美国国家公共电台 NPR In Daniel Mallory Ortberg's Version, The Little Mermaid Inhales Souls

 

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

"The Merry Spinster" is one of the most anticipated books of the spring. Daniel Mallory Ortberg, co-creator of The Toast, an important website for feminist¹ writing, has recast some classic tales, including "The Little Mermaid²," "The Velveteen Rabbit," "Beauty And The Beast," even parts of the Old Testament³ to make them resonate with new takes on romantic love, property rights, abusive relationships, gender⁴ roles and the unsparing lack of sentimentality of the stuffed animals we hold dear. Daniel Mallory Ortberg joins us from the studios of Youth Radio in Oakland, Calif. Thanks so much for being with us.

DANIEL MALLORY ORTBERG: Thank you so much for having me.

SIMON: Why did you want to rewrite some of these well-known stories?

ORTBERG: Oh, man. I can accuse myself of only wanting to rewrite classic stories from a very young age. So that was, I think, already kind of a given. But I had also found as I was rewriting fairy tales, I was having a lot of fun upsetting myself. And I thought, I bet other people have fun being upset sometimes, too. And it turns out, we do.

SIMON: Well, and you raise the question, too. If you're rewriting some of these old stories, you did not stint⁶ on the blood. Did you?

ORTBERG: The, you know - the blood was already there. I think often of "The Velveteen Rabbit," the original version - there's a character called the Skin Horse. That's just his name. And it's because he's made of skin. That's just as upsetting a visual as, I think, you can find in a children's story. So it didn't feel so much like I was adding blood, so much as I was just moving the blood around.

SIMON: Let me get something high up here. You are transitioning from Mallory Ortberg to Daniel Mallory Ortberg.

ORTBERG: That's right.

SIMON: How are you doing?

ORTBERG: You know, I got to say, when you introduced me just a minute ago, I felt a little bit on the verge⁷ of tears. It was extremely powerful. But it also felt like a real relief because one of the things I was really anxious about was I was not sure that I was going to come out in time for the book tour. And one of the things that I was really anxious about was the thought of people saying, hey, a lot of shifting gender roles in your book. What's going on there? And having to say something like, oh, no reason - just interesting, just love to think about thought experiments. Nothing going on over here. So to not have to do that is a real relief.

SIMON: Well, let me ask a question then. A lot of shifting gender roles going on in your book here? (Laughter).

ORTBERG: Well, what's funny is it is also interesting to me. Like, that is truly something that I think I would have tackled regardless of what I was going through in my personal life. But it was also very funny to become kind of consciously aware of what I was doing about halfway⁸ through, writing the book. So some of it certainly just had to do with things that were on my mind a lot. And some of it also had to do with the fact that in fairy tales, like especially the Aarne–Thompson classification system, you know, you can kind of predict what's going to happen based on the combination of someone's gender, their role within their family and their relationship to, say, like, animals or magic. And I like very much that fairy stories often have a sense of morality that's really different from what we might consider moral that's just as ordered and just as precise but has no relationship to what we think of. If you do X, Y will be the natural consequence.

SIMON: Yeah.

ORTBERG: And I liked the idea of just adding gender into that process of just like, OK, if we, like, mix it up and rotate it, how does it look?

SIMON: The book opens with a story called The Daughter Cells, your reworking of "The Little Mermaid," narrated⁹ by, I guess, the mermaid. And by the end of the story, I felt ugly as a human being.

ORTBERG: Oh, man. Thank you.

SIMON: (Laughter).

ORTBERG: Yeah, that one was really - yeah, I think the narrator in that one is a little bit, like, distant. Like, it's not clear whether or not this narrator thinks of themselves as belonging to the mermaid population or outside of it. And it is very - like, as the story progresses, it becomes very clear just how different the way that the mermaid and, like, her family view things like a soul. And it's not malicious¹⁰.

SIMON: Yeah.

ORTBERG: But it's completely disrespectful of something like physical autonomy or, you know, what we would consider a right to privacy. Like, it's not - she doesn't wish the prince harm. But she knows what she wants from him. And she has justified¹¹ it completely according to her own worldview. And the idea of what his worldview might be does not enter into it.

SIMON: Yeah. Well, and without giving anything away, she - the mermaid believes that if you take somebody's life, you inhale¹² their soul. And, you know, they - I guess they just keep - what? - chugging along?

