The Guards Dance

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"We do not deal much in facts when we are contemplating ourselves." --Mark Twain

Now I know we're unlikely to read about your problems and challenges in the New York Times, or see you tonight on CNN--at least I hope that's true. I know that you're probably not an international star of television and movies, whose battles, trials, and tribulations are scrutinized minute by minute in the worldwide media. But just like Oprah, you face problems and challenges each and every day. You, too, may feel that what is happening to you simply is not fair, and you may be right. Just like Oprah, you may feel that at times the world spins out of control, forgetting who the good guys are and letting the bad guys go too far, sometimes way too far.

At times, people aren't fair or sensitive, but that's just part of life. Sadly, it seems that the more successful you are, the more potshots people take at you. Either way, fair or unfair, just like Oprah, you have to help you.

The fact that your problems aren't headlining the six o'clock news does not mean that your problems are unimportant, at least not to you. Believe me when I tell you that if you don't step up and fight for you, no one else will. At the same time, I think you may find that the person you most need to stand up to in this world is you. We'll talk more about this later, but you can probably guess that in this war we call life, most of the decisive battles are fought within you.

In the meantime, let's agree that what makes a problem big is simply that it's yours. To the clerk in the store down the street from Oprah's studio, it might not matter a great deal that Oprah Winfrey was under siege in Amarillo with her very character being impugned, but it mattered a whole lot to Oprah Winfrey. Your problems, in turn, may not matter much to your next-door neighbors. It doesn't mean that they don't like you or have good hearts; it's just human nature that they would put their own concerns first. But it does mean your problems need to matter to you. If they don't matter to you, they won't matter to anybody who can really change them.

Don't feel as if you should minimize your problems, or apologize for them. Our world has for too long conditioned us not to make waves. We don't want to make a scene or disrupt the flow of things. As a result, we settle, quietly, much too often. If a problem is important to you, then that's enough; that qualifies it as worthy. It's important, because you are important.

Nor should you concern yourself with whether your problems seem trivial in the grand scheme of things or not. If I've broken my ankle, and the guy in the next hospital bed has just had his leg amputated, that's terrible, but it doesn't make my ankle hurt any less. If it's your problem, then of course you should care about it. Also beware of getting bogged down in a debate about the fairness or unfairness of what has befallen you. If it is unfair, then it's unfair, but you still have to deal with it.

Your life really can be different--you just haven't had the tools, the focus, and the "inside scoop." Keep moving along with me, assuming that your problems do count and that maybe, just maybe, there is something here for you, something you deserve. I realize that at this point, you don't know where all of this thinking is headed. But what if this book is exactly what you need to have what you've been wanting in your life? A closed mind or attitude of resistance could cause you to cheat yourself out of an important chance for a better "ride." If what you're doing isn't working, you might as well at least consider an alternative approach. You can start by admitting you may not know everything you need to in order to get what you want.

Oprah didn't have any experience in the courtroom. She had plenty in life, but not in the courtroom. She was willing to admit what she did not know, and hook up and learn it. She was not resistant to learning, and when she did learn the rules of the game, she created victory. So can you. Learn how to play this game and you might be surprised at the result. The courtroom is relevant here, because it is indeed a microcosm of life. In any trial, somebody is trying to take something away from somebody else. So it is in life. That is why I shared with you Oprah's experience in Amarillo. In that compressed life drama are a series of valuable lessons.

Trials reflect the competition that characterizes so much of our lives, although trial results are often more sharply focused: at the end of the day, there's a clear winner; there's a clear loser; freedom may be lost; money may be taken away. But by far the most compelling parallel is this: In life, as in the courthouse, when the competition starts, or when the world starts coming after you, you'd better have yourself a really good strategy and know the rules of the game, or the bad guys will be dividing up what used to be yours. They'll be getting your paycheck, or dating your sweetheart, or in some way cutting you out and taking your turn.

Ask yourself right now: Do you really have a strategy in your life, or are you just reactively going from day to day, taking what comes? If you are, you simply aren't competitive. There are "a lot of dogs after the bones" out there, and just stumbling along is no way to succeed. The winners in this life know the rules of the game and have a plan, so that their efficiency is comparatively exponential to that of people who don't. No big mystery, just fact.

You, too, need to know the rules of the game and have a plan and a map. You need to ask yourself: "Am I really headed where I want to go, or am I just out there wandering around?" "Is what I'm doing today really what I want to do, or am I doing it, not because I want to, but because it is what I was doing yesterday?" "Is what I have what I really want, or is it what I've settled for because it was easy, safe, or not as scary as what I really wanted?" Hard questions, I know, but don't you really already know the answers?

The Epidemic

Oprah's situation in Amarillo highlights lessons of widespread application that can show you where the rubber meets the road in your own life. What makes Oprah so appealing is the fact that she is so real, so human, and has the same frailties that we all do. Her initial reactions to the Amarillo attack, the tendencies that she at times demonstrated during that experience, are identical to those I see being applied by people from every walk of life in the face of day-to-day challenges. In fact, those very behaviors are present in epidemic proportions in America today, infecting the lives and goals and dreams of millions of people, young and old, sophisticated or not.

The difference may be that Oprah has developed her life-management skills to the point that it takes a huge crisis to throw her off track. For you, the breakdown may occur way short of a $100 million lawsuit, where the entire world watches as you are personally attacked. That's okay; I will meet you wherever you are. It doesn't matter whether you have a good life that you wish could be better, or a horrible life that you know you must change. This book is designed to give you the tools you need for purposeful, strategic living. Taking a long, hard look at the negative behaviors in your life, and at your current life strategy--if you've even got one--can be more than enlightening; it can be the beginning of a Life Strategy. This self-check of how you are living day to day is of tremendous importance, since you will be, and are, accountable for your own life.

Most people, and I'll bet you are no exception, cheat themselves by not asking themselves the hard questions, not facing their true personality and behavior, and therefore not addressing the nitty-gritty issues undermining their efforts to succeed. My position is this: Let the rest of the people live in a fog of self-deception. You take off the blinders and deal with the truth, and you'll leave them in the dust.

So what are the patterns that threatened Oprah in her challenge in Amarillo, and which are also so commonplace in America? What are the patterns that may be destroying your chance to change your life and have what you want?

The first common tendency is denial. Oprah resisted accepting that something so unjust could happen to her and her staff. And all the while it was, in fact, very much happening. Failing to acknowledge that actuality, one that would only grow more complicated with neglect, she fixated on why it shouldn't be happening, rather than dealing with the fact that it was. Her reaction was totally logical, because she knew the truth about what she had done, and she understood the real motives of her accusers. But the world is not always logical. Often you are forced to deal with what is, not just what should be. Oprah, for example, felt bad about even being involved in the matter in any form or fashion. She felt the process was nonproductive and a waste of everyone's time. She would never have chosen to be there. That was part of the "denial dialogue."

But you don't always have a choice. For example, having arrived at a nice restaurant, you most likely would not start a fistfight in the lobby. But suppose you just happen to be standing in that lobby when some jerk goes nuts and starts swinging at you--guess what? You're in a fistfight. What's more, you'd better deal with it or make plans to get your dentist out of bed, because it is happening. Denial can take the form of totally failing to see what is, or seeing it, but resisting it, because you don't like it. Either way, denial is dangerous. This common mistake can have uncommonly bad results.

The second pattern involves making initial assumptions, then failing to test them for truth or accuracy. If you adopt some position, opinion, or belief, and fail to test or verify it, subsequent thinking that is otherwise totally sound and logical can lead you to conclusions that are way wrong. Oprah assumed that, because the lawsuit against her was so obviously insincere and "unfair," it would ultimately be revealed as such, and then vanish in a puff of smoke. She assumed our justice system would ferret out and eliminate the frivolous. She assumed that someone in authority would intervene and tell these cattlemen they could not abuse the court system to try to get richer. She clung to these assumptions because she wanted them to be true. Had she tested those assumptions unemotionally, she might have awakened sooner to the fallacies of our justice system and her assumptions. But if you trust yourself and therefore have confidence in the rightness of what you believe to be true, it can be very easy to close your mind to additional possibilities.

The third problem is inertia: paralysis caused by fear and denial. Picture an airline pilot sitting motionless in the cockpit of his fully occupied but disabled jet as it rapidly loses altitude; imagine him saying, "Golly, I can't believe this is happening. There's bound to be some divine intervention in a minute"; or "It can't be all that bad--I've never crashed before. Something will happen to save us." If you deny things that seem too painful to accept, then let their impact, once realized, rob you of efficient, energetic acts of self-preservation, you will fail. Oprah Winfrey rose to a challenge, but she had to grasp it and its gravity first. So, too, must you grasp your true challenges before you can efficiently mobilize. Inertia takes your greatest resource out of the game.

Another pattern involves deceptive masking. Oprah, like so many of us, can wear a mask. Her persona can be so mesmerizing that people forget that she has needs, too. Sometimes we adopt a "stiff upper lip" because being in need, and admitting it, can seem to us to be a show of weakness. But by insisting on "toughing it out," you may close yourself off from forthcoming help, since others are taken in by your show of strength and fail to recognize your needs.

Many people also fail to grasp that, when you choose the behavior, you choose the consequences. By choosing to keep her focus on the "unfairness," Oprah could have continued to let precious time and energy slip away, time and energy that could have been focused on working the problem rather than resisting it. This behavior was a choice on her part. No matter what her rationale, she was choosing the behavior of denial, and in so doing, choosing the consequences of falling behind the power curve of defending herself. Fortunately, in a dramatic turnaround, she chose not to keep resisting, and to start coping. She made a choice to take action, and thereby chose the consequence of her eventual victory.

These are all interrelated and common mistakes that when mixed with a dangerous set of circumstances can spell disaster. Obviously, the bigger the problem, the bigger the downside if it is mismanaged. As you think back through your life--and surely there are key events that stand out in your memory--what results were created when you were living in denial, or basing your decisions on what turned out to be faulty initial assumptions? What was the effect when you were stuck in inertia and, by hiding behind your mask, you blocked others from helping? Perhaps most importantly: What choices have you made that set you up for an outcome you did not want or need? Have your problems been mundane, or have they been monumental?

You may have known people who seemed to have stepped blindly into a disaster, and your first thought was, "What in the world could they have been thinking?" I predict that before you are through with this book, you will very probably step back from your own life and wonder how in the world you could have been thinking what you were thinking, not seeing what you were not seeing, and choosing the behaviors you chose. Your challenge, at least in part, is to determine what these patterns have done to your life, your dreams, your needs. Are they alive and going strong, or are the epidemic behavioral patterns silently raging in your life, allowing your problems to fester, poisoning your dreams?

Even in everyday life, we see dramatic examples of dreams that die from that which we choose not to see. Perhaps it is parents deluding themselves that their son is not on drugs until his body is found after an overdose; a woman denying that there is a lump in her breast until it progresses beyond treatment; or the spouse who foolishly believes his or her mate is really an agent for the FBI, with only weekend-night assignments. In each of these cases, the result is the same. Problems and challenges almost never resolve themselves; they don't get better with inattention. The only thing worse than having a child on drugs, a serious disease, or a philandering spouse is having the problem but not recognizing it, or, worse yet, knowing it but pretending it isn't true.

Reading this book is not intended to be a passive experience. As you progress through it, you'll see that it is interactive: the key principles in later chapters rely on themes developed in the earlier ones, and all of it calls on you to play an active role.

