《了不起的盖茨比》百年纪念

《纽约时报》应用里有很多你可能没见过的内容。它的设计方式是

The New York Times app has all this stuff that you may not have seen. The way

所有不同版块的标签都集中在顶部。

the tabs are at the top with all of the different sections.

我能立即找到符合当下心情的内容。我总是会点开游戏板块。

I can immediately navigate to something that matches what I'm feeling. I order games always.

玩填字小游戏。玩Wordle猜词。

Doing the mini. Doing the Wordle.

我特别喜欢它让我接触到的大量内容，那些我从未想过会在新闻应用里看到的东西。

I loved how much content it exposed me to. Things that I never would have thought to turn to a news app for.

这个应用不可或缺。

This app is essential.

《纽约时报》应用。所有时刻，尽在掌中。立即下载：nytimes.com/app。

The New York Times app. All of the times, all in one place. Download it now at nytimes.com/app.

我是《纽约时报》的Michael Bolvarro。这里是《每日播报》。今年是《了不起的盖茨比》问世100周年。今天，《纽约时报》特约评论员A.O.

From New York Times, I'm Michael Bolvarro. This is The Daily. This year, The Great Gatsby turns 100. Today, Times critic at large, A. O.

Scott将为我们讲述这部28岁作家曾被忽视的作品如何最终成为伟大的美国小说，并探讨为何数十年后，我们仍能在书页中找到自己的影子。今天是7月25日，星期五。

Scott, tells us the story of how an overlooked book by a 28 year old author eventually became the great American novel and explores why all these decades later, we still see ourselves in its pages. It's Friday, July 25.

嘿，你好啊。他来了。下午好。很高兴见到你。

Hey there. And here he is. Good afternoon. Great to see you.

见到你真是太好了。

It's so nice to see you.

是啊。

Yeah.

我们开始吧？

Should we get started?

开始吧。

Let's do it.

好吧，托尼，欢迎来到史上第一个每日读书会。一个专属于我们两人的读书会。

Well, Tony, welcome to the first ever Daily Book Club. A book club for the two of two

我们俩的。对。

of us. Right.

我带了我的书。它很漂亮。是的，我确实想给你看看。

I brought my copy. It's beautiful. Yeah. I do wanna show it to you.

哦，太美了。

Oh, it's gorgeous.

它实际上有真实的纹理。

It's actually got real texture to

哦，是的。像是压花的。

it. Oh, yeah. It's like it's embossed.

哑光纸上的烫金。哇哦。而且它被珍藏着。

Foil on matte paper. Wow. And it's treasured.

真不错。嗯，这大概是我第五次经历这种情况了

That's nice. Well, I have been through this is maybe my fifth

跟我说说你的经历吧。

Tell me about yours.

第五或第六本了，因为有些被我翻烂了，而且总是一本我知道自己有却在我生活和书籍的混乱中找不到的书，所以我又买了一本。

Fifth or sixth copy, because I've just I've worn through some, and then it's always a book that I know I have a copy of and can't find in the chaos of my life and my books, so I buy another one.

我能看看封面设计吗？当然。封面上有个时髦女郎

Can I just look at the cover art? Sure. There's a flapper

封面上的女郎，书里还收录了些短篇小说来充实内容。

on on the cover, and it's got some short stories in there to sort of to pat it out.

因为这是本小书。

Because it's a short book.

是本小书。

It's a short book.

正如我们即将讨论的。是的。我们进行这次对话的一个重要原因是这本书在我生命中扮演了极其重要的角色。我不知道有多少人和一本书有这样的关系，但《了不起的盖茨比》是我反复重温的书。不仅是反复阅读——我确实这么做过——有时只是拿起来，翻开，让自己沉浸其中，感受所有情绪。

As we will talk about. Yeah. So a big reason why we're having this conversation is because this book plays a really big role in in my life. And I don't know how many people have this kind of relationship with the book, but The Great Gatsby is the book that I go back to time and time again. Not just to read it over and over again, which I have done, but sometimes just to pick it up, open it up, and just kinda pour myself back into it and feel all the feelings.

而且，你知道，它对我产生了某种影响，我希望这次对话能解开它为何如此占据我的想象。但这并非我们对话的唯一原因，所以这不完全关于我。我们进行这次对话，你和我，是因为这本书正在庆祝它的百年诞辰。我想和你聊聊过去一百年里它变成了什么，因为它确实成为了某种特别的存在。

And, you know, it does something for me and to me, which I'm hoping this conversation will unlock why it has such a hold on on my imagination. But that is not the only reason we're having this conversation so that this is not entirely about me. We are having this conversation, you and I, because this book is celebrating its centennial. And I wanna talk with you about what it's become over the past hundred years because it's become something.

哦，是的。它已经演变成很多东西了

Oh, yes. It's become a lot

各种事物。我想谈谈它究竟变成了什么。嗯。根据你的评估。

of things. And I wanna talk about what it has become Mhmm. In your estimation.

如果要选一本具有代表性的美国小说——不必是伟大的美国小说，就是美国小说——如果你问一百个人，多数情况下我敢打赌答案会是《了不起的盖茨比》。这本书就像一面镜子或罗夏墨迹测验，其中有些东西始终与我们作为美国人对美国的想象产生共鸣，我想对外部观察者也是如此——他们可能想通过这本书了解美国正在发生什么。

If you had to pick just a single American book that somehow had a representative status, that somehow if you asked a 100 people, not even great American novel, but American novel, the answer would come back somehow, you know, in most cases, I would wager, the The Great Gatsby. And so it's a book that is one of these kind of, I don't know if you call it a mirror or a Rorschach blot. There's just something in this book that continues to be resonant with an idea that we have about America as Americans, and I think also as people looking in from the outside who say, like, what's going on over there? Maybe reading this book would help us figure it out.

它以一种非常美国式的方式揭示了美国心理的独特性。

It says something really uniquely American about the American psyche.

是的。不过其内涵更为复杂。这本由年轻作家写就的薄书具有某种难以捉摸的特质，让你不断追寻其意义却始终难以完全把握。正是这种特质让它保持生命力，不仅吸引个体读者反复阅读，也成为学校课堂内外、电影院等场所集体反复探讨的对象。

Yes. What it says is a little more complicated. Right? And one of the things about the book that I think partly accounts for this sort of staying power and this fascination and this hold that it has is that even though it's a slender book written by a pretty young novelist, there's an elusiveness that it has so that you're always kind of chasing after its meaning and maybe never quite catching up to it. But that keeps it alive, keeps it in play, keeps it something that individual readers often come back to, but that also the collective readership in and out of schools and college classrooms and wherever else and movie theaters keeps coming back to.

让我们正式梳理这本书的故事吧。你已开了头，或许我们可以更系统地探讨——为何它能表达如此丰富的内容，即便其确切含义并不总是清晰。

So let's actually tell the story of this book. You've started to do this, but perhaps we can do it a little more formally, how it came to say so much even if it's not always clear exactly what it's saying.

这是菲茨杰拉德的第三部作品，当时他已是文学名人，被誉为

Yeah. It was F. Scott Fitzgerald's third book, and he was already a literary celebrity. He was already kind of one of the voices of his generation and commercially and critically successful. And in this book, he tells the story through this narrator, Nick Caraway, a Midwesterner, graduated from Yale and is selling bonds in New York and living out on Long Island in West Egg.