ORTBERG: Yeah, which is very much - now that I think about it - like just like, you know, you see them - like John Carpenter's "The Thing" - right? - where the alien does not actively¹³ necessarily will anyone harm the way that we might understand it...

SIMON: Yeah.

ORTBERG: ...But is perfectly¹⁴ comfortable absorbing, you know, and taking over their bodies and does not see that as a problem.

SIMON: I want to ask you about the rabbit, which is drawn¹⁵ from the...

ORTBERG: OK.

SIMON: ...From "The Velveteen Rabbit." The rabbit is not sentimental⁵ about the little boy at first. It says that he's telling secrets from his stupid and inane¹⁶ boy's heart. But the rabbit still winds up falling in love with the little boy, doesn't he?

ORTBERG: You know, he's not unlike "The Little Mermaid" in that sense but more driven, as you say. I think he has a greater capacity for love born of obsession¹⁷ and jealousy¹⁸. And so he has to work harder to remind himself how stupid he thinks the boy is even as the one thing he wants more than anything in the world is the quality of realness that the boy exemplifies.

SIMON: Yeah. But he does. I mean, he loves being held by the little boy. He loves being worshipped, in a sense, by the little boy.

ORTBERG: Yeah. That one puts me in mind, I think, too, of the story "Cast Your Bread Upon The Waters," which just - it involves a parent talking about their child in such a way where they're constantly reminding themselves of, no, he did something wrong. And I'm going to do this about it. And then only after things sort of come to a head are they able to acknowledge that they love their child. And it feels similar. In some ways, those two characters do remind me of one another and this idea of, I have to say all these things in order to keep myself from saying, I love him.

SIMON: Let me just ask one more question.

ORTBERG: Uh-huh.

SIMON: What do we make of a feminist writer transitioning into a man?

ORTBERG: Oh. Well, you know, the great news is you can be a feminist in transition, you know, easily in a walk - not an issue. But, yeah, yeah. It is - there are ways in which it felt painfully ironic¹⁹. And there were ways in which it just felt like, well, there's nothing to be done about that. Just as the sun rose this morning, I am dealing²⁰ with these feelings and these impulses and this wish. And nothing about this isn't contiguous with the things I've loved and cared about before. Nothing about this is, in any way, a rejection²¹ of the kind of life that I've had before. I lived my life in a certain way for as long as it was possible.

Ultimately, I came to a point where I confronted and acknowledged something that I hadn't wanted to for a long time. And something new is happening now. But it's not as different as I thought it might've been, or it's not like, oh, man - really shooting off in a different direction. I'll say it like that character said in that story of just like, you know, that character says, my son Johnny was very beautiful, and I love him. Mallory Ortberg is beautiful. And I love her.

SIMON: Daniel Mallory Ortberg - his new collection of stories - "The Merry Spinster: Tales Of Everyday Horror." He also dispenses²² advice professionally as Slate's Dear Prudence²³. Thanks so much for being with us. Good luck.

ORTBERG: Thank you so much.

1 feminist   

adj.主张男女平等的，女权主义的

参考例句：

• She followed the feminist movement.她支持女权运动。
• From then on,feminist studies on literature boomed.从那时起，男女平等受教育的现象开始迅速兴起。

2 mermaid   

n.美人鱼

参考例句：

• How popular would that girl be with the only mermaid mom!和人鱼妈妈在一起，那个女孩会有多受欢迎！
• The little mermaid wasn't happy because she didn't want to wait.小美人鱼不太高兴，因为她等不及了。

3 testament   

n.遗嘱；证明

参考例句：

• This is his last will and testament.这是他的遗愿和遗嘱。
• It is a testament to the power of political mythology.这说明，编造政治神话可以产生多大的威力。

4 gender   

n.（生理上的）性，（名词、代词等的）性

参考例句：

• French differs from English in having gender for all nouns.法语不同于英语，所有的名词都有性。
• Women are sometimes denied opportunities solely because of their gender.妇女有时仅仅因为性别而无法获得种种机会。

5 sentimental   

adj.多愁善感的，感伤的

参考例句：

• She's a sentimental woman who believes marriage comes by destiny.她是多愁善感的人，她相信姻缘命中注定。
• We were deeply touched by the sentimental movie.我们深深被那感伤的电影所感动。

6 stint   

v.节省，限制，停止；n.舍不得化，节约，限制；连续不断的一段时间从事某件事

参考例句：

• He lavished money on his children without stint.他在孩子们身上花钱毫不吝惜。
• We hope that you will not stint your criticism.我们希望您不吝指教。

