 |
| First published in 1965 |
All actions are packed within a single day, from dawn to midnight, in this funny little book recommended by Kotaro Isaka. Of the ten passages of parody or pastiche mimicking Joseph Conrad, Graham Greene, Ernest Hemingway, etc., I can only recognise the too obvious allusions to Kafka and Ulysses.
It is conceivable that the Church commanded far more respects in the early 1960s than it does nowadays. Still, for a reader harbouring not much affection for children and no illusion about the scientific common sense of Catholics, this ordeal over the doctrine of Natural Law is more an object of scorn than humour. The suggestion of a menopause repentance after temporary apostatizing is a plausible way out of this folly.
Adam's occupation of a precious padded seat in the Reading Room without much progress on any academic task for a whole day evokes nostalgia for my days at university.
As the seat was actually the one used by Karl Marx when he was researching Das Kapital, it attracted a cultural delegation of three Chinese, in the author’s words, “not the Westernised, Hong Kong Chinese draped in American-style suits and wielding sophisticated cameras, but authentic Chinese Chinese, dressed in loose, belted uniforms of some drab, coarse-grained material.” After a half century the authentic Chinese Chinese have had their fair share of sophisticated cameras or iPhones, but hopefully there remain subtle differences between the two groups of people.
大英博物館が倒れる
ロッジ・デイヴィッド【著】
内容情報
奨学金も切れようというのに論文が一向に捗らない3人の子持ちのカトリックの大学院生アダムはまたも妻が妊娠したのではないかと心を痛めながら、おんぼろスクーターでいつものように大英博物館の閲覧室に向かうが、珍無類の事件に次々と巻き込まれてしまう。ロッジ会心の出世作。
********************
奨学金：しょうがくきん
一向に~ない：いっこうに (no ~ at all)
捗る：はかどる
心を痛める：こころをいためる (horrify)
おんぼろ：tattered, dilapidated
スクーター：scooter
大英博物館：だいえいはくぶつかん
閲覧室：えつらんしつ
珍無類：ちんむるい (extraordinary)
次々：つぎつぎ
会心の作：かいしんのさく (work after one's heart)
出世作：しゅっせさく (work of art or literature that brings fame)
Comments
Post a Comment