一代人的代言人，商业与评论双丰收。书中通过叙述者尼克·卡拉威——一位耶鲁毕业、在纽约做债券交易、住在长岛西卵的 Midwest 人——展开故事。西卵是新贵聚集地，他有位神秘邻居盖茨比，起初只闻其名不见其人，就像电影拍摄手法般吊足胃口。这位杰·盖茨比坐拥豪宅，每周举办盛大派对。

There are two eggs, East Egg and West Egg, and West Egg is the kind of new money side. And he has a neighbor who you don't see for a while. He's kind of it's like a movie technique of you keep this person off camera for a while, so you just hear the name Gatsby Gatsby Gatsby. Jay Gatsby, very wealthy, lives in this huge mansion, throws epic parties. Every weekend in the summer, there's a big party at Gatsby's house.

说到

Yeah. I mean, and when we say epic, we mean?

盛大，菲茨杰拉德用过一个精彩细节：每周五会有卡车运来成百上千的橙子和柠檬，而周一清洁工就会运走榨干的果皮。单是这个细节就能想象——调酒需要巨量柑橘，一个周末要消耗上千个。

We mean that one of the great details that Fitzgerald uses, he says, every Friday, these trucks would come in full of oranges and lemons by the hundreds, you know, by and every Monday, the garbage collectors would come and take away the squeezed out rinds of those oranges and lemons. So that's just sort of a little piece if you could imagine. Cocktail's required. Right. The cocktail's required to consume a thousand pieces of citrus in the course of a weekend.

原来杰伊·盖茨比在战前就深爱着黛西·布坎南，一直对她念念不忘。他们曾相识，而他在海外期间始终热切地渴望与她重逢。他回来后发了财，在西卵区建立了全新的生活和身份，成为那里的富豪象征，这一切都是为了重新赢得她的心。

And it turns out that Jay Gatsby has been in love with, has been carrying a torch for Daisy Buchanan back before the war. They knew each other, and he has been ardently longing for her all this time. He was away overseas. He's come back. He's made a fortune, and he's built a whole life and a whole identity as this wealthy fixture of West Egg in order to somehow win her back.

他所做的一切——那些精心设计的奢华展示，为自己构建的整个身份——都只为那一个浪漫的目的。但书籍出版时，人们并不买账这段爱情故事，评论家们更是如此。

Everything that he's doing, this elaborate, extravagant display, this whole identity he's built for himself is for that one single romantic purpose. But when the book was published, people weren't buying that romance. Critics certainly weren't.

这是哪一年的事？

What year is this?

那是1925年，当时的书评最多算是冷淡，有些甚至充满敌意，没人认为这本书会有未来。有位评论家说：'这不过是本应季的消遣读物'。大概就是那种人们可能会在海滩上翻翻的书——如果那个年代真有人在海滩看书的话。

This is 1925, and the reviews are at best tepid, sometimes some of them quite hostile, and none of them saying that the book has any kind of future. One of the critics said, this is a book, an amusing book for one season only. So this is gonna be sort of what everyone's gonna be reading maybe, you know, at the beach if they read books at the beach in those days.

是啊。结果连这个预测都过于乐观了。对吧？对。对。

Yeah. Even that turned out to be overly optimistic. Right? Right. Right.

所以它

So it

彻底失败了，这对菲茨杰拉德可谓重大打击，他始终未能完全振作。他后来继续创作了《夜色温柔》——我个人认为那是部杰作，也是我最爱的小说。改天我们可以另做一期节目聊聊。

was it was a bust, and it was kind of a pretty big reversal of fortune for Fitzgerald who never quite recovered from it. He did keep writing. He wrote Tender Is the Night, which I think is a fantastic I mean, that's my favorite of his novels. We can do another episode on that one someday.

我看不必了。

I don't think so.

好吧。众所周知，F·斯科特·菲茨杰拉德晚年愈发沉溺酒精，1940年去世时已几乎被世人遗忘，盖茨比亦然。嗯。而

Okay. But then, you know, the story is sort of the well known tragic story of F. Scott Fitzgerald, you know, going out to Hollywood, falling deeper and deeper into alcoholism by the time of his death, you know, in in 1940 was pretty well forgotten, and so was Gatsby. Mhmm. And

它已逐渐湮没无闻。那它是如何——用'回归'可能不准确——它是如何获得重生的？这是个关于涅槃的故事。

it it had faded into kind of obscurity. And what is its path I guess, back is the wrong word. What is its story of rebirth? It's rebirth.

是的，这让我着迷，因为我一直对这种现象感兴趣——那些被遗忘或误解的书籍后来重新受到关注。《了不起的盖茨比》的复兴有几个契机，其中之一是二战期间，军队配给物资中会发放各种书籍的武装部队版。想象一下，一个即将远赴海外的美国大兵，他会领到一条香烟、一盒安全套，还有一本平装版的《了不起的盖茨比》。

Yeah. This is fascinating to me because I'm always interested in, and always have been interested in, this phenomenon of books that are forgotten or misunderstood, and then, you know, kind of come back. In the case of The Great Gatsby, a few things happened. One of which was that during the Second World War, there were these, armed forces editions of various books that were given out with rations. You know, if you're a GI going overseas, you would get a carton of cigarettes and, you know, a pack of condoms and a copy of a paperback copy of The Great Gatsby.

我记得这类版本印刷了超过10万册。所以

And I think more than a 100,000 of these were printed. And so

这可算是相当有力的政府背书了，有点像

That's a pretty serious government endorsement. A kind of

奥普拉读书俱乐部

an an Oprah book club

的前身。

before Oprah.

差...差不多是那种感觉。

It it's it's kind of like that.

没错。我猜这也和这本书体积小不占空间有关，而且能唤起士兵对家乡的思念。

Yeah. And I'm guessing this had something to do with the fact that this book is small, doesn't take up much space, and it's a reminder of home.

具体是谁在阅读、谁负责选书已不可考，但通过这种方式，这本书在美军士兵这个庞大且多元的读者群中重新流传开来。与此同时及之后，学术界、新闻界都开始努力定义美国身份和美国经典——这个刚从大萧条和战争中走出来，首次以世界强国姿态出现的国家需要回答：我们是谁？哪些书籍或文化产品能诠释我们的本质与意义？我们

And I don't know. It'd be fascinating to know, you know, who who was reading and who was making the selections, but it came back into circulation that way among a wide and one assumes pretty diverse readership of sort of the American soldiers. And around the same time and after, there was an effort in the academy, but also elsewhere, also in the world of journalism, to define an American identity and an American canon. Sort of that here here was, you know, a country that had just emerged from a depression and a war as a great power in the world We'd set

的世界。

the world.

这是前所未有的局面。因此我们需要那些能定义民族身份、阐述我们存在意义的书籍与文化产物。而

For the first time. And so who were we, and what were the books or the other cultural products that would tell us that, that would that would give an account of what we were and what and what we meant. And

传递下去。

pass it on.

然后继续传递。因此当时人们做了大量努力去探索和论证这个问题。这个时期，我们这些后来者——比如你和我——成长过程中逐渐形成的认知是：什么是美国文学？哦，有《红字》。

And pass it on. And so there were there were a lot of efforts to figure that out and to make cases. And this was when a lot of what we people of later generations, let's say, like you and me, grew up as kind of thinking of, like, okay. What's American literature? Oh, there's the Scarlet Letter.