7 verge   

n.边，边缘；v.接近，濒临

参考例句：

• The country's economy is on the verge of collapse.国家的经济已到了崩溃的边缘。
• She was on the verge of bursting into tears.她快要哭出来了。

8 halfway   

adj.中途的，不彻底的，部分的；adv.半路地，在中途，在半途

参考例句：

• We had got only halfway when it began to get dark.走到半路，天就黑了。
• In study the worst danger is give up halfway.在学习上，最忌讳的是有始无终。

9 narrated   

v.故事( narrate的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• Some of the story was narrated in the film. 该电影叙述了这个故事的部分情节。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Defoe skilfully narrated the adventures of Robinson Crusoe on his desert island. 笛福生动地叙述了鲁滨逊·克鲁索在荒岛上的冒险故事。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

10 malicious   

adj.有恶意的，心怀恶意的

参考例句：

• You ought to kick back at such malicious slander. 你应当反击这种恶毒的污蔑。
• Their talk was slightly malicious.他们的谈话有点儿心怀不轨。

11 justified   

a.正当的，有理的

参考例句：

• She felt fully justified in asking for her money back. 她认为有充分的理由要求退款。
• The prisoner has certainly justified his claims by his actions. 那个囚犯确实已用自己的行动表明他的要求是正当的。

12 inhale   

v.吸入(气体等)，吸(烟)

参考例句：

• Don't inhale dust into your lung.别把灰尘吸进肺里。
• They are pleased to not inhale second hand smoke.他们很高兴他们再也不会吸到二手烟了。

13 actively   

adv.积极地，勤奋地

参考例句：

• During this period all the students were actively participating.在这节课中所有的学生都积极参加。
• We are actively intervening to settle a quarrel.我们正在积极调解争执。

14 perfectly   

adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地

参考例句：

• The witnesses were each perfectly certain of what they said.证人们个个对自己所说的话十分肯定。
• Everything that we're doing is all perfectly above board.我们做的每件事情都是光明正大的。

15 drawn   

v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的

参考例句：

• All the characters in the story are drawn from life.故事中的所有人物都取材于生活。
• Her gaze was drawn irresistibly to the scene outside.她的目光禁不住被外面的风景所吸引。

16 inane   

adj.空虚的，愚蠢的，空洞的

参考例句：

• She started asking me inane questions.她开始问我愚蠢的问题。
• Such comments are inane because they don't help us solve our problem.这种评论纯属空洞之词，不能帮助我们解决问题。

17 obsession   

n.困扰，无法摆脱的思想(或情感)

参考例句：

• I was suffering from obsession that my career would be ended.那时的我陷入了我的事业有可能就此终止的困扰当中。
• She would try to forget her obsession with Christopher.她会努力忘记对克里斯托弗的迷恋。

18 jealousy   

n.妒忌，嫉妒，猜忌

参考例句：

• Some women have a disposition to jealousy.有些女人生性爱妒忌。
• I can't support your jealousy any longer.我再也无法忍受你的嫉妒了。

19 ironic   

adj.讽刺的，有讽刺意味的，出乎意料的

参考例句：

• That is a summary and ironic end.那是一个具有概括性和讽刺意味的结局。
• People used to call me Mr Popularity at high school,but they were being ironic.人们中学时常把我称作“万人迷先生”，但他们是在挖苦我。

20 dealing   

n.经商方法，待人态度

参考例句：

• This store has an excellent reputation for fair dealing.该商店因买卖公道而享有极高的声誉。
• His fair dealing earned our confidence.他的诚实的行为获得我们的信任。

21 rejection   

n.拒绝，被拒，抛弃，被弃

参考例句：

• He decided not to approach her for fear of rejection.他因怕遭拒绝决定不再去找她。
• The rejection plunged her into the dark depths of despair.遭到拒绝使她陷入了绝望的深渊。

22 dispenses   

v.分配，分与；分配( dispense的第三人称单数 )；施与；配（药）

参考例句：

• The machine dispenses a range of drinks and snacks. 这台机器发售各种饮料和小吃。
• This machine dispenses coffee. 这台机器发售咖啡。 来自《简明英汉词典》

23 prudence   

n.谨慎，精明，节俭

参考例句：

• A lack of prudence may lead to financial problems.不够谨慎可能会导致财政上出现问题。
• The happy impute all their success to prudence or merit.幸运者都把他们的成功归因于谨慎或功德。