OKAPI 推薦

如果你的人生解答會變成手臂上的刺青，你願意嘗試嗎？──小說《頓悟產生器》（The Epiphany Machine）

文／楊馥嘉2017年08月04日
如果有一台機器，它能告訴你此生最大的盲點、讓你即刻頓悟，你會想知道嗎？那麼，如果代價是它給的「頓悟金句」將變成你手臂上的刺青，你還願意嘗試？ The Epiphany Machine 美國作家大衛．傑拉德的小說新作《頓悟產生器》時空背景設定在60年代到近未來的紐約，17歲的主角凡特來自一個不健全 more

內容簡介

*Best New Science Fiction for Summer by The Washington Post
*A Most-Anticipated book of 2017 by The Millions

Everyone else knows the truth about you, now you can know it, too.

That’s the slogan. The product: a junky contraption that tattoos personalized revelations on its users’ forearms. It’s an old con, playing on the fear that we are obvious to everybody except ourselves. This particular ad has been circulating New York since the 1960s and it works. But, oddly enough, so might the device...

A small stream of city dwellers buy into this cult of the epiphany machine, including Venter Lowood’s parents. This stigma follows them when they move upstate, where Venter can’t avoid the whispers of teachers and neighbors any more than he can ignore the machine’s accurate predictions: his mother’s abandonment and his father’s disinterest. So when Venter’s grandmother finally asks him to confront the epiphany machine and inoculate himself against his family’s mistakes, he’s only too happy to oblige.

Like his parents before him, Venter is quick to fall under the spell of the device’s sweat-stained, profane, and surprisingly charming operator, Adam Lyons. But unlike them, Venter gets close enough to Adam to learn a dark secret. There’s an undeniable pattern between specific epiphanies and violent crimes. And Adam won’t jeopardize the privacy of his customers by alerting the police.

It may be a hoax, but that doesn’t mean what Adam is selling isn’t also spot-on. And in this sprawling, snarling tragicomedy about accountability in contemporary America, the greater danger is that Adam Lyon’s apparatus may just be right about us all. This is ＂can’t-miss pop culture.＂(Vox)

作者簡介

David Burr Gerrard received an MFA in fiction writing from Columbia University. His first novel, Short Century, was published by Rare Bird Books, and his work has appeared in The Awl, The LA Review of Books, BOMB, Guernica, and other publications. He teaches fiction writing at Manhattanville College, the 92nd Street Y, and the Sackett Street Writers’ Workshop.