what you can do instead is inhabit a role

那你只能扮演一个角色来代替
where you will be in contact with the very material of social life.

从中你将接触社会生活的物资
And that's what that mattress is: totally imbued with

这就是所谓的床垫完全充满了
the bodily detritus of a human life, actually of many human lives.

人类生活的肉体琐事实际上是许多人的生活
She reflects, later, on the set of all men who had slept on that mattress.

后来她会想在那床垫上睡过的众多男人
Pynchon wants to imagine a very physical repository for the social,

品钦想为社会想像出一个物质仓库
and especially for the human, affective dimensions of the social.

尤其是为人类社会的社会情感
That's why Oedipa has all these men stripped away from her.

那正是所有那些男人离开奥狄芭的原因
Remember, she says that, as she is growing more and more desperate at the end,

记得她说由于最终她越来越绝望
that her men were being stripped away from her one by one.

因为她的男人一个又一个得离开她
And so, when she comes to be isolated in this way,

当她以这种方式被孤立
she can finally see and meditate upon, in a new way,

最终又可以以一种新的方式去看待和思考