作者：（美）菲茨杰拉德
出版社：清华大学出版社
格式: AZW3, DOCX, EPUB, MOBI, PDF, TXT
了不起的盖茨比试读：
前言
弗·斯格特·菲茨杰拉德（Francis Scott Fitzgeald,1896—1940），20世纪美国著名作家。
1896年9月24日，菲茨杰拉德出生在美国明尼苏达州圣保罗市一个小商人家庭。1913年，进入普林斯顿大学学习，中途辍学。1917年入伍，次年升为中尉军官，1919年退伍，之后在一家商业公司当抄写员，业余致力于文学创作。1920年，他出版了第一部长篇小说《人间天堂》，该书一经出版便成为当时最畅销的小说之一，在社会上引起了很大的反响。继《人间天堂》之后，他又陆续出版了《美国的悲剧》（1925年）、《了不起的盖茨比》（1925年）和《夜色温柔》（1934年）等。他在长篇小说创作方面取得了巨大的成就，特别是《了不起的盖茨比》取得了巨大的成功，该作品确立了菲茨杰拉德在美国文学史上的地位，是他杰出的代表作。菲茨杰拉德是个多才多艺的小说家，除长篇小说之外，他主要的短篇小说也非常有特色，他主要的短篇小说集有：《爵士时代的故事》（1922）、《所有悲伤的年轻人的故事》（1926）等。短篇小说不仅给他带来了商业上的成功，而且还为他赢得了一般大众的认同和喜爱。他的短篇小说布局精巧曲折，文字细腻华丽，风格机智诙谐，经常有欧·亨利式的出人意料的结尾，读起来是一种愉快的享受。
菲茨杰拉德是20世纪与海明威、福克纳齐名的美国著名作家。20世纪的20年代和30年代是美国小说的黄金时代，这20年间可谓是群星璀璨。除菲茨杰拉德外，美国文坛还涌现出了像辛克莱·刘易斯、赛珍珠、福克纳、海明威、斯坦贝克、莫里斯等饮誉世界的作家。这个年代也被称为“爵士年代”，因为这是美国历史上最会享乐、最绚丽的时代，也是空前繁荣的时代，是创造“美国梦”的时代。菲茨杰拉德的作品生动地反映了20世纪20年代“美国梦”的破灭，展示了大萧条时期美国上层社会“荒原时代”的精神面貌。
菲茨杰拉德纵情参与了“爵士时代”的酒食征逐，也完全融化在自己的作品之中。正因为如此，他才能栩栩如生地重现那个时代的社会风貌、生活气息和感情节奏。但更重要的是，在沉湎其中的同时，他又能冷眼旁观，体味“灯火阑珊，酒醒人散”的怅惘，用严峻的道德标准衡量一切，用凄婉的笔调抒写了战后“迷茫的一代”对于“美国梦”幻灭的悲哀。而《了不起的盖茨比》正是这个时代的写照。这部小说谴责以托姆为代表的美国特权阶级自私专横，为所欲为，以同情的态度描写了盖茨比的悲剧，并指出他的悲剧来自他对生活和爱情的幻想，对上层社会人物缺乏认识。著名诗人兼文艺评论家艾略特对《了不起的盖茨比》进行了高度评价，称之为“美国小说自亨利·詹姆斯以来迈出的第一步”。海明威在回忆菲茨杰拉德时写道：“既然他能够写出一本像《了不起的盖茨比》这样好的书，我相信他一定能够写出更好的书。”该书被兰登书屋列为“20世纪百部英文小说”的第二名。时至今日，《了不起的盖茨比》已成为美国大学和中学英文课的必读文学经典。
