※ [本文轉錄自 finavir 信箱]
作者: finavir@kkcity.com.tw
標題: [書]Incendiary
時間: Thu Nov 30 06:47:49 2006
Oct. 2005
前天才訂的書。還沒到手。但其實也沒有關係的。
這是一本關於九一一的小說。
我必須承認，我討厭（或者說是盡量避免）看到所有關於九一一的書。
我沒有辦法接受一面倒的文字。但看過『Ｉｎｃｅｎｄｉａｒｙ』的
簡介和作者自序，我想我終於看到一本我願意去閱讀的關於九一一的
書。
我對於九一一的反應一直是兩極並存。是的，我覺得美國被炸活該（
但請注意，我的反美情結並非平面）；沒錯，同時我對於殺害六千條
無辜生命的恐怖行動感到無法忍受。
我一方面為阿爾凱達的恐怖主義喝采（"It's finally time for the
arrogant America to taste their own medicine"），一方面想著
『最好把那些恐怖分子炸得片甲不留（"yes let's go bomb those
motherfuckers！"）』。
現在或許言之過早，但九一一可以說是二十一世紀初歷史的一個轉戾
點。整個事件和它的後續暴力地影響了東西方的權力平衡（註一）。
在九一一之前，我幾乎沒看過『jihad』 這個字；九一一之後，經由
媒體報導，它不但成了基本日常用字，更成了『暴力、宗教狂熱、恐
怖主義』的同義字；『muslim』成了恐怖份子的同義字；而『Qua'ran』
成了恐怖主義經典。
我其實到現在還是無法全然了解『jihad』的意義。但至少對我來說，
我想我有點明白『jihad』的神聖（the holiness embedded in the
conception of jihad）；然而這並不代表我完全不譴責『jihad』。
在我眼裡，『jihad』既可怖又神聖。（註二）
九一一其實可以看作是二十一世紀宗教文化戰爭的開端（當然它並非
純宗教文化戰爭）。在這個連『恐怖主義』一詞都無法明確定義的年
代（註三），把九一一、馬德里、倫敦地鐵爆炸事件單純歸類為恐怖
主義行動，未免把事情太過簡單化了些。
『在我們眼裡的恐怖份子，在他者眼裡是神聖的革命者／宗教戰士』。
究竟誰才是真正的恐怖份子？是阿爾凱達？還是過去半個世紀以來以
資本帝國主義壓迫第三世界國家的美國和其他西方強國？如果九一一
是恐怖主義行動，那麼無差別使用Ｎａｐａｌｍ（註四）算不算恐怖
主義行動？
我不知道。我只知道生命的可貴和和平的重要性。
同時我也知道，事情沒有絕對地黑與白。
以下，關於『Incendiary』。
《ＩＮＣＥＮＤＩＡＲＹ》
http://www.amazon.ca/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/books/0385661703/reviews/
ref=cm_rev_more/702-7485388-5927240#2
※ ※ ※
Author: Chris Cleave
Format: Hardcover · Published: August 2005
Dimensions: 5.97 x 8.61 in
ISBN: 0385661703 · Published by Doubleday Canada
※ ※ ※
From the Author：
(http://www.chapters.indigo.ca)
In March 2004 I was still dazed from the twin shocks of the
11th September 2001 attack and the perverse Anglo-American
response to it. Sickened by the images of horrors done in my
name in Iraq and elsewhere, frightened by the shameless
Orwellian manipulation of the public debate, I found myself
mute before a growing global catastrophe. So I did what I do
best, which was to pretend none of it was happening. I was
writing a novel set in 1980s Brooklyn, and the more I disappeared
into its escapist world, the less I had to think about the
one in which I was living.
My son Louis was six months old and I was falling in love with
him. I never believed it was possible to love someone so
infinitely. I became terrified that he was growing up in a
world descending into cruelty and barbarism. A lot of new
parents have told me they feel the same fear. To cope, I tried
to block out the insane events taking place in the world
outside our flat. But they kept getting through my defences.
It wasn’t the big, obvious brutalities that got to me. To
learn that 30 people had died in a car bomb, for example,
provoked no strong reaction. Instead it was the small,
domestic ephemera of the growing tragedy that touched me.
To see a pile of mangled bodies left me unmoved, but seeing
a photo of a child’s sandal abandoned on the floor of a
bombed-out building reduced me to tears. Such images made
me understand that all of the people destroyed and traumatised
by the jihadists and by our armies were loved by their own
families as much as I loved my son.
On the 11th March 2004, my son stood up on his own for the
first time and jihadists killed 191 people in Madrid. It went
on and on like that all that week. Each day something beautiful
happened in my flat while something terrible happened outside.
It was this constant dissonance that began to affect me and
stopped me from being able to feel good about my day-to-day
life. I found I could no longer stay silent.
I wrote the first draft of Incendiary in six weeks. I hardly
slept, and when I did I had nightmares which were indistinguishable
from the next day’s news. In April the Abu Grahib torture
scandal broke, and in May Abu Musab al-Zarqawi released the
first beheading tape, of Nick Berg. I felt while I was
writing that our own minds were the battleground on which the
world struggle was being fought. I felt I would be psychologically
broken unless I could write characters who not only lived
though the horror into which our world is plunging, but who
had depths of love and humour that were equal to it. My
story is an examination of love: what the narrator of Incendiary
feels for her son is what I feel for mine. My question is
whether love is strong enough to defeat horror, or whether
in the end the best we can hope for is some miserable truce.
I never found the answer, which is why it was a difficult
and frightening book to write.
The battle lines drawn in "Incendiary"—between East and West,
between East End and West End, between men and women, between
faithfulness and infidelity, between mothers and career women,
between working class and middle class—have no real existence.
They are only lines we allow to be drawn in our own minds.
Whenever we as loving humans allow these lines to be established
there will be violence and, as the narrator of Incendiary
believes, all the violence in the world is connected. That
is why it is possible to write the whole global narrative
into her intimate tragedy.
I think the book is truthful because it isn’t political. It
looks directly at our deepest fears, and places the responsibility
for them in our own hands. It doesn’t blame our leaders or
their shadowy antagonists for the world’s current descent.
This tragedy is ours: we made it, we own it, and we can stop it.
We propagate it when we allow our politicians to act cynically
in our name, and when we allow them to own the language of the
debate.
"Incendiary" is an attempt to win back the language and start a
more honest debate. I would like a lot of people to read it,
then I want to listen to what they say. I think if I keep
listening then I can keep writing stories that people find
relevant and useful.
—Chris Cleave, London, December 2004
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※ 編輯: finavir 來自: 72.136.150.250 (11/30 06:56)