《股票作手回忆录·第六章·旧金山地震·做空联合太平洋》第2节
I want to tell you only about one of them because of what it did for me. It happened when I was having that little vacation in Atlantic City in the spring of 1906. I had a friend with me who also was a customer of Harding Brothers. I had no interest in the market one way or another and was enjoying my rest. I can always give up trading to play, unless of course it is an exceptionally active market in which my commitments are rather heavy. It was a bull market, as I remember it. The outlook was favorable for general business and the stock market had slowed down but the tone was firm and all indications pointed to higher prices. One morning after we had breakfasted and had finished reading all the New York morning papers, and had got tired of watching the sea gulls picking up clams and flying up with them twenty feet in the air and dropping them on the hard wet sand to open them for their breakfast, my friend and I started up the Boardwalk. That was the most exciting thing we did in the daytime. It was not noon yet, and we walked up slowly to kill time and breathe the salt air. Harding Brothers had a branch office on the Boardwalk and we used to drop in every morning and see how they’d opened. It was more force of habit than anything else, for I wasn’t doing anything.
注释摘要
这段文字是典型的暴风雨前的宁静，利弗莫尔用闲笔勾勒出他人生中一次关键交易发生前的全部外部环境与内在状态。Lefevre在此处展现了一个成熟小说家的时间控制能力——他偏不让事情立刻发生，而是先把镜头拉远，让读者看清大西洋城春天缓慢的光线、海鸥的啄食和两个男人在木板路上消磨时间的步伐。我们必须记住，这本书是文学化的自传，Lawrence Livingston就…