Assignment #1: Your first assignment is to challenge your beliefs right now, by listing in order of significance the top five things in your life that you have simply failed to fully and completely admit or acknowledge to yourself. This requires some new thinking. You may think, "If I know it, I'm not denying it," or "If I'm denying it, how can I know it to write it down?" I said new thinking. Ask yourself some of those hard questions about what you would rather not think about. Write them down, because you'll be referring to them later. What is it that you know in your heart is a problem not acknowledged or at least so painful that you avoid it?

Be advised that you are going to be writing down a lot of things as we progress through the rest of the book. I recommend that you get some type of journal where you can do all of the "homework" that arises as we move forward. I recommend a spiral notebook, where the pages are attached and can therefore be kept together. This journal is highly confidential and should be for your eyes only. Treating it as such will allow you the freedom to be totally honest.

I would wager that whatever made your list is at least in part a product of your own behavior. I also suspect that the main difference between your problems and the more terribly tragic situations we hear or read about is the result, not the behaviors that led up to it. For aren't the patterns in your life, and those present in the more tragic stories, very likely the same? You've driven a little too fast down a neighborhood street; you've left the kids unattended while you ran next door "for a minute"; you've driven yourself home from happy hour, when discretion should have told you to hand over the keys; you've engaged in unprotected sex; you've fudged on your income tax. The "shocking stories" are often about people who have done the very same things. But only because of a tragically different outcome, they wound up in jail, or burying a child, or dealing with HIV.

Maybe your driving drunk or speeding through a neighborhood didn't leave anyone dead, unlike the person you see on television who did the same thing but ran over a child. You're not audited, whereas the next person is. Your kids are still safe when you get home. It's not that you behaved or chose any better; you just got by with it. But if you are habitually practicing poor life-management skills, you are playing with fire. You may not be getting away with as much as you think you are.

You don't live, choose, or manage your life in a vacuum. It happens in a context called the world. Given the current state of the world, naivete or a rose garden perception will likely land you in trouble you don't want. You don't live in Mayberry, because it doesn't exist. These days, when you hear people use the word coke in a conversation, the odds are that they are not talking about the soft drink. If you decide to take your honey for a midnight swim, you're likely to end up in jail for trespassing, or worse, glowing in the dark because you were bobbing around in a toxic dump or Superfund site you only thought was pristine. Take a twilight stroll down the lane or through the park, and you might not be sleeping at home tonight (don't you hate those hospital gowns?). Oh, and before you leave the house, you might also want to write your name on your arm--better yet, write it on your leg, since that's less likely to get smudged if you decide to fight back.

The world has changed; it is tough out there, of that there can be no doubt. I am sorry to sound like a cynic, but you know I'm right. This world we have conspired to create is drastically different from the one our parents and grandparents knew. If there ever was a Mayberry, there certainly is none now. As we hurtle headlong at breakneck speed toward the millennium, we are caught up in the fastest-paced, most rapidly changing society in the history of humankind. Our world is like an unguided missile, with more speed than control.

You've got a mess on your hands, for sure. You don't need a Ph.D. in behavioral sciences to know that in virtually every dimension of human functioning, America is, in varying degrees, failing. The divorce rate in the United States is estimated by some authorities to be as high as 57.7 percent, and the average length of new marriages is twenty-six months. Sixty-two percent of our society is obese. Reported emotional neglect of children has increased 330 percent in the last ten years. One in four women has been sexually molested. Suicide is increasing at an exponential rate. At least one out of every six of us will experience a serious, function-impairing depressive episode at some point in our lives; thus, antidepressants and anxiety-reducing agents are now a multibillion-dollar industry.

Violence is rampant, not just in the streets, but at home. Each year, our society witnesses nearly forty million crimes: 74 percent of us are victims of property crimes, while 25 percent of us fall prey to violent crimes. Our teenagers are headed in the wrong direction, as well. Teens between the ages of fourteen and seventeen commit approximately 4,000 murders a year. Each year, over 57 percent of public elementary and secondary school principals report at least one incident of crime to law enforcement authorities. Perhaps the saddest statistic of all: by the time they reach the eighth grade, 45 percent of American children have experimented with alcohol, and 25 percent with drugs.

As a society, we are losing it. When it comes to managing our own emotional lives, and training our children how to manage theirs, we're out of control but desperately pretending otherwise. We project an outward image of "I'm all right. I can take it. I'll be okay," because we fear judgment. Well, it's not okay, and we'd better start changing this world one life at a time, or God only knows what the millennium will hold. The life for you to start with is your own. If you want to be a winner instead of a statistic, you can do it, but lean forward, because it is not easy.

In every church I have ever attended, the people with real problems hid them rather than seeking support, and those who didn't hide them wished that they had, after the doses of guilt, judgment, or alienation they received. We hide our problems, and judge those who don't or can't hide theirs. It's not working, people--not even close. We have forgotten the basic laws of living in general, and living together in particular, and therefore violate them constantly.

I am convinced that the fundamental Life Laws that govern our world and dictate the results of our conduct have not changed. Certain characteristics of the game are different, sure, but it's the basic Life Laws that still dictate our results. Understandably, living in ignorance of or consciously ignoring these Life Laws has created huge problems and a society desperate for answers, one desperate for guidance and knowledge about human experience. Count on us, as a society, to try to quench that thirst with answers that are often harmful, silly, or both.

If you want to know why we as a society are spinning out of control, consider what sorts of "solutions" we're currently being offered. As for psychology as it is practiced today, I am not too much of a fan. In my view, it's too fuzzy, it's too intangible, it exists in a world of opinion and subjectivity. Maybe that's okay if you live in some ivory tower and can afford to pontificate about ambiguous and abstract elements of life. But I don't think that's what you want and I don't think that's what you need. You're living in the real world and dealing with real problems that need real change. You don't just need insight and understanding into your problems; you need them to change, right now.

Consider, too, the "self-empowerment" industry that dominates our culture. It really has very little to do with empowerment, and lots to do with somebody else's bottom line. It is largely unfocused, lazy, gimmicky, politically correct, and above all, marketable, often at the expense of truth. The gurus seem to have everything but verbs in their sentences. You're trying to pay the rent and get your kids to go to college instead of jail, and they want you to play with your inner this or your inner that, or yourself; perhaps a poor choice of words, but appropriate.

You are sold "self-improvement" the same way you're sold everything else: it's easy; five simple steps; you can't help succeeding, because you're so wonderful; your results will be fast, fast, fast. But we are paying dearly--in more ways than one--for this polluting flood of psychobabble. I say polluting, because, instead of stripping away our excuses and jacking us up to deal with our true lives, the psychobabble provides us with a whole new set of excuses. The result is more distraction and more problems.

To the extent that our current pop psych does identify legitimate disorders, those terms are now so overused as to obscure those cases that are genuine. A mom who despairs over the behavior of her spoiled-rotten brat is told that her child is "hyperactive" and is "engaging in negative attention-getting." Outrageous behavior in the classroom is routinely ascribed to "attention-deficit disorder." If you're shooting it up, snorting it, or drinking yourself to sleep with it, you're suffering from a "substance abuse problem." When a middle-aged woman, longing for something more in her life, certain that there's something missing, picks up a book that at last promises answers, it tells her that the answer to her yearnings lies somewhere in her exotic ancestry, several incarnations back. Tell them what they want to hear: it's not their fault; they are victims. What's astonishing is that we are actively participating in the game, gobbling up these illusions. You would think that if a ship just kept on sinking faster and faster or was getting farther and farther off course, somebody would finally stand up and say, "Hey, anybody notice this ain't working?"

Well, I'm saying it. I'm shouting it. You need a new strategy, badly. It may not be "nineties en vogue" or politically correct to say so, but I just don't too much care about providing you with vague philosophical pronouncements, rah-rah rhetoric, clever buzz words, or quick-fix solutions as to how life should be or why it should change. What I am interested in is your having a clear knowledge-based strategy for winning by overcoming your problems, patterns, and obstacles, and getting what you want in this life, for you and those you care about.

Whether "winning" for you means healing a relationship or a broken heart, having a new job, a better family life, a skinny butt, some inner peace and tranquillity, or some other meaningful goal, you need a strategy to get there, and some guidance on how to create one. Why should you listen to me? For one thing, I am not suggesting that you substitute my judgment for your own, not at all. Challenge every word I say, but first hear it. I've studied the Life Laws, gathered them into one place, and am going to explain them, I hope, clearly.

I have had the privilege, over the years, of designing winning strategies with and for thousands of clients, people from all walks of life, and in every imaginable predicament. I have addressed their problems the same way I want you to address yours: with a real-world focus on results, not intentions. There is a science to strategic living. Not to know it in this complex era is tantamount to being illiterate. I did not do it for them, I did it with them, and that is my plan with you

So who am I? I'll bet with the exception of having chosen a different career and course of life study, my background may be a lot like yours. My parents grew up poor. Both my mother and father chopped cotton in the middle of Texas when they were growing up. They were raised by good-hearted but uneducated parents. When, after returning from World War II, my father announced he would go to college on the GI Bill, his family openly ridiculed him for wanting to "play student," wasting his life in a book instead of getting a real job. Nonetheless, ultimately and with great sacrifice to us all, he earned a Ph.D. in psychology, which he practiced for twenty-five years. In 1995, he collapsed and died one Sunday morning while teaching at his church. My mother, to whom he was married for fifty-three years, has a high school education and has worked on and off throughout my life. She raised me and my three sisters with love, affection, and sacrifice: a truly noble woman.

During my high school years, my father and I, separated from the rest of the family while he pursued his internship, lived in apartments that often had no utilities, because we couldn't afford them. Being pretty shallow and status conscious, I was embarrassed to be poor and didn't know enough yet to understand that it did not matter. Among my teenage friends, I was the one with no nice clothes, no car, no money, and no prospects. I had little or no supervision, and if it had not been for athletics, I would probably have never finished high school. Like many families, we lived paycheck to paycheck, got around in old rattletraps, and spent a lot of time doing without. But we loved one another, stuck together, and kept ourselves involved in life.

Had I not won a football scholarship, I probably would never have gone to college, and probably wouldn't be writing this now. I became a psychologist, but found I liked building strategies better than doing therapy, so I began creating and finding forums to instruct people on how to change their lives and attain their goals using the ten Life Laws. I didn't spend much time focusing on why people, businesses, or clients were doing what they were doing unless it directly affected how to change. I instead focused on helping them design a plan to move forward from where they were.

Quite predictably, that approach got us to dealing with solutions much more quickly. It placed the true problems at center stage. Too often, problems get pushed aside because it is painful to deal with them and it seems easier not to. I say "seems" because, while the pain of dealing with problems is an acute, easy-to-identify pain, the pain of avoiding them is also profound, even if more subtle. If you are part of the epidemic of lives not managed, you may find yourself in one of these categories of existence:


--Frustrated that you are not making more money in your job or career
--Capable of more than you are accomplishing

--Stuck in a rut and not getting what you want

--Bored with yourself


--Silently enduring an emotionally barren life or marriage

--Trudging zombielike through a dead and unchallenging career
--Consistently failing in the pursuit of your goals


--Just "going through the motions" of your life with no passion, no plan, and no goal

--Living in a fantasy world in which you think you are bullet-proof, when in fact your actions entail incredible risks

--Living in a comfort zone that yields too little challenge and too little of what you do want, and too much of what you don't want

--Living a lonely existence with little hope for change
--Suffering financial burdens you can't handle, or


--Living with lingering guilt, frustration, or depression
It is not okay to simply accept burdens like these. This book is about how to reach, in a strategic way, for something better. You have both the capacity and the right to do so. But first, you have to stop being part of the epidemic. You have to eliminate the behavior that has become so much a part of our country's obsession with the theory of relativity. Einstein probably had no inkling of how a society might apply his scientific thinking to social mores. Americans act as though everything is relative; there are no absolutes anymore. There's no good or bad, no right or wrong, there is no standard to achieve. Everything is a compromise. Think about how often you have said or heard comments like:

"Well, we're doing relatively well."


