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While we pay lip service to the virtues of reading, the truth is that there is still in our culture something that suspects those who read too much, whatever reading too much means, of being lazy, aimless dreamers, people who need to grow up and come outside to where life is, who think themselves superior in their separateness.
我們雖然口頭上也說讀書的好處，但實際上，我們的文化卻始終懷疑那些讀書太多的人——無論讀書太多意味著什么），認為他們懶惰、胸?zé)o大志，需要成長并接觸現(xiàn)實生活；認為他們不屑與他人為伍。
There is something in the American character that is even secretly hostile to the act of aimless reading, a certain hale and heartiness that is suspicious of reading as anything more than a tool for advancement. America is also a nation that prizes sociability and community, that accepts a kind of psychological domino effect: alone leads to loner, loner to loser. Any sort of turning away from human contact is suspect, especially one that interferes with the go-out-and-get-going ethos that seems to be at the heart of our national character. The images of American presidents that stick are those that portray them as men of action: Theodore Roosevelt on safari, John Kennedy throwing a football around with his brothers. There is only Lincoln as solace to the inveterate reader, a solitary figure sitting by the fire, saying, "My best friend is a person who will give me a book I have not read."
我們美國人的性格里，甚至有一種偏見，暗中敵視無目的的閱讀，總認為讀書不過是升職的一種手段。美國是一個強調(diào)社交和群體的國家，因此她有一種心理上的多米諾骨牌效應(yīng)：獨處會導(dǎo)致不合群，而不合群的人會變成失敗者。任何拒絕交際活動的行為都是可疑的，尤其是和“走出去、干起來”這一精神相矛盾的行為就更可疑了，因為這一精神似乎是我們民族性格的核心所在。人們印象中的美國總統(tǒng)總是在行動：在野外狩獵的西奧多·羅斯福，和兄弟們傳橄欖球的約翰·肯尼迪。對于那些頑固不化的書蟲，唯一的安慰是林肯：他獨自坐在火爐旁邊，說道誰給我一本我沒有讀過的書，誰就是我最好的朋友。”
There also arose, as I was growing up, a kind of careerism in the United States that sanctioned reading only if there was some point to it.
我長大成人的那些年里，在美國還興起了一種追求名利的風(fēng)氣。人們只認可那些有用的閱讀。
