at the dance hall. I reported to work in the morning, after an hour or two's sleep, looking like a somnambulist. The day passed like a dream. After dinner I fell asleep on the couch and awoke fully dressed about six the next morning. I felt thoroughly refreshed, pure at heart, and obsessed with one idea - to have her at any cost. Walking through the park I debated what sort of flowers to send with the book I had promised her (Winesburg, Ohio). I was approaching my thirty-third year, the age of Christ crucified. A wholly new life lay before me, had I the courage to risk all. Actually there was nothing to risk: I was at the bottom rung of the ladder, a failure in every sense of the word.

It was a Saturday morning, then, and for me Saturday has always been the best day of the week. I come to life when others are dropping off with fatigue;

my week begins with the Jewish day of rest. That this was to be the grand week of my life, to last for seven long years, I had no idea of course. I knew only that the day was auspicious and eventful. To make the fatal step, to throw everything to the dogs, is in itself an emancipation: the thought of consequences never entered my head. To make absolute, unconditional surrender to the woman one loves is to break every bond save the desire not to lose her, which is the most terrible bond of all.

I spent the morning borrowing right and left, dispatched the book and flowers, then sat down to write a long letter to be delivered by a special messenger. I told her that I would telephone her later in the afternoon. At noon I quit the office and went home. I was terribly restless, almost feverish with impatience.

To wait until five o'clock was torture. I went again to the park, oblivious of everything as I walked blindly over the downs to the lake where the children were sailing their boats .... Above everything else I wanted to hear her voice, know that she was still alive, that she had not already forgotten me. To be able to put a nickel in the slot every day of my life henceforth, to be able to hear her say hello, that and nothing more was the utmost I dared hope for. If she would promise me that much, and keep her promise, it wouldn't matter what happened.

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William Styron (1925-

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He was born in Newport News, Virginia, and educated at Davidson College and Duke University. His first novel, Lie Down in Darkness, was published in 1951. Other novels include 1be Long March (1952), Set 1bts House on Fire (1960), 1be Confessions of Nat Turner 0967), and Sophie's Choice 0979). His work generally concerns forms of oppression, ranging from that of the family to the wider social issues of racism and politics. His account of Nat Turner's rebellion met with considerable protest from the black community; William Styron 's Nat Turner: Ten Black Writers Respond (1968) contains essays which reflect the animosity toward his 'white' approach to race relations.

In Sophie's Choice, his most commercially successful novel to date, he deals with the horrors of the Holocaust as it affects the lives of those who survived the concentration camps and Nazi persecution. 1bts Quiet Dust(l982) is a collection of essays and Darkness

Visible 0990) an account of his battle with depression.

Sophie '.5 Choice

In those days cheap apartments were almost impossible to find in Manhattan, so I had to move to Brooklyn. This was in 1947, and one of the pleasant features of that summer which I so vividly remember was the weather, which was sunny and mild, flower-fragrant, almost as if the days had been arrested in a seemingly perpetual springtime. I was grateful for that if for nothing else, since my youth, I felt, was at its lowest ebb. At twenty-two, struggling to become some kind of writer, I found that the creative heat which at eighteen had nearly consumed me with its gorgeous, relentless flame had flickered out to a dim pilot light registering little more than a token glow in my breast, or wherever my hungriest aspirations once resided. It was not that I no longer wanted to write, I still yearned passionately to produce the novel which had been for so long captive in my brain. It was only that, having written down the first few fine paragraphs, I could not produce any others, or - to approximate Gertrude Stein's remark about a lesser writer of the Lost Generation - I had the syrup but it wouldn't pour. To make matters worse, I was out of a job and had very little money and was self- exiled to Flatbush - like others of my countrymen, another lean and lonesome young Southerner wandering amid the Kingdom of the Jews.

Call me Stingo, which was the nickname I was known by in those days, if I was called anything at all. The name derives from my prep-school days down in my native state of Virginia. This school was a pleasant institution to which I was sent at fourteen by my distraught father, who found me difficult to handle after my mother died. Among my other disheveled qualities was apparently an inattention to personal hygiene, hence I soon became known as Stinky. But the years passed. The abrasive labor of time, together with a radical change of habits (I was in fact shamed into becoming almost obsessively clean), gradually wore down the harsh syllabic brusqueness of the name, slurring off into the more attractive, or less unattractive, certainly sportier Stingo.