在中国，《了不起的盖茨比》同样受到广大读者的喜爱。目前，在国内数量众多的《了不起的盖茨比》书籍中，主要的出版形式有两种：一种是中文翻译版，另一种是中英文对照版。其中的中英文对照读版比较受读者的欢迎，这主要是得益于中国人热衷于学习英文的大环境。从英文学习的角度来看，直接使用纯英文的学习资料更有利于学习。考虑到对英文内容背景的了解有助于英文阅读，使用中文导读应该是一种比较好的方式，也可以说是该类型书的第三种版本形式。采用中文导读而非中英文对照的方式进行编排，这样有利于国内读者摆脱对英文阅读依赖中文注释的习惯。基于以上原因，我们决定编译《了不起的盖茨比》，并采用中文导读英文版的形式出版。在中文导读中，我们尽力使其贴近原作的精髓。我们希望能够编出为当代中国读者所喜爱的经典读本。读者在阅读每章之前，可以先阅读中文导读内容，这样有利于了解每章的背景，从而加快阅读速度。同时，为了读者更好地理解故事内容，书中加入了大量的插图。我们相信，该经典小说的引进对加强当代中国读者，特别是大学生读者的文学修养是非常有帮助的。
本书主要内容由王勋、纪飞编译。参加本书素材搜集整理及编译工作的还有郑佳、王勋、赵雪、左新杲、黄福成、冯洁、徐鑫、马启龙、王业伟、王旭敏、陈楠、王多多、邵舒丽、周丽萍、王晓旭、李永振、孟宪行、熊红华、胡国平、熊建国、徐平国、王小红等。限于我们的文学素养和英语水平，书中难免会有不当之处，衷心希望读者朋友批评指正。第一章Chapter 1
尼克年轻的时候，父亲曾告诉他，并非世上所有人都拥有他这样的优越条件。为此，他习惯于对人保留判断和倾听别人的诉说，所以，大学期间人们指责他为小政客。尼克认为人在道德观念上的分配是不均的，如果所有人在道德上像军人站立正姿势那样一致就好了，但有一个人例外——那就是盖茨比，他有一种对人生希望高度敏感和富于浪漫的天赋。
尼克的姓卡罗威，其家族在当地也算是个名门望族，这个家族据说还是布娄奇公爵的后裔。尼克祖父的哥哥于一八五一年来到那里买了个替身参加南北战争，然后自己做起了五金批发生意，这买卖现在由尼克的父亲经营。尼克一九一五年从纽黑文毕业，后来到东部尝试做债券生意。父亲答应为他提供一年的费用，于是，一九二一年他到了东部大城市纽约。尼克原来准备和同事在近郊合租一套房子，但后来同事调到华盛顿去了，他只好一个人搬到了郊外。
纽约市的正东有一对像鸡蛋一样的小岛，外形一模一样，中间有一条小河相隔。尼克住在小河的西岸，房子紧靠在“鸡蛋”的顶端，夹在两座豪华别墅的中间。他右边的别墅是一位姓盖茨比的人的公馆。尼克虽然不认识盖茨比，但他为每月只付八十美元就能与百万富翁为邻而自豪。小河对岸的东卵豪华住宅区住着汤姆·布坎农夫妇——女主人黛西是尼克的远房表妹，男主人汤姆则是尼克在大学里认识的。汤姆非常有钱，搬来时的排场非常大，甚至拉来了一群用来打马球的马。
一天晚上，尼克开车去东卵地区看望那两个他并不十分了解的朋友。三十多岁的汤姆举止高傲地站在面临海湾的红白相间的前门阳台上，给人一种盛气凌人的印象。尼克和汤姆在阳台上谈了几分钟，然后穿过高高的走廊，来到玫瑰色的屋里。风从窗外吹来，把窗帘吹向天花板。沙发上有两位年轻的女士，其中平躺着的那位较年轻的尼克并不认识；另外一位少妇——黛西向尼克微微欠了欠身，轻轻地一笑，拉着他的手告诉他那位姑娘姓贝克。尼克告诉黛西，在芝加哥停留的一天中有十多个朋友向她问好，这使她很高兴。黛西建议尼克去看看她三岁的宝宝，不过宝宝现在睡着了。
尼克租的房子在小河西岸
这时，一直在屋里走动的汤姆停下来问尼克现在干什么买卖，尼克回答说做债券生意，并介绍了公司的名字，汤姆说从来没听说过这家公司。这使尼克感到不舒服，他漫不经心地答道：“你在东部待久了就会听说的。”汤姆说：“我一定会在东部待下去的。”贝克小姐突然接了一句“一定如此”，说完便站了起来；接着又抱怨说，整个下午都在沙发上躺着，身体都木了。