知道吗？还有《白鲸记》、《哈克贝利·费恩历险记》、艾米莉·狄金森、沃尔特·惠特曼、伊迪丝·华顿。嗯。还有福克纳。海明威。

You know? There's Moby Dick, Huckleberry Finn, Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, Edith Wharton. Mhmm. There's Faulkner. There's Hemingway.

评论家们开始重新发现《了不起的盖茨比》。于是所有这些书单、教学大纲在二十世纪四十年代由众多评论家编制，但这其实是更广泛的文化现象，部分原因在于高等教育本身正在成为大众现象。有了《退伍军人权利法案》，高等教育大规模扩张，而文学阅读的普及正是这种扩张的一部分。从绝对数量来看有更多人参与，但更重要的是它被赋予了重要意义——阅读小说、美国小说、伟大的美国小说，这既不算完全的大众文化，也不属于专业的高雅文化。

And critics began to rediscover The Great Gatsby. And so all of these lists, these syllabi Right. Were being made in the nineteen forties by a lot of different critics, but it it was a much more widespread cultural phenomenon than that, and partly because at the same time, higher education itself is becoming a mass phenomenon. You have the GI Bill, and you have the enormous expansion of higher education, and part of that expansion is the expansion of literature, of reading literature. So more people are just, you know, in terms of raw numbers, but also in terms of it feeling like an important thing to do, reading novels, reading American novels, reading great American novels, is not exactly mass culture, but not specialized high culture either.

它某种程度上属于战后几十年被称为'中产文化趣味'的组成部分。

It's it's sort of part of what will be come to be known as the great middle brow of the postwar decades.

所以这基本上就是这本书最终出现在我高中课本里的故事。某些权威人士认为它代表了美国经典。正如你刚才所说，它的文化层次刚好适合康涅狄格州北黑文镇的16岁学生阅读。

So that's basically the story of how this ends up on my high school syllabus. Somebody upon high felt it represented the American canon. And as you just said, it's sufficiently middlebrow to be read by a 16 year old in North Haven, Connecticut.

没错。还有罗德岛普罗维登斯——我读到它的地方。要知道它不像《白鲸记》，篇幅短得多。

Yeah. Exactly. And also in Providence, Rhode Island, where where I encountered it. You know, it's not Moby Dick. It's, you know, it's a it's a lot shorter.

它浪漫易读。高中生能读懂、能享受、能思考，也提供了丰富的思考素材。这么说并非贬低——它是本非常适合布置学期论文和课堂讨论的书，教学适用性极强。菲茨杰拉德创作时肯定没考虑这点，但后来这恰恰成为其经久不衰的关键。

It's romantic. It's very readable. It's a very it's a book that high school students can read, can enjoy, can think about, and it also gives them a lot to think about. It it's it and I don't, you know, mean this to sound kind of diminishing, but it's it's a book that can generate a lot of term papers and a lot of class discussions. It's a very teachable book, which is something certainly Fitzgerald was not thinking about when he was writing it, but it turns out to be part of the key to its later longevity.

正是。因为我们很多人都是在受教育阶段接触它，这就成了我们随身携带的文化行囊的一部分。既然谈论美国文化，它已成为各种改编作品的源头素材。

Right. And because so many of us encountered it there as part of our education, it just becomes part of the cultural baggage that we carry around. And since we're talking about American culture, it's been source material for all kinds of adaptations.

为我起舞吧，杰伊。

Dance, me Jay.

荣幸之至。今晚我们有一支非常特别的乐团。先生，打扰一下？战后时代的第一部电影版本制作于1949年。

With pleasure. We have a very special orchestra tonight. Excuse, please, sir? The first film version made in the postwar era was made in 1949.

那么，我们是谁

Well, who are we

来决定他们该不该再见面？她已婚了。婚姻并不幸福。

to say they should or shouldn't see each other again? She's married. Unhappily married.

它彻底改写了原著，因为当时生效的制作规范不允许《了不起的盖茨比》中大部分情节在银幕上呈现。所以如果你读过书再看那版电影，某个瞬间肯定会困惑——什么？怎么会？有这样一条路，人以为正，至终却是死亡之路。

And it rewrote the book because the production code that was in effect at the time could not permit most of what happens in The Great Gatsby, to happen on screen. So it's really if you've read the book and you watch that version, you at a certain point, you'd be like, what? What? What? There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.

而且它过于煽情，充满说教。简而言之，这不是部好电影。

And it's very sentimental. It's very pious. It's just it's not a good movie.

但此刻我需要提醒大家，您曾担任我们首席影评人多年。

But I should, at this point, remind people, you were our chief film critic for many years.

确实。我这么说是有底气的。抱歉。接下来重要的电影改编当然是1974年版。

I was. Yes. I say this with some authority. Excuse me. And then, of course, the next big film adaptation, 1974.

您好啊，奥体育？我是盖茨比。由罗伯特·雷德福正值巅峰时期主演——他最具雷德福魅力的时期。最具雷德福魅力。你为何不等我？

How do you do, Osports? I'm Gatsby. Starring Robert Redford at the very peak of his Redfordness. Of his Redfordness. Why didn't you wait for me?

因为富家女不嫁穷小子，亲爱的盖茨比。

Because rich girls don't marry poor boys, dear Gatsby.

这是个极其忧郁伤感的盖茨比，影片着重刻画了围绕这个角色的那种难以捉摸的哀伤氛围。不过另一方面

It's a very solemn, melancholy Gatsby, and it plays very much on the sort of the elusiveness and the sadness that surrounds the character. On the other hand

恐怕我在体育方面

Afraid I haven't been a

算不上是个好东道主。你看，我是盖茨比。快进到2013年，巴兹·鲁赫曼的奢华版电影由莱昂纳多·迪卡普里奥主演。

very good host on sport. You see I'm Gatsby. Fast forward to 2013, and you have Boz Luhrmann's extravagant version with Leo DiCaprio.

你究竟对我有什么看法？我的看法？是的。是的。你的看法。

What is your opinion of me anyhow? My opinion? Yes. Yes. Your opinion.

他某种程度上是当时美国电影明星的代表

Who is sort of the American movie star of that moment

对。

Right.

类似的方式。而且不仅仅是迪卡普里奥成为巴兹·鲁赫曼改编作品中磁石般的核心。

In a similar way. And it's not only DiCaprio who sort of is the magnetic center of the Baz Luhrmann adaptation.

当我们到达桥边时，我已经困惑得无以复加。

By the time we reached the bridge, I was impossibly confused.

Jay Z担任原声带执行制作人，某种程度上揭示了一个长期存在的观点——盖茨比与嘻哈文化间存在有趣的共鸣。想想看，白手起家正是嘻哈的经典主题之一。以Jay Z本人为例，他从街头混混、毒贩一路攀升至财富与影响力的巅峰。你也能在德雷克2010年代中期作品中，听到许多关于盖茨比式孤独——拥有一切却得不到爱的主题。

Jay Z executive produced the soundtrack and, in a way, brought to the surface an idea that had been there for a while, which is of the the interesting resonance between Gatsby and hip hop culture. And if you think about it, one of the tropes of hip hop is the self made. I mean, if you think of Jay Z himself. Somebody who rose from being, you know, a gangster, a drug dealer from the streets into the pinnacle of wealth and influence. You can also, I think, hear a lot of Gatsby as the lonely man who has everything but love in, you know, a lot of Drake's work from the mid twenty tens.

