一、A Working Community
5、None of us, mind you, was born into these communities. Nor did we move into them, U-Hauling our possessions along with us. None has papers to prove we are card-carrying members of one such group or another. Yet it seems that more and more of us are identified by work these days, rather than by street.值得一提的是，我们没有谁一出生就属于这些社区，也不是后来我们搬了进来。这些身份是我们随身携带的，没有人可以拿出文件证明我们是这个或那个群体的会员卡持有者。然而，不知不觉中人们的身份更倾向于各自所从事的工作，而不是像以往一样由家庭住址来界定。
6、In the past, most Americans live in neighborhoods. We were members of precincts or parishes or school districts. My dictionary still defines communtiy, first of all in geographic terms, as “a body of people who live in one place.”过去大多数彼邻而居的美国人彼此是同一个街区、教区、校区的成员。今天的词典依然首先从地理的角度来定义社区，称之为“一个由居住在同一地方的人组成的群体”。
7、But today fewer of us do our living in that one place; more of us just use it for sleeping. Now we call our towns “bedroom suburbs,” and many of us, without small children as icebreakers, would have trouble naming all the people on our street.然而，如今的情况是居住和工作都在同一个地方的人极少，对更多的人来说家成了一个仅仅用来睡觉的地方。我们的居住地被叫做“近郊居住区”，由于没有了孩子像过去那样起到沟通邻里关系的作用，许多人感到要叫出跟我们同住一条街的所有人的名字是件极不容易的事。
8、It’s not that we are more isolated today. It’s that many of us have transferred a chunk of our friendships, a major portion of our everyday social lives, from home to office. As more of our neighbors work away from home, the workplace becomes our neighborhood.这不是说我们今天被分得更开了，而是好多人已经部分的友谊和大部分的日常社交生活从家里转移到了办文室。随着越来越多的人走出家门去工作，工作的地方就变成了我们的街区。
9、The kaffeeklatsch of the fifties is the coffee break of the eighties.The water cooler, the hall, the elevator, and the parking lot are the back fences of these neighborhoods. The people we have lunch with day after day are those who know the running saga of our mother’s operations, our child’s math grades, our frozen pipes, and faulty transmissions.50年代的下午茶成了80年代的喝咖啡的工间休息。工作地的饮水冷却机、大厅、电梯、停车场是新社区的后院篱笆墙。天天和我们共进午餐的人是给我们的母亲动手术的医生、孩子的数学老师、管道工、汽车修理工等。 10、We may be strangers at the supermarket that replaced the corner grocer, but we are known at the coffee shop in the lobby. We share with each other a cast of characters from the boss in the corner office to the crazy lady in Shipping, to the lovers in Marketing. It’s not surprising that when researchers ask Americans what they like best about work,they say it is “the shmoose factor.” When they ask young mothers at home what they miss most about work, it is the people.人们曾经在杂货店的超市里可能是陌生人，但是却极可能在公司大厅的咖啡间里相识。我们谈论一些人物，从街头办文室的老板，到运输部中的疯女人，到营销部的情人们。难怪当研究者问及美国人关于工作他们最喜欢什么的时候，他们的回答是“和同事悠闲自在地闲扯”，当询问在家里做全职母亲的年轻妇女对工作最怀念什么时，她们说是工作中所接触过的人。
11、Not all the neighborhoods are empty, nor is every workplace a friendly playground. Most of us have had mixed experiences in these environments. Yet as one woman told me recently, she knows more about the people she passes on the way to her desk than on her way around the block. Our new sense of community hasn’t just moved from house to office building. The labels that we wear connect us with members from distant companies, cities, and states. We assume that we have something “in common” with other teachers, nurses, city planners.不是所有的住宅区都是空的，也不是所有的工作单位都是友好的。多数人在这些环境里都曾有过复杂的经历。然而，最近一位女性朋友告诉我她对工作单位里的人的了解程度要胜于对同一街区人的了解程度。我们不仅把社区的概念从住宅区搬进了办公楼，上班时身上所佩戴的标志也把我们和异国他乡的人们和公司员工联系在一起。我们假设自己和其他的教师、护士、城市规划者有着某些共同点。
