[오늘의 한문장] 런던 필즈 1

키스 탤런트가 들려준 이야기는 정말 기분 나쁠 만큼 비열했다. 아마 그의 이야기가 완전히 거짓말은 아니더라도작은 부분을 크게 부풀렸을 것이다. 키스는 나뿐만이 아니라 블랙 크로스의 딘, 실로니어스, 퍼커와 보그단에게도 그이야기를 해주었다. 모두들 키스가 어떤 사람인지 잘 드러난 이야기라고 말없이 동의했다.

그게 무슨 뜻일까? 기억하자. 현대적, 현대적이다. 그것은모두 키스의 무심함에 대한 찬사였기 때문이다. 아무것도신경 쓰지 않는 키스에 대한 찬사. 이것은 그가 섹스라는 무대에서 훨씬 더 큰 승리를 거두도록 길을 닦아 줄 것이다. 물론 (키스가 하는 이야기는) 대부분 사실을 파악할 수 없는거짓이겠지만.


오늘 아침은 정말 충격적이었다. 바퀴벌레가 한 마리 나왔다. 마크 애스프리의 아파트에서 말이다. 그것은 부엌을가로질러 인간의 수고를 덜어 주는 기계 아래에서 다른 기계 아래로 쏜살같이 달려갔다. 작은 마부가 더 작은 채찍을휘두르고 있는 아주 작은 4두마차 같았다.

[오늘의 한문장] To All the Boys I've Loved Before #2 : P.S. I Still Love You

I watch it. I close my eyes so I don‘t have to. Thank Godthe only things you can hear are the sounds of the woodsand the hot tub water bubbling. "Is it... is it as bad as I‘mremembering? I mean, does it really look like we‘re havingsex? Be honest." I open my eyes.
Margot‘s peering at it, head tilted. "No, it really doesn‘t. Itjust looks like..."
"Like a hot makeout," Chris supplies.
"Right," Margot agrees. "Just a hot makeout."
"You guys swear?"
In unison they say, "We swear."
"Kitty?" I ask.
She bites her lip. "It looks like sex to me, but I‘m theonly one here besides you who‘s never had sex, so what doI know?" Margot lets out a gasp. "Sorry, I read your diary."
Margot swats at her, and Kitty crawls away fast like a crab.

[오늘의 한문장] Less : Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction 2018

HERE it comes, the trip he dreads: the one when he turnsfifty. All the other trips of his life seem to have led, ina blind man‘s march, toward this one. The hotel in Italywith Robert. The jaunt through France with Freddy. Thewild-hare cross-country journey after college to San Fran-cisco, to stay with someone named Lewis. And his childhoodtrips the camping trips his father took him on many times,
mostly to Civil War battlefields. How clearly Less rememberssearching their campsite for bullets and finding-wonder ofwonders! an arrowhead (time revealed the possibility his fa-ther had salted the area). The games of mumblety-peg inwhich clumsy young Less was entrusted with a switchbladeknife, which he fearfully tossed as if it were a poisonous snake

[오늘의 한문장] The Bad Queen: Rules and Instructions for Marie-Antoinette

THE EMPRESS, my mother, studied me as if I were an un-usual creature she‘d thought of acquiring for the palacemenagerie. I shivered under her critical gaze. It was like be-ing bathed in snow.
"Still rather small, but I suppose she‘ll grow. Her sis-ters did," my mother said half to herself. She caught myeye. "No bosom yet, Antonia?"
I shook my head and stared down at my naked toes,
pale as slugs. "No, Mama."
Swathed in widow‘s black, the empress frowned atme as if my flat chest were my own fault. "She‘s no beauty,
certainly," she said, speaking to my governess, CountessBrandeis. "But pretty enough, I think, to marry the dauphinof France." She signaled me to turn around, which I did,

[오늘의 한문장] The Unbearable Lightness of Being

It would be senseless for the author to try to convince thereader that his characters once actually lived. They were notborn of a mother‘s womb; they were born of a stimulatingphrase or two or from a basic situation. Tomas was born of thesaying "Einmal ist keinmal." Tereza was born of the rumblingof a stomach.
The first time she went to Tomas‘s flat, her insides beganto rumble. And no wonder: she had had nothing to eat sincebreakfast but a quick sandwich on the platform before boardingthe train. She had concentrated on the daring journey ahead ofher and forgotten about food. But when we ignore the body, weare more easily victimized by it. She felt terrible standing therein front of Tomas listening to her belly speak out. She felt likecrying. Fortunately, after the first ten seconds Tomas put hisarms around her and made her forget her ventral voices.