感觉我们不在同一个世界。我们的关系改变了。爸爸，我仿佛从未存在过。

Feel like we weren't in the same. Our relationship changed. Dad, I already never existed.

然后这种潜流又出现在电视作品中。

Then there's this sort of undercurrent where it turns up on television.

明白了。我以为我们是朋友。我们还打算一起开一家赔钱的酒庄呢。

Understand. I thought we were friends. We were going to open up a money losing winery together.

在《辛普森一家》的剧集里。

On Simpsons episodes.

是啊。这个老派运动的事儿。你这是试试看呢，还是打算长期保持？

Yeah. This old sport thing. Is this is this something you're trying out, or is this a keeper?

在《恶搞之家》的剧集里。但我们可以像盖茨比一家那样。他们不是总有一大帮人围着转吗？当然还有我最爱的，《宋飞正传》里的乔治·科斯坦萨，这个角色可以说几乎没读过什么书。他有两集特别执着于要当盖茨比那样的人。嗯。

It's on Family Guy episodes. But we could be like The Gatsby's. Didn't they always have, like, you know, a bunch of people around and they were And, of course, my own favorite, George Costanza on Seinfeld, a character who, it's pretty safe to say, has read very few, if any, books. He has this whole kind of jag across, I think, two different episodes where he's obsessed with this idea of being like the Gatsby's. Mhmm.

真希望能回到我们当盖茨比一家的日子。我想重回那个我们像盖茨比一家的时光。

I wish we could go back to when we were the Gatsby's. I wanna get it back to when we were the Gatsby's.

我还是不懂那是什么意思。是啊。

I still don't know what that means. Yeah.

读过原著的人都知道，其实根本没有什么盖茨比一家。

And, you know, as anyone who has read the book will know, there are no Gatsby's.

只有一个？

There's just one?

只有一个，而且他甚至不姓盖茨比。这本书、这个角色、这个名字已经融入美国商业文化和流行文化，经久不衰。我们只是触及了表面，但它无处不在。从二战以来，它总是以各种形式出现在各个角落，而且我看不出有衰落的迹象。

There's just one, and he's not even Gatsby. The book and the character and the and just the name have entered into American commercial culture, American popular culture, and it keeps going. I mean, we've we've, in a way, only scratched the surface, but it's there. And, you know, from the Second World War on, it's always there. It's always somewhere in lots of different places And, you know, shows no signs, I think, of waning Right.

这很迷人。

Which is fascinating.

确实如此。我们一直在追溯这本书的发展轨迹，它是如何诞生的，但我不确定我们是否完全解释了原因。嗯。为什么作为一部文学作品，它能引起如此深刻的共鸣。这本书、这个角色、这种散文风格究竟有什么特质，让它感觉如此震撼地美国化，并产生如此持久的影响。

It is. And we've been tracing here the arc of this book, how it happened, but I'm not quite sure that we've fully explained why. Mhmm. Why as a as a piece of literature, it's resonated so deeply. What it is about the book, the character, the prose that has made it feel so stunningly American and such an enduring influence.

托尼，这正是我们稍后回来时要讨论的话题。

And that is something, Tony, that we're gonna talk about when we come back.

很高兴我带了这本书来。

I'm glad I brought my copy.

我也是。我们要进行一些互动式阅读。好的，我们马上回来。

Me too. We're gonna do some participatory reading. Alright. We'll be right back.

嗨，我是乔尔。我是《纽约时报》游戏的朱丽叶。

Hey. I'm Joel. And I'm Juliet from New York Times Games.

我们在这里和大家聊聊游戏。

And we're out here talking to people about games.

你玩《纽约时报》游戏吗？是的，每天都玩。有最喜欢的吗？《连线》。

You play New York Times Games. Yes. Every day. Do you have a favorite? Connections.

它真的让人思考。感觉它给了我思维弹性。

It just makes you think. I feel like it gives me elasticity.

将四个项目分成四组。

Create four groups of four.

这其实是个相当酷的游戏。

This is actually a pretty cool game.

你最喜欢的游戏是什么？

What's your favorite game?

填字游戏。

The cross word.

填字游戏？

The crossword?

我和我兄弟一起玩。有时我们能搞定周四的题目，但我觉得自己一个人解不开周四的。

I do it with my brother. We get Thursday sometimes, but I don't think I can do Thursday on my own.

我感觉自己在学习，在完成些什么。我喜欢完成时的成就感。我们全家都玩Wordle，有个大群聊。连我奶奶都玩Wordle。

I feel like I'm learning. I feel like I'm accomplishing something. I like the when you finish it. My family does Wordle, and we have a huge group chat. Like, my grandma does Wordle.

你奶奶玩Wordle啊。哦，每天都玩。对了，你对Wordle有什么独特见解吗？

Your grandma does Wordle. Oh, every day. Yeah. Do you have a Wordle hot take?

你应该用策略性差的词开局，这样更有趣。

You should start with the word that's strategically bad to make it more fun.

这些游戏都超有意思，像是五到十分钟的小憩。我超爱这些游戏。没错。

All of these games are so fun because it's like a little five to ten minute, like, break. I love these games. Yeah.

纽约时报游戏订阅用户可畅玩所有游戏及功能。立即登录nytimes.com/games获取特别优惠。

New York Times game subscribers get full access to all our games and features. Subscribe now at nytimes.com/games for a special offer.

那么托尼，让我们翻开这本书，阐释为何它被视作且长久以来被视为伟大的美国小说。你想从哪里开始？你先说。

So, Tony, let's crack open the book and illustrate why this book is seen and has been seen for so long as the great American novel. Where where do wanna start? You you first.

那么，我会从非常细致的层面开始。我刚刚在来和你交谈前重读了部分内容。谢谢。书中有许多段落，菲茨杰拉德几乎要触及某种感伤或陈词滥调，却又以一种美妙而意外的方式巧妙避开。当我们初次了解背景，关于詹姆斯·盖兹如何成为盖茨比时，叙述者尼克·卡拉威说，事实是西卵区的杰伊·盖茨比源自他对自我的柏拉图式构想。

Well, I would start at a very granular level. I was just, you know, rereading parts of it before coming to talk to you. And Thank you. There are so many passages where Fitzgerald's almost sort of going towards something that might be sentimental or cliched and then sort of just twisting back away from it in a kind of lovely and surprising way. When we're first kind of discovering, some things about the background, about James Gatz and how he became Gatsby, Nick Caraway, the narrator, says the truth was that Jay Gatsby of West Egg, Long Island sprang from his platonic conception of himself.

