另一个 第9期

[abstract]提要

继畅销书《爱在冰雪纷飞时》，David Guterson又给读者带来了新的力作――《另一个》，一个有关青春与理想、成长与妥协的故事：来自西雅图一富有家庭的John和蓝领家庭的爱尔兰乡村男孩Neil,16岁相遇成为好朋友。毕业之后，Neil进入学校当老师，过着寻常人的生活；而John则选择放弃学业，进入森林过远离伪善的生活。他让Neil帮助他离开，而作为他的好朋友，Neil尽力帮忙，却在帮助John的过程中发觉自己陷入了一个充满着责任、欺骗、灾难的神秘之网――最终彻底改变了他的人生。

我们节选了开头的一段描写，站在Neil的回忆角度上阐述整个事件。

[excerpt]摘录

Thirty-four years have passed, but I still remember how, in the final five yards, my double frees himself―like a shadow in a cartoon or a mirror-figure in a dream―and beats me by three-quarters of a stride.

I’m bent over and spent, my hands on my knees after the race, breathing hoarsely and looking at the ground, when he comes over to shake my hand with what I think at first is a grating sincerity. The grip is vigorous. The expression is heartfelt and, post-race, ruddy. The stance is upright, the posture exclamatory. This is gracious victory personified, and for a moment I think―it says Lakeside on his jersey―that what I’m seeing is obligatory patrician good manners, a valorous lad with his cursory and vapid Victorian Well done while his heaving breath subsides. But no. He’s just fiercely putting forward what he feels―he’s honest. There’s a sentiment to be noted, life is short, and he doesn’t want to just pass by. “Thanks for the push,” John William declares, between bouts of sucking wind. “I just about died.”

That’s how I met the privileged boy who would later become “the hermit of the Hoh”―as he’s been called by the Seattle newspapers this spring, in articles mentioning my name, too―that loner who lived in the woods for seven years and who bequeathed me four hundred and forty million dollars...

[comment]点评

When John William Barry and Neil Countryman meet at a high school track meet in the early 1970s, they are two sides of the same coin. After an unintentionally challenging week lost in the wilds of the North Cascades, John is compelled to an ascetic path: life in a remote river valley, where he chips a shelter from a granite wall. Neil meanwhile chooses a traditional path as a father and school teacher, despite his troubled friend’s exhortations to eschew “hamburger world” and find truth in a simpler, stripped-down existence. Nothing is that simple, of course, and The Other compellingly explores the compromises we make to balance meaning and security in our lives through the choices (and their subsequent consequences) of these two men. ―Jon Foro

（责编：张雯）