【正文】 w York one afternoon when I finally read the Book Review section, my blood began to article stated a thesis I took to be an offensive insult: William Butler Yeats, the Nobel Prizewinning light of the Irish Literary Renaissance, had risen above his Irishness and was now a universal grew indignant suddenly, and a deepseated passion within me was 30 歲，是紐約市的一名消防員，我工作的消防站總是不斷有求助電話進(jìn)來。偶爾在我們不忙的時候，我會打打無繩電話，或是到辦公室，看看格雷隊長訂的《紐約時報》周日版。一天下午晚些時候，當(dāng)我最后讀到書評欄時，我開始血液沸騰。一篇文章提出了一個在我看來帶有侮辱性的觀點(diǎn)：，即點(diǎn)亮愛爾蘭文學(xué)復(fù)興之光的人，已經(jīng)超越了其愛爾蘭身份，是一名世界性的詩人。我突然感到憤怒，內(nèi)心深處一種激情也被激發(fā)起來。There were few things I was more proud of than my Irish ancestors were Catholic Irish farmers, fishermen and bluecollar workers, all of whom were patrons of the time my family came ashore on Ellis Island and faced the threat of being deported, we have fought discrimination against Irish since I first picked up a book of his poems, Yeats had been my favorite wrote his poetry in close adherence to his Irish life was, in essence, a tribute to his 。我的祖先是信仰天主教的愛爾蘭人，他們做過農(nóng)夫、漁民和藍(lán)領(lǐng)工人，但是他們所有人都熱愛文學(xué)。從我的家族登上埃利斯島、面臨被驅(qū)逐的威脅那一刻起，我們就一直在反抗對愛爾蘭移民的歧視。自從我第一次拿起葉芝的詩集開始，他就一直是我最喜歡的作家。他創(chuàng)作的詩中有著深深的愛爾蘭情懷。實(shí)際上，他的一生都在贊頌祖國。所以，不管是從心理的、社會的還是文學(xué)的角度，認(rèn)為愛爾蘭的身份是能夠超越的，都是一種侮辱。我感覺自己繼承的身份就像是成了法庭上的被告，我別無選擇，只能保護(hù)它并譴責(zé)這樣一種過時的偏見。So, it was offensive to think Irishness, no matter if it was psychological, social or literary, was something to rise felt like my heritage was a defendant at a tribunal, and I had no choice but to protect it and denounce such an outdated ，全身顫動，于是抓起了一張干凈的紙，那張紙的頂部印有紐約市消防局的標(biāo)志。我開始給《周日書評》欄目的編輯寫信，表達(dá)我的憤怒。我把葉芝描述為他本來的樣子，即無論從行為還是從作品來看，他都是地地道道的愛爾蘭作家。Vibrating with agitation, I grabbed a piece of clean paper, one that had the logo of the Fire Department of the City of New York across the began a letter, trumpeting my indignation to the editor of the Sunday Book Review, describing Yeats as he was: a writer fundamentally Irish in all he did and （至少是僅次于荷馬和莎士比亞的詩人），使其免于被“起訴”，或者為什么我要撰文捍衛(wèi)愛爾蘭文學(xué)。我只知道我必須寫那封信，就像牧師必須禱告，或者音樂家必須演奏樂器一樣。Until that point in my life I hadn39。t written much of valuethe article titled “Fireman Smith” provided the impetus for a large publishing pany to request a manuscript about my ，但是到目前為止卻很少被寫過。起初我很困惑，對于自己是否有能力寫一本完整的書沒有多少信心。所以，我開始一點(diǎn)一點(diǎn)地寫，一次寫一部分。很快，我對整本書有了基本的結(jié)構(gòu)和框架。這本書最終賣出了 200 萬冊，并被譯成了 12 種語言。在接下來的幾年中，我又寫了 3 本暢銷書，去年還出版了一本自傳。Being a writer had been far from my expectations。being crowned a bestselling author was almost had it happened? I often found myself thinking about it, marveling at the inconsistency of my success and earlier thoughts always came back to the nucleus at the center of it all, that letter to The New York ，我發(fā)現(xiàn)了一個讓我有強(qiáng)烈感觸的題材，因此，寫作就成為這種激情很自然的結(jié)果了。在我寫關(guān)于消防員以及后來寫關(guān)于我母親的系列故事時，我都懷有同樣的激情。不管題材是什么，它們總是有意義并且合時宜的，因為它們代表了人類生活中偉大的價值觀——得體、誠實(shí)和公正。在我寫作時，這些題材在我心中炙熱如火。The clearest explanation is that I had found a subject I felt so strongly about that the writing was a natural consequence of that felt the same kind of passion when I began writing about firefighters and, later, a serial story about my the subjects, they are always meaningful and timely because they represent the great values of human lifesubjects that burn within me as I ，我的五個孩子會時不時地來問我一個又一個讓他們進(jìn)退兩難的問題：我應(yīng)該踢足球還是打籃球？