《了不起的盖茨比·Chapter III》第21节
------------------------------------------------------------------------ Reading over what I have written so far, I see I have given the impression that the events of three nights several weeks apart were all that absorbed me. On the contrary, they were merely casual events in a crowded summer, and, until much later, they absorbed me infinitely less than my personal affairs. Most of the time I worked. In the early morning the sun threw my shadow westward as I hurried down the white chasms of lower New York to the Probity Trust. I knew the other clerks and young bond-salesmen by their first names, and lunched with them in dark, crowded restaurants on little pig sausages and mashed potatoes and coffee. I even had a short affair with a girl who lived in Jersey City and worked in the accounting department, but her brother began throwing mean looks in my direction, so when she went on her vacation in July I let it blow quietly away. I took dinner usually at the Yale Club—for some reason it was the gloomiest event of my day—and then I went upstairs to the library and studied investments and securities for a conscientious hour. There were generally a few rioters around, but they never came into the library, so it was a good place to work. After that, if the night was mellow, I strolled down Madison Avenue past the old Murray Hill Hotel, and over 33rd Street to the Pennsylvania Station.
注释摘要
这一段是叙述者尼克·卡拉威在整部小说中一个相当微妙的时刻——他忽然停下脚步，回头审视自己已经写下的文字。这个动作本身就值得我们注意：他在主动介入自己的叙述，像是在对读者说，等等，我刚刚讲的那些派对、那些夜晚，可能会让你误会我整个人都被这些东西吞没了。他直言，这三个相隔数周的夜晚，不过是那个拥挤的夏天里偶然发生的事件，直到很久以后才真正占据他的心思，而当时，…