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Truman Capote (1924-84)

Capote was born in New Orleans. He attended the prestigious academies of the Trinity School and St. John's, but left school at the age of seventeen. Fascinated by New York theater, Capote worked at a number of locales before being employed by The New Yorker. As he grew older, and more self-parodic, Capote became the friend of celebrities and often received more attention as a personality than as an author. Capote's prose is both sensitive and nostalgic. His works include Other Voices, Other Rooms (1948), Local Color (1950), The Grass Harp (1951), Breakfast at Tiffany's (1958), In Cold Blood (1966), and Answered Prayers (unfinished and posthumous, 1985).

Breakfast at Tiffany's

I am always drawn back to places where I have lived, the houses and their neighbourhoods. For instance, there is a brownstone in the East Seventies where, during the early years of the war, I had my first New York apartment. It was one room crowded with attic furniture, a sofa and fat chairs upholstered in that itchy, particular red velvet that one associates with hot days on a train. The walls were stucco, and a colour rather like tobacco-spit. Everywhere, in the bathroom too, there were prints of Roman ruins freckled brown with age. The single window looked out on a fire escape. Even so, my spirits heightened whenever I felt in my pocket the key to this apartment; with all its gloom, it still was a place of my own, the first, and my books were there, and jars of pencils to sharpen, everything I needed, so I felt, to become the writer I wanted to be.

It never occurred to me in those days to write about Holly Golightly, and probably it would not now except for a conversation I had with Joe Bell that set the whole memory of her in motion again.

Holly Golightly had been a tenant in the old brownstone; she'd occupied the apartment below mine. As for Joe Bell, he ran a bar around the corner on Lexington Avenue; he still does. Both Holly and I used to go there six, seven times a day, not for a drink, not always, but to make telephone calls: during the war a private telephone was hard to come by. Moreover, Joe Bell was good about taking messages, which in Holly's case was no small favour, for she had a tremendous many.

Of course this was a long time ago, and until last week I hadn't seen Joe Bell

in several years. Off and on we'd kept in touch, and occasionally I'd stopped by his bar when passing through the neighbourhood; but actually we'd never been strong friends except in as much as we were both friends of Holly Golightly. Joe Bell hasn't an easy nature, he admits it himself, he says it's because he's bachelor and has a sour stomach. Anyone who knows him will tell you he's a hard man to talk to. Impossible if you don't share his fixations, of which Holly is one.

Some others are: ice hockey, Weimaraner dogs, Our Gal Sunday (a soap serial he has listened to for fifteen years), and Gilbert and Sullivan - he claims to be related to one or the other, I can't remember which.

And so when, late last Tuesday afternoon, the telephone rang and I heard ']oe Bell here,' I knew it must be about Holly. He didn't say so, just: 'Can you rattle right over here? It's important,' and there was a croak of excitement in his froggy voice.

I took a taxi in a downpour of October rain, and on my way I even thought she might be there, that I would see Holly again.

But there was no one on the premises except the proprietor. Joe Bell's is a quiet place compared to most Lexington Avenue bars. It boasts neither neon nor television. Two old mirrors reflect the weather from the streets; and behind the bar, in a niche surrounded by photographs of ice-hockey stars, there is always a large bowl of fresh flowers that Joe Bell himself arranges with matronly care.

That is what he was doing when I came in.

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John Updike (1932- )

The son of a writer (his mother) and a mathematics teacher (his father), Updike was born in Shillington, Pennsylvania. A highly motivated and successful student, Updike won a scholarship to Harvard University, where he was elected president of the humorous Harvard Lampoon. Upon his graduation in 1954, Updike went to England to study art at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Arts. In 1955 Updike began to contribute to The New Yorker, and since that time he has published more than thirty books. A winner of numerous awards, including the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize, Updike has achieved a kind of celebrity status. Updike has written novels, short stories, poetry, plays, criticism, and children's books. His works include The Same Door (1959), The Poorhouse Fair (1959), Rabbit, Run (1960), Pigeon Feathers (1962), The Magic Flute (1962), Telephone Poles (1963), The Centaur (1963), Couples (1968), Bech: A Book (1970), Rabbit Redux (1971), Marry Me (1976), The Coup (1978), Rabbit

Is Rieb (1980), Beeb Is Back (1982), Hugging the Shore (1983), 7be Witches of Eastwick (1984), and Roger's Ve'3ion (1986).