他是上帝之子——这个短语若有意义，仅此而已——他必须从事天父的事业，侍奉一种庞大、粗俗而浮华的美。于是他创造了恰如17岁少年会想象出的那种杰伊·盖茨比，并始终忠于这个构想。这里我们进入另一层面，既描述角色心理也展现其塑造过程——既是宏大的（柏拉图式的自我构想、上帝之子），也带有神学色彩（詹姆斯·盖茨比自我蜕变为杰伊·盖茨比的行为），同时又不乏幼稚气息。

He was a son of god, a phrase which, if it means anything, means just that, and he must be about his father's business, the service of a vast, vulgar, and meretricious beauty. So he invented just the sort of Jay Gatsby that a 17 year old boy would be likely to invent, and to this conception, he was faithful to the end. I mean, here, we're sort of at another level where we're describing the psychology of the character and the process of making him, which is both very grand, the platonic conception of himself, a son of god. So there's something theological about what James Gatz is doing to make himself into Jay Gatsby. And at the same time, there's something juvenile about it.

这是北达科他州一个17岁少年对百万富翁形象的想象，而他始终保持着这个形象。角色的复杂性与小说的深度正体现在此类描述中——那些同时朝多个几乎矛盾方向展开的段落。嗯。

It's a 17 year old boy in North Dakota's idea of what a big shot millionaire would be, and that's who he stayed. That's who he always was, was a sort of kid's idea of this guy. And so the complexity of the character and the complexity of the novel lives in descriptions like that and passages like that, where it's working in so many different, almost contradictory directions at once. Mhmm.

你已触及这点——本书最大魅力就在于探讨是什么驱动着盖茨比，他究竟是谁

And you're getting at this, but the great allure of the book is the question of what animates Gatsby, who he really

确实。

is Right.

以及他代表什么（这或许无解），为何如此具有美国特质。

And what exactly, and this may be somewhat unanswerable, he represents and why that is so American.

没错。其美国性正源于这种自我重塑的理念——北达科他乡野少年通过参军、犯罪等途径成为更好的存在。盖茨比既有精明算计的一面，又保持着纯粹天真。尼克反复强调的关键正是：在这个腐败角色身上，始终存在着未被玷污的纯粹与完整。

Yes. I think that's exactly right. Because his Americanness comes out of this idea of his self inventedness, this idea that here's this kid out in the sticks in North Dakota who's gonna become something else, something better, and who finds his way to that through military service, through criminal activities, through all of these different ways. So there's something very shrewd and scheming about Gatsby and about his progress through the world, and also at the same time, something very pure and innocent. So he's always still this boy, and this is the key that that Nick Caraway comes back to again and again in his idea of Gatsby is that there is a purity and integrity and absence of corruption.

即使这个角色本质上是堕落的。

Even within a character who is profoundly corrupt.

他是个罪犯。明白吗？与操纵1919年世界大赛的人合作。

Who's a criminal. Right? You know? Who's in partnership with the guy who fixed the World Series in 1919.

这正是我们需要讨论的。美国人对欺诈、犯罪与金钱的矛盾态度，实为本书核心。

Well, that's what I think we need to talk about here. Yeah. American ambivalence around fraud Yeah. Criminality, and money Yeah. Is really central to this book.

而这些主题历久弥新

And those themes endure

确实如此。它们它们

Absolutely. They they

就在此刻。

this very moment.

它们从未消失，关于谁属于这里、谁不属于，谁在内、谁在外的紧张与困惑也从未消散。我认为我们需要谈谈汤姆·布坎南这个角色，他在某种程度上是反派，是盖茨比的对照。黛西的丈夫。黛西的丈夫。

They never go away, and nor does the kind of tension and confusion about who belongs and who doesn't belong, who's in and who's out. I I think we need to talk about Tom Buchanan, who's the foil, who's the villain in a way. Daisy's husband. Daisy's husband.

耶鲁出身。

A Yale man.

耶鲁出身。古老，古老的财富。古老，古老的财富。不是个好人。玩弄女性，虐待女性。

A Yale man. Old, old money. Old, old money. Not a nice guy. Philanderer, abuser of women.

不仅如此，还是个愚昧无知的公开种族主义者。某种程度上，书中的核心三角关系是汤姆、盖茨比和黛西。他们都爱着黛西。黛西嫁给了汤姆，而他形容盖茨比最著名的话就是‘不知从哪儿冒出来的无名小卒’。他说：‘现在的情况就是让这个不知从哪儿冒出来的无名小卒和你妻子调情。’

Not only that, just, you know, an ignoramus and an outspoken racist. And in a way, the central triangle in the book is Tom and Gatsby and Daisy. They're both in love with Daisy. Daisy is married to Tom, and the way that he talks about his great epithet for Gatsby is mister nobody from nowhere. He says, I suppose the thing now is to let mister nobody from nowhere make love to your wife.

所以他坚持一种非常狭隘、排外、讲究血统的观念。嗯。关于谁掌权、谁是真正的美国人。而盖茨比的观点是，‘不知从哪儿冒出来的无名小卒’恰恰是能创造柏拉图式自我理想的人，能从无到有或通过任何手段塑造自我、身份和财富。因此书中耐人寻味的双重性在于：一方面是谁赢了的问题——剧透警告，答案是汤姆赢了。

And so he's upholding a very restrictive, exclusive, pedigreed idea Mhmm. About who's in charge and and who's American. And Gatsby's idea is that, well, mister nobody from nowhere is the person who invents the platonic ideal of himself and creates a self and an identity and a fortune out of nothing or out of whatever ways that he can get to it. It. And so the interesting kind of doubleness of the book is on the one hand, there's a question of who wins, and to spoil it, the answer is Tom wins.

甚至在盖茨比彻底毁灭之前，黛西就选择留在汤姆身边。对吧。但另一方面还有我们站在哪边的问题，书站在哪边，尼克站在哪边，而这个答案是杰伊。

Daisy, even before Gatsby is completely destroyed, Daisy stays with Tom. Right. But then there's also the question of whose side we're on, whose side the book is on, whose side Nick is on, and that answer is Jay.

长久以来，我一直在思考杰伊·盖茨比与汤姆·布坎南在这场政治中的冲突

For a long time now, I have been contemplating the Jay Gatsby versus Tom Buchanan conflict in this political

是啊。

Yeah.

以及我们所处的经济时代。让我直截了当地问——特朗普总统是盖茨比还是汤姆？请各位思考我为何如此设问，因为这涉及新贵资本、反建制主义，以及'让美国再次伟大'的口号。在我看来，无论有意与否，这句口号都借用了《了不起的盖茨比》的经典台词——当盖茨比对尼克说'你不能重复过去'时，他回答'当然可以'。

And economic moment that we're in. And let me just put it to you with startling bluntness. Is president Trump Gatsby or Tom? And I'll let you kind of imagine why I've even posed that question because it's infused with new money, anti establishmentism, and a motto, make America great again, that, to my mind, borrows from, whether it means to or not, one of the great lines in Gatsby, which is when Gatsby says to Nick, you can't repeat the past? Of course, you can.

MAGA不正是对重拾过去的恳求吗？这种执念正是本书的核心主题。

I mean, what is MAGA other than a a pleading to reclaim a past that's so central to this book?

这是个非常有趣的问题。特朗普究竟属于老钱阶层还是新贵？他是否属于精英群体？他的个人神话始终强调自己的局外人身份——曼哈顿精英、建制派、那些自命不凡的学者们，虽曾渴望融入却屡遭排斥。就像奥尔特会参加他的派对，对吧？

It's a very interesting question of I mean, with Trump, it's this old money or new money. What elite does he or doesn't he belong to? And, certainly, his own mythology is that he's been and I think our colleagues have written a lot about this, about his sense of outsiderness, his sense of the Manhattan elite, the Manhattan establishment, the fancy know it alls, and and eggheads who he was, you know, desperate for a long time to join, who always sort of rebuffed him. Ortal went to his parties. Right?