尼克对贝克小姐颇有好感，而且觉得在什么地方见过她。贝克小姐问尼克是不是住在西卵，并说认识住在那里的盖茨比。尼克正要回答说盖茨比是他的邻居，佣人宣布开饭了。阳台的餐桌上四只蜡烛在风中闪烁，黛西却不喜欢，把它们掐灭了。贝克小姐提议应该计划干点什么，黛西赞成她的看法，又询问尼克的意见。尼克还没来得及回答，黛西又把话题转到她的小手指上了——指关节有些青紫，她埋怨是汤姆碰伤的，并用了汤姆最不喜欢的词语“笨拙”，说他是又粗大又笨拙的汉子。
尼克对黛西说：“你让我觉得自己不文明，你不能谈点庄稼或者别的什么吗？”这句并没有什么特殊用意的话却让汤姆接过去了，他气势汹汹地说，文明正在消退，并让尼克读一读戈达德写的《有色帝国的兴起》。这本书的大意是说，白色人种将会被淹没。汤姆说这本书是有科学根据的，如果不提高警惕，其他人种将会掌握世界。黛西一边对着炽热的太阳眨眼，一边低声说：“我们非打倒他们不可。”
这时，屋里电话响了，男管家离开阳台去接电话。黛西赶紧拿男管家的鼻子开玩笑，她兴奋地小声说：男管家以前替纽约一个人家擦银餐具，那家有一套供二百人用的银餐具，导致鼻子受到损害，后来鼻子的情况越来越坏，只得辞职不干，到了这里。
管家回来在汤姆耳边说了些什么，汤姆眉头一皱，到屋里去了。黛西立刻活跃起来，对尼克说，在餐桌上见到他便想起了一朵玫瑰花，随后突然说了声“对不起”就到屋里去了。屋里传来激烈的争吵声，声音几度起伏，最后停止了。贝克小姐告诉尼克，汤姆在纽约有个女人，但那女人应该顾大体，不该在吃饭时来电话。
这时，汤姆和黛西回到了餐桌上，黛西强装愉快地对汤姆说：草坪上有一只夜莺在唱歌，浪漫极了。汤姆哭丧着脸说了句“非常浪漫”。突然，屋里的电话铃又响了，黛西向汤姆摇了摇头。在餐桌上这最后五分钟，谁也不知道汤姆和黛西在想什么。
饭后，尼克和黛西穿过几条走廊来到前面的阳台，并排在一张柳条椅子上坐下。黛西对尼克说：“我们是表亲，但你没参加我的婚礼，我们并不熟识。”尼克解释说，当时正在打仗。黛西突然抱怨说自己受够了，把一切都看透了。她犹豫了一下，欲言又止，然后又把话题扯回到她女儿身上来。黛西说女儿出生不到一个钟头，汤姆就不知道上哪去了；自己很高兴生了个女孩，可以让她做一个美丽的小傻瓜。
尼克和黛西回到屋里，贝克小姐正在给汤姆念《星期六晚邮报》，这时正好念完。贝克小姐把杂志扔在桌上，说十点了，该睡觉了。黛西解释说，乔丹明天要去参加锦标赛。这时尼克才知道为什么觉得她面熟，原来她就是高尔夫球运动员乔丹·贝克。贝克小姐和他们道了晚安就上楼去了。
黛西对尼克说想做个媒，把贝克小姐和他拽到一起。汤姆说贝克小姐是一个好姑娘，她家里人不应该让她到处乱跑。黛西说她家里只有一个七八十岁的老姑妈，这里的家庭环境对她大有好处，而且以后尼克可以照顾她。
结束贝克小姐的话题后，汤姆质问黛西是不是把心里话都对尼克讲了，并告诫尼克说：不要听到什么都信以为真。几分钟后，尼克告辞了，当他发动汽车时，黛西喊住了他：“忘了问你一件事，听说你在西部订婚了？”尼克解释说，那是诽谤，而且这正是自己来到东部的一个原因。
尼克回到西卵的住处，明亮的夜里，看到一只猫的侧影在月光下移动。五十英尺外，邻居盖茨比从大厦的阴影中走出来，仰望着星光。尼克正打定主意要跟他打个招呼，却看到盖茨比突然将两臂朝向大海伸了出去，似乎不愿意别人打扰。尼克不禁也朝海上看去——远处只有一盏小绿灯。再回头时，盖茨比已经不见了，不平静的夜里留下了尼克独自一人。
In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since.
“Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone,” he told me, “just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had.”
He didn't say any more but we've always been unusually communicative in a reserved way and I understood that he meant a great deal more than that. In consequence I'm inclined to reserve all judgements, a habit that has opened up many curious natures to me and also made me the victim of not a few veteran bores. The abnormal mind is quick to detect and attach itself to this quality when it appears in a normal person, and so it came about that in college I was unjustly accused of being a politician, because I was privy to the secret griefs of wild, unknown men. Most of the confidences were unsought—frequently I have feigned sleep, preoccupation or a hostile levity when I realized by some unmistakable sign that an intimate revelation was quivering on the horizon—for the intimate revelations of young men or at least the terms in which they express them are usually plagiaristic and marred by obvious suppressions. Reserving judgements is a matter of infinite hope. I am still a little afraid of missing something if I forget that, as my father snobbishly suggested and I snobbishly repeat, a sense of the fundamental decencies is parcelled out unequally at birth.
And, after boasting this way of my tolerance, I come to the admission that it has a limit. Conduct may be founded on the hard rock or the wet marshes but after a certain point I don't care what it's founded on. When I came back from the East last autumn I felt that I wanted the world to be in uniform and at a sort of moral attention forever;I wanted no more riotous excursions with privileged glimpses into the human heart. Only Gatsby, the man who gives his name to this book, was exempt from my reaction—Gatsby, who represented everything for which I have an unaffected scorn. If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life, as if he were related to one of those intricate machines that register earthquakes ten thousand miles away. This responsiveness had nothing to do with that flabby impressionability which is dignified under the name of the “creative temperament”—it was an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness such as I have never found in any other person and which it is not likely I shall ever find again. No—Gatsby turned out all right at the end;it is what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams that temporarily closed out my interest in theabortive sorrows and short-winded elations of men.
My family have been prominent, well-to-do people in this middle-western city for three generations. The Carraways are something of a clan and we have a tradition that we're descended from the Dukes of Buccleuch, but the actual founder of my line was my grandfather's brother who came here in fifty-one, sent a substitute to the Civil War and started the wholesale hardware business that my father carries on today.
I never saw this great-uncle but I'm supposed to look like him—with special reference to the rather hard—boiled painting that hangs in Father's office. I graduated from New Haven in 1915, just a quarter of a century after my father, and a little later I participated in that delayed Teutonic migration known as the Great War. I enjoyed the counter-raid so thoroughly that I came back restless. Instead of being the warm center of the world the middle-west now seemed like the ragged edge of the universe—so I decided to go east and learn the bond business. Everybody I knew was in the bond business so I supposed it could support one more single man. All my aunts and uncles talked it over as if they were choosing a prep-school for me, and finally said “Why—ye-es”with very grave, hesitant faces. Father agreed to finance me for a year and after various delays I came east, permanently, I thought, in the spring of twenty-two.
The practical thing was to find rooms in the city, but it was a warm season, and I had iust left a country of wide lawns and friendly trees, so when a young man at the office suggested that we take a house together in a commuting town it sounded like a great idea. He found the house, a weather-beaten cardboard bungalow at eighty a month, but at the last minute the firm ordered him to Washington and I went out to the country alone. I had a dog, at least I had him for a few days until he ran away, and an old Dodge and a Finnish woman who made my bed and cooked breakfast and muttered Finnish wisdom to herself over the electric stove.
It was lonely for a day or so until one morning some man, more recently arrived than I, stopped me on the road.
“How do you get to West Egg Village?” he asked helplessly.
I told him. And as I walked on I was lonely no longer. I was a guide, apathfinder，an original settler. He had casually conferred on me the freedom of the neighborhood.
尼克告辞出来，在发动汽车时，黛西叫住了他
And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees—just as things grow in fast movies—I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.
There was so much to read for one thing and so much fine health to be pulled down out of the young breath-giving air. I bought a dozen volumes on banking and credit and investment securities and they stood on my shelf in red and gold like new money from the mint, promising to unfold the shining secrets that only Midas and Morgan and Maecenas knew. And I had the high intention of reading many other books besides. I was rather literary in college—one year I wrote a series of very solemn and obvious editonals for the “Yale News”—and now I was going to bring back all such things into my life and become again that most limited of all specialists, the “well-rounded”man. This isn't just an epigram—life is much more successfully looked at from a single window, after all.
