【文章內(nèi)容簡介】 “I am the only son of your poor cousin Lucy Elizabeth Robinson.”在我從事報業(yè)的頭幾年，我就不懷著幼稚的要報復(fù)地表兄艾德文的怪念頭。假如我能成為非常杰出的記者，讓《紐約時代周刊》在不知道我和艾德文關(guān)系的情況下雇用我，這難道不是件快樂無比的事情嗎？如果艾德文將我請到他那寬敞的辦公室，對我說：年輕人，能請你介紹一下自己嗎？我是你的窮表妹露西伊麗莎白羅賓遜唯一的兒子。這回答是多么絕妙的復(fù)仇啊。2What would one day happen was right out of my wildest childhood fantasy. The TIMES did e knocking at my door, though Cousin Edwin had departed by the time I arrived. Eventually I would be offered one of the gaudiest prizes in American journalism: a column in the New York ?！都~約時代周刊》真的派人敲開了我的家門，盡管在我到達(dá)時，艾德文表兄已經(jīng)有事離開了，美國新聞界還是給予了我一個炫麗的獎勵—做《紐約時代周刊》的專欄作家。2It was not a column meant to convey news, but a writer’s column menting on the news by using different literary forms: essay devices, satire, burlesque, sometimes even fiction. It was proof that my mother had been absolutely right when she sized me up early in life and steered me toward ，而是一個用不同文學(xué)體裁評論新聞的專欄，如散文、諷刺、夸張的模仿、有時甚至是小說。這一切證明母親早就看出是這塊料并引導(dǎo)我走文學(xué)之路是完全正確的。2The column won its share of medals. Including a Pulitezer Prize in 1979. My mother never knew about that. The circuitry of her brain had collapsed the year before, and she was in a nursing home, out of touch with life ，包括1979年的普利策獎，但母親卻不得而知。她在前一年患了腦癱住進(jìn)療養(yǎng)院，她從此與生活沒有了接觸。I can only guess how she’d have responded to news of Pulitzer. I’m pretty sure she would have said, “That’s nice, Buddy. It shows if you buckle down and work hard, you’ll be able to make something of yourself one of these days.”我只能去想象她得知我獲得普利策獎的消息時的反應(yīng)。她肯定又會說：好樣的，伙計，這證明了只要你下定決心，埋頭苦干，某一天你一定能有所成就。3In time there would be an attack on the values my mother preached and I have lived by. When the country began to pull apart in the 1960s and 70s, people who admitted to wanting to amount something were put down as materialists idiotically wasting their lives in the “rat race.” The word “gumption”vanished from the 。二十世紀(jì)六七十年代，這個國家的價值觀念開始分化。那些承認(rèn)自己想要獲得成功的人被鄙視為在“激烈競爭”的凡塵中愚蠢地浪費生命的物質(zhì)主義者?！斑M(jìn)取精神”這個詞開始從我們的語言中消失。3I tried at first to roll with the new age. I decided not to drive my children, as my mother had driven me, with those corrupt old demands that they amount to ，決心不再像母親逼迫我那樣逼迫自己的孩子們，不再用那些陳腐的苛求非要他們大有作為。3The new age exalted love, selfgratification and passive Asian philosopies that aimed at helping people resign themselves to the status quo. Much of this seemed preposterous to me, but I conceded that my mother might have turned me into a coarse materialist (one defect in her code was its emphasis on money and position ),so I kept my heretical suspicions to ，崇尚消極的東方哲學(xué)要人安于現(xiàn)狀的思想。這些思想對我來說顯得荒謬，但是我也得承認(rèn)也許母親已經(jīng)將我變成一個粗俗的物質(zhì)主義者（她的信條中的一個缺陷就是對金錢和地位的強調(diào)），我在新時代一直對自己懷著異教徒般的懷疑。3And then, realizing I had failed to fire my own children with ambition, I broke. One evening at dinner, I heard myself shouting, “Don’t you want to amount to something?”當(dāng)意識到自己未能使孩子們充滿抱負(fù)的時候，我心碎了。一天晚上在用餐的時候，我聽到自己大聲吼道 ：“你們難道就不想有任何作為嗎？3The children looked blank. Amount to something. What a strange expression. I could see their thought: That isn’t Dad yelling. That was those martins he had before ：有所作為？