Rabbit, Run

Boys are playing basketball around a telephone pole with a backboard bolted to it. Legs, shouts. The scrape and snap of Keds on loose alley pebbles seems to catapult their voices high into the moist March air blue above the wires. Rabbit Angstrom, coming up the alley in a business suit, stops and watches, though he's twenty-six and six three. So tall, he seems an unlikely rabbit, but the breadth of white face, the pallor of his blue irises, and a nervous flutter under his brief nose as he stabs a cigarette into his mouth partially explain the nickname, which was given to him when he too was a boy. He stands there thinking. The kids keep coming, they keep crowding you up.

His standing there makes the real boys feel strange. Eyeballs slide. They're doing this for themselves, not as a show for some adult walking around town in a double-breasted cocoa suit. It seems funny to them, an adult walking up the alley at all. Where's his car? The cigarette makes it more sinister still. Is this one of those going to offer them cigarettes or money to go out in back of the ice plant with him? They've heard of such things but are not too frightened; there are six of them and one of him.

The ball, rocketing off the crotch of the rim, leaps over the heads of the six and lands at the feet of the one. He catches it on the short bounce with a quickness that startles them. As they stare hushed he sights squinting through blue clouds of weed smoke, a suddenly dark silhouette like a smoke-stack against the afternoon spring sky, setting his feet with care, wiggling the ball with nervousness in front of his chest, one widespread white hand on top of the ball and the other underneath, jiggling it patiently to get some adjustment in air itself. The cuticle moons on his fingernails are big. Then the ball seems to ride up the right lapel of his coat and comes off his shoulder as his knees dip down, and it appears the ball will miss because though he shot from an angle the ball is not going toward the backboard. It was not aimed there. It drops into the circle of the rim, whipping the net with a ladylike whisper. 'Hey!' he shouts in pride.

'Luck,' one of the kids says.

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1 4 章

ポストモダニズム

大戦後しばらく時をおいて、ジョウゼフ・ヘラー(JosephHeller, 1923‑ )の

『キャッチ 22』(Catcb‑22,1961)に代表されるプラック・ユーモアやアプサード

（不条理）の文学の作家たちが輩出したのが、 60年代における文学の風潮であ り、当時のポストモダニストたちの特徴をよく表しているといえよう。

「コロンビア・アメリカ小説史』(TheColumbia Htstory of the American Novel,  1988)には、ポストモダン・フィクション、とりわけ、「物語の中で物語が語ら れる」という『アラビアン・ナイト』の手法を再現したメタフィクションにか かわるものとして、ウラジミール・ナボコフ(VladimirNabokov, 1899‑1977)の

「ロリータ』(Loltta,1955)、ジョン・バース(JohnBarth, 1930‑)の『フローティ ング・オペラ』(TheFloattng opera, 1956)、ドナルド・バーセルミ(Donald Barthelme, 1931‑89)の『白雪姫』(SnowWbtte, 1967)、カート・ヴォネガット (Kurt Vonnegut, 1922‑ )の『スローターハウス5号』(Slaughterhouse‑Five, 1969)、 トマス・ピンチョン(ThomasPynchon, 1937‑ )の『V.』(V.,1963)や

『重力の虹』(Gravity'sRainbow, 1973)のほか、数人の作家や作品が挙げられて いる。

このように戦後の文学は、一般的にみてポストモダニズムの時代であるとい えよう。それはモダニズムがそうであったように、世界大戦という社会的大変 動後において起こるべくして起こったアヴァン・ギャルド（前衛）的風潮で あった。

その他の作家として、『ワップショット家の人びと』(TheWapshot Chronicle,  1957)や「ワップショット家のスキャンダル』(TheWapshot Scandal, 1964)に おいて倦怠した現代中産階級を批判したジョン ・チーウァー(JohnCheever,  1912‑82)がいるし、レイモンド・カーヴァー(RaymondCarver, 1939‑88)はミ ニマリズムの短篇作家としてよく知られている。

Vladimir Nabokov (1899‑1977) 

Born in the Czarist Russian city of St. Petersburg, Nabokov immigrated with his family  after the Russian Revolution to London and Berlin. During his long, cosmopolitan life,  Nabokov lived variously in Germany, Britain, France, and the United States. Educated  at Trinity College, Cambridge, Nabokov taught at Wellesley College and Cornell University  while in the United States during the 1940s and 1950s. Widely considered a literary  genius ‑ many consider Nabokov to be the most influential postmodern writer ‑ he  created difficult, metafictional books, characterized by a combination of erudition and  humor. Incorporating aspects of the author's personal history, passions, and aesthetic  prejudices

—

^{for example, Russian history, butterflies, chess,} and word games ‑ Nabokov's books include Lolita (1955), Pale Fire (1962), and Ada (1969). In 1960  Nabokov returned to Europe and lived in the top floor of the Palace Hotel in Montreux,  Switzerland, until his death. 

