In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

• The Man at the Top of the Stairs, On Rendering the Inner Life
• Steve Almond (bio)

Over the past decade, my taste in literature—or at least my engagement with it—has shifted dramatically. I spend most of my "reading time" reciting charming and insufferable tales to my children. Curious George, for instance, is both the account of an irascible chimp unleashed in the big city and the chilling tale of interspecies abduction. Babar has the same ripe flavor of unacknowledged colonial predation, with the added twist that the elephant Babar clearly serves as a sexual slave to his rapacious octogenarian mistress. I could go on here but won't.

I mention these books not just because I know every goddamn word of them by heart, but because as I thought about how to discuss the "inner life" without sounding like a pretentious twit my mind kept returning to one particular moment from the book Love You Forever by Robert Munsch. It's about a mother who has a ritual of rocking her only child back and forth and singing him this song:

I'll love you forever,I'll like you for always,As long as I'm livingMy baby you'll be.

As so often happens in children's books, things quickly get weird. The child grows into a teenager. The mother waits till he's asleep and picks him up and rocks him and sings to him. This ritual continues into his adulthood. The mom gets into her car and drives to his house, and if the lights are out, she opens his bedroom window and crawls across the floor and, yes, she picks up this grown man and rocks him and sings to him. So OK. Super kinky, borderline criminal behavior. But also: sweet.

Eventually, the mom grows too old and sick to continue breaking into her son's home and rocking him to sleep. So the ritual is reversed. He drives to her house and picks up his mother and rocks her and sings to her.

Then comes the moment that haunts me. Munsch writes: [End Page 7]

When the son came home that night, he stood for a long time at the top of the stairs.

________

And that's it. That's the line. When the son came home that night, he stood for a long time at the top of the stairs.

I could tell you, of course, what the man does next, that he then goes into the room where his own new baby daughter is sleeping and that he picks her up and rocks her back and forth and sings to her. But that's not the part that sticks with me. Because that's not the part that reveals his inner life, all the sadness and bewilderment—the ecstatic paralysis—that grips him at the top of those stairs, as he seeks to reckon with the death of his mother.

________

A lesser writer (a writer more like, for instance, me) would have felt the need to articulate that paralysis, to dive into the dark abyss of this guy's soul, to replay the highlight reel of his maternal experiences, to grant him a flourish of defensive rage, or an aria of anguish.

That is so often our instinct as writers, and human beings: to render the inner life as a performative experience, rather than a shared experience. Because, after all, we have all stood at the top of those stairs, have all stood in terror and sorrow and confusion before the enormity of the pain we risk—not as any function of misfortune or calculated assault—but simply by the miracle of our birth into this species.

We've already been shown everything we need to know about that man and all that he is carrying. Our job is simply to bear witness, to not look away, to feel what we already feel.

________

This is a rather indirect way of saying something pretty simple: that it is the mission of all art, but literary art in particular, to engage with the inner life. And all I mean by the inner life is the private set of...

中文翻译：

---

楼梯顶端的人，呈现内在生命

代替摘要，这里是内容的简要摘录：

• 楼梯顶端的人，呈现内在生命
• 史蒂夫·杏仁（生物）

在过去的十年中，我对文学的兴趣-或至少对文学的兴趣-发生了巨大变化。我大部分的“阅读时间”都花在给孩子背诵迷人而令人难以忍受的故事上。例如，好奇的乔治既是在大城市中发动的一只暴躁的黑猩猩的原因，又是种间绑架的令人毛骨悚然的故事。Babar具有未经认可的殖民掠夺者的成熟味道，并且增加了一种扭曲，即大象Babar显然是其贪婪的八十年代情妇的性奴隶。我可以在这里继续，但不会。

我之所以提到这些书，不仅是因为我内心深处知道它们中的每一个单词，还因为我在思考如何讨论“内心生活”时听起来并不自以为是，我的思想不断从《爱你》这本书中恢复到一个特定的时刻。罗伯特·芒施（Robert Munsch）永远。关于一位母亲，她有来回地摇摆她唯一的孩子并为他唱歌的仪式：

我将永远爱你，我会喜欢你，直到永远，只要我活着我的宝贝，你会。

由于在儿童读物中经常发生，事情很快就变得很奇怪。孩子长大了。母亲一直等到他睡着了，然后把他抱起来，摇晃他，然后唱歌给他听。这种仪式一直持续到他成年。妈妈走进她的汽车，开车去他家，如果灯不亮，她打开卧室的窗户，在地板上爬行，是的，她抱起这个长大的男人，摇晃他，向他唱歌。那么好吧。超级淫秽，边缘性的犯罪行为。而且：甜。

最终，母亲变得年老又病重，无法继续闯入儿子的家，让他摇摇欲坠。因此，仪式是相反的。他开车去她的房子，接他的母亲，摇晃她，向她唱歌。

然后是困扰我的那一刻。Munsch写道：[结束第7页]

儿子那天晚上回家时，他在楼梯顶上站了很长时间。

________

就是这样。就是那条线。儿子那天晚上回家时，他在楼梯顶上站了很长时间。

我当然可以告诉你，那个男人接下来要做什么，然后他进入自己的新宝贝女儿睡觉的房间，然后他抱起她来回晃动并向她唱歌。但这不是我坚持的部分。因为那不是揭示他内心生活的部分，所以所有的悲伤和困惑（狂喜的瘫痪）都使他陷入了阶梯的顶上，而他正努力地考虑到母亲的去世。

________

一个较小的作家（例如一个更像我的作家）会觉得有必要阐明麻痹症，潜入这个人灵魂的黑暗深渊，重播他母性经历的重头戏，让他蓬勃发展防御性愤怒或痛苦的咏叹调。

这常常是我们作为作家和人类的本能：将内在生活表现为一种表演体验，而不是一种共享的体验。因为毕竟，我们所有人都站在那些阶梯的顶端，在我们所承受的巨大痛苦之前，所有人都处于恐怖，悲伤和混乱之中，这不是由于不幸或有计划的攻击所造成的，而仅仅是由于奇迹的发生。我们诞生于这个物种。

已经向我们展示了该人及其所携带的一切所需的所有知识。我们的工作只是做见证，不要移开视线，去感受我们已经感觉到的。

________

这是一种非常间接的简单表达方式：与内在生活息息相关，这是所有艺术（尤其是文学艺术）的使命。我的意思是内心的生活是私人的……