In Christine Montalbetti’s Expérience de la campagne, the countryside is both the setting and the catalyst for a collection of digressions on nature and memory. The basic premise of the text is simple: the protagonist, a man named Simon, sits on the terrace of a house in the countryside on a stormy evening and lets his thoughts wander. The narrative, on the other hand, is considerably less straightforward. The topics explored by Simon’s pensive divagations are varied, including a departed friend, a novel by the Japanese writer Haruki Murakami, and a painting, to name just a few; and the seeming lack of narrative cohesion that ensues from that eclectic collection of topics presents an undeniable challenge for readers. What is more, the absence of a conventional “story” behind the digressions deprives the text of the narrative scaffolding that traditionally holds novels together. The result is a dilatory text whose apparent lack of direction necessarily calls into question its raison d’être. What is the point of such a text, and, presuming the existence of some sort of point, how can a reader approach it? With Expérience de la campagne, Christine Montalbetti has penned a smart and deliberate novel, but it is by no means an easy one. However tempting it may be to take it at face value and dismiss it as a hopeless narrative mess, the reader who is willing and ready to engage with it will find an exceptionally thoughtful and rewarding text that is about more than its narrative content. Some work is required to discover that, contrary to what the title suggests, the countryside is not the end of Montalbetti’s text, but rather its means. Indeed, the countryside never feels like the teleological destination of the novel, but instead retains a certain ancillary feel that does not dissipate as the novel progresses. From the first page of Expérience de la campagne to the last, the reader instinctively senses that Montalbetti is using the countryside to set the scene for something – but for what?

中文翻译：

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克里斯汀·蒙塔尔贝蒂（Christine Montalbetti）在CampéExpériencede la campagne中的“小巧的通勤”

在克里斯蒂娜·蒙塔尔贝蒂（Christine Montalbetti）的Expériencede la campagne中，乡村既是集合自然环境又是记忆的催化剂。文本的基本前提很简单：主角，一个名叫西蒙的人，在一个暴风雨的夜晚坐在农村的一所房子的露台上，让他的思想w绕。另一方面，叙述却不那么简单。西蒙沉思的话题探讨的话题千差万别，包括一位离去的朋友，日本作家村上春树的小说和一幅画作，仅举几例。折衷的主题集似乎缺乏叙事凝聚力，这对读者构成了不可否认的挑战。更，题外话没有传统的“故事”，使文本失去了传统上将小说连在一起的叙事手法。结果是一个扩张性的文本，其明显缺乏方向性必然使它的存在理由受到质疑。这样的文本的意义是什么？假设存在某种意义的观点，读者将如何处理？克里斯蒂娜·蒙塔尔贝蒂（Christine Montalbetti）凭借《露营体验》（Expériencede la campagne）创作了一部精巧而刻意的小说，但这绝非易事。不管尝试将其视为具有表面价值并将其视为毫无希望的叙事混乱，但愿意并准备与之互动的读者会发现，其文本内容比其叙述的内容还更具有深思熟虑和有益的文本。需要做一些工作才能发现与标题所暗示的相反，农村不是蒙塔尔贝蒂著作的结尾，而是它的含义。的确，乡村从来没有感觉像是小说的目的论目的地，而是保留了一定的辅助感觉，这种感觉不会随着小说的发展而消失。从Expériencede la campagne的第一页到最后一页，读者本能地感觉到Montalbetti正在利用乡村为某些事物搭建场景-但是又是什么呢？