Lolita 1

Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.

She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line.

But in my arms she was always Lolita.

Did she have a precursor? She did, indeed she did. In point of fact, there might have been no Lolita at all had I not loved, one summer, a certain initial girl-child. In a princedom by the sea. Oh when? About as many years before Lolita was born as my age was that summer. You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style.

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, exhibit number one is what the seraphs, the misinformed, simple, noble-winged seraphs, envied. Look at this tangle of thorns.

2

I was born in 1910, in Paris. My father was a gentle, easy-going person, a salad of racial genes: a Swiss citizen, of mixed French and Austrian descent, with a dash of the Danube in his veins. I am going to pass around in a minute some lovely, glossy-blue picture-postcards. He owned a luxurious hotel on the Riviera.

His father and two grandfathers had sold wine, jewels and silk, respectively. At thirty he married an English girl, daughter of Jerome Dunn, the alpinist, and grand- daughter of two Dorset parsons, experts in obscure subjects - palaeopedology and Aeolian harps, respectively. My very photogenic mother died in a freak accident (picnic, lightning) when I was three, and, save for a pocket of warmth in the darkest past, nothing of her subsists within the hollows and dells of memory, ...

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)

Heller was born and educated in Brooklyn, New York. He later attended Columbia University and then worked in the theater and television. During World War II, Heller served in the United States Army Air Force and later satirized his experiences in Catch- 22 (1961). A writer of plays and fiction, Heller turned to teaching. Heller has emerged as a major parodic force in American literature. His works include Something Happened (1974), Good as Gold(l979), God Knows 0984), No l.aughing Matter(l986), and Picture Tbts 0988).

Catch-22 It was love at first sight.

The first time Yossarian saw the chaplain he fell madly in love with him.

Yossarian was in the hospital with a pain in his liver that fell just short of being jaundice. The doctors were puzzled by the fact that it wasn't quite jaundice.

If it became jaundice they could treat it. If it didn't become jaundice and went away they could discharge him. But this just being short of jaundice all the time confused them.

Each morning they came around, three brisk and serious men with efficient mouths and inefficient eyes, accompanied by brisk and serious Nurse Duckett, one of the ward nurses who didn't like Yossarian. They read the chart at the foot of the bed and asked impatiently about the pain. They seemed irritated when he told them it was exactly the same.

"Still no movement?" the full colonel demanded.

The doctors exchanged a look when he shook his head.

"Give him another pill."

Nurse Duckett made a note to give Yossarian another pill, and the four of them moved along to the next bed. None of the nurses liked Yossarian. Actually, the pain in his liver had gone away, but Yossarian didn't say anything and the doctors never suspected. They just suspected that he had been moving his bowels and not telling anyone.

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Donald Barthelme (1931-89)

Born in Philadelphia, Barthelme and his family moved to Houston where his father practiced architecture, a subject later important to Barthelme's fiction. After serving two years in Korea, Barthelme relocated to New York where he soon achieved notoriety for his innovative minimalist stories that appeared in The New Yorker. A prominent postmodernist, Barthelme published his first collection of metafictional stories, Come Back, Dr. Caligari, in 1964, followed by Unspeakable Practices, Unnatural Acts (1968),

City Life (1970), Sadness (1972), A mateu,:,; (1976), Great Days (1979), and Sixty Stories (1981). His novels are Snow Wbite(l967) and 1be Dead Fatber(l976).

Snow White

SHE is a tall dark beauty containing a great many beauty spots: one above the breast, one above the belly, one above the knee, one above the ankle, one above the buttock, one on the back of the neck. All of these are on the left side, more or less in a row, as you go up and down:

The hair is black as ebony, the skin white as snow.

BILL is tired of Snow White now. But he cannot tell her. No, that would not be the way. Bill can't bear to be touched. That is new too. To have anyone touch him is unbearable. Not just Snow White but also Kevin, Edward, Hubert, Henry, Clem or Dan. That is a peculiar aspect of Bill, the leader. We speculate that he doesn't want to be involved in human situations any more. A withdrawal.

