【正文】 the task of showing the best thing to the rest of the world. The best thing can only be moneymaking and consumption for its own sake. In the name of this ghastly creed the jungle must be defoliated .1511 No wonder thoughtful Americans feel guilty and want to take all the blame they can find. What do Europeans really think of us? is a mon question at parties. The expected answer is: They think you39。s mind as anything other than raw material for statistical reductions. The fear of being unorthodox is rooted in the American teacher39。s biggest polluter. Awareness of this is a kind of redemptive grace, but it has not led to repentance and a revolution in consumer habits. Citizens of Los Angeles are horrified by the daily pall of golden smog, but they don39。t even the grace to undergo chemical change . America, the world39。 what to the European are bizarre luxuries bee, to the American, plain necessities. 155 During my year39。 you have your own things. A family39。 postwar, if one thing went right the day would be made. America is a prewar country, psychologically unprepared for one thing to go wrong. Hence the neurosis, despair, the Kafka feeling that the whole marvelous fabric of American life is ing apart at the seams. 154 Let us stay for a while on this subject of consumption. American individualism, on the face of it an admirable philosophy, wishes to manifest itself in independence of the munity. You don39。t draw, or go without canned food . America made me develop new appetites in order to make proper use of the supermarket. A character in Evelyn Waugh39。s return of an old Western is something to look forward to. Manifold consumption isn39。s delightful to be back. People are underpaid but they go through an act of liking their work, the open markets are luscious with esculent color , the munity is important than the state, the human condition is humorously accepted. The northern wind blows viciously today, and there39。t heard from you yet, no, not by a long way, though it won39。s a good life and a good world, all said and done, if you don39。s bound to be trouble in store for me every day of my life, because trouble it39。s not one thing it39。ll be, fighting every day until I die. Why do they make soldiers out of us when we39。s trouble for you and trouble for me, and all over a piece of bait, The fattest worm of the lot is fastened to the hook, so don39。s curtains for 39。t concern yourself too much with these things if you had plans and wanted to get something out of life that you had never had before. And that was a fact, he thought, chewing a piece of grass.145 He fixed the rod firmly against the bank and stood to stretch himself. He yawned widely, felt his legs weaken, then strengthen, then relax, his tall figure marked against a background of curving canal and hedges and trees bordering it. He rubbed his hand over the rough features of his face , upwards over thick lips, grey eyes, low forehead ,short fair hair, then looked up at the mixture of grey cloud and blue patches of sky overhead . For some reason he smiled at what he saw, and turned to walk some yards along the towpath. 　　　Forgetting the stilled float in the water, he stopped to urinate against the bushes. While fastening his trousers, he saw the float in violent agitation, as if it were suddenly alive and wanted to leap out of the water,146 He ran back to the rod and began winding in the reel with steady movements . His hands worked smoothly and the line came in so quickly that it did not seem to be moving except on the reel itself where the nylon thread grew in thickness and breadth, where he evened it out with his thumb so that it would not clog at a vital moment . The fish came out of the water, flashing and struggling on the end of the line, and he grasped it firmly in his hand to take the hook from its mouth. He looked into its glassgrey eye, at the brown pupil whose fear expressed all the life that it had yet lived, and all its fear of the death that now threatened it. In its eye he saw the green gloom of willowsleeved canals in cool decay, an eye filled with panic and concern for the remaining veins of life that circled like a silent whirlpool around it. Where do fishes go when they die? he wondered. The glow of longremembered lives was mirrored in its eyes, and the memory of cunning curves executed in the moving shadows from reed to reed as it scattered the smaller fry and was itself chased by bigger fish was also pictured there. Arthur felt mobile waves of hope running the length of its squamous body from head to tail. He removed the hook, and threw it back into the water. He watched it flash away and disappear.147 One more chance, he said to himself。t start, or trade slump and bring back the dole. As long as there wasn39。 but for a man it might not be so bad. Maybe it was only the beginning of something better in life, better than you could ever have thought possible before clamping your avid jaws down over the vital bait. Arthur knew he had not yet bitten, that he had really only licked the bait and. found it tasty, that he could still disengage his mouth from the nibbled morsel. But he did not want to do so. If you went through life refusing all the bait dangled before you, that would be no life at all. No changes would be made and you would have nothing to fight against. Life would be as dull as ditchwater. You could kill yourself by too much cunning. Even though bait meant trouble, you could not ignore it for ever. He laughed to think that he was full of bait already, halfdigested slop that had certainly given him a share of trouble, one way or another. 144 Watching the float so intently made him sleepy: he had been with Doreen until two the night before. They spoke of getting married in three months, by which time, Arthur said, they would have collected a good amount of money, nearly a hundred and fifty pounds, not counting inetax rebate, which will probably bump it up to a couple of hundred. S