"It's not what I really want, but what are you going to do?"

"I'm trying, but you know, it's hard."

"Well, compared to what we could have had to endure, we're not doing so badly."
Such ideology is seductive, because if there is no clear standard, no clear finish line, then you can pretend you aren't a loser, even if you are not getting what you want. It's fuzzy; it's easier to hide. Seductive as it may be, that thinking is a myth. You are either winning or losing in your life, plain and simple. You live in a competitive world, where outcomes are determined by the distinct Life Laws that I want to reveal to you.

Here's the deal. The next several weeks, months and years are going to go by, whether you are doing something about your life circumstances or not. The weeks and months and years will go by, whether you learn and embrace the Life Laws or not.

Resolve now that you will no longer live by the old adage that "ignorance is bliss," unblissfully allowing your choices and behaviors to cause you pain and fear rather than peace and joy. Life Laws, accountability, and hard questions and decisions may not be what you want to hear about, but good deal or bad, they're the only deal you've got.

Reality Check

Assignment #2: It's time for you to do a little homework, in part to see if you're willing to recognize your self-defeating excuses and rationales. I want you to sit down and write a story. The story is entitled: "The Story I'll Tell Myself if I Don't Create Meaningful and Lasting Change After Reading and Studying This Book."

I want you to be honest. You know your patterns. You know your typical excuses, rationalizations, and justifications for failure. Just look ahead, see which excuses you are most likely going to rely on, and write them down in a story. I suggest that you begin it by writing: "After reading and studying this book, I did not create meaningful and lasting change because ...

As you go through this exercise, I want you to be creative, thorough, and brutally honest about the things you will say to justify your failure. You know you con yourself and let yourself off the hook when the going gets tough. This is a test to see how willing you are to recognize that con job that sabotages yourself. It is a test to see if you can tell it like it is, or if you want to just live with the same old, tired excuses and be right instead of happy.

Now that you have finished writing, let's reflect on what you've done. You have just argued your limitations. You have just created a record of the thoughts and beliefs that you use to sabotage yourself in every endeavor you undertake. There, on paper, are the same thoughts and beliefs you will use to prevent this book from changing your life for the better. The more candid it is, the more self-critical it is, the more valuable it is. Are any of the following excuses familiar; did some of them get on your list?

--It was just too hard.

--He doesn't really understand me.

--That's all for other people.

--I couldn't focus because of the kids and my job.


--He's just too harsh; I need a more gentle approach.

--My problems are different.

--I need to read it again.

--Until my spouse reads it, I'm just spinning my wheels.

--I'm right and he's wrong.
Try something new with me for a while. At least during the period of time that you are reading this book, you can help yourself immensely if you evaluate your life, behavior, and thinking very differently. Instead of asking whether the way you are living, behaving, and thinking is "right," I want you to ask whether the way you are living, behaving, and thinking is working or not working.

I suggest that if what you are choosing is not working, that by itself tells you that those things are worthy of change. This ought to make perfect sense--unless, of course, you're more concerned about being right than you are concerned with being successful. If, on the other hand, your priority is winning and getting what you want, then at least for the time that you are reading this book, be willing to "move your position" on anything and everything that we deal with.

You can always go back to your old way of doing things; resolve that if what you are doing is not working, you will be willing to change it. I don't mean that figuratively, I mean it literally. If your marriage isn't working, change what you're doing. If your self-management is not working, change what you're doing. If your "child management" is not working, even though you're dead sure you're right, change it. What have you got to lose? Forget about being right or winning the argument about who is right. If what you're doing is not working, change it. Measure your thinking and behavior by that simple yardstick: Is it working or not working? You've been right long enough; try being a winner instead.

Having read only what you've read so far, you've arrived at a crossroads. In the next few moments, you'll be making one of the most important decisions in your life. Will you choose to learn the Life Laws, fold them into a life strategy and begin to live purposefully, or will you just continue to bob along with your hands in your pockets, taking what comes your way and complaining about what you don't have?

There never is a "good time," so there's no better time than right now. There's no better place than right here. This book is for people who are saying, "I have had it. I am sick of this. Show me the Life Laws, show me how to live strategically and show me how to create what I want in my life. I am ready."

The game has just begun. It's not too late. Whatever your situation--whether it's just that you suspect there's something missing from an otherwise quality life, or your life is a shambles--there is a strategy that will make you a winner. Together we're about to make you bottom-line streetwise and real-world savvy. Enough whining about "bad genes" or "bad luck" or "bad timing." It is your time and your turn. But you have to have the guts to face the truth about yourself. Get your feelings hurt, decide it's all too harsh--and your life is back where it started. But consider these two truths: First, you've got what it takes, and you're worth the effort it will take to find that truth and build that strategy. Second: nobody is going to do it for you. But that's okay, because you don't need a brain transplant; you don't need a spine transplant; you don't need anything that you don't have within you.

When I confronted Oprah that night with the accountabilities and results swirling around her, she came quickly to attention. No longer willing to be a spectator at her own dismemberment, she became committed and focused. She immediately stopped living with the epidemic behavior. She stopped doing the things that were going to prevent her from overcoming her obstacles. Just as importantly, she actively adopted and began living consistently with the Life Laws that govern our world. As we work together to provide you with strategic control of your own destiny, you will get the chance to learn those same laws, and, I hope, incorporate them into your life.

Life Laws are the rules of the game. No one is going to ask you if you think these laws are fair, or if you think they should exist. Like the law of gravity, they simply are. You don't get a vote. You can ignore them and stumble along, wondering why you never seem to succeed; or you can learn them, adapt to them, mold your choices and behavior to them, and live effectively. Learning these Life Laws is at the absolute core of what you must master in this book to have the essential knowledge for a personal life strategy.
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Chapter One

DECEMBER 1961
一九六一年十二月

In some empty hall, my brother is still singing. His voice hasn't dampened yet. Not altogether. The rooms where he sang still hold an impression, their walls dimpled with his sound, awaiting some future phonograph capable of replaying them.

　どこか、空っぽの音楽堂で兄が歌っている。まだ声は湿り切ってはいない。これまで兄が歌ってきた部屋の壁にはいまだに彼の声の反響が彫り込まれている。特別な蓄音機が発明され、その反響を再生する日を待ち続けている。

　My brother Jonah stands fixed, leaning against a piano. He's just twenty. The sixties have only begun. The country still dozes in its last pretended innocence. No one has heard of Jonah Strom but our family, what's left of it. We've come to Durham, North Carolina, the old music building at Duke. He has made it to the finals of a national vocal competition he'll later deny ever having entered. Jonah stands alone, just right of center stage. My brother towers in place, listing a little, backing up into the crook of the grand piano, his only safety. He curls forward, the scroll on a reticent cello. Left hand steadies him against the piano edge, while right hand cups in front of him, holding some letter, now oddly lost. He grins at the odds against being here, breathes in, and sings.

　兄はピアノに寄りかかるようにして微動だにせず立っている。ジョナはまだ二十歳になったばかりだ。六〇年代が今まさに始まろうとしているが、アメリカはいまだに無垢な振りをして居眠りを続けている。私の家族、というか、私の家族の中でまだ生きている者たちを除けば、兄が歌うのを聴いた者はまだ一人もいない。今、私たちはノースキャロライナ州ダーラムにいる。デューク大学の古い音楽堂だ。兄は全国的な声楽コンクールの本選まで勝ち残ってきた。のちに、そのような大会に出場した覚えなどないと兄は否定することになるのだが。ジョナは、舞台の中央からわずかに右寄りのところに、一人で立っている。堂々と立っている。少し横に体をかしげながらも、まっすぐ立っている。唯一の安全地帯、グランドピアノのくぼみに身をもたせている。言葉数の少ないチェロの海老尾のように上体を丸めながら前に乗り出していく。ピアノの縁に左手を軽く載せてバランスをとりながら、お椀の形に丸められた右掌を差し出していく。行方不明だった手紙を渡そうとしているかのようだ。自分かここまで勝ち残ってきたということが信じられないとでも言うようににやりと笑うと、深々と息を吸い込んで歌い始める。

　One moment, the Erl-King is hunched on my brother's shoulder, whispering a blessed death. In the next, a trapdoor opens up in the air and my brother is elsewhere, teasing out Dowland of all things, a bit of ravishing sass for this stunned lieder crowd, who can't grasp the web that slips over them:

　魔王が兄の肩にとまり、耳元で至福の死をささやいている。と思ったとたん、跳ね上げ戸が空中でばたんと開き、兄は姿をくらます。彼が引き出そうとしてい るのはよりによってダウランド[ジョン・ダウランド 1563-1626 イギリスの作曲家]だ。ドイツ歌曲(リート)を聴きに来た聴衆たちに対する魅惑的で生意気な挑戦。頭上に降り掛かってくる網を理解することができず、皆呆 然としている。

　Time stands still with gazing on her face,
　Stand still and gaze for minutes, hours, and years to her give place.
　All other things shall change, but she remains the same,
　Till heavens changed have their course and time hath lost his name.

　時間が凝視したまま静止する。
　時間が凍り、凝視し、秒が、分が、時が、年月が経過し、自分の居場所を見つける。
　何もかも変化するが、時間だけは変わらない。
　天空が己の航路を変更し、時間が彼の名前を失ってしまうまで

　Two stanzas, and his tune is done. Silence hangs over the hall. It drifts above the seats like a balloon across the horizon. For two downbeats, even breathing is a crime. Then there's no surviving this surprise except by applauding it away. The noisy gratitude of hands starts time up again, sending the dart to its target and my brother on to the things that will finish him.

　連が二つ。それで歌もおしまい。沈黙が会場にたれ込め、地平線を横切る風船のように客席の上空を漂っていく。強拍二つ分の間、息をつくことさえ許されない。と、そこで、これほど予期せぬ出来事に耐えるには、拍手喝采で厄介払いをしてしまうのが一番だということに皆が気づく。やかましい感謝の拍手で、再び時間が流れ始める。矢は的に向かって再び飛んでいき、兄は自分の息の根を止めることになるものどもへ向かって飛んでいく。

　This is how I see him, although he'll live another third of a century. This is the moment when the world first finds him out, the night I hear where his voice is headed. I'm up onstage, too, at the battered Steinway with its caramel action. I accompany him, trying to keep up, trying not to listen to that siren voice that says, Stop your fingers, crash your boat on the reef of keys, and die in peace.

