《了不起的盖茨比·Chapter I》第20节
“Very much.” “It’ll show you how I’ve gotten to feel about—things. Well, she was less than an hour old and Tom was God knows where. I woke up out of the ether with an utterly abandoned feeling, and asked the nurse right away if it was a boy or a girl. She told me it was a girl, and so I turned my head away and wept. ‘All right,’ I said, ‘I’m glad it’s a girl. And I hope she’ll be a fool—that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.’ “You see I think everything’s terrible anyhow,” she went on in a convinced way. “Everybody thinks so—the most advanced people. And I know. I’ve been everywhere and seen everything and done everything.” Her eyes flashed around her in a defiant way, rather like Tom’s, and she laughed with thrilling scorn. “Sophisticated—God, I’m sophisticated!” The instant her voice broke off, ceasing to compel my attention, my belief, I felt the basic insincerity of what she had said. It made me uneasy, as though the whole evening had been a trick of some sort to exact a contributory emotion from me. I waited, and sure enough, in a moment she looked at me with an absolute smirk on her lovely face, as if she had asserted her membership in a rather distinguished secret society to which she and Tom belonged.
注释摘要
接下来这段文字，是小说中第一次有人试着向尼克、也向读者解释，盖茨比日后将要重逢的那个黛西究竟活在一种什么样的真理里。 字面上，黛西向尼克讲述了自己女儿出生那天的事。女儿出生不到一小时，汤姆不知去向。黛西从乙醚麻醉中醒来，感到一种彻底的被遗弃感。她问护士是男孩还是女孩，得知是女孩后，她转过头哭了。然后她说：“好吧，我很高兴是个女孩。我希望她将来是个傻瓜——这…