《了不起的盖茨比·Chapter IV》第1节
On Sunday morning while church bells rang in the villages alongshore, the world and its mistress returned to Gatsby’s house and twinkled hilariously on his lawn. “He’s a bootlegger,” said the young ladies, moving somewhere between his cocktails and his flowers. “One time he killed a man who had found out that he was nephew to Von Hindenburg and second cousin to the devil. Reach me a rose, honey, and pour me a last drop into that there crystal glass.” Once I wrote down on the empty spaces of a timetable the names of those who came to Gatsby’s house that summer. It is an old timetable now, disintegrating at its folds, and headed “This schedule in effect July 5th, 1922.” But I can still read the grey names, and they will give you a better impression than my generalities of those who accepted Gatsby’s hospitality and paid him the subtle tribute of knowing nothing whatever about him. From East Egg, then, came the Chester Beckers and the Leeches, and a man named Bunsen, whom I knew at Yale, and Doctor Webster Civet, who was drowned last summer up in Maine. And the Hornbeams and the Willie Voltaires, and a whole clan named Blackbuck, who always gathered in a corner and flipped up their noses like goats at whosoever came near. And the Ismays and the Chrysties (or rather Hubert Auerbach and Mr. Chrystie’s wife), and Edgar Beaver, whose hair, they say, turned cotton-white one winter afternoon for no good reason at all.
注释摘要
这段话一开头，菲茨杰拉德就用一种看似平静的笔调制造了尖刻的讽刺。星期日的早晨，岸边的教堂钟声正在响，但"the world and its mistress"——上流社会以及他们的情妇——并没有去教堂，而是涌向了盖茨比的草坪。那个"twinkled hilariously"用得极妙，"twinkled"带着珠宝般闪烁的意味，同时暗示这些人像舞台上的灯光一样…