　兄のことを思うたびにいつもこの光景が甦る。兄はその後さらに三十年以上生きることになるのだが。あの夜、世界は初めて兄を発見した。そして、兄の声の終着点がどこにあるのかが初めて分かったのもあの夜のことだった。私も舞台に上がり、くたびれてキャラメルのようにアクションが柔らかいスタインウェイを弾く。兄の伴奏を勤める。兄に遅れないようにと必死なのだ。「指を休めよ、鍵盤の珊瑚礁に小舟を休めて、安らかに死ね」とかどわかしてくるセイレーンの虜にならないよう気をつけながら。

　Though I make no fatal fumbles, that night is not my proudest as a musician. After the concert, I'll ask my brother again to let me go, to find an accompanist who can do him justice. And again he'll refuse. "I already have one, Joey."

　ドジを踏むことはなかったが、音楽家として最高の演奏を披露できた夜というわけでもない。コンサートの後、私は再び兄に暇乞いをする。兄の歌唱力に見合ったピアニストを探してくれと頼む。そして、兄はまたもこちらの要求を拒む。「ピアニストは間に合ってるよ、ジョーイ」　

　I'm there, up onstage with him. But at the same time, I'm down in the hall, in the place I always sit at concerts: eight rows back, just inside the left aisle. I sit where I can see my own: fingers moving, where I can study my brother's face-close enough to see everything, but far enough to survive seeing.

　私は兄とともに舞台上にいる。だが、同時に、私は客席にもいる。いつも座っている場所。前から八列目。左の通路から少し中央に入ったところだ。私は自分の 指使いがよく見え、なおかつ兄の顔がよく見える地点に腰を下ろす。近すぎず遠すぎず。何もかもはっきり見えるが、かといってそれを見て死んでしまうほどの 至近距離というわけでもない。

　Stage fright ought to paralyze us. Backstage is a single bleeding ulcer. Performers who've spent their whole youth training for this moment now prepare to spend their old age explaining why it didn't go as planned. The hall fills with venom and envy, families who've traveled hundreds of miles to see their lives' pride reduced to runner-up. My brother alone is fearless. He has already paid. This public contest has nothing to do with music. Music means those years of harmonizing together, still in the shell of our family, before that shell broke open and burned. Jonah glides through the backstage fright, the dressing rooms full of well-bred nausea, on a cloud, as though through a dress rehearsal for a performance already canceled. Onstage, against this sea of panic, his calm electrifies. The drape of his hand on the piano's black enamel ravishes his listeners, the essence of his sound before he even makes one.

　場打てして私たちは麻痺してしまうはずではないか。舞台裏はまさに出血中の潰瘍顔負けだ。この瞬間のために青春時代を犠牲にして特訓に特訓を重ねてきた歌い手たちが、なぜ計画通りに行かなかったのだろうかと考えながら余生を過ごす準備を始めている。会場には毒気と嫉妬が渦巻き、家族たちが見守るなか、一家の誇りが次点の地位に墜落していく。兄のみが恐れるということを知らない。すでに代償は支払っているのだ。このコンクールは音楽とは何の関係もない。音楽とはあの、ともにハーモニーをつけて歌った幼年期、家族の殻が割れて燃え尽きてしまう前、その殼に守られたまま一緒に歌ったあの年月を意味する。ジョナは緊張している参加者たちや上流階級の子弟が吐き気にえずいている控え室を、雲に乗っているかのようにすり抜けていく。まるで、すでに公演中止が決定しているショーのために最終リハーサルをしているような落ち着きぶりだ。舞台に上がる。この打ち寄せる恐慌状態の大洋を背景にして仁王立ちした兄の姿に場内が静まり返る。ピアノの黒いエナメルにそっと載せられた兄の手に聴衆が魅了される。まだ声を発してもいないが、すでにこの手に歌声の精髄が込められているのだ。

　I see him on this night of his first open triumph, from four decades on. He still has that softness around his eyes that later life will crack and line. His jaw quakes a little on Dowland's quarter notes, but the notes do not. He drops his head toward his right shoulder as he lifts to the high C, shrinking from his entranced listeners. The face shudders, a look only I can see, from my perch behind the piano. The broken-ridged bridge of his nose, his bruised brown lips, the two bumps of bone riding his eyes: almost my own face, but keener, a year older, a shade lighter. That breakaway shade: the public record of our family's private crime.

　兄が公衆の面前で初めて勝利を手に入れたあの夜のことを、私は四十年後から振り返って物思いにふける。兄の目の回りには、のちに皺がよってひび割れてしまう前の、あの柔らかさが残っている。ダウランドの四分音符のところで顎が幽かに震える。しかし、音程は一定したままだ。兄は頭を右肩の方へ寄せたかと思うと高音の「ド」に向かって駆け上がっていき、陶然となった聴衆を地上に置き去りにする。顔面が揺れる。ピアノ伴奏者の位置からしか見ることのできないあの表情だ。でこぼこの鼻梁、腫れぽったい茶色の唇、それに両眼の上にせり出した額の骨。私の顔にそっくりだが、私の顔よりも鋭さがあり、一つ歳上であり、ほんの少し肌の色が明るい。あの逸脱の色だ。私の一家が犯した密やかな罪を世間に喧伝するあの犯罪記録。

　My brother sings to save the good and make the wicked take their own lives. At twenty, he's already intimate with both. This is the source of his resonance, the sound that holds his audience stilled for a few stopped seconds before they can bring themselves to clap. In the soar of that voice, they hear the rift it floats over.

　善人を救済し、悪人が罪を悔いて自死することを祈りながら兄がひたすら歌う。二十歳にしてすでに兄はどちらも経験済みだった。それがこの共振音の源泉になっていた。拍手するまでの数秒間、聴衆を黙り込ませてしまうあの歌声。軽々と天空に駆け上がるあの声を聴くと、人々は裂け目の深さを実感するのだ。

　The year is a snowy black-and-white signal coming in on rabbit ears. The world of our childhood-the A-rationing, radio-fed world pitched in that final war against evil-falls away into a Kodak tableau. A man has flown in space. Astronomers pick up pulses from starlike objects. Across the globe, the United States draws to an inside straight. Berlin's tinderbox is ready to flash at any moment. Southeast Asia smolders, nothing but a curl of smoke coming from the banana leaves. At home, a rash of babies piles up behind the viewing glass of maternity hospitals from Bar Harbor to San Diego. Our hatless boy president plays touch football on the White House lawn. The continent is awash in spies, beatniks, and major appliances. Montgomery hits the fifth year of an impasse that won't occur to me until five more have passed. And seven hundred unsuspecting people in Durham, North Carolina, disappear, lulled into the granite mountainside opened by Jonah's sound.

　あの年。まるでウサギの耳に乗っかってこちらにやってくる白黒のふわふわした信号みたいだ。私たちの幼年期。食糧配給、ラジオ漬けの世界。邪悪な枢軸帝国に挑む最後の戦い。何もかもがコダック写真の世界の中に落下していく。初の大気圏外有人飛行。星のような物体から宇宙飛行士たちが波動を受信する。地球の裏側、アメリカの国民は内角低めの球を待つ。火薬庫ベルリンは今にも爆発しそう。東南アジアからは黒煙が立ち昇る。バナナの葉をすかしてゆらゆら立ち昇る煙の帯が見えるの
み。国内に目を戻すと、ベビー・ブームの真っ盛り。国土最東端のバーハーバーから最西端のサンディエゴまで、産婦人科は大繁盛。我らが無帽の青年大統領がホワイトハウスの芝生でタッチ・フットボールをして遊ぶ。アメリカ大陸は諜報員、ビート族、そして三種の神器でごった返している。モンゴメリーでは政局が難航してすでに五年目。さらに五年が経過して、私はようやくその上うな事態が生じていたことに気づくようになるのだが。そして、何の気なしにノースキャロライナ州ダょフムの音楽堂を訪れた七百人の聴衆たちは、ジョナの歌声が花崗岩の山の山腹に開けた割れ目の中に、人事不省のまま、姿を消していく。

　Until this night, no one has heard my brother sing but us. Now the word is out. In the applause, I watch that rust red face waver behind his smile's hasty barricade. He looks around for an offstage shadow to duck back into, but it's too late. He breaks into leaky grins and, with one practiced bow, accepts his doom.

　私たち以外に兄が歌うのを聴いた者など一人もいない。今夜が初めてだ。しかし、秘密はついに暴かれた。聴衆の喝采を聞きながら、私は赤錆のような色をしたあの顔がとっさにこしらえた微笑のバリケードの背後で兄が逡巡するのを目撃する。兄は辺りを見渡し、舞台の袖の陰にどこか身を潜めることができるところはないかと考えるが、すでに遅すぎる。彼は締まりのない笑顔を浮かべると、練習しておいたお辞儀を繰り返しながら、宿命を受け入れる。

　They bring us back twice; Jonah has to drag me out the second time. Then the judges call out the winners in each range-three, two, one-as if Duke were Cape Canaveral, this music contest another Mercury launch, and America's Next Voice another Shepard or Grissom. We stand in the wings, the other tenors forming a ring around Jonah, already hating him and heaping him with praise. I fight the urge to work this group, to assure them my brother is not special, that each performer has sung as well as anyone. The others sneak glances at Jonah, studying his unstudied posture. They go over the strategy, for next time: the panache of Schubert. Then the left hook of Dowland, striving for that floating sustain above the high A. The thing they can never stand far back enough to see has already swallowed my brother whole.

　カーテンコールが二回。二回目の時には私も引きずり出されて聴衆の喝采に応えなければならない。そして、審査員たちがそれぞれの部門の入賞者を発表し始める。三、二、一。まるでここはデューク大学ではなくてケネディ宇宙センターだと言わんばかりじやないか。そして、このコンクールは、マーキュリー宇宙船打ち上げで、アメリカの次世代を担う歌手はさしずめマーキュリー７シェパードかグリソムといったところか。舞台の袖に立っている間、ジョナの周りにテノール部門参加者たちが集まってきて人垣ができる。すでにジョナのことを憎悪しつつ賞賛を惜しみなく浴びせてくる。この人垣相手に一席ぶとうか、兄はなにも特別な人間ではない、ほかのテノール部門出場者もみんなあっぱれな出来映えだったとねぎらいの言葉をかけてやろうかという衝動を私はなんとかこらえる。皆、泰然としたジョナの身構えを研究している。次に戦う時はどのように攻めようかとすでに戦略を練り始めている。シューペルトも顔負けの堂々たる態度ではないか。それから、ダウランドの左フックがやってくる。あの高音の「ラ」のさらに上で声を維持することができる持続力。彼らには決して全容を把握することができないようなあの能力がすでに兄を丸ごと呑み込んでしまっている。

　My brother hangs back against the fly ropes in his concert black, appraising the choicer sopranos. Stands still and gazes. He sings to them, private encores in his mind. Everyone knows he's won, and Jonah struggles to make it mean nothing. The judges call his name. Invisible people cheer and whistle. He is their victory for democracy, and worse. Jonah turns to me, drawing out the moment. "Joey. Brother. There's got to be a more honest way to make a living." He breaks another rule by dragging me onstage with him to collect the trophy. And his first public conquest rushes to join the past.

