Monkeyville【翻译】

Monkeyville【翻译】

CERTIFICATE OF APPROVAL
___________________________
MASTER’S THESIS
_________________
This is to certify that the Master’s thesis of
Robert Paul Plantenberg
has been approved by the Examining Committee for the thesis requirement for the Master of
Fine Arts degree in English (Nonfiction Writing) at the May 2012 graduation.
Thesis Committee: __________________________________
Jeffery Porter (Thesis Supervisor)
__________________________________
Ralph Savarese
__________________________________
Judith Pascoe
__________________________________
Ander Monson
ii
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER I: HUMAN PINSETTER……………………………………………………………..1
CHAPTER II: WELL HI THERE………………………………………………………………...6
CHAPTER III: RITUAL….……………………………………………………………………..16
CHAPTER IV: OFF THE CLOCK OR A GREATER CYCLE…….…………………………..39
CHAPTER V: …………………………………………………………………………64
CHAPTER VI: CONJECTURE.………………………………………………………………...69
CHAPTER VII: RETURN …………………………………………….72
CHAPTER VIII: A REAL STORY..…………………………………………………………….76
1
CHAPTER I: HUMAN PINSETTER
“Should we talk about Monkeyville?” I ask.
“Yeah,” Scooter says in his usual upward, slightly Southern-sounding lilt, his mouth
nearly shut.
“Who lives in Monkeyville?”
“Monkeyville’s Uncles.”
Miniature plastic models of horses line the windowsills in Scooter’s bedroom, sorrel
workhorses and black stallions frozen mid-buck, one with an unusual shade of neon green, mares
apart from their foals, separated by an impassable foot or two. If they could unstick themselves
all at once, turn plastic into flesh, they would surely stampede. The tiny horses would be
horrified, suddenly alive and looking at these two huge great ape-men muttering gibberish.
Scooter owns five stuffed animals: Curious George in a red sweater, Curious George in a
yellow sweatshirt, an albino gorilla that’s a bit light on the matting, Shrek and a great big dog.
Ask Scooter, and he’ll tell you that Shrek and the dog are monkeys, too. And those fluffy
versions of our most primal ancestors, all five of them, have stadium seating on Scooter’s bed, a
lower-deck mattress and upper-deck pillow; and they smile blankly, as though awaiting some
sort of spectacle.
“What do Monkeyville’s Uncles do?”
“Sell monkeys.”
“Oh. Well, who buys the monkeys?”
“The green Martian men in their spaceship.” Scooter doesn’t make ironic statements or
pithy jokes about Monkeyville. It is a real story. And by way of personality, he is almost
2
universally agreeable, a man of real virtue, and I have come to love him for his earnestness. But
now, in his room, the Martians appear to have gone awry. His eyes suddenly widen, his forehead
puckers up, his breathing goes irregular, he mutters something barely intelligible, affect firmly
pressed. “Bob’s gonna be at Dartmouth in two weeks gonna take you to S.E. on Mm-T-Th-
Thursd-two weeks in the black van please?”
“I’m not sure I caught all that, Scooter.” It could be a bad sign. His panic attacks are
inevitable but rarely predictable, and I feel a tug toward urgent action. I’ve learned to resist it.
Keep a certain level of nonchalance.
“Huh?” Scooter replies.
“You just have to slow down a bit, relax. I didn’t understand what you just said.”
“Bob will take you back to Dartmouth?”
“Where are we, Scooter?”
“At Dartmouth.”
“Yessir. You got it. Sounds like that darned autism is acting up again.”
Scooter mutters an affirmative “Yeah” and leans back into his rocking chair where he has
been for the last hour or so, crosses his legs at the ankle, left over right, swings himself forward
and back again. A rhythm dominates the soundscape: a heel thud, a creak, a pop, a deeper creak,
a heel thud, and so on. Something feels infinite about the scene, the sounds appear in my dreams,
but there are things that mark the passage of time. There’s a hole in Scooter’s right shoe where
his left heel meets it. The brown upholstery of the rocker is flattened and discolored, the armrests
are threadbare. Deep scratches and pocks stipple the hardwood floor, markers of where the
rocker was and will be again.

原文地址：

.do?id=8be9ad9e-e607-49af-9f3a-707d7c60d95f