第一章
在我年紀還輕，涉世不深的時候，我父親曾經訓誡過我一段話，至今我還放在心上反覆思考。
他對我說：「每當你開口批評別人，請記住，世界上不是每個人都像你這樣，從小就占盡各種優勢。」
他沒有繼續多說—我們父子之間雖然話不多，但總有些事情異常相通，所以我當時知道他話中有話。由於這個教誨，我養成了不妄下斷語的習慣。而這種態度吸引了很多性情古怪的人把我當成知己，什麼心事都對我說，甚至有些面目可憎、言語無味的人也來糾纏我。大概那些心理不正常的人見到正常人有這種性情，就會馬上伺機接近。所以，我在大學時代就被視為政客，這很不公正，因為總有冒冒失失的陌生人找我傾吐心事，其實我一點都不想知道，一旦情況不對，發現有人要把我當知己，準備向我坦露心事，我就會裝睡或藉故忙碌，一副事不關己的模樣，說幾句玩笑話；因為年輕人把你當作知己所傾吐的隱私往往千篇一律，而且有所隱瞞。不對人妄下斷語代表一種無窮的希望。我提起父親的話，似乎顯得我們父子都有點瞧不起人，但他其實是要提醒我，待人寬厚是一種天賦，並不是每個人生來都相同，我時時提醒自己記得這個準則：責人過苛，而有所失。
雖然我如此強調對人寬厚，但不得不說寬厚也有限度。人的行為，有基於磐石、有出於泥沼，可是過了某種程度，我也不管它的緣由了。去年秋天剛從東部回來時，心情的確非常沉重，巴不得全世界的人都穿上制服來向道德觀念立正致敬；我再也不想放縱自己涉足他人的內心，讓人家對我推心置腹了。但是只有蓋茨比—本書的主人翁—例外，這位大亨代表了我所鄙夷的一切。假使一個人的個性是一連串不間斷的成功姿態，那麼他一定有其迷人之處；他對於生命具有超高敏感度，像是能夠偵測萬里以外地震的精密儀器。這種能力與一般美其名為「創造型人格」的那種軟弱的多愁善感完全不同，是一種異乎尋常、與生俱來的樂觀，一種浪漫的希望，是我在別人身上從未發現過，以後也不可能再遇見。沒錯，蓋茨比最終也沒有令我失望，使我對人世間虛無的悲歡暫時喪失興趣的，就是蓋茨比內心所受的一切折磨，以及在他的幻夢消逝後隨之而來的污濁灰塵。
我們卡拉威家三代住在中西部這個城市，家境富裕，也算是當地名門望族。據說我們原本是蘇格蘭博克祿地方的公爵世家，而我這個支系的直系先人是我的伯祖父。他在一八五一年移居到這，在南北戰爭期間買了傭兵替他打仗，他自己則創辦了一家商行，專做五金批發買賣，如今我父親還繼續經營這項祖業。
我從未見過這位伯祖父，但我應該長得像他—從父親辦公室牆上那幅稍嫌冷酷的肖像畫就可以看出來。我在一九一五年從紐哈芬市的耶魯大學畢業，剛好比我父親晚了四分之一個世紀。不久後我參加了稱之為世界大戰，但我視之為條頓民族大遷徙的延續。這場反侵略的仗，我打得興致高昂，退伍回家後仍靜不下心來。中西部家鄉不再是我心中溫暖的中心，而是宇宙邊緣的荒漠，因此我決定到東部去學債券生意。我的朋友全進了這一行，所以再多收容我一個也無妨。為了這件事，我的叔伯姑嬸討論了好久，就跟決定送我到哪所私立中學去一樣緊張。最後，個個臉上露出嚴肅而且猶豫的神情說：「那麼，好吧。」父親答應資助我一年。耽擱了一陣子後，我終於在一九二二年的春天來到這裡，當時我還以為這一去就不再回來了。
在大城市生活最現實的問題就是找到棲身處，那時已是溫暖的季節，而我又離開了花木扶疏、綠草如茵的家園，所以當一位年輕同事建議一起去近郊租房子同住時，我馬上答應了。不久就找到了一間飽經風霜的木造平房，月租八十元。但正要搬進去時，公司忽然把他調到華盛頓，我只好一個人搬進郊外這間房子。與我作伴的還有一隻狗—雖然沒幾天牠就跑了—和一部道奇老車，還有一位芬蘭籍的女傭人，她每天來替我整理床舖、準備早餐，每次她站在電爐前，總會自顧自叨唸著芬蘭人為人處世的道理。
頭一兩天我覺得很孤單，直到有一天，我在路上碰到一個比我對這地方還陌生的人。
「請問到西卵鎮該怎麼走？」他一臉無助地問我。
我指點方向後繼續往前，頓時不再感覺孤單。陌生人把我當成嚮導、拓荒者、定居者。他無意間認定我為這地方的一份子。
這個時節陽光普照，綠樹倏然成蔭。就像在縮時電影裡一樣，花草在一夜間繁茂了起來。夏天接著來臨，我也再度有了生命復始的信念。
要做的事不少，有許多書要讀，憑藉著清新的空氣，也有許多有益健康的活動。買了十幾本有關銀行學、信用貸款和證券投資的書籍，一本本燙了紅金的書本擺在書架上，就像造幣廠製的新鈔一樣，等著為我揭露邁達斯國王、金融家摩根和羅馬巨富梅賽納斯等人的致富祕訣。除此之外，我打算要讀更多其他種類的書。我大學時頗有文藝氣息，曾經替《耶魯新聞》寫過一系列內容嚴肅而淺顯的社論。現在我打算重新在這些方面下功夫，使自己成為「通才」，換句話說，就是最膚淺的專家。這並不是什麼俏皮話，畢竟專心致志的人生總是要成功多了。
我租的房子在北美最怪異的一個地方，這純屬巧合。這個小鎮位在紐約東方一個延伸出來的細長怪島上，除了天然奇景外，還有兩處不尋常的地形，像一對碩大的雞蛋，離城裡有二十英里路，一東一西，中間隔著一道小灣，兩邊地角伸向西半球直到長島海灣恬靜無波的鹹水裡。這兩處隆起的地形一點都不圓滾，倒像哥倫布故事裡的雞蛋一樣，在觸地的那一端都有點壓扁了。在天空翱翔的海鷗看見了，一定驚訝不已；而對於插翅也難飛的人類來說，這兩個地方除了形狀大小之外，並無絲毫相似之處。
CHAPTER 1
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 any one," 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 judgments, 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 judgments 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 the abortive 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 just 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, a pathfinder, an original settler. He had casually conferred on me the freedom of the neighborhood.
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 editorials 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 Western 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.
2024專利防護中