Withdrawal is one of the four modes of dealing with anxiety. We speculate that his reluctance to be touched springs from that. Dan does not go along with the anxiety theory. Dan does not believe in anxiety. Dan speculates that Bill's reluctance to be touched is a physical manifestation of a metaphysical condition that is not anxiety. But he is the only one who speculates that. The rest of us support anxiety. Bill has let us know in subtle ways that he doesn't want to be touched. If he falls down, you are not to pick him up. If someone holds out a hand in greeting, Bill smiles. If it is time to wash the buildings, he will pick up his own bucket. Don't hand him a bucket, for in that circumstance there is a chance that your hands will touch. Bill is tired of Snow White. She must have noticed that he doesn't go to the shower room, now. We are sure she has noticed that. But Bill has not told her in so many words that he is tired of her. He has not had the heart to unfold those cruel words, we speculate. Those cruel words remain locked in his lack of heart. Snow White must assume that his absence from the shower room, in these days, is an aspect of his not liking to be touched.

We are certain she has assumed that. But to what does she attribute the "not- liking" itself? We don't know.

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Kurt Vonnegut (1922-

)

Born in Indianapolis, Indiana, Vonnegut attended the Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie-Mellon University). He worked at a variety of vocations, including a stint as a teacher at Massachusetts Hopefield School, work as a freelance writer, and employment as a police reporter for the Chicago City News Bureau. During World War II, he served in the United States Army. He was captured and held as a POW. After his emergence as a novelist, Vonnegut received teaching appointments at a variety of prestigious institutions, including Harvard University and the University of Iowa's famed Writers' Workshop. Vonnegut's interests are multidisciplinary, embracing science, technology, art, and politics. His novels incorporate these themes and frequently blur the boundaries between fiction and science fiction. Vonnegut's numerous works include Player Piano 0952), 1be Sirens of Titan 0959), Mother Night 0962), Cat's Cradle 0963), God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater; or, Pearls Before Swine (1965), Slaughterhouse-Five; or, 1be Children's Crusade 0969), Breakfast of Champions; or, Goodbye Blue Monday!

(1973), Slapstick; or, Lonesome NoMore/(1975), Deadeye Dick(l982), Galapagos(l985), and Bluebeard 0987).

Slaughterhouse-Five

All this happened, more or less. The war parts, anyway, are pretty much true.

One guy I knew really was shot in Dresden for taking a teapot "that wasn't his.

Another guy I knew really didthreaten to have his personal enemies killed by hired gunmen after the war. And so on. I've changed all the names.

I really did go back to Dresden with Guggenheim money (God love it) in 1967. It looked a lot like Dayton, Ohio, more open spaces than Dayton has.

There must be tons of human bone meal in the ground.

I went back there with an old war buddy, Bernard V. O'Hare, and we made friends with a cab driver, who took us to the slaughterhouse where we had been locked up at night as prisoners of war. His name was Gerhard Millier. He told us that he was a prisoner of the Americans for a while. We asked him how it was to live under Communism, and he said that it was terrible at first, because everybody had to work so hard, and because there wasn't much shelter or food or clothing.

But things were much better now. He had a pleasant little apartment, and his daughter was getting an excellent education. His mother was incinerated in the Dresden fire-storm. So it goes.

He sent O'Hare a postcard at Christmastime, and here is what it said:

"I wish you and your family also as to your friend Merry Christmas and a happy New Year and I hope that we'll meet again in a world of peace and freedom in the taxi cab if the accident will."

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Barth (1930- )

Born in Maryland, Barth originally studied at the Juilliard School of Music. This early affinity for music is reflected in his first novel, The Floating Opera (1956). He was associated, by his own admission, with existentialism, and later with the postmodernist movement. Barth's challenging work rejects conventional conceptions of both narrative structure and truth. His novels include 7be Sot-Weed Factor(l960), Giles Goat-Boy(l966), Lost In the Funhouse (1968), Chimera (1972), The Friday Book (1984), and 7be Tidewater Tales (1987).

Tbe Floating Opera

To someone like myself, whose literary activities have been confined since 1920 mainly to legal briefs and Inquiry-writing, the hardest thing about the task at hand - viz., the explanation of a day in 1937 when I changed my mind - is getting into it. I've never tried my hand at this sort of thing before, but I know enough about myself to realize that once the ice is broken the pages will flow all too easily, for I'm not naturally a reticent fellow, and the problem then will be to stick to the story and finally to shut myself up. I've no doubts on that score: I can predict myself correctly almost every time, because opinion here in Cambridge to the contrary, my behavior is actually quite consistent. If other people (my friend Harrison Mack, for instance, or his wife Jane) think I'm eccentric and unpredictable, it is because my actions and opinions are inconsistent with their principles, if they have any; I assure you that they're quite consistent with mine.

