|
このページはEtoJ逐語翻訳フィルタによって翻訳生成されました。 |
I read a lot of advice columns. Not ‘a lot’ as in one or two a week. ‘A lot’ as in: I read problem pages every day, いつかs for half an hour at a time. ‘A lot’ as in some weeks I, a professional writer, spend more time reading advice columns than I spend reading actual 調書をとる／予約するs.
But I don’t read them for the advice. I read them for the tiny glimpses of other people’s lives.
It began when I was a 十代の少年少女 in the 1990s in Australia. I used to babysit for a family who subscribed to the British magazine The 観客. There were always copies lying around, and when I 結局 leafed through one of them I 設立する, tucked away at the 支援する, an incredible and bewildering advice column ? ‘Dear Mary’, written by Mary Killen (from Gogglebox) and still running now, 25 years later.
One enquirer 手配中の，お尋ね者 to know what to do about their chauffeur’s 傾向 to 割れ目 his knuckles; another, how to stop their housekeeper from drinking all the gin. One advice-探検者 was upset that a friend had said ‘night-night’ to them, and wondered how to let them know not to do it again.
Why were these problems so 半端物? Was everyone in England like this? Or were readers of this magazine just all 極端に posh? I had no idea, but I was obsessed. Every time I babysat for that family, after I’d put the children to bed, I’d 急ぐ over to the magazine pile and flick straight to all the new advice.
Holly Gramazio is obsessed with reading advice columns and has been for years
Jessica Weisberg’s 2018 調書をとる／予約する Asking for a Friend traces the problem-answer 判型 支援する to a 1690 column in The Athenian 水銀柱，温度計, a London 定期刊行物 that （人命などを）奪う，主張するd to have a 抱擁する パネル盤 of 専門家s who could を取り引きする questions about anything: science, farming, life, 法律, romance. There was even an engraving made of the Athenian Society’s パネル盤 sitting around a （米）棚上げする／（英）提議する, looking clever, which became its emblem.
In reality, the ‘専門家s’ consisted of the newspaper publisher, his brother-in-法律 and one or two of their friends. But they did try their hardest. They answered someone who 手配中の，お尋ね者 to know why the moon looks bigger when it’s 近づく the horizon (we now know this is an 光学の illusion, but the 水銀柱，温度計 専門家s 非難するd ‘vapour’ in the 空気／公表する).
One reader wondered if it was 合法的な to 溺死する a person to find out whether they were a witch (it definitely wasn’t). Someone else enquired if it was sinful to be in love with a married woman, even if he never 行為／法令／行動するd on it (it was very much a sin, the 専門家s said, as was ‘all inordinate affection’).
This question-and-answer 判型 was so successful that a parody column sprang up in 競争相手 newspaper The London 水銀柱，温度計, which reprinted some of the questions with new answers; and after the 初めの 水銀柱，温度計 の近くにd in 1697, advice columns carried on.
Even Benjamin Franklin dabbled in 令状ing one, 支援する before he invented the 雷 棒 and helped to 令状 the US 宣言 of Independence. One of his most 広範囲にわたって 引用するd pieces of advice is on how to get rid of an overeager guest. Franklin 示唆するs serving some ‘権利 French Brandy for the Men, and Citron-Water for the Ladies’ to bring any evening to a natural の近くに.
By the 20th century the 判型 was everywhere and, ますます, advice was given by women. The American 新聞記者／雑誌記者 Dorothy Dix had a column that was 企業連合（する）d in 273 newspapers across the world and seen by more than 60 million people, making her the best-paid and most-read 新聞記者／雑誌記者 of the time.
In one 1934 column, she answered a woman who 手配中の，お尋ね者 to know why her husband was a delight at parties but a bore at home.
‘Nobody can explain this peculiarity of husbands,’ Dix replied, ‘they are just that way.’
Not all columnists were as good at に引き続いて advice as they were at giving it. In the 50s and 60s, two of the world’s most popular advice columns ? ‘Ask Ann Landers’ and ‘Dear Abby’ ? were written by twin sisters.
結局, each column was 企業連合（する）d to hundreds of newspapers, with tens of millions of readers. However, the sisters became 猛烈な／残忍な 競争相手s and didn’t speak to each other for a １０年間, which seems like the sort of thing that could disqualify you from 申し込む／申し出ing 指導／手引 to others.
With advice columns, the 詳細（に述べる）s of the questions are important. I love it when one 拡大するs my 見解（をとる） of how people live and think ? like those long-ago questions in The 観客. I also love queries that have a straightforward 解答: what a delight to think that problems really can be solved.
My greatest advice-column joy ? a わずかに embarrassing and malicious joy ? comes when someone who 令状s in is 完全に in the wrong but of a question sent in to ‘Ask a 経営者／支配人’, an online column that 取引，協定s with workplace 問題／発行するs.
The enquirer had, years 以前, broken up with his girlfriend by just moving out of the house they 株d while she was on holiday. He never told her he’d done it, and he never 接触するd her again.
She took this 不正に, he said, and even got in touch with his family; how 不適切な! Should he be 関心d, he 手配中の，お尋ね者 to know, now that this woman had ? a １０年間 later ? been 任命するd his new boss? What a perfect story, what a magnificent comeuppance.
Perhaps too perfect. It might 井戸／弁護士席 be 偽の. Some of the letters probably are. Certainly I’ve never written to an advice columnist myself; I 草案d a letter once, but by the time I’d written it I knew the answer I was hoping for and didn’t need to send it. So it’s not as if I have any first-手渡す 証拠 that the problems are real.
But, for me, the 可能性 that any given question could be true is enough. Let’s say this thing happened: what might you do in 返答? I want a tiny story, a 状況／情勢, a person, and then a 会社／堅い, 簡潔な／要約する judgment. I want to （不足などを）補う my own mind and see if I agree with the columnist.
Since I started writi ng my first novel in 2020 I must have read at least 12,000 advice columns ? I just couldn’t give them up. いつかs, while I was 令状ing, I’d think: if only I could stop wasting my time on advice columns. I’d get this done so much faster.
But now that the 調書をとる／予約する is finished, I no longer think that’s true. In fact, I’ve begun to 嫌疑者，容疑者／疑う that my love for these glimpses of other people’s lives, the little stories and puzzles and 解答s, is part of the same curiosity that keeps me 令状ing. The same 勧める to think about those lives and then ask: what happens next?
Your chauffeur 割れ目s his knuckles. Your guests stay too late. Your beloved is married to someone else. Your husband is boring. Now what?
The Husbands by Holly Gramazio will be published on 4 April by Vintage, £16.99. To order a copy for £14.44 until 7 april, go to mailshop.co.uk/調書をとる／予約するs or call 020 3176 2937. 解放する／自由な UK 配達／演説／出産 on orders over £25.