　コンサート用の黒の晴れ着に身を包んだ兄は大道具吊り上げ用の大縄に寄りかかりながら、ソプラノ部門参加者をじっと品定めしている。凍り付いたように凝視している。彼らに向かって心の中で歌を口ずさみ、こっそりとアンコールを送る。兄の優勝は誰の目にも明らかなのだが、ジョナは何事もなかったかのように振る舞おうと努力している。審査員たちが彼の名前を呼ぶ。不可視の聴衆たちがやんやと喝采を送る。彼らにとって兄は民主主義の勝利の象徴に過ぎない。あるいはもっとくだらないものの象徴に過ぎない。ジョナは私の方を振り向くと、じっと溜めてからこう言う。「よう、ジョーイ。もう少し正直な生計の立て方ってものがこの世のどこかにはあるはずだろう？」コンクールの掟をまたも破って、兄は私を引き連れて壇上で賞杯を受け取る。そして、初めてのコンクール優勝という記念すべきこの瞬間もあっという間に過去の一部となって消え去っていく。

　Afterward, we move through a sea of small delights and epic disappointments. Congratulating lines form up around the winners. In ours, a woman hunched with age touches Jonah's shoulder, her eyes damp. My brother amazes me, extending his performance, as if he's really the ethereal creature she mistakes him for. "Sing forever," she says, until her caretaker whisks her off. A few well-wishers behind her, a ramrod retired colonel twitches. His face is a hostile muddle, duped in a way he can't dope out. I feel the man's righteousness, well before he reaches us, the rage we repeatedly provoke in his people simply by appearing in public. He waits out his moment in the queue, his anger's fuse shortening with this line. Reaching the front, he charges. I know what he'll say before he gets it out. He studies my brother's face like a thwarted anthropologist. "What exactly are you boys?"

　それから、私たちは小さな喜びと巨大な落胆の大海原を横切っていく。優勝者たちの前には祝福者たちの行列がすでにできている。老齢で背中の曲がった女性が兄の肩にそっと触れる。涙目になっている。私は兄にまたも驚かされる。兄はいまだに舞台上で歌っているかのようだ。自分は空気のような妖精だと思い込んでいる老女の幻想を壊したりしないように振る舞う。「永遠に歌っていてください」と言ったかと思うと、老女は看護の者に付き添われてどこかに姿を消す。老女の数人後に並んでいたもう一人のファンは背筋のしやきっとした退役軍人とおぼしき人物。顔面がぴくぴく痙攣しているのが見える。敵意の泥沼が顔面で渦巻いている。ペテンにかけられたのだが、相手の手口が分からないのだ。こちらに近づいてくる前から、この男の独善を肌身でひしひしと感じることができる。公衆の面前に私たちが大胆不敵にも姿を現すたび、彼のような人種の心のうちにかき立てられる激怒の念。彼はじっと自分の順番がやってくるのを待っている。その間にも激怒のヒューズが過熱して飛びそうになっているのが手に取るように分かる。ようやく自分の順番が回ってくると、男は告発する。男が口を開く前から私には彼が何を言うつもりなのか分かっている。男は兄の顔をじっと観察する。まるで、御しにくい原住民を前にしか人類学者のように。「君らはいったい何者かね？」

　The question we grew up on. The question no Strom ever figured out how to read, let alone answer. As often as I've heard it, I still seize up. Jonah and I don't even bother to exchange looks. We're old hands at annihilation. I make some motions, ready to smooth over the misunderstanding. But the man backs me off with a look that chases me from adolescence for good.

　これまで何度となく投げかけられてきた質問だ。シュトロム家の人々にはいまだにこの質問をどう考えればいいのか、まして、この質問にどう答えればいいのかが分からない。これまで何度も耳にしてきた質問だが、いまだに私はこの質問を聞くたびに喉に何か熱いものがこみ上げてくるのを感じる。ジョナと私は目配せを交わしさえしない。敵の殲滅ならお手のものだ。私は身振り手振りで誤解を解きほぐそうとする。しかし、退役軍人はこちらに無垢な青春時代を永久追放してしまうほど強烈な目線を投げやり、邪魔立てするなと告げてくる。

　Jonah has his answer; I have mine. But he's the one in the spotlight. My brother inhales, as if we're still onstage, the smallest grace note of breath that would lead me into the downbeat. For a semiquaver, he's about to launch into "Fremd bin ich eingezogen." Instead, he pitches his reply, buffo-style, up into comic head tones:

　ジョナは答えを持っている。私も私なりの答えを用意している。しかし、今夜、優勝したのは私ではなくて兄だった。兄は舞台に立っているかのように大きく息を吸い込む。この小さな装飾音に釣りこまれるようにして、私はいつも伴奏に入る。ほんの刹那、兄は「異邦人としてやってきて……」とシューベルトを歌い始めるのかと見える。しかし、応答の音程を滑稽で喜劇的な高音に変化させて歌い出すのは----

　"I am my mammy's ae bairn,
　Wi' unco folk I weary, Sir ..."

　「ぼくはママの赤ちゃんで
　変人ばっかり、疲れ気味……」

　His first full night of adulthood, but still a child, giddy with just being named America's Next Voice. His unaccompanied encore turns heads all around us. Jonah ignores them all. It's 1961. We're in a major university town. You can't string a guy up for high spirits. They haven't strung up anyone for high spirits in these parts for at least half a dozen years. My brother laughs through the Burns couplet, thinking to leave the colonel sheepish with eight bars of good-natured cheek. The man goes livid. He tenses and puckers, ready to wrestle Jonah to the ground. But the eager line of admirers moves him along, out the stage door, toward what the prophetic look spreading across my brother's face already knows will be a paralyzing stroke.

　兄が大人になった夜だ。が、アメリカの次世代を担う歌手に選ばれて少し浮ついている子供に過ぎない。この伴奏なしで歌われるアンコールに周囲にいた人々はぎょっとする。ジョナは何か起きようがおかまいなしといった態度で歌っている。時は一九六一年、そこそこの大学都市にいるのだから安心だ。おもしろ半分にジョナを絞首刑にしたりはしないだろう。少なくとも、この五、六年は、この地域ではおもしろ半分のリンチ事件はコ度も起きていない。兄はロバートーバーンズの対句を歌っている間も笑いを抑えることができない。罪のない生意気な青年が歌う八小節のスコットランド民謡を手土産に退役軍人さんには尻尾を丸めて退散してもらおうという魂胆か。退役軍人さんは怒りで顔が鉛色になる。体をこわばらせ、唇をすぼめ、今にも兄を組み伏せようとするかに見える。しかし、熱烈なファンの行列につつかれるようにしながら老人は舞台裏の出口から外に出て、迫りくる心臓発作を甘受することになるのだろう。兄の顔に浮かぶ予言者のような表情がそう告げている。

　At the end of the conga line, our father and sister wait. This is how I see them, too, from the far side of a life. Still ours, still a family. Da grins like the lost immigrant he is. A quarter century in this country, and he still walks around like he's expecting to be detained. "You pronounciate German like a Polack. Who the hell taught you your vowels? A disgrace. Eine Schande!"

　長蛇の行列の終点で、私たちの父親と妹が待ち構えている。今でもありありとその姿を思い出すことができる。私たちの父親、私たちの妹として私は記憶している。父は迷子の移民のように（実際にそうなのだが）にんまりと笑う。この国に来てから四半世紀が経とうというのに、いまだに強制送還されるのではと恐れているような歩き方をする。「ポーランド野郎(ポラック)みたいなドイツ語の発音じやないか。まったく。特に母音がひどい。いったい誰に教わったっていうんだ？まったく、恥ずかしいったらありやしない。アイネーシャンデ！」

　Jonah caps a hand over our father's mouth. "Shah. Da. For Christ's sake. Remind me never to take you out in public. `Polack' is an ethnic slur."
　"`Polack'? You're crazy. That's what they're called, bub."

　ジョナが片手で父親の口を塞ぎ「シッ。父さん。頼むよ。“ポラック”なんて差別語でしょう。まったく、二度と連れてこないからね」と言う。
　「“ポラック”がか？　そんな馬鹿な。どこでもそう呼ばれているんだから。しやらくさい」

　"Yeah, hub." Ruth, our mimic, nails him. Even at sixteen, she's passed for the man more than once, over the phone. "What the hell else you going to call people from Polackia?"

　「そうそう、しゃらくさい」と物まね上手な妹のルースが追い討ちをかける。まだ十六歳だというのに、電話でなら男として通すこともできるくらいだ。「それじゃあ、ポラッキア出身の人たちをどう呼べばいいっていうの？」

　The crowd flinches again, that look that pretends not to. We're a moving violation of everything in their creed. But out here in classically trained public, they keep that major-key smile. They push on to the other winners, leaving us, for a last moment, once again our own safe nation. Father and eldest son reel about on the remnants of Schubert still hanging about the emptied hall. They lean on each other's shoulders. "Trust me," the older one tells the younger. "I've known a few Polacks in my day. I almost married one."

　私たちを取り囲む群衆から再びひんしゅくを買う。あの思わず出てしまったというような表情。私たち一家は彼らにとって常識になっているしきたりを次から次に破壊していく。しかし、クラシック音楽の世界では、誰もが長調の笑顔を浮かべている。群衆は、私たち一家を後に残してほかの入賞者のもとへ立ち去っていく。ふたたび、親子水入らずの共和国。空っぽの音楽堂にいまだに漂っているシューベルトを追いかけて父親と長男はふらふらさまよう。二人とも相手にもたれかかるようにしている。「本当なんだぞ」と父親。「大昔の話だが、ポラックの知り合いも何人かいたんだ。そのうちの∵人とは危うく結婚しかけたんだ」

　"I could have been a Polack?"
　"A near Polack. A counterfactual Polack."
　"A Polack in one of many alternate universes?"

　「ということは、僕もポラックになる可能性があった？」
　「ポラックすれすれだよ。反実仮想のポラックというところだな」
　「数多くの平行世界の中の一つに生きているポラック？」

　They babble to each other, the shorthand jokes of his profession. Clowning for the one none of us will name this night, the one to whom we offer every note of our contest prize. Ruth stands in the stage footlights, almost auburn, but otherwise the sole keeper of our mother's features in this world. My mother, the woman my father almost didn't marry, a woman more and longer American than anyone in this hall tonight.

　駄弁を交わす親子。父親の職業をネタにした速記風の冗談。今夜、私たちが決してその名を口にすることがないあの人物に向かってひょうきんにおどけてみせる二人。優勝賞金を全額捧げなければならないその人物。ルースがフットライトを浴びて立っている。肌はほとんど鳶色といっていいのだが、その点を除けば、私たちの母親の面影をこの世にとどめている唯一の記念品。母。父が危うく結婚し損なったかもしれない女性。アメリカ国民の資格においては、今夜、この会堂に集まった聴衆の誰にも負けることのないあの女性。

　"You did good, too, Joey," my little sister makes sure to tell me. "You know. Perfect and all." I hug her for her lie, and she glows under my grasp, a ready jewel. We wander back to Da and Jonah. Assembled again: the surviving four-fifths of the Strom family chorale.

　「ジョーイも今晩はよく頑張ったよね」と妹は忘れずに付け足す。「ほら、ばっちり。完璧みたいな」私はお世辞へのお礼に妹を抱きしめ、妹は私の抱擁の中で輝きを増す。光がこぼれ落ちんばかりの宝石。私たちは父とジョナが立っているところまでゆっくり引き返す。再び一家集合。五人家族だったシュトロムー家。生存者の四名が一堂に会す。

　But Da and Jonah don't need either of us accompanists. Da has hold of the Erl-King motif, and Jonah thumps along, his three-and-a-half-octave voice dropping into bass to whack at his imitation piano's left hand. He hums the way he wanted me to play it. The way it ought to be played, in heaven's headliner series. Ruth and I draw near, despite ourselves, to add the inner lines. People smile as they pass, in pity or shame, some imagined difference. But Jonah is the evening's rising star, momentarily beyond scorn.