And although my principles might change now and then - this book, remember, concerns one such change - nevertheless I always have them aplenty, more than I can handily use, and they usually hang all in a piece, so that my life is never less logical simply for its being unorthodox. Also, I get things done, as a rule.

For example, I've got this book started now, and though we're probably a good way from the story yet, at least we're headed toward it, and I for one have learned to content myself with that. Perhaps when I've finished describing that particular day I mentioned before - I believe it was about June. 21, 1937 - perhaps when I reach the bedtime of that day, if ever, I'll come back and destroy these pages of piano-tuning. Or perhaps not: I intend directly to introduce myself, caution you against certain possible interpretations of my name, explain the significance of this book's title, and do several other gracious things for you, like a host fussing over a guest, to make you as comfortable as possible and to dunk you gently into the meandering stream of my story - useful activities better preserved than scrapped.

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Apart from the broad outlines of Pynchon's personal history, much about his life remains mysterious as a result of his legendary obsession with privacy. Born in Glen Cove, New York, Pynchon attended Cornell University from 1953 to 1955, first studying physics, then English, dropped out to join the Signal Corps, and returned to school in 1957. While working as a technical writer for Boeing in Seattle, Pynchon achieved success writing stories. In 1963 he won the Faulkner Award for his first novel, ^V.

A strange amalgam of spy thriller, quest mythology, alternate history, physics theory, puns, and self-reflexive literary games, the book draws on Pynchon's diverse education and interests, and immediately established him as a prodigious literary talent. Equally complex and challenging, The Crying of Lot 49(1966) and Gravity's Rainbow (1973) further established Pynchon's reputation as one of the most important writers of the last half of the century. His most recent novel is Vineland (1989).

V

Christmas Eve, 1955, Benny Profane, wearing black levis, suede jacket, sneakers and big cowboy hat, happened to pass through Norfolk, Virginia. Given to sentimental impulses, he thought he'd look in on the Sailor's Grave, his old tin can's tavern on East Main Street. He got there by way of the Arcade, at the East Main end of which sat an old street singer with a guitar and an empty Sterno can for donations. Out in the street a chief yeoman was trying to urinate in the gas tank of a '54 Packard Patrician and five or six seamen apprentice were standing around giving encouragement. The old man was singing, in a fine, firm baritone:

Every night is Christmas Eve on old East Main, Sailors and their sweethearts all agree.

Neon signs of red and green Shine upon the friendly scene, Welcoming you in from off the sea.

Santa's bag is filled with all your dreams come true:

Nickel beers that sparkle like champagne, Barmaids who all love to screw,

All of them reminding you

It's Christmas Eve on old East Main.

''Yay chief," yelled a seaman deuce. Profane rounded the corner. With its usual lack of warning, East Main was on him.

Since his discharge from the Navy Profane had been road-laboring and when there wasn't work just traveling, up and down the east coast like a yo-yo; and this had been going on for maybe a year and a half. After that long of more named pavements than he'd care to count, Profane had grown a little leery of streets, especially streets like this. They had in fact all fused into a single abstracted Street, which come the full moon he would have nightmares about. East Main, a ghetto for Drunken Sailors nobody knew what to Do With, sprang on your nerves with all the abruptness of a normal night's dream turning to nightmare. Dog into wolf, light into twilight, emptiness into waiting presence, here were your underage Marine barfing in the street, barmaid with a ship's propeller tattooed on each buttock, one potential berserk studying the best technique for jumping through a plate glass window (when to scream Geronimo? before or after the glass breaks?), a drunken deck ape crying back in the alley because last time the SP's caught him like this they put him in a strait jacket. Underfoot, now and again, came vibration in the sidewalk from an SP streetlights away, beating out a Hey Rube with his night stick; overhead, turning everybody's face green and ugly, shone mercury-vapor lamps, receding in an asymmetric V to the east where it's dark and there are no more bars.

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John Cheever (1912-82)

Born in Quincy, Massachusetts, Cheever was educated in New England. He attended the well-known Thayer Academy, but was expelled at the age of seventeen. This expulsion formed the basis of Cheever's first story, "Expelled," which was published by the New Republic in 1930. Committed to a literary career, Cheever moved to New York City where he wrote book synopses for MGM. During World War II, Cheever served in the United States Army and then returned to what would become a successful literary career. Living in New England suburbia, Cheever exposed the painful and sometimes humorous truths that haunt upper-middle-class existence. The biographies

that have appeared since Cheever's death suggest that his life, too, had hidden aspects.