嗯。但未必真正接纳他。所以从某些角度看，他同时具备两面性：既有与汤姆相似的虚张声势、好斗性格和沙文主义特权意识；另一方面又像盖茨比那样野心勃勃，且对常规、法律和传统行事方式持暧昧态度。

Mhmm. But didn't necessarily accept him into their midst. So, you know, in in some ways, he's he can be on both sides of the question. I mean, I think I think from one angle, you look at him, and you see the bluster and belligerence and sense of chauvinistic entitlement that aligns him with Tom. On the other hand, you can also see the striving and also, for that matter, the kind of dubious relation to sort of norms and and laws and conventional ways of doing things that defines Gatsby.

嗯。

Mhmm.

还有对黄金的热爱。

And the love of gold.

确实。不过我不确定...

Yes. I don't know if And

以及对酒精的厌恶。

the dislike of alcohol.

没错。但我没看到那种浪漫主义的渴望。你很难想象唐纳德·特朗普会为爱情牺牲一切。

Yeah. But I don't know if there's quite the I I don't quite see the romantic longing. I don't see it. I mean, you don't think of Donald Trump as someone who would sacrifice everything in his life for the love of one woman.

没错。作为一个国家，一个深受这本书熏陶的国家，我们似乎相当乐于颂扬并推崇一个在公众面前屡次欺骗且已被定罪的罪犯，这一点值得明确指出。

Right. It just seems worth saying that as a country, a country reared on this book, we do seem rather comfortable celebrating and elevating someone with a clear, repeated public history of deceit and convicted criminality.

所以你认为这是盖茨比的影响。我不认为这是盖茨比首创的，但我确实认为那种无视一切规则与准则的自我重塑理念——

So you're saying it's it's because of Gatsby. I don't think it was invented in Gatsby, but I do think that the idea of self invention in defiance of all rules and norms

嗯。

Mhmm.

以及对这种冲动——本质上就是骗子冲动的赞美与浪漫化，确实是盖茨比这个角色的重要特质之一。

And a kind of celebration and romanticization of that impulse, that con man impulse, really, I mean, because that's what one of the things that Gatsby is, is a big part of

美国生活的写照。

American life.

美国生活、美国政治和美国社会的缩影。完全正确。

American life and American politics and American society. Absolutely.

嗯。我想花点时间谈谈反对这本书的文学观点。因为到目前为止，我们俩似乎都对这本书颇有好感——

Mhmm. I wanna talk for just a moment about the dissenting case here, the literary case against this book. Because I think it's fair to say so far you and I have been rather fond

对这本书。

of this book.

我认为凯瑟琳·舒尔茨提出的异议最为有力。她在《纽约杂志》上撰文指出，这本书的主要问题是：《了不起的盖茨比》是我能想到的与人类情感关联最少的同级别名著。

And I think the best dissenting case that I read was from Katherine Schultz. Yeah. She wrote it for New York Magazine. She had many complaints about the book, but I'm gonna read the central one. She writes, the great Gatsby is less involved with human emotion than any book of comparable fame I can think of.

书中没有一个角色讨人喜欢，甚至没有让人反感的角色——尽管几乎所有角色都卑鄙可耻。他们只是作为符号存在，像校园剧里挂着绶带向观众表明象征意义的孩子般穿梭于书页间：老钱、美国梦、有组织犯罪。她的批评还有很多。

None of its characters are likable. None of them are even dislikable, though nearly all of them are despicable. They function here only as types, walking through the pages of the book like kids in a school play who wear sashes telling the audience what they represent. Old money, the American dream, organized crime. She goes on and on.

没错。

Right.

她觉得整件事都站不住脚。

She thinks the whole thing's kind of flimsy.

你看，我应该说，我认为那是一篇精彩的文章，堪称必读之作，因为它提出了任何盖茨比拥护者都必须反驳的有力论点。但实际上我发现角色们比她描述的更加难以捉摸，更像是水彩画而非她所说的那种霓虹灯般鲜明的轮廓。某种程度上，你并不完全清楚他们的想法或感受。他们的动机和行为有种难以参透的特质，但我觉得正是这一点赋予了这本书某种神秘感，让它散发出魔力。如果真如她所言，这些角色只是寓言式的符号——

See, I I would say I mean, I think that is a brilliant article and and sort of must reading because it's sort of the strong case that any Gatsby partisan would have to argue against. But I actually don't find that I find that the characters are much more elusive than that, much more watercolor than the sort of, like, the bold neon highlighting that she's talking about. So in some ways, you don't know necessarily what they think or what they feel. There's a certain inscrutability to their motives and to their behaviors, but I think that that is kind of what gives the book some of its mystique and helps it sort of cast a spell. Because I think if they were just what she's saying, you know, allegorical figures

好吧。

Alright.

不是活生生的人，而像是会走动的广告牌——象征符号般的广告牌，那么这本书就不会有如今这样的持久影响力。它可能仍会被列入学校教材，学生可能仍需写相关论文，但绝不会以同样的方式令人着迷。我认为这种魔力，正如我们之前讨论的，源自文字的华美以及人物身上那种神秘而奇特的气质。

Not people, but just sort of like walking, talking Billboards. Symbols, billboards, then I don't think that the book would have the kind of, staying power that it has. I don't think that it would be it still might be taught in schools. Those term papers might still be assigned, but I don't think that it would cast a spell in the same way. And I think that what casts that spell is, as we were talking about before, the gorgeousness of the writing and a sense of the mysteriousness and the strangeness of the people.

对，确实如此。

Right. Right.

所以在她眼中这本书的核心缺陷，某种程度上在你看来反而是其主要优点——这块留白的画布让我们能够将自己对美国、对自身的种种理解和期待投射其中。

And therefore, the thing she points to as a central flaw of the book in your mind is, in some ways, its chief virtue, that this only partially filled canvas allows us to project whatever we need to, whatever we want to onto the book and about America and about ourselves.

这正是我的观点。每次重读都让我更确信这点：它在某种意义上是个开放文本。菲茨杰拉德自己也未完全想清楚要表达什么。他的伟大之处在于他不是个教条式的思考者，不是在构建某种论点——

That that's what I think. And and every time I read it, I'm more convinced of this, is that it's kind of an open text in a way. It doesn't it hasn't entirely and Fitzgerald hasn't entirely figured out what it wants to say. The great virtue of Fitzgerald is he's not a programmatic thinker. He's not constructing an argument about this.

他更像是在摸索前行。

He's kind of feeling his way through it.

嗯。我想现在终于该坦白我对这本书的投射了。对我来说，这本书讲述的是一个人在阶级和社会地位阶梯上能攀爬多远——而内心深处始终知道自己可能是个骗子，这非常具有美国普遍性。

Mhmm. I I think here, it's only appropriate that I finally confess what I project onto this book. And for me, the book is about the distance you can travel in your life on a journey of class and social status, the entire time on some level knowing that you might be a fraud, which is very universally American.

对。

Right.

