《Her Body and Other Parties》“派對恐懼症”：身体与其他事件的阅读分享

By Carmen Maria Machado

短評（不夠短版）：No one gets away unscathed, few get away at all in these brilliant stories.

慢吞吞看了好幾天。Carmen Machado的敘述蠻特別的，重復的段落、直白的語言、略帶靈異、奇幻色彩的故事，一時之間分不清她是在描寫現實，還是在講述Angela Carters Book of Fairy Tales里那些恐怖傳說。我之前看到豆瓣短評裡有人拿她和 Carson McCullers做比較，但讀過之後我覺得她們帶給我的感受完全不一樣。McCullers的寫作風格頗為沈鬱，小說作品主要以難以預測、莫名其妙卻又無處不在的荒誕的愛和即使有荒誕的愛也仍然無法改變的、深入骨髓的孤獨為主題。McCullers是敏感的，她善於將階級憂慮隱去，內化成人物心中永恆不變的孤獨，將處在上層階級和底層之間的中產階級在社會大變革的時代下處在夾縫中的尷尬處境化作一聲憂鬱的嘆息。而 Carmen Machado則是一種很奇詭的文風，她筆下的故事充滿了一種奇妙的揭示力，能讓人意識到日常的兩性關係乃至愛情之中都潛伏著暴力：自由和無力可以同時發生，或者說，發生中和。每個自然段都讓人悚然，在看似是划痕的地方，細看都是傷口。（讀她的書是有挑戰性的，進入她建構的意象世界並不容易。但即使是在茂密如叢林般的隱喻裡，依然能夠感受到 Machado 作為一名女性作家，她的文字裡那令人萬分痛苦又無比熾熱的反叛精神。）

Some reading notes:

There are two stories that stand out to me the most in this collection. The first being "The Husband Stitch," the opening story and inspiration for the cover art. It tells of a young womans sexual awakening, her marriage, and the difficult birth of her one and only child. She gives everything of herself to both her husband and son, while trying to protect this one small part of herself (this is physically manifested as a ribbon tied around her neck). The narrators husband becomes fixated on her green ribbon, not because it is itself a mystery demanding to be unlocked, but because it belongs to this woman and her husband cannot fathom why she should not want to share it with him. Even her son, small as he is, must eventually be warned away from the ribbon. One of my favorite elements of this story is the authors inclusion of these interactive annotations at the end of key scenes.

“If you are reading this story out loud, prepare a soda can full of pennies. When you arrive at this moment, shake it loudly in the face of the people closest to you. Observe their expressions of startled fear, then betrayal. Notice how they never look at you exactly the same way for the rest of your days.”

This excerpt comes after she is forced to startle her child with a can full of pennies in order to stop him from pulling her ribbon. She ends the scene by saying something has shifted between them and their relationship is never the same.

"The Resident" is another story that ended up being one of my favorites. The story opens with a woman driving to the mountains to take part in a type of retreat for various artists. The narrator makes the trip to a familiar area she used to visit as a Girl Scout. There are hints of a traumatic event that happened in the past.

During this time of isolation and loss, I think many of us can identify with the experience of seeing an empty space in the mirror where we once saw what we were supposed to. There is no manual for this, nobody to compete with at this game. But "The Resident" offers a message of hope for those of us who are, in various ways, transient, confined, undefined. For the queer woman, the madwoman, the sentinel who refuses to comply—or for me, who wishes to leap into a new life—"The Resident" suggests that the absence of authority might also be an opportunity to create ones own.