There's No Place Like Home

　"I'm shaking the dust of this crummy little town off my feet and I'm going to see the world."
　So vows George Bailey in Frank Capra's 1946 film "It's a Wonderful Life." But despite years of trying, he never does leave Bedford Falls. The story follows the tribulations of George, played by Jimmy Stewart, as he realizes how much he values his roots in that crummy little town (with help from an angel named Clarence).
　Many of Jack Kerouac's characters, on the other hand, fled small-town values. In "On the Road," his seminal 1957 novel of rootless beatniks racing across America in an amphetamine rush of jazz and poetry, mobility is sacred. "There was nowhere to go but everywhere," Kerouac wrote, "so just keep on rolling under the stars."
　As David Brooks pointed out in The Times, the Capra and Kerouac worldviews have long been in conflict. Humans have a natural restlessness that driven them across continents for millennia. But leaving home can be emotionally devastating.
　Mr. Brooks stressed that science supports Capra─for many people, roots, community and family are pre-eminent. “The happiness  research,” Mr. Brooks wrote, “It's a Wonderful Life' is correct and 'On the Road' is an illusion.”
　And though we live in an ever more mobile world, with many people migrating to pursue economic opportunities, homesickness is a scourge.
　Susan J. Matt, the author of “Homesickness: An American History,” wrote in The Times that moving extracts a wrenching emotional toll, despite the benign-sounding 19th-century clinical name for homesickness: “nostalgia.”
　Today, the emphasis on opportunity makes homesickness a secret. “This silence,” she wrote, “makes mobility appear deceptively easy.” Yet one study found that Mexican immigrants in the United States suffered 40 percent more depression and anxiety than their relatives remaining at home.
　And as for the “comforting illusion” of technology? “If they could truly vanquish homesickness and make us citizens of the world,” Ms. Matt writes, “Skype, Facebook, cellphones and e-mail would have cured a pain that has been around since 'The Odyssey.'”
　Americans celebrate rootlessness in their national mythology (Kerouac is but one writer in that tradition). It is, after all, a nation of immigrants.
　But those myths may be fading. Todd G. Buchholz and Victoria Buchhoiz wrote in The Times that “young Americans have become rick-averse and sedentary,” and despite an 8.3 percent unemployment rate, few want to leave their hometowns in search of better jobs. Indeed, with social media, few want to leave their homes at all.
　“Maybe it's time,” they wrote, “to yank out the power cords, pump up the flat bicycle tires and even reopen Route 66 － whatever it takes to get our kids back on the road.”
　But young Americans may be heeding the lessons of Kerouac himself, who died a shattered alcoholic in 1969,without ever having put down real roots. Toward the end of his life, Kerouac often dreamed of Lowell, Massachusetts, the small New England city not unlike Bedford Falls, where he was raised.
　“A very eerie, recurrent dream,” he said, “but it always makes me happy when I wake  up.”

........................................KEVIN DELANEY

中譯：
「鄉愁愁煞人　還是家最好」

　　「把這殘破小鎮的塵土從我腳上抖掉，我將邁向世界。」
　　這是大導演卡普拉1946年鉅作「風雲人物」片中男主角貝利的誓言。但儘管經過多年嘗試，他始終未曾當真離開這個名叫貝德福瀑布的小鎮。劇情是敘述由詹姆斯史都華飾演的主人翁喬治在歷經磨難後，終於領會到他有多麼珍惜自己深植在這殘破小鎮的根﹝在名叫克拉倫斯的天使協助之下﹞。
　　另一方面，小說家凱魯亞克筆下則有不少人物甩開了出身小城的價值觀。他1957年發表的傳世小說「旅途上」，描述垮掉的一代如何踏遍全美國，沉溺於安非他命、爵士樂與詩詞，標榜流浪的神聖。他寫道：「處處無家處處家，滿天星斗蕩天涯。」布魯克斯在紐約時報專欄中指出，卡普拉與凱魯亞克的世界觀一直相互衝突。人類有不甘於安定的本性，數千年來它一直驅動人們渡洋跨洲。然而離鄉背井終究令人情為之傷。
　　布魯克斯強調，科學理論支持卡普拉的觀點─對許多人而言，根、社區及家庭的確意義重大。他寫道：「針對幸福所做的研究顯示，『風雲人物』的觀點是對的，『旅途上』則是一種幻覺。」而且雖然我們生活在流動性越來越大的世界裡，許多人遷往他處尋求經濟機會，思鄉病仍不時鞭笞著遊子的心靈。
　　「思鄉病：一部美國歷史」一書作者蘇珊‧馬特在時報撰文指出，播遷往往引發磨人的情緒傷痛，儘管19世紀時臨床醫學給思鄉病起了個好聽的名字：「鄉愁」。
　　時至今日，由於人們強調尋求機會，逼得大家把鄉愁深藏心底。馬特寫道：「緘默使流浪顯得更為輕易，卻是自欺欺人。」一項研究發現，美國的墨西哥移民憂鬱與焦慮的程度比老家的親戚高出40%。
　　科技所帶來的「安撫幻覺」是否有效？馬特寫道：「如果它當真能克服思鄉病，使大家都成為世界公民，那麼Skype、臉書、手機及電郵早就能治好從『奧狄賽』以來就揮之不去的傷痛了。」
　　美國人在自己的國家神話中頌揚「失根」之美﹝凱魯亞克便是繼承此種傳統的作家之一﹞。畢竟這是個移民組成的國家。
　　但這些神話或許正在褪色。陶德‧布希霍茲與維多利亞‧巴克霍爾茲在時報撰文指出，「美國年輕人已更傾向於逃避風險且安土重遷」；儘管失業率高達8.3%，卻沒多少人到外地去尋求較好的工作。事實上，由於社群媒體普及，連出門的人都越來越少。
　　他們寫道：「或許現在正是拔掉電源線，把腳踏車胎打足氣，甚至重新開放66號大道的時候了─只要能把我們的孩子重新趕回馬路上，怎麼做都行。」
　　但美國年輕人或許會注意到凱魯亞克自身的教訓；他於1969年死於嚴重酗酒，完全沒有紮下真實的根基。在他生命最後的日子裡，凱魯亞克經常夢到麻州洛威爾市這個他生長的地方，這個新英格蘭小城跟貝福德瀑布鎮其實沒什麼差別。
　　他寫道：「這是個怪異卻一再出現的夢境，然而每當醒來時，總令我感到愉悅。」