kicker: シリーズ村上春樹その3

読んでいるとかなり面白い表現があります。すべてを挙げることはできませんが，厳選してご紹介いたします。
Sometimes the tourism even crosses metaphysical boundaries. Murakami often hears from readers who have “discovered” his inventions in the real world: a restaurant or a shop that he thought he made up, they report, actually exists in Tokyo. In Sapporo, there are now apparently multiple Dolphin Hotels — an establishment Murakami invented in “A Wild Sheep Chase.” After publishing “1Q84,” Murakami received a letter from a family with the surname “Aomame,” a name so improbable (remember: “green peas”) he thought he invented it. He sent them a signed copy of the book. The kicker is that all of this — fiction leaking into reality, reality leaking into fiction — is what most of Murakami’s fiction (including, especially, “1Q84”) is all about. He is always shuttling us back and forth between worlds.
This calls to mind the act of translation — shuttling from one world to another — which is in many ways the key to understanding Murakami’s work.
赤字で示したkickerもなかなか面白い表現です。通常であれば「蹴り手，蹴る人」などの意味ですが，ここでは「あっと驚く結末，意外な展開」などの意味で使われています（『リーダーズ英和辞典』研究社）。LDOCE 4th Eds.だと“a surprising or unexpected end to an event”という定義が与えられています。
さらに，そのようなkickerは，筆者にthe act of translationというものを想起させます。これも面白い表現です。まさにhe is always shuttling us back and forth between worldsという言葉にしっくりきます。事実は小説よりも奇なりとはよく言ったもので，青豆という名字の方が本当にいるというエピソードは，村上春樹の熱心な読者でない私のような人にとっても，現実とフィクションの世界を行ったり来たりさせられるようなことです。(Othello)