　しかし、父とジョナには私たち伴奏者など必要なかった。父は『魔王』を歌い続け、ジョナは三オクターヴ半の声域を誇るその声を低くして、ピアノの左手の動きをまねてリズムを取っている。私に弾いて欲しかったような弾き方でピアノの音をまねる。天国でオールスターのコンサートが開かれるなら、きっと伴奏者もそんな弾き方をするのだろうというような弾き方で。ルースと私は、いつの間にか引き寄せられて、コ圭フスを歌い始めている。通りすがりの聴衆たちは微笑んでいる。哀れみからか、それとも後悔の念からか。想像上の差異。しかし、今宵のジョナはクラシック界期待の星なのであり、軽蔑の届かない天空の高みで輝いている。

　The audience this night will claim they heard him. They'll tell their children how that chasm opened up, how the floor dropped out of the old Duke concert hall and left them hanging in the vacuum they thought it was music's job to fill. But the person they'll recall won't be my brother. They'll tell of sitting up in their seats at the first sound of that transmuting voice. But the voice they'll remember won't be his.

　今夜、この会堂に居合わせた聴衆たちは、将来、ジョナを聴いたと自慢することになるだろう。地面がいきなりまっぶたつに割れた時のことを、そして、デューク大学の音楽堂の床がいきなり抜けてしまい、それを埋め立てるのが音楽の務めだとばかり思っていた真空状態の中に宙づりにされてしまった時のことを子供たちに語って聞かせるだろう。しかし、彼らが回想する人物は私の兄ではない。あの錬金術のような声を聴くや否や、座席の上で背筋を伸ばした時のことを語って聞かせるだろう。しかし、彼らが思い出すことになる声は兄のそれではない。

　His growing band of listeners will chase Jonah's performances, prize his tickets, follow his career even into those last, decoupled years. Connoisseurs will search down his records, mistaking the voice on the disk for his. My brother's sound could never be recorded. He had a thing against the permanent, a hatred of being fixed that's audible in every note he ever laid down. He was Orpheus in reverse: Look forward, and all that you love will disappear.

　ジョナのファンたちはジョナのコンサートを追いかけ回し、高額チケットを宝物のようにありがたがり、最盛期を過ぎた晩年に至るまで兄の近況に細心の注意を払うだろう。愛好家たちは彼のレコードを蒐集し、レコード盤に刻まれた声を兄の声だと勘違いするだろう。兄の声を録音するなど不可能だった。恒久不変という概念に反逆するようなところがあった。兄の声の一音一音には固定されることを断固として拒む意志が聴き取れた。まさにオルフェウスの正反対だった。前方の未来を見つめた瞬間、自分の愛していたものが何もかも消え去ってしまうのだ。

　It's 1961. Jonah Strom, America's Next Voice, is twenty. This is how I see him, forty years on, eight years older now than my older brother will ever be. The hall has emptied; my brother still sings. He sings through to the double bar, the tempo falling to nothing as it passes through the fermata's blackness, a boy singing to a mother who can no longer hear him.

　一九六一年、アメリカの次世代を担う歌手、ジョナーシュトロムは二十歳になったばかり。あれから四十年が経過した。ついに私は兄の八歳年長になってしまった。いまだにあの時の情景がありありと目に浮かぶ。空っぽの音楽堂。兄はいまだに歌っている。兄はダブルーバーのところまで歌い続け、フェルマータに引き延ばされるようにしてそのテンポはほとんど静止状態に近づき、少年が一人、会場に駆けつけることができない母親に歌いかけている。

　That voice was so pure, it could make heads of state repent. But it sang knowing just what shape rode along behind it. And if any voice could have sent a message back to warn the past and correct the unmade future, it would have been my brother's.

　あまりに純粋な声。国家元首でさえ頭を垂れたくなるような声。しかし、あの声は背後からついてくるものの形を諒解した上で歌っていた。過去に警告を送り、いまだ訪れぬ未来を修正できるような声がこの世にあるとすれば、それは兄の声だった。

　WINTER, AROUND 1950
　一九五〇年頃、冬

　But no one ever really knew that voice except his family, singing together on those postwar winter nights, with music their last line of defense against the outside and the encroaching cold. They lived in half of a three-story Jersey freestone house that had weathered over half a century to a chocolate brown, tucked up in the northwest corner of Manhattan, a neglected enclave of mixed, mottled blocks where Hamilton Heights shaded off into Washington Heights. They rented, the immigrant David Strom never trusting the future enough to own anything that wouldn't fit into a waiting suitcase.

　しかし、家族を除けば兄の声を知っている者などＩ人もいなかった。あの戦後直後の冬。一家でそろって合唱したものだった。まるで、包囲して侵食してくる外界に対する最後の砦を防衛するかのように熱心に。ニュージャージーから切り出されたフリーストーンで建てられた三階建の家の半分を借りていた。マンハッタンの北西の片隅、ハミルトンーハイツ地区とワシントンーハイツ地区の境界にひっそりと建っている、雨風にさらされてチョコレート色に変色した建物。賃貸だった。新移民のデイヴィッドーシュトロムは一寸先は闇という人生哲学の持ち主だったので、スーツケースに詰め込めないものは所有しないように心がけていた。コロンビア大学物理学部の教授ポストでさえ、彼にとっては、何かとても脆弱ではかないものに思えた。ュダヤ人差別や、知識人差別や、不合理な群集心理やら、ナチの再台頭のせいでそう遠からぬ将来に奪い取られてしまうかもしれないと思っていた。潮だまりのようにさえない地域だったが、これまでの人生体験に照らし合わせれば、曲がりなりにも建物の半分を賃貸できること自体がデイヴィッドには奇跡に思えるのだった。
----

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1. FIRST SIGHT
1 転校生

MY MOTHER DROVE ME TO THE AIRPORT WITH THE windows rolled down. It was seventy-five degrees in Phoenix, the sky a perfect, cloudless blue. I was wearing my favorite shirt --- sleeveless, white eyelet lace; I was wearing it as a farewell gesture. My carry-on item was a parka.

　ママは車のウインドウを全開にして、空港まで送ってくれた。アリゾナ州フェニックスは気温二十四度、雲ひとつない完璧な青空。あたしはお気に入りのシャツを着ている。白い透かし模様のレースのノースリーブだ。おわかれの記念に着てみたつもり。

　In the Olympic Peninsula of northwest Washington State, a small town named Forks exists under a near-constant cover of clouds. It rains on this inconsequential town more than any other place in the United States of America. It was from this town and its gloomy, omnipresent shade that my mother escaped with me when I was only a few months old. It was in this town that I'd been compelled to spend a month every summer until I was fourteen. That was the year I finally put my foot down; these past three summers, my dad, Charlie, vacationed with me in California for two weeks instead.

　ワシントン州北西部のオリンピック半島に、フォークスという名のいつも雲におおわれた小さな町がある。そのちっぽけな町には、全米のどんな場所よりたくさん雨が降る。
　 ママが、そのどんよりした不吉な雲におおわれた町から逃げだしたのは、あたしが生後数力月のときだった。そして十三歳まであたしは毎年、夏の一カ月をその 町ですごさなければならなかった。でも、十四歳になってようやく自分の意見を主張した。だからこの三年は、かわりにチャーリー……ううん、ちがった、パパ とカリフォルニアで落ちあって一緒に二週間の休暇をすごしてきた。

　It was to Forks that I now exiled myself --- an action that I took with great horror. I detested Forks.
　I loved Phoenix. I loved the sun and the blistering heat. I loved the vigorous, sprawling city.
　"Bella," my mom said to me --- the last of a thousand times --- before I got on the plane. "You don't have to do this."

　あたしはいま、その雨と霧と雲の町に、自分を追いこもうとしている。フォークスなんて大嫌いなのに。
　大好きなのはフェニックスだ。太陽と焼けつくような熱気。活気にあふれた大都会があたしは大好きだった。
　「ねえ、ベラ」飛行機に乗る前、ママはいった。これで千回目。「こんなこと、しなくていいのよ」

　My mom looks like me, except with short hair and laugh lines. I felt a spasm of panic as I stared at her wide, childlike eyes. How could I leave my loving, erratic, harebrained mother to fend for herself? Of course she had Phil now, so the bills would probably get paid, there would be food in the refrigerator, gas in her car, and someone to call when she got lost, but still . . .

　ショートヘアと笑いじわをべつにすれば、ママとあたしはそっくり。そのあどけない大きな瞳を見つめているうちに、心がぐらりと揺らいだ。おひとよしで、 気まぐれで、むこうみずなママを残していくなんてやっぱりできない。もちろん、いまではフィルがいてくれるから、生活費だって問題ないはずだし、冷蔵庫に は食べるものが、そして車にはガソリンがちゃんと入るだろうし、迷子になったら連絡する人もいる。でも……。

　"I want to go," I lied. I'd always been a bad liar, but I'd been saying this lie so frequently lately that it sounded almost convincing now.
　"Tell Charlie I said hi."
　"I will."
　"I'll see you soon," she insisted. "You can come home whenever you want --- I'll come right back as soon as you need me."

　「行きたいんだもの」あたしはウソをついた。
　昔からウソは下手だけど、このウソは最近何回も口にしてきたから、いまではほとんど本気に聞こえる。
　「チャーリーによろしく伝えてね」ママはあきらめていった。
　「うん」
　「近いうちにまたね」ママがきっぱりいった。「いつでも、好きなときにうちへ帰ってきていいのよ。あなたがそうしたいなら、ママもすぐもどってくるから」

　But I could see the sacrifice in her eyes behind the promise.
　"Don't worry about me," I urged. "It'll be great. I love you, Mom."
　She hugged me tightly for a minute, and then I got on the plane, and she was gone.

　言葉とは裏腹に、瞳には悲壮感が浮かんでいる。そんなわけにいかないことはママだってわかってるんだ。
　「あたしのことは心配しないで」と説得した。「きっとうまくいくわ。元気でね」
　ママはしばらくあたしをぎゅっと抱きしめた。それから、あたしは搭乗し、ママも行ってしまった。

　It's a four-hour flight from Phoenix to Seattle, another hour in a small plane up to Port Angeles, and then an hour drive back down to Forks. Flying doesn't bother me; the hour in the car with Charlie, though, I was a little worried about.

　フェニックスからシアトルまでの飛行時間は四時間。それから小型機で一時間かけてポートアンジェルスヘ北上して、さらに車で一時間かけてフォークスに着く。空の旅はなんでもなかったけど、チャーリーとの一時間のドライブはちょっと気がかりだった。

　Charlie had really been fairly nice about the whole thing. He seemed genuinely pleased that I was coming to live with him for the first time with any degree of permanence. He'd already gotten me registered for high school and was going to help me get a car.

　今回の件では、チャーリーはすごくよくしてくれている。あたしがはじめて、ちょっとでも″永住″に近いかたちで一緒に暮らすことになって、心からよろこんでるみたい。高校の転入手続きもすでにすませていて、車を買うのにも協力してくれるらしい。

　But it was sure to be awkward with Charlie. Neither of us was what anyone would call verbose, and I didn't know what there was to say regardless. I knew he was more than a little confused by my decision --- like my mother before me, I hadn't made a secret of my distaste for Forks.

