美国国家公共电台 NPR Growing Up In Appalachia Is 'The Great Riddle Of My Life,' Says 'Marilou' Author

 

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

Sarah Elaine Smith's first novel finds poetry in dispiriting surroundings. Cindy, the central character in her first novel, "Marilou Is Everywhere," describes her life in rural Pennsylvania at the age of 14.

SARAH ELAINE SMITH: (Reading) My life was an empty place. From where I stood, it's seared on with a blank and merciless light. All dust and no song. Rainbows in oil puddles¹. Bug² bites hatched with a curved X from my fingernails. Donald Duck orange juice in the can. Red mottles on my brother Clinton's puffy hands, otherwise so white they were actually yellow, like hard cheese. The mole³ on my belly⁴ button. You get to know things this way by looking at yourself. You know the world by the shape of what comes back when you yell. I had only ever been myself and found it lacking.

SIMON: That's the author, Sarah Elaine Smith, who joins us from member station WESA in Pittsburgh. Thank you so much for being with us.

SMITH: Thank you so much, Scott.

SIMON: Cindy's life, though, begins to brighten with the disappearance⁵ of another young woman in their town, Jude. What happens?

SMITH: So Jude goes missing after a camping trip. And she happens to be the girlfriend of Cindy's older brother Virgil. And Virgil takes it upon himself to look in on Jude's mother after the disappearance because he realizes that she might be at loose ends. And while he's in the house, Cindy sees an opportunity to leave her own home life and spend time someplace a little bit more, possibly nurturing⁶ because her mother has been gone for a number of months and she is in the care of her teenage brothers.

SIMON: And so Cindy envies Jude even as she's missing - almost because of it, doesn't she?

SMITH: She does. And Cindy, in some ways, I think, wants to disappear herself.

SIMON: Jude's mother, Bernadette, becomes confused - or is she?

SMITH: That's a really interesting question. And Bernadette is a cogent⁷ character at times. And at other times, she is very palpably suffering from a kind of dementia. And Cindy takes advantage of that in order to gain information about Jude's life and how to fit into that world, learning what kind of daughter Bernadette expects. And Bernadette, for her part - to me, it seems possible that she is aware at times that Cindy is not her daughter. But they're both lonely in a way that makes them willing to overlook pretty obvious truths.

SIMON: You were, I gather, born and raised in Green County, Pa.

SMITH: Yes.

SIMON: What does that contribute to this book?

SMITH: Oh, gosh, just everything, really. Growing up there has been the great riddle⁸ of my life. And I think in a lot of ways I wanted to write this book to tease out some of the contradictions and expose some of the things that are both beautiful and really troubling about the place.

SIMON: What do you want us to know? What do you want to stand out for people?

SMITH: Well, I feel very aware of how easy it is to objectify Appalachia in places even for me as someone who grew up in one. In "Marilou Is Everywhere," Cindy's family experience poverty in a way that might be a more familiar view of Appalachia. But Jude and Bernadette - their family also represents a presence in those places of people who move back to the land out of this sort of pursuit of the idea that they might live in nature. And all of those people are in Appalachia, and their interactions with each other are much more complicated than they're often given to be.

SIMON: A theme in your book seems to be that, although there are great moments of suffering and stress, you are left with the impression that, sometimes, unfathomable events can still restore happiness.

SMITH: Absolutely. I think one of the crucial turns in the book occurs when Cindy begins to realize that even though she has been in tremendous pain and also caused tremendous pain, she still has the choice of deciding how she's going to react from then on, what she's going to do with that knowledge.

And it turns out for her that realizing that decision matters is actually in a way the beginning of sort of unexpected happiness for her. And that's something that I actually really resisted when I was writing earlier drafts of this book. I thought, oh, no, a happy ending, you know, how gauche⁹. But I've experienced that pain can be the source of tremendous changes and the things that we learn that way can really make our lives beautiful.

SIMON: Sarah Elaine Smith - her novel "Marilou Is Everywhere." Thank you so much for being with us.

SMITH: Thank you so much, Scott.

1 puddles   

n.水坑， （尤指道路上的）雨水坑( puddle的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• The puddles had coalesced into a small stream. 地面上水洼子里的水汇流成了一条小溪。
• The road was filled with puddles from the rain. 雨后路面到处是一坑坑的积水。 来自《简明英汉词典》

2 bug   

n.虫子；故障；窃听器；vt.纠缠；装窃听器

参考例句：

• There is a bug in the system.系统出了故障。
• The bird caught a bug on the fly.那鸟在飞行中捉住了一只昆虫。

3 mole   

n.胎块；痣；克分子

参考例句：

• She had a tiny mole on her cheek.她的面颊上有一颗小黑痣。
• The young girl felt very self- conscious about the large mole on her chin.那位年轻姑娘对自己下巴上的一颗大痣感到很不自在。

4 belly   

n.肚子，腹部；(像肚子一样)鼓起的部分，膛

参考例句：

• The boss has a large belly.老板大腹便便。
• His eyes are bigger than his belly.他眼馋肚饱。

5 disappearance   

n.消失，消散，失踪

参考例句：

• He was hard put to it to explain her disappearance.他难以说明她为什么不见了。
• Her disappearance gave rise to the wildest rumours.她失踪一事引起了各种流言蜚语。

6 nurturing   

养育( nurture的现在分词 )； 培育； 滋长； 助长

参考例句：

• These delicate plants need careful nurturing. 这些幼嫩的植物需要精心培育。
• The modern conservatory is not an environment for nurturing plants. 这个现代化温室的环境不适合培育植物。

7 cogent   

adj.强有力的，有说服力的

参考例句：

• The result is a cogent explanation of inflation.结果令人信服地解释了通货膨胀问题。
• He produced cogent reasons for the change of policy.他对改变政策提出了充分的理由。

8 riddle   

n.谜，谜语，粗筛；vt.解谜，给…出谜，筛，检查，鉴定，非难，充满于；vi.出谜

参考例句：

• The riddle couldn't be solved by the child.这个谜语孩子猜不出来。
• Her disappearance is a complete riddle.她的失踪完全是一个谜。

9 gauche   

adj.笨拙的，粗鲁的

参考例句：

• He now seems gauche and uninteresting.他显得又笨拙又古板。
• She was a rather gauche,provincial creature.她是个非常不善交际、偏狭守旧的人。