2023年問題５の出典らしきものがあった。New England Reviewという雑誌に掲載されたフィクション、文学作品からの引用だ。この雑誌はアメリカのLiberal Arts Collegeが発行しているもので、やや特殊な雑誌と言える。
NER is published by Middlebury College, and as a nonprofit organization we rely on subscriptions and charitable donations to support our mission.
この時の受験生はこういうマイナーな英語の作品を読むことは生涯を通じて金輪際ないだろう。特に理系の受験生には無縁なものだ。東大は毎年、毎年、第５問には、こういう類の文章を出題して理系の高校生を苦しめ自己満足に浸っている。実に不健全だ。
とりとめのない非アカデミックかつ非論理的な文章を出して受験生を苦しめるのはやめるべきだ。高校で、こんなレベルの英文を教えてるわけないだろうが！
作者は女性で名前はHawkinson, Elin. 神戸に住んでいたことがある。作品名は"This Will Only Take a Moment." New England Review, vol. 41, no. 1, spring 2020, pp.
作者のプロフィール
Elin Hawkinson holds an MFA in creative writing from Eastern Washington University. Her fiction has appeared in American Short Fiction, Tin House Online, Crab Creek Review, Midwestern Gothic, and others.
She has previously lived and taught English in Kobe, Japan.
東大問題５の原文の一部
HAVE YOU EVER BEEN EATING IN A RESTAURANT--JUST AN ORDINARY café or dining room, surrounded by the bustle of waitresses, the buzz of conversation, and the smell of meat cooking on a grill--and when you take up the salt to sprinkle it over your eggs, you're struck by the simple wonder of the shaker, filled to the brim by unseen hands, ready and awaiting your pleasure? For you, the shaker exists only for today. But in reality it's there hour after hour, on the same table, refilled again and again. The evidence is visible in the threads beneath the cap, worn down by repeated twisting--someone else's labor, perhaps the girl with the pen and pad waiting patiently for you to choose a sorbet, the boy in an apron with a washrag and dirty sneakers, perhaps someone you'll never in your life see. This shaker is work, embodied. And there you are, undoing it.
Or you might have wandered through a department store, perusing neat stacks of buttoned shirts. The size or color you prefer is at the bottom of the stack, and though you're as gentle as can be lifting the shirts, extracting only the chosen one, the pile as you leave it is never quite as tidy, and it won't be again until the invisible person returns to set things right.
Cash in an ATM machine. Hotel towels on the floor. The world is full of this kind of work, always waiting to be done and then undone, so it can be done again.
***
This morning, I gathered up all the cans and bottles strewn about the apartment by my sometimes-boyfriend and put them in a bag to carry down to the building's rubbish area. He hasn't slept here in a week, but I'd been staying late at the university library and only managed to lift myself out of bed in time to bathe and run to my secretary job in an office in downtown Kobe, where every day I perform my own round of monotonous tasks. I'm fairly good at it, though. I'm careful to affix the labels on file folders so they are perfectly centered, perfectly straight, and I have a system of ink and Post-it colors that keeps everything organized. I never run out of pens or paper clips. When anyone needs an aspirin or a stick of gum or a throat lozenge, I'm the one who has it in her desk drawer. Always. Like magic.
Today is Sunday and both the office and the university library are closed. My boyfriend texted he'd arrive at one o'clock, so I have all morning to straighten up the apartment and shop. Around eleven last night I finished my final paper of the year, and there won't be another until classes begin again in a few weeks. It's a comfortable feeling.
Besides the cans and bottles, there are the to-go containers of Lawson's yakisoba, crusted with dried spring onion, from our dinner together last weekend. The greasy paper bags...
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