12、It’s not unlike the experience of our immigrant grandparents. Many who came to this country still identified themselves as members of the Italian community, the Irish communtiy, the Polish community. They sought out and assumes connection with people from the old country, Many of us have updated that experience. We have replaced ethnic identity with professional identity, the way we replaced neighborhood with the workplace. This whole realignment of community is surely most obvious among the mobile professions. People who move from city to city seem to put roots into their professions. In an age of specialists, they may have to search harder to find people who speak the same language.这有点像最初移民来到美国的我们的祖辈们的经历，许多人来到这里后把自己原来的国籍当成一个社区，所以有意大利人社区、爱尔兰人社区、波兰社区等。他们不断寻找并设想自己与来自同一个国家的人们有着亲密的联系。我们把这种体验提升了一步。像用工作单位取代居住地一样，我们用专业身份取代了种族身份。这种社区的完全重组在流动作业的行业中表现得最为明显，那些在不同城市变换工作的人似乎把自己的身份植根于他们的行业中。在这个充满专业人士的时代，他们不得不费尽周折去寻找有共同语言的人。
13、I don’t think that there is anything massively disruptive about this shifting sense of community. The continuing search for connection and shared enterprise is very human. But I do feel uncomfortable with our shifting identity. The balance has tipped, and we seem increasingly dependent on work for our sense of self.我并不认为这种社区概念的变迁会造成大面积的混乱，这种对联系和共同理想的不断追寻充满了人性。但我对我们不断变化的身份确实感到不安。身份意识的天平似乎已经日渐倾斜到工作决定身份这边。
14、If our office are our new neighborhoods, if our professional titles are our new ethnic tags, then how do we separate ourselves from our jobs? Selfworth isn’t just something to measure in the marketplace. But in these new communities, it becomes harder to tell who we are without saying what we do.如果办公室真的彻底变成我们的社区，如果我们的所从事的行业真的彻底变成我们的种族印记，那我们怎样才能把自己和工作
区分开来呢？自我价值并不是只有在市场环境中得到体现的。但是在这些新的社区中，如果不先说明我们是从事哪行哪业的，就越来越难以说清楚我们究竟是谁。
二、The Roots Of My Ambition
1、“If there’s one thing I can’t stand, Russell, it’s a quitter.”罗素，假如有一件事我不能容忍的话，那就是做轻易放弃的人。
2、My mother,dead now to this world but still roaring free in my mind, wakes me some mornings before day-break. “If there’s one thing I can’t stand, Russell, it’s a quitter.”虽然她已离天人世，我母亲却依旧在我的脑子里大声嚷嚷，有时天还未破晓她就催我起床，罗素，假如有一件事情我不能容忍的话，那就是轻易放弃的人。
3、I have heard her say that all my life. Now, Lying in bed, coming awake in the dark, I feel the fury of her energy fighting the good-for-nothing idler within me who wants to go back to sleep instead of tackling the brave new day.我一辈子都在听她讲这句话。而今躺在床上，在黑暗中睁开睡眼，我就能感觉到她和那个一无是处，游手好闲的人对歭的那股凶劲儿，那个人就在我心中，他宁可缩回被窝继续睡觉，她不愿意抓住新的美好的一天。
4、Silenty, I protest: I am not a child anymore. I have made something of myself. I am entitled to sleep late.我在心里默默地抗议：我不再是个孩子，我已经做出了自己的成绩，有权晚点起床。
5、“Russell, you’ve got no more gumption than a bump on a log.”罗素，你完全没有进取心了，只想当个无所事事的懒汉。
6、She has hounded me with these battle cries since I was a boy in short pants.自从我还是穿着短裤整天乱跑的小男孩起她就用这种战场上的喊叫来鞭策我。
