各位好！欢迎来到口袋图书馆（Pocket Library）！
对于所谓的“美国梦”，spica脑中一向是第一个反映出“淘金热”的。自从看了《学徒》之后，又多了一个“Donald Trump”作为候补名词。这一题材是很多作家所偏爱的宠儿，而故事的结局也往往极端，要么是白手起家名利双收，要么是得不偿失人财两空。
怎么说呢，美国梦象征着Dream Big的勇气，也象征着自不量力的肤浅；象征着挑战自我的伟大，也象征着痴心妄想的愚昧。淘金热过后的一段时期里，这个名词往往是贬义的。然而随着竞争社会的发展，美国梦又再次成为了中性，甚至是褒义的存在。
今天spica为大家奉上的，是公认的阐述“美国梦”题材的代表作品——菲茨杰拉德的《了不起的盖茨比》。
spica碎语：
中考之后去北京新东方呆了十多天，因为无聊而看了N多书，其中包括村上春树的代表作《挪威的森林》。其中男主角最欣赏的书，即是这本《了不起的盖茨比》。我以前从未听过此书，更未曾对这样的题材产生兴趣。这么说吧，如果在书店偶遇这本书，单单看介绍我就会把它弃置一旁了。但是村上的描写却让我对此书产生了非凡的好奇心，非要买来读读不可。
男主角说：“《了不起的盖茨比》对我始终是绝好的作品。兴之所至，我便习惯性地从书架中抽出它，信手翻开一页，读上一段，一次都没让我失望过，没有一页使人兴味索然。何等妙不可言的杰作！”说实话，当时的我虽然也读过了很多名著和杂书，还真没有一本达到了如此夸张的程度。因此我十分想看看能被人如此评价的书会是个什么样子。
走之前去西单图书城买了此书，然后在火车上一夜读完。大概因为困倦和疲乏，还有当时的阅历依然不足，读完后对整个故事的印象都是朦朦胧胧，像一个迷迷糊糊色彩混杂的梦，除了根据前面的介绍大概理解了“美国梦”的主旨，其他的细节啊感受啊一概模糊。因此读完之后也就弃置不顾了。这种经历让我现在一想到美国梦都是一种脑袋一片浆糊的诡异感觉……嘛，等何时有空自当重温一遍，我一直相信读书是有时间机缘的，不同时段品出来的东西是迥然不同的，各有各的风味~
真是碎语了……什么时候也给大家来介绍一些其他语种的作品，说起来我苏联文学和日本文学读得也蛮多的~
General Image
The Great Gatsby is a novel by the American author F. Scott Fitzgerald. First published on April 10, 1925, it is set in Long Island's North Shore and New York City during the summer of 1922.
The novel chronicles an era that Fitzgerald himself dubbed the "Jazz Age." Following the shock and chaos of World War I, American society enjoyed unprecedented levels of prosperity during the "roaring" 1920s as the economy soared. At the same time, Prohibition, the ban on the sale and manufacture of alcohol as mandated by the Eighteenth Amendment, made millionaires out of bootleggers and led to an increase in organized crime. Although Fitzgerald, like Nick Carraway in his novel, idolized the riches and glamor of the age, he was uncomfortable with the unrestrained materialism and the lack of morality that went with it.
Although it was adapted into both a Broadway play and a Hollywood film within a year of publication, it was not popular upon initial printing, selling fewer than 25,000 copies during the remaining fifteen years of Fitzgerald's life. It was largely forgotten during the Great Depression and World War II. After its republishing in 1945 and 1953, it quickly found a wide readership and is today widely regarded as a paradigm of the Great American Novel. The Great Gatsby has become a standard text in high school and university courses on American literature in countries around the world, and is ranked second in the Modern Library's list of the 100 Best Novels of the 20th Century. Time Magazine included the novel in its TIME 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005.
根据上面这段大家完全可以理解《了不起的盖茨比》在文学史上的伟大地位。这书其实也可以说是作者本人的一种寄托与衍生。虽然篇幅很短，但是通过盖茨比一个人对个人生活的理解与追寻，却体现了一个时代的精神风貌，影射了新旧时代的交替与过往浮华的瓦解终结，是一本值得深刻挖掘的书。
Title
The last piece to fall into place was the title. Fitzgerald was always ambivalent about it, shifting between Gatsby, Among Ash-Heaps and Millionaires, Trimalchio, Trimalchio in West Egg, On the Road to West Egg, Gold-Hatted Gatsby and The High-Bouncing Lover. He initially preferred Trimalchio, after the crude parvenue of Petronius's Satyricon. Unlike Fitzgerald's reticent agonist, Trimalchio actively participated in the edacious and libidinous orgies that he hosted. That Fitzgerald refers to Gatsby by the proposed title just once in the entire novel reinforces the view that it would have been a misnomer. As Tony Tanner observes, however, there are subtle similarities between the two.
