| As a Woman Grows Older/J. M. Coetzee |
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As a Woman Grows Older, The New York Review of Books Volume 51, Number 1, 2004
南非作家柯慈(J. M. Coetzee)荣获2003年诺贝尔文学奖。库切1940年生于南非开普敦，并于2002年移居澳大利亚，任职于阿德莱德大学。
柯慈为南非国宝级作家，也是荣获两次英国「布克奖」的作家。《等待野蛮人》（Waiting for the Barbarians）曾获得南非最重要的文学奖－ＣＮＡ奖、费柏纪念奖及布莱克纪念奖。《麦可．Ｋ的生命与时代》（Life & Times of Michael K）赢得英国最高文学荣誉—布克奖、法国费米那奖。
As a Woman Grows Older 不像是一篇小说。
她从澳大利亚到欧洲的Nice去和儿子、女儿会面。她是一个作家，七十多了。儿子女儿都想把她接来和自己住，因为她老了。
"What I find eerie, as I grow older," she tells her son, "is that I hear issuing from my lips words I once upon a time used to hear old people say and swore I would never say myself. What-is-the-world-coming-to things. For example: no one seems any longer to be aware that the verb 'may' has a past tense—what is the world coming to? People walk down the street eating pizza and talking into a telephone— what is the world coming to?"
小说描述了好多个场合她和子女的对话，对话富含哲理，却怎么也不像是一个母亲对她的孩子们说的。不过，因为她是个作家，我们应该原谅她？也许这也是作者的意思。
小说里面，她说了好多意味深长的话，好象教条一样，没有什么伪装，好象作者想说这些话实在很急很急。
“There is one thing the old are better at than the young, and that is dying. ... I would like to concentrate on making a good death. ... A good death is one that you learn of by telegram: I regret to inform you, etcetera."
"Is beauty not just another consumable, like wine? One drinks it in, one drinks it down, it gives one a brief, pleasing, heady feeling, but what does it leave behind? The residue of wine is, excuse the word, piss; what is the residue of beauty? What is the good of it? Does beauty make us better people?"
"... does it merely say that families, happy families, are held together by a repertoire of games played from behind masks?"
"... there are states of the soul deeper than moods."
读着这样的句子，你感到一个正在死去的作者，当然， he's trying to make a good death，但他不能确定。有意思的是“她”是一个澳大利亚人，老死而不愿离开故土，而作者是一个南非人，旅居在澳大利亚。在小说的结尾，她拒绝了儿女的邀请，反而邀请儿子回澳洲，她说：
"... Let me simply say, if you and Norma and the children can stand America no more, cannot stand the shame of it, the house in Melbourne is yours, as it has always been. You can come on a visit, you can come as refugees, you can come to réunir la famille, as Helen puts it...."
作者也许想到他的故土了吧，我也想到了我的，visit, refugee, réunir la famille, ....
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