　でも、チャーリーと一緒にいるのが気まずいのに変わりはない。ふたりともおしゃべりってタイプじゃないし、どっちみち話題なんてあるのかどうか。今回の あたしの決断にチャーリーがとまどってるのもわかってる。ママと一緒で、あたしもフォークスが嫌いなのを隠してなかったから。

　When I landed in Port Angeles, it was raining. I didn't see it as an omen --- just unavoidable. I'd already said my goodbyes to the sun.

　ポートアンジェルスに着陸すると、雨が降っていた。
　べつに不吉なサインではない。ここではこうなんだってだけ。太陽には、ちゃんとおわかれの挨拶をしてきた。

　Charlie was waiting for me with the cruiser. This I was expecting, too. Charlie is Police Chief Swan to the good people of Forks. My primary motivation behind buying a car, despite the scarcity of my funds, was that I refused to be driven around town in a car with red and blue lights on top. Nothing slows down traffic like a cop.

　 チャーリーはパトカーで出迎えてくれた。これも予想どおり。なにしろ、フォークスでは「スワン警察署長」で通っているんだもの。あんまりお金もないのにあたしが車を買おうとしてる最大の理由は、赤と青のライトをてっぺんにつけた車に乗せられて町を走るのはごめんだから。パトカーくらい、スピーディーな交通 をさまたげるものはない。

　Charlie gave me an awkward, one-armed hug when I stumbled my way off the plane.
　"It's good to see you, Bells," he said, smiling as he automatically caught and steadied me. "You haven't changed much. How's Renee?"

　飛行機からおりるとき、転びそうになって、チャーリーがぎこちなく片腕で抱きとめてくれた。
　「会えてうれしいよ、ベラ」笑顔を浮かべながら、チャーリーは反射的にあたしをつかんでしっかり支えた。「相変わらず、すぐつまずくんだな。レネは元気かい」

　"Mom's fine. It's good to see you, too, Dad." I wasn't allowed to call him Charlie to his face.
　I had only a few bags. Most of my Arizona clothes were too permeable for Washington. My mom and I had pooled our resources to supplement my winter wardrobe, but it was still scanty. It all fit easily into the trunk of the cruiser.
　"I found a good car for you, really cheap," he announced when we were strapped in.
　"What kind of car?" I was suspicious of the way he said "good car for you" as opposed to just "good car."
　"Well, it's a truck actually, a Chevy."
　"Where did you find it?"
　"Do you remember Billy Black down at La Push?" La Push is the tiny Indian reservation on the coast.
　"No."
　"He used to go fishing with us during the summer," Charlie prompted.
　That would explain why I didn't remember him. I do a good job of blocking painful, unnecessary things from my memory.
　"He's in a wheelchair now," Charlie continued when I didn't respond, "so he can't drive anymore, and he offered to sell me his truck cheap."
　"What year is it?" I could see from his change of expression that this was the question he was hoping I wouldn't ask.
　"Well, Billy's done a lot of work on the engine --- it's only a few years old, really."
　I hoped he didn't think so little of me as to believe I would give up that easily. "When did he buy it?"
　"He bought it in 1984, I think."
　"Did he buy it new?"
　"Well, no. I think it was new in the early sixties --- or late fifties at the earliest," he admitted sheepishly.
　"Ch --- Dad, I don't really know anything about cars. I wouldn't be able to fix it if anything went wrong, and I couldn't afford a mechanic. . . ."
　"Really, Bella, the thing runs great. They don't build them like that anymore."
　The thing, I thought to myself . . . it had possibilities --- as a nickname, at the very least.
　"How cheap is cheap?" After all, that was the part I couldn't compromise on.
　"Well, honey, I kind of already bought it for you. As a homecoming gift." Charlie peeked sideways at me with a hopeful expression.
----

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Preface
Part I: What's the Issue?　なにが本当の問題なのか?
Chapter 1: Falling Behind and Falling Apart: the Bottom Billion　脱落し崩壊する最底辺の一〇億人の国
Part II: The Traps　これらの国を捕らえる数々の罠
Chapter 2: The Conflict Trap　紛争の罠
Chapter 3: The Natural Resource Trap　天然資源の罠
Chapter 4: Landlocked with Bad Neighbors　内陸国の罠
Chapter 5: Bad Governance in a Small Country　小国における悪いガバナンスの罠
Part III: An Interlude: Globalization to the Rescue?　グローバル化がもたらしたもの
Chapter 6: On Missing the Boat: the Marginalization of the Bottom Billion in the World Economy　世界経済の中で好機を逸する最貧国
Part IV: The Instruments　われわれのとるべき手段
Chapter 7: Aid to the Rescue?　救済のための援助となっているのか?
Chapter 8: Military Intervention　軍事介入
Chapter 9: Laws and Charters　法と憲章
Chapter 10: Trade　周縁化を逆転させる貿易政策
Part V: The Struggle for the Bottom Billion　最底辺の一〇億人の国にとっての戦い
Chapter 11: An Agenda for Action　われわれの行動の指針
Research on Which This Book Is Based
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　THE THIRD WORLD has shrunk. For forty years the development challenge has been a rich world of one billion people facing a poor world of five billion people. The Millennium Development Goals established by the United Nations, which are designed to track development progress through 2015, encapsulate this thinking. By 2015, however, it will be apparent that this way of conceptualizing development has become outdated. Most of the five billion, about 80 percent, live in countries that are indeed developing often at amazing speed. The real challenge of development is that there is a group of countries at the bottom that are falling behind, and often falling apart.
　The countries at the bottom coexist with the twenty-first century, but their reality is the fourteenth century: civil war, plague, ignorance. They are concentrated in Africa and Central Asia, with a scattering elsewhere. Even during the 1990s, in retrospect the golden decade between the end of the Cold War and 9/11, incomes in this group declined by 5 percent. We must learn to turn the familiar numbers upside down: a total of five billion who are already prosperous, or at least on the track to be so, and one billion who are stuck at the bottom.
　This problem matters, and not just to the billion people who are living and dying in fourteenth-century conditions. It matters to us. The twenty-first-century world of material comfort, global travel, and economic interdependence will become increasingly vulnerable to these large islands of chaos. And it matters now. As the bottom billion diverges from an increasingly sophisticated world economy, integration will become harder, not easier.
　And yet it is a problem denied, both by development biz and by development buzz. Development biz is run by the aid agencies and the companies that get the contracts for their projects. They will fight this thesis with tenacity of bureaucracies endangered, because they like things the way they are. A definition of development that encompasses five billion people gives them license to be everywhere, or more honestly, everywhere but the bottom billion. At the bottom, conditions are rather rough. Every development agency has difficulty getting its staff to serve in Chad and Laos; the glamour postings are for countries such as Brazil and China. The World Bank has large offices in every major middle income country but not a single person resident in the Central African Republic. So don’t expect the development biz to refocus voluntarily.
　Development buzz is generated by rock stars, celebrities and NGOs. To its credit, it does focus on the plight of the bottom billion. It is thanks to development buzz that Africa gets on the agenda of the G8. But inevitably, development buzz has to keep its message simple, driven by the need for slogans, images, and anger. Unfortunately, although the plight of the bottom billion lends itself to simple moralizing, the answers do not. It is a problem that needs to be hit with several policies at the same time, some of them counterintuitive. Don’t look to development buzz to formulate such an agenda: it is at times a headless heart.
　What of the governments of the countries at the bottom? The prevailing conditions bring out extremes. Leaders are sometimes psychopaths who have shot their way to power, sometimes crooks who have bought it, and sometimes brave people who, against the odds, are trying to build a better future. Even the appearance of modern government in these states is sometimes a facade, as if the leaders are reading from a script. They sit at the international negotiating tables, such as the World Trade Organization, but they have nothing to negotiate. The seats stay occupied even in the face of meltdown in their societies: the government of Somalia continued to be officially “represented” in the international arena for years after Somalia ceased to have a functioning government in the country itself. So don’t expect the governments of the bottom billion to unite in formulating a practical agenda: they are fractured between villains and heroes, and some of them are barely there. For our future world to be livable the heroes must win their struggle. But the villains have the guns and the money, and to date they have usually prevailed. That will continue unless we radically change our approach.
　All societies used to be poor. Most are now lifting out of it; why are others stuck? The answer is traps. Poverty is not intrinsically a trap, otherwise we would all still be poor. Think, for a moment, of development as chutes and ladders. In the modern world of globalization there are some fabulous ladders; most societies are using them. But there are also some chutes, and some societies have hit them. The countries at the bottom are an unlucky minority, but they are stuck.
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Erster Theil　第一部
Zarathustra's Vorrede　ツァラトゥストラの序説
Die Reden Zarathustra's　ツァラトゥストラの教説
Von den drei Verwandlungen　三段の変化
Von den Lehrstuhlen der Tugend　徳の講壇
Von den Hinterweltlern　世界の背後を説く者
Von den Verachtern des Leibes　身体の軽蔑者
Von den Freuden- und Leidenschaften　喜びの情熱と苦しみの情熱
Vom bleichen Verbrecher　蒼白の犯罪者
Vom Lesen und Schreiben　読むことと書くこと
Vom Baum am Berge　山上の木
Von den Predigern des Todes　死の説教者
Vom Krieg und Kriegsvolke　戦争と戦士
Vom neuen Gotzen　新しい偶像
Von den Fliegen des Marktes　市場の蠅
Von der Keuschheit　純潔
Vom Freunde　友
Von tausend und Einem Ziele　千の目標と一つの目標
Von der Nachstenliebe　隣人への愛
Vom Wege des Schaffenden　創造者の道
Von alten und jungen Weiblein　老いた女と若い女
Vom Biss der Natter　蝮の咬み傷
Von Kind und Ehe　子どもと結婚
Vom freien Tode　自由な死
Von der schenkenden Tugend　贈り与える徳
Zweiter Theil　第二部
Das Kind mit dem Spiegel　鏡を持った幼な子
Auf den gluckseligen Inseln　至福の島々で
Von den Mitleidigen　同情者たち
Von den Priestern　聖職者たち
Von den Tugendhaften　有職者たち
Vom Gesindel　賤民
Von den Taranteln　毒ぐもタランテラ
Von den beruhmten Weisen　名高い賢者たち
Das Nachtlied　夜の歌
Das Tanzlied　舞踏の歌
Das Grablied　墓の歌
Von der Selbst-Uberwindung　自己超克
Von den Erhabenen　悲壮な者たち
Vom Lande der Bildung　教養の国
Von der unbefleckten Erkenntniss　汚れなき認識
Von den Gelehrten　学者
Von den Dichtern　詩人
Von grossen Ereignissen　大いなる事件
Der Wahrsager　預言者
Von der Erlosing　救済
Von der Menschen-Klugheit　処世の術
Die stillste Stunde　最も静かな時
----
Erster Theil
第一部

Zarathustra's Vorrede.
ツァラトゥストラの序説

1.

Als Zarathustra dreissig Jahr alt war, verliess er seine Heimat und den See seiner Heimat und ging in das Gebirge. Hier genoss er seines Geistes und seiner Einsamkeit und wurde dessen zehn Jahr nicht mude. Endlich aber verwandelte sich sein Herz, - und eines Morgens stand er mit der Morgenrothe auf, trat vor die Sonne hin und sprach zu ihr also:

　ツァラトゥストラは、三十歳になったとき、そのふるさとを去り、ふるさとの湖を捨てて、山奥に入った。そこでみずからの知恵を愛し、孤独を楽しんで、十 年ののちも倦むことを知らなかった。しかしついに彼の心の変わるときが来た。---ある朝、ツァラトゥストラはあかつきとともに起き、太陽を迎えて立ち、 次のように太陽に語りかけた。

"Du grosses Gestirn! Was ware dein Gluck, wenn du nicht Die hattest, welchen du leuchtest!