On 7 November 1924, Fitzgerald wrote decisively to Perkins — "I have now decided to stick to the title I put on the book [...] Trimalchio in West Egg" — but was eventually persuaded that the reference was too obscure and that people would not be able to pronounce it. His wife and Perkins both expressed their preference for The Great Gatsby and, in December, Fitzgerald agreed. A month before publication, after a final review of the proofs, he asked if it would be possible to re-title it Trimalchio or Gold-Hatted Gatsby, but Perkins advised against it. On March 19, Fitzgerald asked if the book could be renamed Under the Red White and Blue, but it was at that stage too late to change. The Great Gatsby was published on April 10, 1925. Fitzgerald remarked that "the title is only fair, rather bad than good."
真正精致的好小说，必然是在细节上下了很大功夫的。象征和隐喻往往是必不可少且最有可读性的。其实“盖茨比”这个名字本身就有很深的含义。男主角自己改了“Jay Gatsby”这个名字，那么大家能不能猜出他意在何处呢？
Original cover art
The cover of The Great Gatsby is among the most celebrated pieces of jacket art in American literature. A little-known artist named Francis Cugat was commissioned to illustrate the book while Fitzgerald was in the midst of writing it. The cover was completed before the novel, with Fitzgerald so enamored of it that he told his publisher he had "written it into" the novel.
After several initial sketches of various completeness, Cugat produced the Art Deco-style painting of a pair of eyes hovering over the bright lights of an amusement park. The woman has no nose but full and voluptuous lips. Descending from the right eye is a green tear. The irises of the eyes are a gouache, depicting a pair of reclining nudes.
Fitzgerald's remarks about incorporating the painting into the novel led to the interpretation that the eyes are reminiscent of those of Dr. T. J. Eckleburg (the novel's erstwhile proprietor of a faded commercial billboard near George Wilson's auto-repair shop) which Fitzgerald described as "blue and gigantic — their retinas are one yard high. They look out of no face, but, instead, from a pair of enormous yellow spectacles which pass over a non-existent nose." Although this passage has some resemblance to the painting, a closer explanation can be found in the description of Daisy Buchanan as the "girl whose disembodied face floated along the dark cornices and blinding signs".
建议对此书有兴趣或者好感的筒子去找一找作者菲氏的生平相关读一读，绝对会对加深理解有很大的帮助。最后再给大家一段译者姚乃强先生对美国梦的定义作为参考：所谓的“美国梦”是一种信念，也是一种欲望，一种梦幻，认为在这块充满机会和财富的土地上，人们只要遵循一组明确的行为准则去生活，就有理由实现物质的成功。至于这种准则是什么，就有待大家自己去思考喽~
本期作业
1.Guess the meaning of the hero's name "Jay Gatsby".
2.Talk about your opinion about the so-called "American Dream". Do you know other masterpieces about this topic? What's your feeling about them?（“美国梦”算是蛮常见的选题了，而且所谓的“美国”现在也不过是个指代，各位可千万不要理解成故事一定要发生在美国啊~）
奖励标准
1.完成第一大题奖励30HY，完成第二大题奖励100HY。（大家答题不要那么简略嘛……你就把第二大题当作写小作文好了，还可以练练手~）
2.请大家用英语回答，设置“所有回复人可见”。
说到“美国梦”，就想到“淘金热”，想到“淘金热”，就不得不提起澳大利亚的家族史小说。代表性的《荆棘鸟》已经介绍过了，推荐大家可以去看看由同一作者于前几年出版的《Touch》（《呼唤》），典型的关于淘金热的家族史诗，很不错看的书。
一如既往，欢迎所有针对节目的意见和建议，也希望大家可以向spica推荐你们喜欢的书，让我们一起期待下一次的节目吧！（对，我也很期待，因为我对下期做什么完全没有概念……囧）
《了不起的盖茨比》英文版与中文版下载：
点击浏览该文件
《莎翁情史》的《The De Lesseps Dance`s》。很有味道，和静静的破灭蛮合的，请各位慢慢欣赏~
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