It was a matter of chance that I should have rented a house in one of the strangest communities in North America. It was on that slender riotous island which extends itself due east of New York and where there are, among other natural curiosities, two unusual formations of land:Twenty miles from the city a pair of enormous eggs, identical in contour and separated only by a courtesy bay, jut out into the most domesticated body of salt water in the Westem Hemisphere, the great wet barnyard of Long Island Sound. They are not perfect ovals—like the egg in the Columbus story they are both crushed flat at the contact end—but their physical resemblance must be a source of perpetual confusion to the gulls that fly overhead. To the wingless a more arresting phenomenon is their dissimilarity in every particular except shape and size.
I lived at West Egg, the—well, the less fashionable of the two, thougn this is a most superficial tag to express the bizarre and not a little sinister contrast between them. My house was at the very tip of the egg, only fifty yards from the Sound, and squeezed between two huge places that rented for twelve or fifteen thousand a season. The one on my right was a colossal affair by any standard—it was a factual imitation of some Hotel de Ville in Normandy, witha tower on one side，spanking new under a thin beard of raw ivy, and a marble swimming pool and more than forty acres of lawn and garden. It was Gatsby's mansion. Or rather, as I didn't know Mr. Gatsby it was a mansion inhabited by a gentleman of that name. My own house was an eye-sore, but it was a small eyesore and it had been overlooked, so I had a view of the water, a partial view of my neighbor's lawn and the consoling proximity of millionaires—all for eighty dollars a month.
Across the courtesy bay the white palaces of fashionable East Egg glittered along the water and the history of the summer really begins on the evening I drove over there to have dinner with the Tom Buchanans. Daisy was my second cousin once removed and I'd known Tom in college. And iust after the war I spent two days with them in Chicago.
Her husband, among various physical accomplishments, had been one of the most powerful ends that ever played football at New Haven—a national figure in a way, one of those men who reach such an acute limited excellence at twenty-one that everything afterwards savours of anticlimax. His family were enormously wealthy—even in college his freedom with money was a matter for reproach—but now he'd left Chicago and come east in a fashion that rather took your breath away:for instance he'd brought down a string of polo ponies from Lake Forest. It was hard to realize that a man in my own generation was wealthy enough to do that.
Why they came east I don't know. They had spent a year in France, for no particular reason, and then drifted here and there unrestfully wherever people played polo and were rich together. This was a permanent move, said Daisy over the telephone, but I didn't believe it—I had no sight into Daisy's heart but I felt that Tom would drift on forever seeking a little wistfully for the dramatic turbulence of some irrecoverable football game.
And so it happened that on a warm windy evening I drove over to East Egg to see two old friends whom I scarcely knew at all. Their house was even more elaborate than I expected, a cheerful red and white Georgian Colonial mansion overlooking the bay. The lawn started at the beach and ran toward the front door for a quarter of a mile, jumping over sundials and brick walks and burning gardens—finally when it reached the house drifting up the side in bright vines as though from the momentum of its run. The front was broken by a line of French windows, glowing now with reflected gold, and wide open to the warm windy afternoon, and Tom Buchanan in riding clothes was standing with his legs apart on the front porch.
He had changed since his New Haven years. Now he was a sturdy, straw-haired man of thirty with a rather hard mouth and a supercilious manner. Two shining, arrogant eyes had established dominance over his face and gave him the appearance of always leaning aggressively forward. Not even the effeminate swank of his riding clothes could hide the enormous power of that body—he seemed to fill those glistening boots until he strained the top lacing and you could see a great pack of muscle shiffing when his shoulder moved under his thin coat. It was a body capable of enormous leverage—a cruel body.
His speaking voice, a gruff husky tenor, added to the impression of fractiousness he conveyed. There was a touch of paternal contempt in it, even toward people he liked—and there were men at New Haven who had hated his guts.