Zehn Jahre kamst du hier herauf zu meiner Hohle: du wurdest deines Lichtes und dieses Weges satt geworden sein, ohne mich, meinen Adler und meine Schlange.

Aber wir warteten deiner an jedem Morgen, nahmen dir deinen Uberfluss ab und segneten dich dafur.

Siehe! Ich bin meiner Weisheit uberdrussig, wie die Biene, die des Honigs zu viel gesammelt hat, ich bedarf der Hande, die sich ausstrecken.

Ich mochte verschenken und austheilen, bis die Weisen unter den Menschen wieder einmal ihrer Thorheit und die Armen einmal ihres Reichthums froh geworden sind.

Dazu muss ich in die Tiefe steigen: wie du des Abends thust, wenn du hinter das Meer gehst und noch der Unterwelt Licht bringst, du uberreiches Gestirn!

Ich muss, gleich dir, _untergehen_, wie die Menschen es nennen, zu denen ich hinab will.

So segne mich denn, du ruhiges Auge, das ohne Neid auch ein allzugrosses Gluck sehen kann!

Segne den Becher, welche uberfliessen will, dass das Wasser golden aus ihm fliesse und uberallhin den Abglanz deiner Wonne trage!

Siehe! Dieser Becher will wieder leer werden, und Zarathustra will wieder Mensch werden."

- Also begann Zarathustra's Untergang.
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はじめに
　神経科学と文学
　美を生み出す脳
　医師としての視点
　神経科学者としての視点
　患者としての視点
　本書の構成
第一章 ハイパーグラフィア
　側頭葉てんかんとハイパーグラフィア
　側頭葉の働き
　側頭葉てんかんの特徴
　ハイパーグラフィアとは
　側頭葉てんかん発作の症状
　躁うつ病とハイパーグラフィア
　躁病患者が書くわけ
　ウェルニッケ失語症、統合失調症とハイパーグラフィア
　苦しみとハイパーグラフィア
　作家の創造性と病理
第二章 文学的創造力と衝動
　創造性の定義
　才能、意欲、生産性と創造性
　精神分析から見た創造性
　認知心理学から見た創造性
　精神病理として見た創造性
　薬物と創造性
　左脳・右脳と創造性
　前頭葉と創造性
　側頭葉と創造性
　創造性を解明する新たな技術
第三章 精神状態としてのライターズ・ブロック
　どんな感じがするのか
　どんな原因があるのか
　失書との相違
　アメリカ文化とライターズ・ブロック
　インスピレーションの枯渇
　書くこと以外のブロック
　認知心理学から見たライターズ・ブロック
　精神分析から見たライターズ・ブロック
　多角的な精神力動論から見たライターズ・ブロック
　自分でできる解決法
　作家たちの対策
　外的な要因---親であることと創造
　文学理論から見たライターズ・ブロック
第四章 脳の状態としてのライターズ・ブロック
　書痙とライターズ・ブロック
　先送りとライターズ・ブロック
　うつとライターズ・ブロック
　・うつと書くこと
　・うつをもたらす脳の状態
　・うつの治療
　・うつは創造に必要か
　生産性のサイクルとライターズ・ブロック
　・睡眠のサイクル
　・季節のサイクル
　・ホルモンのサイクル
　不安とライターズ・ブロック
　・動機の過剰
　・不安の治療
　・自意識の影響
　その他の生物学的要因
　さまざまな原因どうしを関連づける
第五章 どうやって書くのか---皮質
　脳のどこがかかわっているのか
　左脳の言語野
　ブローカ野とウェルニッケ野
　失語症と比喩
　さまざまな失語症
　右脳の言語野
　書くことと話すことの進化
　書き言葉の力
　書き言葉における抑揚
　共感覚
　読むことと書くこと
　読み書きの学習
　ハイパーレキシア
　ディスレキシア
　書くというテクノロジー
第六章 なぜ書くのか---辺縁系
　感情をコントロールする脳
　感情に影響する神経伝達物質
　感情と行動のつながり
　感情の分類
　感情と理性
　コミュニケーション衝動の起源
　感情と言語の結びつき
　向精神薬としての言語
　必要性の表現としての言語
　文学を生み出す生物学的な衝動
　自己表現がもたらすもの
　社会的なつながりという麻薬
　喜びと苦しみは分かちがたい
　作家はなぜ書くのか
　私自身の告白
　孤独を満たすために書く
　因果関係の鎖
　認識論的意味と辺縁系の意味
　辺縁系の意味と文学
第七章 暗喩、内なる声、詩神
　世界は暗喩に満ちている
　科学的文章の特徴
　暗喩としての科学モデル
　暗喩の役割
　精神状態の暗喩の意義
　病としての暗喩
　詩神の訪れ
　自我異和的な創造性
　内なる声から幻聴まで
　わたしに訪れた詩神
　内なる声との闘い
　右脳と内なる声
　自由意志という感覚
　原始的に考えるための内なる声
　インスピレーションという体験
　宗教的インスピレーションと創造的インスピレーションの類似
----
Introduction

Poets teach us to use words with special force. We may need their help in finding new ways to talk about brains.
---J.Z. Young, Programs of the Brain

A creative writer is one for whom writing is a problem.
---Roland Barthes, Writing Degree Zero

WRITING IS ONE of the supreme human achievements. No, why should I be reasonable? Writing is the supreme achievement. It is by turns exhilarating and arduous, and trying to write obsesses and distresses students, professional writers, and diarists alike. Writers explain why they write (and have trouble writing) one way; freshman composition teachers, another; literary critics and psychiatrists and neurologists have increasingly foreign explanations. These modes of thinking about the emotions that surround writing do not easily translate into one another. But one fact is always true: the mind that writes is also the brain that writes. And the existence of brain states that affect our creativity raises questions that make us uneasy. What is the relation between mind and body? What are the sources of imagination?
　How can both neuroscience and literature bear on the question of what makes writers not only able to, but want to, even need to, write? How can we understand the outpouring of authors like Joyce Carol Oates or Stephen King? Why does John Updike see a blank sheet of paper as radiant, the sun rising in the morning? (As William Pritchard said of him, "He must have had an unpublished thought, but you couldn't tell it.") This compulsion seems -- and is -- an unbelievably complex psychological trait.
　Yet it is not so complex that it cannot be studied. Neurologists have found that changes in a specific area of the brain can produce hypergraphia -- the medical term for an overpowering desire to write. Thinking in a counterintuitive, neurological way about what drives and frustrates literary creation can suggest new treatments for hypergraphia's more common and tormenting opposite, writer's block. Both conditions arise from complicated abnormalities of the basic biological drive to communicate. Whereas linguists and most scientists have focused primarily on writing's cognitive aspects, this book spends more time exploring the complex relationship between writing and emotion. It draws examples from literature, from my patients, and from some of my own experiences.
　Evidence that ranges from Nabokov to neurochemistry, Faulkner to functional brain imaging, shows that thinking about excesses and dearths of writing can also clarify normal literary output and the mechanisms of creativity. The few current books on creativity that include a neuroscientific perspective have neglected crucial brain regions such as the temporal lobe and limbic system in favor of a still-popular -- but arguably oversimplified -- emphasis on the role of the right side of the brain.
　Focusing on the importance of the brain in the drive to write helps suggest treatments for disorders of creativity that are sometimes medical. It should do so, though, without ignoring the fact that most people struggling with blocks, are not mentally ill. Concentrating on the brain structures underlying creativity provides surprising answers to such diverse questions as how we learn to write, the nature of metaphor, and even what causes the strange sensation of being visited by the muse.
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丸谷才一のレビュー (毎日新聞　2008年8月10日　東京朝刊)

　フロイトはイタリアが大好きで、生涯に二十数回もこの国へ旅行した。彼の思想および精神分析理論の形成には、このイタリア好きが大きくかかわっている。一八九七年、旅に出る直前に友達に出した手紙にこうある。

　僕の心のなかは発酵していますが、僕は何も仕上げていません。心理学には大いに満足しています。神経症学では重大な疑惑に苦しめられ、考えるのがたいへん億劫（おっくう）になっています。そして、ここでは、頭のなかと感情のなかの動揺を鎮めることをなし遂げていません。そのためにはまずイタリアが必要です（、、、、、、、、、、、）。

一八九五年の『ヒステリー研究』のフロイトから一九〇〇年の『夢判断』のフロイトへと変貌（へんぼう）するためには、五回にわたる（うち九八年には三回）イタリア旅行が必要であった。

　不思議なのは、一八七六年にトリエステへ奨学生として出かけたのに（トリエステはアドリア海北端の港町で、当時はオーストリア＝ハンガリー帝国の支配下）、以後二十年間イタリアゆきを敢（あ）えてせず、九五年までためらいつづけたことだ。さらに奇怪なのは、多年のあこがれにもかかわらず、一九〇一年（この年フロイトは四十五歳）まで、ローマを避けたことである。岡田温司によるこれらの謎の提出は、個人研究の手法としてまことに見事なもので嘆賞に価する。わたしはこの発想に感銘を受けた。

　批評家は対象とする作家の文体に影響されるというけれど、岡田は精神分析の方法でこの謎を解こうとする。フロイトは三歳の年、某駅を通過するときガスの炎を見て、鉄道恐怖症におちいった。十九世紀後半は、列車の激しい震動のせいでの「鉄道性脊柱（せきちゅう）」や、列車事故による「外傷性ノイローゼ」がある時代だった。それにユダヤ人嫌いの乗客と乗り合せることもあり得るし（フロイトはユダヤ系）、鉄道恐怖はたしかに要因の一つかもしれない。しかしローマを避けつづけたのはなぜ？

　『夢判断』ではフロイト自身の見た夢が四十七種あつかわれ、うち四つがローマの夢である。その四つを思い返して、彼は、少年時代にあこがれた偉人のなかにローマにゆかりの深い二人がいたと思い当る。教皇庁に勤めた、美術史学者であるドイツ人ヴィンケルマン（同性愛癖のためトリエステで落命）と、父との盟約に従ってローマに進駐したいと望みながら敢えて迂回（うかい）してナポリへと進軍したカルタゴの将軍ハンニバル（後に自殺）。著者はここでアンジューの研究を参照しながら、ヴィンケルマンとハンニバルの積極性と受動性の両立にフロイトのバイセクシュアリティの徴候を見、さらに父との関係の両義性を感じ取る。

　さらにローマ（ＲＯＭＡ）を逆に綴（つづ）ればアモル（ＡＭＯＲ）すなわち「愛」ないし「愛神」になると思い当る。ここから、フロイトにとって「ローマ」とは欲望と禁止、あこがれと恐怖という相反する感情の形象であり、禁止された愛を意味し、近親相姦（そうかん）への恐れや父へのエディプス的な嫌悪と結びつくものであったと展開してゆく。

　二つの名篇『レオナルドの幼少期』と『ミケランジェロのモーセ像』が彼のイタリア歴訪から生れたという事情については、念を押すまでもなかろう。

　知的刺戟（しげき）にみちた好著だが、フロイトの故郷であり本拠地であるウィーンとローマとの都市論的比較があれば、もっとわかりやすくなっていたかもしれない。