最远的距离――读蒂姆.温顿《远在天边》有感

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摘要：蒂姆・温顿的这篇短篇小说《远在天边》写得像一部小电影。女主角肥麦茨的生活孤独而平淡，没有朋友，更没有男朋友。她逐渐暗恋上了每天中午来他父母书店看书的一个深肤色男子，最后却什么也没发生。文中电影一般的语言把主题突出得更为生动：人与人之间隔绝孤独感无处不在，扑面而来。

关键词：孤独 隔绝 电影语言

During the first-time reading, this short story immediately reminds me of the scenes in Wong Kar-wai’ movie: in a specific setting, usually a narrow space, the hero and heroine communicate with each other without much real contact; they seldom talk to each other; they just go about their own life. The communication is conducted by the details: color, minute movements, glances, all of which send the messages to each other.

But actually this story is quite different from Wong Kar-wai’ movie, which is full of beautiful women and handsome men and appeals to the social elite group with particular taste. The heroine in this short story is a fat girl, dubbed as Fat Maz, who is everything but pretty. However, this story do share a very important element with Wong Kar-wai’ movie: the theme of this story is the unbearable loneliness felt by people and how the character try to get out of his or her life of loneliness, just as the theme of most Wong Kar-wai’ movies.

Fat Maz is surrounded by people all day long, yet she seems to be the loneliest person on this planet. She works at her parents’ news agency. She has no friend, let alone a boy friend. Her father is an angry man, who does not seem to harbor much tender feelings for his little girl; Her mother is almost mute except for the drumming of the old radio, which is not even her own voice. They have raised Maz, and they feed her and give her a job. Yet they don’t pay attention to her. Conversations seldom occur when they are together. It’s like three of them are strangers living and working under the same roof. Finally, a tall dark man comes into her life. He reads a paperback novel called Distant Lands every lunch hour for fifteen minutes in the news agency. That is the highlight of the girl’s daily life. It may be a mystery even to the girl herself that which part of the man attracts her. Is it because that he is well-dressed, or that he’s been reading a book named DISTANT Lands, or that he comes to read when she is alone? Either way he becomes the object of her infatuation. She feels like he is the only person that is connected to her because they share something--the lunch-hour conspiracy. She lives in a prison called Solitude until he comes. He is under her wing during that limited time period. She even goes through a few crises for him, not that he knows. The blurb on the back cover of the book “You will want this book never to finish” speaks right into her heart. But everything has to end somehow. The Nescafe colored man turns the last page. The strange or ironic thing about this little crush is that they don’t actually exchange any words. The first time she tries to relax him by asking ‘interesting?’He does not answer and just pass the register with his eyes downcast. The last time he thanks her, tips her, and says goodbye to her. She says nothing. And he tips her like she is a waitress! She thinks they understand each other. But do they really have a tacit understanding? There is no doubt in the girl’s fantasy though. She winds around her finger with the long black hair left behind by the man, and she puts the starchy-new note between her breasts. She gets the sexual satisfaction with her fantasy. It’s hard to tell whether she is happy or pathetic at that very moment.

It’s like that she is living in an isolated distant land. No matter how hard she tries to reach, she touches nothing. The loneliness between the characters in this short story seems unbreakable.

And the author presents us this thought-provoking story by using a very simple but quite cinematic language. Just as said in the beginning of this essay, the reading of this story is accompanied by one scene after another in my mind, because the whole story goes like a movie being played. Sometimes I can even discern how the camera moves. The camera moves closer when the details are covered, and it stays still for a while when shooting some important details: his Nescafe hands, the gloss finish of his downpointed brow shining in the fluorescent light, the little snapping movement of his page-turning, and especially the facial expression when the girl they called Fat Maz watches the dark man leaving the last time.

The succinct and cinematic language makes the whole piece palpable and graphic. However, the other element that maks this short story have a depth is the symbolic meaning of the descriptions. Why the author chooses a fat girl as the heroine. What does fatness represent? Fatness means resignation. Keeping fit requires energy and determination to fight with life itself. Yet the girl is not totally resigned. In her partial resignation, she keeps an eye on her weight because she can feel herself growing fatter everyday. She tries to reach out to break the isolation, and she fears that the other fat red woman in a shiny cardigan could be her future. The thing that is patently missing in the other woman is the will to have a different life more than the life in a small seaside town. The name of the book that the dark man reads also reflects the girl’s inner desire: she wants to get away from her life, which is also the reason why she would bicycle out to the edge of town and look along the highway. She hates the smell of the harbor. One day when she cannot smell of it at all, it means she is totally resigned.

There is still another element that makes this story fascinating: the open ending. Several questions remain to be answered when the story ends. What becomes of the girl later on? Does she get fatter? Or she loses her weight and tries to really talk to the Nescafe man eventually? Or she gathers courage enough to get on the greyhound and go to the distant lands she’s been dreaming about? Well, it’s just like life itself, which is open to exploration, isn’t it?