对我来说，这是一个消防员孩子的故事，父亲没上过大学，而这本书里人人都仿佛去了耶鲁。我莫名考进了耶鲁——在我父亲认知里，那是学生蠢到会在没烟道的壁炉生火，害得他得去灭火的地方。而我却去了那里，踏上这场逐渐远离童年、年复一年愈发疏离的阶级跨越之旅。

And for me, it's the story of being the child of a firefighter who didn't go to college and resonantly for this book where everyone seems to go to Yale. Somehow getting into into Yale, a school that my father only knew as a place where students were so kind of practically unintelligent that they would set fires in fireplaces that had no flu because then he'd have to come put them out. And I got to go there and go on this kind of classifying journey away from my childhood that receded further and further year by year.

是啊。

Yeah.

关于如何调和出身与现状。那个'骗子'的标签始终如影随形。每次置身秘密社团厅堂，或是纽约顶楼豪宅的晚宴——这些我从未幻想能踏入的场所——总在自我怀疑是否在伪装。

And kind of reconciling where you come from and and who you are. And and, again, that word fraud hovers over it the whole time. You know? Yeah. Every time I was in some secret society chamber or at a dinner party in some, you know, penthouse apartment in New York City, places I never fathomed I would ever get to in my life, having the question of of whether I was passing.

对吧？某种程度上这就是盖茨比的故事。只不过我追求的不是惊天动地的爱情，而是更模糊的野心。

Right? And that's, in some ways, the story of of Gatsby. Now I wasn't in pursuit of some great singular love. Right. Mine was a, you know, more amorphous ambition.

但像盖茨比那样，我曾奋力攀爬，至今仍在攀登。

But Gatz like, I was striving and and still strive.

你用了'攀登'和'伪装'这两个词，我认为这正是本书核心。1920年代的'伪装'常指跨越种族界限——

And you use the word striving and also the word passing, which I think is a crucial part of what this book is about. I mean, the in the nineteen twenties, passing meant, in many of those cases, across racial lines

嗯。

Mhmm.

当时被种族观念定义为黑人的人越界伪装成白人。盖茨比也是如此，虽非种族层面，但确实关于穿越真实却无形的边界，体验另一侧的生活。书中让我着迷并产生共鸣的——这个对比很有趣——是叙述者尼克·卡拉威。这两个男人都无法真实诠释自我。

In in which people who were by the sort of the racial conventions of the time, black crossed over and passed as white. Gatsby is that too, not in an explicitly racial sense, but it is about coming from one side of a boundary that's a very real but also invisible boundary, and going over to the other side of it, and what that looks like and how that might feel. What's fascinating to me about the book and what I identify with, this is an interesting kind of contrast, is I think a lot about the narrator, Nick Carraway. Here are these two men who can't give an account of themselves.

可靠地诠释。

A reliable one.

一个可靠的叙述者。对吧。就像汤姆那样，可能会给出一种粗俗愚蠢的版本，或者像杰伊那样，呈现一个充满浪漫和自我神话色彩的版本。而尼克的任务，就是去厘清这个故事的本质和这些人的真面目。关于这本书，我一直以来的疑问是：他成功了吗？

A reliable one. Right. Who will either give, you know, in the case of Tom, a sort of a dumb and vulgar one or in the case of of Jay, a very sort of, like, romantic and self mythologizing one. And it it sort of falls to Nick, well, to figure out what this story is and who these guys are. And the question that I have always about the book is that does he succeed?

你明白吗？他是否看透了真相？这个叙述者可靠吗？还是说他也以某种自己未能察觉的方式被卷入了故事之中？

You know? Does he figure it out? Is the narrator reliable, or is he implicated in the story in ways that he can't quite take account of?

换种方式问这个问题：你，或者说任何叙述者，真的有能力完成这个任务吗？

I mean, another way of asking that question is, are you, are any narrators capable of meeting the task?

没错。而关于美国的问题——让我们回到这个层面——它本身能被解读吗？我们真的能理解它吗？摆在我们面前的这部小说，多年来被无数教师、学生、电影人视为诠释我们民族身份的经典。但此刻萦绕我心头的疑问是：这本书本身就在质疑这种解读的可能性。

Right. And and the question about America, in a way, to bring it back to that level, is it even interpretable? Can we even make sense of it? Here we have, you know, laid out before us a novel that many people over the years, teachers and students and filmmakers and everyone else have taken as the book that will help us explain to ourselves who we are. And the thing that haunts me about this book right now is that it raises the question, is that even possible?

我们追寻的答案真的存在吗？甚至能否被理解？我是说，

Are the answers that we're looking for even intelligible, even there? I mean,

你完美铺垫了我想引用的《了不起的盖茨比》最后一段，在第六章结尾。这是个关于美国的问题，我想。作为评论家，菲茨杰拉德描写盖茨比初吻黛西的场景——这段很长，

you have perfectly teed up the last thing I wanna quote from Gatsby, which is at the end of chapter six. And it's a question of America, I think. You're the critic. Fitzgerald describes the moment where Gatsby first kisses Daisy. It's a long passage.

我就不全文赘述了。但当盖茨比吻她时，菲茨杰拉德写道，她像花朵般为他绽放，这一刻的化身就此完成。但紧接着这段文字让我琢磨多年，唯一能确定的是它在讲述美国。叙述者尼克·卡拉威写道：当盖茨比追忆与黛西相恋初吻的往事时，在他开启那场惊人努力赢回她之前，尽管叙述充满令人不适的感伤，尼克说'我忽然想起什么——某个难以捕捉的韵律，只言片语，很久以前在哪儿听过。有那么一瞬，一个短语在我唇间挣扎成形，我像哑巴般张着嘴，仿佛唇齿间挣扎着的不只是惊颤的气流'

I won't bore you with all of it. But when he kisses her, she blossoms for him, Fitzgerald writes, like a flower, and the incarnation was complete. But then there's this passage that I have spent years trying to understand, and the only thing I'm certain of is that it's about America. Nick Caraway, the narrator, writes that as Gatsby is recounting falling in love with and kissing Daisy for the first time before he sets upon this extraordinary effort to win her back, even through his appalling sentimentality, Nick writes, I was reminded of something, an elusive rhythm, a fragment of lost words that I had heard somewhere a long time ago. For a moment, a phrase tried to take shape in my mouth, and my lips parted like a dumb man's, as though there was more struggling upon them than a wisp of startled air.

'但最终没有声音，而我几乎记起的东西，永远无法诉诸言语了。'我一直想象那个难以捕捉的韵律，那些永远无法传达的只言片语，或许来自某首美国颂歌。《美丽的亚美利加》？《宪法》？《独立宣言》？

But they made no sound, and what I had almost remembered was uncommunicable forever, end quote. I have always imagined that the elusive rhythm or the fragment of lost words that he can never communicate is something from some American anthem. Is it America the beautiful? Is it our constitution? Is it our declaration of advance?

它仿佛在揭示美国的本质。而盖茨比整个旅程——他最终徒劳的悲剧性努力，想要重获曾经的爱恋，这种未被满足的压倒性怀旧情绪，在我们的叙述者心中激起了对某种已逝美国精神的追索。

It feels like it's something that tells you what America really is. And Gatsby's entire journey, his ultimately fruitless tragic effort to reclaim the love he once knew, This overpowering nostalgia that's not fulfilled brings forth in our narrator this effort to grasp something American that's now lost.