Alcoholism, familial strife, and sexual guilt were aspects of Cheever's owi;i life, as well as themes in his fiction. His works include The Way Some People Live (1943), The Enormous Radio and Other Stories (1953), 1he Wapshot Scandal (1964), 1he Brigadier and the Golf Widow (1964), Bullet Park (1969), and Falconer 0978).

1be Wapsbot Chronicle

St. Botolphs was an old place, an old river town. It had been an inland port in the great days of the Massachusetts sailing fleets and now it was left with a factory that manufactured table silver and a few other small industries. The natives did not consider that it had diminished much in size or importance, but the long roster of the Civil War dead, bolted to the cannon on the green, was a reminder of how populous the village had been in the 186o's. St. Botolphs would never muster as many soldiers again. The green was shaded by a few great elms and loosely enclosed by a square of store fronts. The Cartwright Block, which made the western wall of the square, had along the front of its second story a row of lancet windows, as delicate and reproachful as the windows of a church. Behind these windows were the offices of the Eastern Star, Dr. Bulstrode the dentist, the telephone company and the insurance agent. The smells of these offices - the smell of dental preparations, floor oil, spittoons and coal gas - mingled in the downstairs hallway like an aroma of the past. In a drilling autumn rain, in a world of much change, the green at St. Botolphs conveyed an impression of unusual permanence. On Independence Day in the morning, when the parade had begun to form, the place looked prosperous and festive.

The two Wapshot boys - Moses and Coverly - sat on a lawn on Water Street watching the floats arrive. The parade mixed spiritual and commercial themes freely and near the Spirit of '76 was an old delivery wagon with a sign saying:

get your fresh fish from Mr. Hiram. The wheels of the wagon, the wheels of every vehicle in the parade were decorated with red, white and blue crepe paper and there was bunting everywhere. The front of the Cartwright Block was festooned with bunting. It hung in folds over the front of the bank and floated from all the trucks and wagons.

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Raymond Carver (1939-88)

Born in Clatskanie, Oregon, Carver attended California State University at Humbolt and later the University of Iowa. Despite his extensive teaching experience - at the

universities of Iowa, Texas, California (Berkeley and Santa Cruz), and Syracuse - he persistently returned to the Pacific Northwest. Carver died in Port Angeles, Washington.

Primarily a writer of short stories, Carver was also a poet of considerable talent. A self- avowed, recovered alcoholic, Carver explored the hidden vulnerabilities of character and exposed the revelatory aspects of ordinary experience. His works include Will You Please Be Quiet, Please (1977), What We Talk About When We Talk About Love (1981), Cathedral (1984), Fires, Essays, Poems and Stories (1984), and Where I'm Calling From (1986).

"Boxes"

My mother is packed and ready to move. But Sunday afternoon, at the last minute, she calls and says for us to come eat with her. "My icebox is defrosting,"

she tells me. "I have to fry up this chicken before it rots." She says we should bring our own plates and some knives and forks. She's packed most of her dishes and kitchen things. "Come on and eat with me one last time," she says. "You and Jill."

I hang up the phone and stand at the window for a minute longer, wishing I could figure this thing out. But I can't. So finally I turn to Jill and say, "Let's go to my mother's for a good-bye meal."

Jill is at the table with a Sears catalogue in front of her, trying to find us some curtains. But she's been listening. She makes a face. "Do we have to?" she says.

She bends down the corner of a page and doses the catalogue. She sighs. "God, we been over there to eat two or three times in this last month alone. Is she ever actually going to leave?" ...

Other people take vacations in the summer, but my mother moves. She started moving years ago, after my dad lost his job. When that happened, when he was laid off, they sold their home, as if this were what they should do, and went to where they thought things would be better. But things weren't any better there, either. They moved again. They kept on moving. They lived in rented houses, apartments, mobile homes, and motel units even. They kept moving, lightening their load with each move they made. A couple of times they landed in a town where I lived. They'd move in with my wife and me for a while and then they'd move on again. They were like migrating animals in this regard, except there was no pattern to their movement.

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第

15

章 ユ ダ ヤ 系 作 家 た ち

第二次世界大戦中すでに、ソール・ベロー(SaulBellow, 1915‑ )が「宙ぶ らりんの男』(DanglingMan, 1944)を発表したが、その後、ノーマン・メイラー (Norman Mailer, 1923‑ )の戦争小説『裸者と死者』(TheNaked and the Dead,  1948)、さらには50年代にはいって、

J. 