這對他們來說是多么奇怪的字眼啊。我能夠清楚地分辨他們想法：這不是爸爸的吼叫，是他飯前喝下的馬提尼酒在作怪。3It wasn’t the gin that was shouting. It was my mother. The gin only gave me the courage to announce to them that yes, by God, I had always believed in success, had always believed that without hard work and selfdiscipline you could never amount to anything, and didn’t deserve ，是我的母親在吼。酒只是借給了我勇氣向他們宣布那個想法。是的，上帝可以作證，我一直相信成功，一直相信如果沒有辛勤的勞動和嚴(yán)格的自律，一個人不可能有任何成就，也不配有成就。3It would turn out that the children’s bleak report cards did not forebode failure, but a refusal to march to the drumbeat of the ordinary, which should have made me proud. Now they are grown people with children of their own, and we like one another and have good times when we are ，那些曾使我感到黯淡無望的成績單并沒有預(yù)示我的孩子們一敗涂地，而預(yù)示了他們拒絕平庸，這令我應(yīng)該感到欣慰。而今他們都已長大成人，也有了自己的孩子。我們彼此都懷著好感，家庭團(tuán)聚時過得非常愉快。3So it is with a family. We carry the dead generations within us and pass them on to the future abroad our children. This keeps the people of the past alive long after we have taken them to the ，我們在自己身上承傳去世的老一輩，并將他們傳給自己將來四散在各地的后代，讓已經(jīng)去世安息在教堂墓地的人們很久以后仍然活在我們心中。3“If there’s one thing I can’t stand, Russell, its’s quitter.”羅素，假如有一件事我不能容忍的話，那就是做輕易放棄的人。Lord, I can hear her ！我聽見我的母親還在說。三、Help Yourself through the Hard TimesSome years ago I had what most would call the American Dream: a thriving construction business, a fortable home, two new cars and a sailboat. Moreover, I was happpily married. I had it ，我擁有大多數(shù)人稱之為美國夢想的東西：一份蒸蒸日上的建筑生意，一個舒適的家，兩輛新車和一艘帆船，此外，我婚姻幸福。我擁有這一切。Then the stock market crashed, and suddenly no one was looking at the houses I’d of murderous interest payment gobbled up my savings. I couldn’t make ends meet and lay awake nights in a cold sweat. Just when I though things couldn’t get worse, my wife announced that she wanted a ，股市垮了，突然間再沒人看我修的那些房子。連續(xù)幾個月支付要命的利息，耗盡了我的積蓄。我入不敷出，經(jīng)常徹夜無眠，一身冷汗。就在我認(rèn)為事情不可能變得更糟的時候，我太太宣布她想離婚。With no idea what to do next, I resolved literally to “sail off into the sunset,” following the coastline from Connecticut to Florida. But somewhere off New Jersey I turned due east, straight out to sea. Hours later, I climbed up on the stern rail and watched the dark Atlantic slip beneath the hull. How easy it would be to let the water take me, I “向夕陽行駛”，沿著海岸線從康涅狄格州駛向佛羅里達(dá)州。但是在離新澤西巷的地方，我轉(zhuǎn)向正東方，直接駛往大海。幾小時后，我爬上船尾的欄桿，注視著從船體下面滑過的黑沉沉的大西洋海水。我想讓海水淹死是多么容易的一件事。 Suddenly the boat plummeted between two swells, knocking me off balance. I grabbed the rail, my feet dragging in icy brine, and just managed to haul myself back on board. Shaken, I thought, what’s happening to me? Idon’t want to that moment, I knew I had to see things through. My old life was gone. Somehow I’d have to build a new ，帆船筆直地落在兩個巨浪之間，使我失去了平衡。我手抓住 欄桿，腳浸在冰冷的海水里，勉強把自己拉回船上。震驚之余，我想，我這是怎么了？我不想死。從那一刻起，我知道我必須看穿萬物。我從前的生活一去不復(fù)返了，必須得想辦法自己重建新的生活。Everyone, at some point, will suffer a lossthe loss of loved ones. Good health, a job. “It’s your desert experience’a time of feeling barren of options, even hope,” explains Patrick Ddl Zoppo, a psychologist