嗯，我认为那个...

Well and I think that that What

是吗？

is it?

这段文字在书的结尾处被完整呼应。因为，若以呼吸为喻——更著名的段落里他描述荷兰水手初次看见长岛时的情景：那些为盖茨比豪宅让路的消失的树木。他想象着已然消逝的森林，那些曾被砍伐以建造房屋的大陆边缘林地，它们曾‘以絮语迎合人类最后最伟大的梦想’。在那个转瞬即逝的迷醉时刻，人类面对这片大陆时‘必定屏住了呼吸’（又见呼吸意象），被迫进行他既不理解也不渴望的审美凝视——这是历史上最后一次，人类与自身惊叹能力相匹配的事物直面相对。

Well, that passage is exactly echoed at the very end of the book. Because, you know, if you think about it in terms of breath, right, there's the a more famous passage where where he talks about the Dutch sailors coming, you know, seeing this land, Long Island, for the first time. And he says, it's vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby's house. So he's imagining something that isn't there anymore, the forests that were at the edge of the continent that have been cleared away to build these houses, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams. For a transitory enchanted moment, man must have held his breath, there's the breath again, in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired face to face for the last time in history, for the last time in history, with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.

这也是美国的某种写照，但这个美国始终处于‘已失去’的状态。是的，永远消逝了。我认为这精准呼应了你刚才朗读的段落。

And that's also an image of America there, but in America, it's something that is, like, always lost. Yeah. Always gone. And I think that that's exact that's an echo of the passage that that you just read.

那么这里揭示什么？美国计划本质上是悲剧性的吗？它最终建立在战争、奴隶制、不平等与分裂之上。或许我们最辉煌的时刻只存在于远古探险者发现美洲时那个充满可能性的转瞬之间——而当我们真正开始建设时，便是毁坏的开始。

So so what's going on here? Is the is the American project fundamentally tragic? It ends up being built on war, slavery, inequity, division. And maybe our best moment is this transitory moment way in the past when the explorers discover America and all this possibility exists. But the minute we actually start to make the thing is when we start to ruin it.

是的。这始终是美国叙事与神话的一部分，好比边疆神话——边界不断后退，新可能性永远在前方诱惑着我们。但菲茨杰拉德想说的是：从最初就注定了悲剧，所有惨痛历史与未来在第一个瞬间就已写好。

Yeah. And that and that has been part of the American story and part of the American myth. It's, I mean, it's it's one of the myths of the frontier. Like, It's always being pushed back, right, this this boundary, the new possibility that's always tantalizingly ahead of us. But I think what Fitzgerald is saying in a way is that it was doomed from the start, that from the very first moment, all of that tragic history, all of that tragic future was written.

没错。盖茨比吻黛西前的瞬间是他生命可能性最大的时刻。当他真正吻上她，她那‘易逝的呼吸’成为现实，一切便开始急转直下。

Right. And the moments right before he kisses Daisy are the greatest potential moments of his life. The minute he kisses her, her, quote, perishable breath becomes real, and it all goes downhill. Right. From there.

某种意义上这些是同一时刻——水手凝视美洲的葱茏胸膛，盖茨比俯身献上伟大一吻。这正是小说的天才之处：菲茨杰拉德看出个人与国家的故事在此刻重叠，我们都站在这不可能的临界点上。

And and those moments are the same moment in a way. The the sailor's looking at the green breast of America and Gatsby leaning in for this great kiss. And this is the sort of the genius of the novel, and why it's both the story of this guy and the story of this nation is that Fitzgerald recognizes that they're the same moment. We're at this same kind of impossible crux.

托尼，这次对话令人受益匪浅。

Well, Tony, this has been a real treat.

老兄，荣幸之至。

Old sport, it's been a pleasure.

稍后继续。今日其他要闻：法国总统马克龙周四宣布将承认巴勒斯坦国家地位，使其成为七国集团中首个采取此举措的国家。法国官员认为当前承认巴勒斯坦是为使其在加沙停火谈判中获得与以色列平等地位，但此举使法国与美国立场相悖。

We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. In a major announcement on Thursday, French president Emmanuel Macron said that France would recognize Palestine as a state, making it the first member of the group of seven industrialized nations to do so. French officials believe that recognizing Palestine as a state now is necessary to give it equal status to Israel as the two sides negotiate the end of their deadly conflict in Gaza. But the decision puts France at odds with The United States.

而

And

女士们先生们，首次在这个擂台亮相的是——浩克·霍根。

Making his first appearance in this arena, ladies and gentlemen, Hulk Hogan.

快看啊，他真是个巨人。瞧瞧，足足320磅的体格。好戏开场了。

Look at that. He is a Hulk. Look at that. Three hundred and twenty pounds of him. Here we go.

浩克·霍根以其张扬个性、巨星魅力和壮硕二头肌，将职业摔角从低预算的地区性表演转变为价值数十亿美元的产业，于71岁逝世。

Hulk Hogan, whose flamboyance, star power, and bulging biceps helped transform professional wrestling from a low budget regional attraction into a multi billion dollar industry has died at the age of 71.

知道吗，疯子们？史上最伟大的浩克·霍根在此，兄弟我拥有全球最粗壮的手臂。你们可知道

You know something, maniacs? Hulk Hogan here, the greatest of all time with the largest arms in the world, brother. You know something

即使退役后，霍根的文化影响力依然巨大。去年特朗普总统遭遇未遂刺杀后不久，霍根在共和党全国代表大会上撕开衬衫，露出印有"特朗普-万斯"字样的内搭。

Even after retiring from professional wrestling, Hogan's cultural impact remained enormous. Last year, shortly after president Trump survived an assassination attempt, Hogan spoke at the Republican National Convention, tearing off his shirt to reveal a Trump Vance shirt underneath it.

作为艺人，我曾试图远离政治。但目睹过去四年国家遭遇的一切，以及上周末发生的事件后，我无法再保持沉默。今晚我站在这里，就是要让全世界知道唐纳德·特朗普是真正的美国英雄。

As an entertainer, I tried to stay out of politics. But after everything that's happened to our country over the past four years and everything that happened last weekend, I can no longer stay silent. I'm here tonight because I want the world to know that Donald Trump is a real American hero.

本期节目由罗伯·齐普科制作，迈克尔·伯努瓦编辑。原创音乐来自艾莉西亚·伊图布、玛丽昂·洛萨诺、黛安·王和丹·鲍威尔，音频工程由克里斯·伍德负责。主题音乐由Wonderly的吉姆·布伦德伯格和本·兰斯伯格创作。特别感谢我九年级英语老师比尔·亨特，只有他能如此精彩地为我解读《了不起的盖茨比》。

Today's episode was produced by Rob Zipko. It was edited by Michael Benoit. Contains original music by Aliciaba Itub, Marion Lozano, Diane Wong, and Dan Powell, and was engineered by Chris Wood. Our theme music is by Jim Brundberg and Ben Lansberg of Wonderly. Special thanks to my ninth grade English teacher, Bill Hunter, for introducing me to The Great Gatsby as only he could.

以上就是本期《每日播报》，我是迈克尔·穆巴罗，周一见。

That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Mubaro. See you on Monday.