^D・サリンジャー(].D. Salinger,  1919‑)の『ライ麦畑で捕まえて』(TheCatcher in the Rye, 1951)、バーナー

ド・マラマッド(BernardMalamud, 1914‑86)の『アシスタント』(TheAssistant,  1957)というふうに、大戦中および戦後におけるユダヤ系作家の活躍が目立っ た。フィリップ・ロス(Philip Roth, 1933‑ )は『さよならコロンバス』

(Goodbye, Columbus, 1959)で頭角を現した。これらの作家たちはほとんど、い まなお活躍している。

ノーマン・メイラーやサリンジャーにはそれほど顕著ではないが、少なくと もベローやマラマッドの作品は、アメリカ社会にあってユダヤ人としてのアイ デンテイティを求めるところに端を発しているといっていい。しかしそのよう なユダヤ人としてのアイデンテイティを求めることを契機として、さらにその ことが押し進められて、ユダヤ人には限らない人間としての実存的なアイデン テイティの追求に問題が深められているのである。ユダヤの伝統にはわれわれ の理解を阻むものも少なくないが、そのような人間的次元にわれわれは訴える ものを感じるのである。しかしロスになると、そのような深刻さはもはや認め られはしない。彼にあっては、ユダヤ社会はすでにあるものとして受け入れら れ、逆にその愚かしさを彼は面白おかしく描くだけである。要するに、ユダヤ 系の社会や文学にも世代の交替がうかがわれるのである。

これらの作家のほかに、 1935年にポーランドからアメリカに亡命したアイ ザック ・B・シンガー(IsaacB. Singer, 1904‑91)の、東欧のユダヤ人社会に根 ざした迷信や神話を一種独特のユーモアをこめてイーデイッシュ語で紹介した 作品も見逃せない。それらはかつて、ナチスが撲滅しようとした文化そのもの だからである。

なお、ベローは1976年に、そして引き続いて、シンガーは1978年にノーベ ル文学賞を受賞していることを付け加えておこう。

Saul Bellow (1915‑) 

The son of a Russian Jewish emigre, and a Canadian by birth, Bellow came to Chicago  when he was nine and grew up in the Midwest. He attended the University of Chicago  and graduated from Northwestern University. A student of anthropology, Bellow began  graduate work at the University of Wisconsin, but as his thesis persisted in "turning out  to be a story," Bellow considered a career in literature. He worked on the WPA Federal  Writers'Project where he became acquainted with a number of New York writers, notably  Delmore Schwartz, and began teaching. Today regarded as a prominent American writer,  Bellow received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1976, following the publication of  Humbolt's Gift (1975). His works include Dangling Man (1944), 1be Victim (1947), 1be 

Adventures of Augie March (1953), Seize the Day (1956), Henderson the Rain King (1959), Herzog (1964), 1be Dean's December Cl 982), and Some Die of Heartbreak Cl 987).

Henderson the Rain King

What made me take this trip to Africa? There is no quick explanation. Things got worse and worse and worse and pretty soon they were too complicated.

When I think of my condition at the age of fifty-five when I bought the ticket, all is grief. The facts begin to crowd me and soon I get a pressure in the chest. A disorderly rush begins - my parents, my wives, my girls, my children, my farm, my animals, my habits, my money, my music lessons, my drunkenness, my prejudices, my brutality, my teeth, my face, my soul! I have to cry, 'No, no, get back, curse you, let me alone!' But how can they let me alone? They belong to me. They are mine. And they pile into me from all sides. It turns into chaos.

However, the world which I thought so mighty an oppressor has removed its wrath from me. But if I am to make sense to you people and explain why I went to Africa I must face up to the facts. I might as well start with the money. I am rich. From my old man I inherited three million dollars after taxes, but I thought myself a bum and had my reasons, the main reason being that I behaved like a bum. But privately when things got very bad I often looked into books to see whether I could find some helpful words, and one day I read, 'The forgiveness of sins is perpetual and righteousness first is not required.' This impressed me so deeply that I went around saying it to myself. But then I forgot which book it was. It was one of thousands left by my father, who had also written a number of them. And I searched through dozens of volumes but all that turned up was money, for my father had used currency for bookmarks - whatever he happened to have in his pockets - fives, tens, or twenties. Some of the discontinued bills of thirty years ago turned up, the big yellowbacks. For old times' sake I was glad to see them and locking the library door to keep out the children I spent the afternoon on a ladder shaking out books and the money spun to the floor. But I never found that statement about forgiveness.

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Norman Mailer (1923-

)

Mailer was born in Long Branch, New Jersey, and grew up in Brooklyn, New York.

At sixteen Mailer graduated from Boys High School and entered Harvard University.