doing, why they’re doing it, what they’re supposed to be doing instead, and, moreover, how they’re supposed to feel about any of that. Ben Marcus’s collection Notes from the Fog seems to offer readers a variety of these existential crises — the author spreading out the brutal choices like a Vegas dealer fanning out cards — and while no one will really find clear answers to those questions or even much comfort in reading the stories, the collection’s narrators and speakers do function as grinning Pied Pipers who will dance everyone happily to hell. Many of these stories aren’t set up along the traditional story arc, with a conflict, crisis, resolution pattern. For most of the pieces, the point seems to be that there can be no resolution; the problems experienced by the characters cannot be solved or dissolved, either. Marcus rejects that simplicity, choosing instead to offer hopeless situations that exist in a sort of futuristic anti-Eden controlled by corporations (mostly pharma and tech industries) where meaningful human connection is all but extinct. One can’t ignore, though, that despite the stories’ absurd premises, the emotions of the protagonists feel familiar, like one of those tiny surgical cameras is poking into the ugliest parts of oneself and showing what it finds on a large-screen television. With equal parts repulsion, shame, curiosity, and fascination, no one can look away. Ida Grieve is a young professional whose industry is dying in “Precious Precious.” She finds no personal satisfaction in her work, a vague role at a company called Thompson that “was a think tank that had turned into a make tank, which meant it was essentially like any other company,” and her father is dying. Romance and friendship seem out of the question, and even sex offers little validation for being alive. It is Ida’s depressing fantasy that “One day, supposedly, a Kind Friend could give them what they needed, and clean up after, and possibly even flush the shame from their systems as well.” Her carnal reality, though, is that “for the time being they still had to endure the company of other fleshy need machines, human spouters and little bags of weepery.” She starts taking a mysterious drug called Rally, “[n]ot for moods, she was told, but possibly for the lack of them.” This ennui is ever-present not only here but throughout the entire story, and the fact that no one can keep their Rally pills down may say that all those patients don’t want to feel things, anyway. Ida is not the only character for whom regular-old human-to-human sex is unfulfilling, monotonous, and not worth the sweaty bother. Really, a quest for new and satisfying (or at least efficient) sexual experiences is one of the collection’s main threads. The speaker in “The Boys,” who is staying with her brother-in-law and young nephews after the death of her sister, decides she has been wasting time by masturbating alone and then, late at night, performing almost anonymous sexual favors for her grieving brother-in-law. She reduces sex to a math equation: “When I thought about how I was spending my time, I realized that I was masturbating two people. Myself and Drew. For the sheer sake of efficiency, just following the logic, I could reduce this workload by 100 percent, saving time and effort, without forfeiting our mutual outcomes, simply by having intercourse with Drew.” There is no question of ethics or boundaries for the married speaker — those things are not quantifiable, so don’t

中文翻译：

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在雾中摸索

做什么，他们为什么这样做，他们应该做什么，此外，他们应该如何看待这些。本·马库斯（Ben Marcus）的《雾中笔记》（Notes from the Fog）集似乎为读者提供了各种这些生存危机——作者散布残酷的选择，就像维加斯经销商张开纸牌一样——虽然没有人能真正找到这些问题的明确答案，甚至在阅读故事时，该系列的叙述者和演讲者确实像笑嘻嘻的吹笛者一样，会快乐地跳舞到地狱。这些故事中的许多故事都不是沿着传统的故事情节建立的，而是具有冲突、危机和解决模式。对于大多数作品，重点似乎是无法解决；人物所经历的问题也无法解决或化解。马库斯拒绝这种简单，相反，选择提供存在于由公司（主要是制药和科技行业）控制的未来主义反伊甸园中存在的绝望情况，其中有意义的人际关系几乎灭绝。然而，不能忽视的是，尽管故事的前提荒诞不经，但主人公的情感却让人感觉很熟悉，就像一台微型手术相机正在窥探自己最丑陋的部分，并在大屏幕电视上展示它的发现. 面对同等程度的排斥、羞耻、好奇和迷恋，没有人能移开视线。艾达·格里夫 (Ida Grieve) 是一位年轻的专业人​​士，她的行业在“珍贵珍贵”中消亡。她对自己的工作没有个人满足感，在一家名为 Thompson 的公司担任一个模糊的角色，该公司“是一个智囊团，已经变成了一个制造库，这意味着它本质上和任何其他公司一样，”而她的父亲快要死了。浪漫和友谊似乎是不可能的，甚至性也不能证明活着。艾达令人沮丧的幻想是“有一天，据说，一个好朋友可以给他们所需的东西，然后清理，甚至可能也从他们的系统中清除耻辱。” 然而，她肉体的现实是，“就目前而言，他们仍然不得不忍受其他肉体需求机器、人类喷水器和小袋哭泣的陪伴。” 她开始服用一种名为 Rally 的神秘药物，“有人告诉她，[不是] 用于情绪，但可能是因为缺乏情绪。” 这种厌倦不仅在这里而且在整个故事中始终存在，而且没有人可以放下他们的 Rally 药丸这一事实可能会说，无论如何，所有这些患者都不想感受任何事情。艾达并不是唯一一个让正常的人与人之间的性行为不满足、单调且不值得大汗淋漓的角色。确实，对新的和令人满意的（或至少是有效的）性体验的追求是该系列的主线之一。“男孩”中的演讲者在姐姐去世后与她的姐夫和年轻的侄子住在一起，认为她一直在浪费时间独自自慰，然后在深夜对她进行几乎匿名的性爱她悲伤的姐夫。她将性简化为一个数学方程式：“当我想到我是如何度过我的时间时，我意识到我在自慰两个人。我和德鲁。纯粹为了效率，按照逻辑，我可以将这个工作量减少 100%，节省时间和精力，同时又不影响我们的共同成果，只需与德鲁发生性关系即可。” 对于已婚演讲者来说，没有道德或界限问题——这些事情是不可量化的，所以不要