我是到這家公司工作還是到那家？Over the years, all five of my children have e to me periodically with one dilemma or I go out for soccer or basketball? Should I take a job with this pany or that one? 我的回答一直是相同的：想想你骨子深處的情感。估量一下那些情感的熱度，因為那就是流淌于你身體每一部分的激情。任何時候都要找到那種激情。如果你失去了它，就要重新搜尋到它，然后再重新開始。你接受的教育和你的經(jīng)驗會引導(dǎo)你作出正確的決定，但是你的激情總是會使你在做任何事情時都成就非凡。My answer is always the same: Think about your feelings deep down in your the heat of the fire there, for that is the passion that will flow through every particle of your find that , if you lose it, retrieve it and start education and your experience will guide you toward making a right decision, but your passion will always enable you to make a difference in whatever you 。That39。s what I learned the day I stood up for Ireland39。s greatest meaningful life有意義的人生The death of an angel of animal rights activism does not rate with that of a druggedout rock when Henry Spira died of cancer in September 1998, his death passed without notice, apart from a brief obituary in The New York Henry Spiral life tells us something important, not only about the modern animal movement, but about the possibility of an individual making a difference in the modern 。所以， 1998 年 9 月因癌癥去世的消息根本沒有引起公眾的注意，只是《紐約時報》上刊登了一則簡短的訃告。，不僅關(guān)于現(xiàn)代動物權(quán)益保護(hù)運(yùn)動，而且還有一個人改變現(xiàn)代社會的可能性。I first met Henry when he turned up at an adult education seminar I was giving at New York offered a course on “Animal Liberation” that attracted about 20 student was an unusual specimen, outside the regular aesthetic of an “animal person”.His clothes were untidy, and his hair language was so blunt and earthy that at times I thought I was listening to an assassin from a violent , I couldn39。t help feeling intrigued with his direct way of speaking and his solemn, secular oath to help animals in ，是我在紐約大學(xué)教一個成人教育研修班時他前來聽課。我開設(shè)了一門關(guān)于“動物解放”的課程，吸引了大約 20 名學(xué)生。其中一名學(xué)生很另類，完全和通常意義上“動物權(quán)利保護(hù)者”的形象背道而馳。他的衣著邋遢，頭發(fā)也未曾梳理。他說話非常直率并且粗俗，有時我甚至認(rèn)為，我好像是在聽一個暴力團(tuán)伙的殺手在講話。但是，我情不自禁地被他那種直截了當(dāng)?shù)恼f話方式，還有他那莊重的、不是出于宗教目的要幫助處于困境中的動物的誓言吸引住了。I left New York soon after that, but one day got a call from talked with me about his knew that for over a century, the animal rights movement had been putting out graphic brochures, leaflets, and audio propaganda, alerting people to the dreadful experiments on in all that time, the number of animals used in experiments had risen from a small batch of a few hundred to more than 30 activist had managed to stop a single experiment or improve the lives of animals living in tiny, constricted changed of his earliest campaigns permanently closed down a laboratory conducting experiments with toxic vapor on about 60 ，我很快就離開了紐約。但是有一天，我接到了亨利的電話。他和我聊起了他的工作。我知道，一個多世紀(jì)以來，動物權(quán)益運(yùn)動的倡導(dǎo)者一直通過散發(fā)帶圖畫的手冊、傳單以及音頻宣傳材料，來引起公眾對那些可怕的動物實(shí)驗的關(guān)注。但與此同時，用于實(shí)驗的動物數(shù)量從原來區(qū)區(qū)幾百驟增到三千多萬。沒有哪位活動家曾成功阻止過一項實(shí)驗或改善了蝸居在狹小困籠中的動物的生活。亨利卻改變了這一切。他早期的運(yùn)動之一就是使一間用毒蒸汽在大約 60 只兔子身上做實(shí)驗的實(shí)驗室被永久關(guān)閉。Following that success, Henry r