“Now, don't think my opinion on these matters is final,” he seemed to say, “just because I'm stronger and more of a man than you are. ”We were in the same Senior Society and while we were never intimate I always had the impression that he approved of me and wanted me to like him with some harsh, defiant wistfulness of his own.
We talked for a few minutes on the sunny porch.
“I've got a nice place here,” he said, his eyes flashing about restlessly.
Turning me around by one arm he moved a broad flat hand along the front vista, including in its sweep a sunken Italian garden, a half acre of deep pungent roses and a snub-nosed motor boat that bumped the tide off shore.
“It belonged to Demaine the oil man. ”He turned me around again, politely and abruptly. “We'll go inside.”
We walked through a high hallway into a bright rosy-colored space, fragilely bound into the house by French windows at either end. The windows were ajar and gleaming white against the fresh grass outside that seemed to grow a little way into the house. A breeze blew through the room, blew curtains in at one end and out the other like pale flags, twisting them up toward thefrosted wedding cake of the cetling—and then rippled over the wine-colored rug，making a shadow on it as wind does on the sea.
The only completely stationary object in the room was an enormous couch on which two young women were buoyed up as though upon an anchored balloon. They were both in white and their dresses were rippling and fluttering as if they had just been blown back in after a short flight around the house. I must have stood for 4 few moments listening to the whip and snap of the curtains and the groan of a picture on the wall. Then there was a boom as Tom Buchanan shut the rear windows and the caught wind died out about the room and the curtains and the rugs and the two young women ballooned slowly to the floor.
The younger of the two was a stranger to me. She was extended full length at her end of the divan, completely motionless and with her chin raised a little as if she were balancing something on it which was quite likely to fall. If she saw me out of the corner of her eyes she gave no hint of it—indeed, I was almost surprised into murmuring an apology for having disturbed her by coming in.
The other girl, Daisy, made an attempt to rise—she leaned slightly forward with a conscientious expression—then she laughed, an absurd, charming little laugh, and I laughed too and came forward into the room.
“I'm p-paralyzed with happiness.”
She laughed again, as if she said something very witty, and held my hand for a moment, looking up into my face, promising that there was no one in the world she so much wanted to see. That was a way she had. She hinted in a murmur that the surname of the balancing girl was Baker. （I've heard it said that Daisy's murmur was only to make people lean toward her;an irrelevant criticism that made it no less charming. ）
At any rate Miss Baker's lips fluttered, she nodded at me almost imperceptibly and then quickly tipped her head back again—the object she was balancing had obviously tottered a little and given her something of a fright. Again a sort of apology arose to my lips. Almost any exhibition of complete self sufficiency draws a stunned tribute from me.
I looked back at my cousin who began to ask me questions in her low, thrilling voice. It was the kind of voice that the ear follows up and down as if each speech is an arrangement of notes that will never be played again. Her face was sad and lovely with bright things in it, bright eyes and a bright passionate mouth—but there was an excitement in her voice that men who had cared for her found difficult to forget:a singing compulsion, a whispered “Listen,” a promise that she had done gay, exciting things just a while since and that there were gay, exciting things hovering in the next hour.
I told her how I had stopped off in Chicago for a day on my way east and how a dozen people had sent their love through me.
“Do they miss me?”she cried ecstatically.
“The whole town is desolate. All the cars have the left rear wheel painted black as a mourning wreath and there's a persistent wail all night along the North Shore.”
“How gorgeous!Let's go back, Tom. Tomorrow!”Then she added irrelevantly, “You ought to see the baby.”
“I'd like to.”
“She's asleep. She's three years old. Haven't you ever seen her?”
“Never.”
“Well, you ought to see her. She's—”
Tom Buchanan who had been hovering restlessly about the room stopped and rested his hand on my shoulder.
“What you doing, Nick?”
“I'm a bond man.”
“Who with?”
I told him.
“Never heard of them,” he remarked decisively.
This annoyed me.
“You will,” I answered shortly. “You will if you stay in the East.”
“Oh, I'll stay in the East, don't you worry,” he said, glancing at Daisy and then back at me as if he were alert for something more. “I'd be a God Damn fool to live anywhere else.”
At this point Miss Baker said “Absolutely!”with such suddenness that I started—it was the first word she had uttered since I came into the room.
Evidently it surprised her as much as it did me，for she yawned
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