7、“Make something of yourself!” 你一定得弄出个名堂来！ 8、“Don’t be a quitter!” 绝不要轻易放弃的人！
9、“Have a little ambiton, Buddy.” 伙伴，得有点儿抱负吧
10、The civilized man of the world within me scoffs at materialism and strives after success. He has read the philosophers and social critics. He thinks it is vulgar and unworthy to spend one’s life pursuing money, power, fame, and…… 在我心目中这个世界上真的文明人嘲笑物质主义者和追名逐利的人。这种人饱读哲学大师和社会批评家的著作，他认为花费整个生命去追求金钱、权力、名誉是粗俗而不值的…… 11、“Sometimes you act like you’re not worth the powder and shot it would take to blow you up with.”母亲还对我说：“有时你的行业显得自己还不如能置你于死地的那点火药或一粒子弹值钱。
12、Life had been hard for my mother ever since her father died, leaving nothing but debts, The family house was lost, the children scattered. My mother’s mother, fatally ill with tubercular infection, fell into a suicide depression and was institutionalized. My mother, who had just started college, had to quit and look for work.。自从外公死后母亲一直过着艰辛的生活，除了一大堆债务外公啥也没有留下。家里的房子成了别人的。孩子们四散各处。我那染上夺命结核病的外婆患了自杀抑郁症被送入医院。刚上大学的母亲不得不辍学去找工作。
13、Then ,after five years of marriage and three babies, her husband died in 1930, leaving my mother so poor that she had to give up her baby Audrey for adoption. Maybe the bravest thing she did was to give up Audrey, only ten months old, to my Uncle Tom and Aunt Goldie. Uncle Tom, one of my father’s brothers, had a good job with the railroad and could give Audrey a comfortable life.后来母亲在结婚后5年内生下连我在内3个孩子。但是，1930年我爸爸离开了人世，母亲一贫如洗，不得不将最小的孩子奥德丽送给别人收养。也许母亲做过的最勇敢的事就是让我叔叔汤姆和婶婶葛黛收养了10个月大的奥德丽。叔叔汤姆是爸爸的亲兄弟，他在铁路上有一份好工作，能够给奥德丽舒适的生活。
14、My mother headed off to New Jersey with my other sister and me to take shelter with with her brother Alen, poor relatives dependent on his goodness. She eventually found work pathching grocers’smocks at ten dollars a week in a laundry.
母亲带着我和另一个妹妹直奔新泽西州暂时寄居在她哥哥阿伦家里，成了投奔我那好舅舅的穷亲戚。母亲后来总算在一家洗衣店找到了一份周薪10美元，修补杂货商穿用的工作服的工作。
15、Mother would have liked it better if I could have grown up to be President or a rich businessman, but much as she loved me, she did not deceive herself. Before I was out of grade school, she could see I lacked the gifts for either making millions or winning the love of crowds. After that she began nudging me toward working with words.假如我现在是总统或者是富有的商人，妈妈应该会更满意的。虽然母亲很爱我，但她并没有欺骗自己。在我高中毕业之时，她就意识到了我缺少那种日进斗金或博取群众爱戴的能力。从那以后她就开始把我往写作的道路上推。 16、Words ran in her family. There seemed to be a word gene that passed down from her maternal grandfather. He was a school teacher, his daughter Lulie wrote poetry, and his son Charlie became New York correspondent for the Bltimore Herald. In the turn-of-the –century South, still impoverished by the Civil War, words were a way out.母亲的家族有从事写作的传统。从她的外公开始似乎就有一种语言基因代代相传。她的外公是一位教师，他的女儿露利是诗人，儿子查理后来成了《巴尔的摩先驱报》的通讯员。在世纪之交，南方还没有从因为内战而大伤气的状态下恢复过来，写作在当时是一条谋生之路。
17、The most spectacular proof was my mother’s first cousin Edwin. He was a managing editor of the New York Times.He had traveled all over Europe, proving that words could take you to places so glorious and so far from the Virginia sticks that you own kon could only gape in wonder and envy. My mother often used Edwin as an example of how far a man could go without much talent.最充分的证据要数我母亲的一位表兄艾德文。他是《纽约时代周刊》的执行主编。他曾经遍游欧洲，这证明文字可以将你带到那些远离弗吉尼亚边远山区无比美好的地方，令你的亲戚惊
讶而又嫉妒。母亲常以艾德文为例，告诉我一个不是很有才气的男人能走多远。
18、“Edwin James was no smarter than anybody else, and look where he is today,”my mother said, and said again, so than I finally grew up thinking Edwin James was adill clod who had a lucky break. Maybe she felt didn’t have to be brilliant to get where Edwin had got to, that the way to get to the top was to work, work, and work.艾德文并不比任何一个孩子聪明，看看他今天已经在哪了？母亲总是这样遍又一遍地对我说，以至于我长大以后认为艾德文·詹姆士不过是碰上了好运气的平庸之辈。也许母亲也是那样看待他的，但她的话中应该有更深的含意。她是在告诉我不需要很聪明就能达到艾德文的高度，通往顶峰的路是努力、努力、再努力。
19、When my mother saw that I might have the word gift, she started trying to make it grow. Thought desperately poor, she signed up for a deal that supplied one volume of Worlds Greatest Literature every month at 39 cents a book.当母亲看到我或多或少有些语言天赋的时候，她就开始努力要让这种天赋成长发挥出来，虽然家里穷得叮当响，她还是狠下心来给我订购了售价为39美分的月刊《世界最伟大的文学》
20、I respected those great writers,but what I read with joy were newpapers. I lapped up every word about monstrous crimes, dreadful accidents and hideous butcheries committed in faraway wars. Accounts of murderes dying in the electric chair fascinated me, and I kept close track of fast meals ordered by condemned men.我很仰慕那些伟大的作家，但读起来使我最快乐的是报纸。我如饥似渴地读着报纸上关于犯罪、恐怖事件和发生在遥远他乡的骇人听闻的杀戮。关于那些死在电梯上的杀手的报道令我入迷，我甚至对死刑犯订的最后一顿快餐都特别留心。 21、In 1947 I graduated from John Hopkins and learned that the Baltimore Sun needed a police reporter. Two or there classmates at Hopkins also applied for the job. Why I was picked was a mystery. It paid $30 a week. When I complained that was insulting for a college man, my mother refused to sympathize.1947年，我从约翰·霍普金斯大学毕业时到了解到《巴尔的摩太阳报》需要招募一名治安记者。另外有两三个霍普金斯的同班同学也在争取这个职位，为什么最后我被录用了是谜。这份工作的薪水是30美金一星期。当我在母亲面前抱怨这样的待遇对一个大学毕业生来说是一种耻辱的时候，她拒绝给我同情。
22、“If you work hard at this job,”she said, “maybe you can make something of it. Then they’ll have to give you a raise.”假如你在这个职位上好好干，她说，也许你是会有所作为的，到那时他们就不得不给你涨工资了
23、Seven years later I was assigned by the Sun to cover the White House. For most reporters, being White House correspondent was as close to heaven as you could get. I was 29 years old and puffed up with pride. I went to see my mother’s delight while telling her about it. I should have known better.7年之后，我被《巴尔的摩太阳报》任命为驻白宫记者。对于大多数记者而言，成为驻白宫记者被看成是离上天只有一步之遥。那时我29岁，踌躇满志。我回有对母亲讲自己晋升的事想看到她高兴。但结果却出乎我的预料。
24、“Well, Russ,”she said, “if you work hard at this White House job, you might be able to make something of yourself.”嗯，罗素啊，母亲说，假如你把白宫记者当好了，你会有所作为的。
25、Onward and upward was the course she set. Small progress was no excuse for feeling satisfied with yourself. People who stopped to pat themselves on the back didn’t last long. Even if you got to the top, you ‘d better not take it easy. “The bigger they come, the harder they fall” was one of her favorite maxims.进取、进取、再进取，这是母亲给我设定的方向。小小的进步是不足以自我满足的。那些因成功而沾沾自喜停下来欣赏自己的人是不会持久的。即使你已经到达顶峰，你也最好不要放松。爬得越高，摔得越痛，是母亲的至理名言。
26、During my early years in the newspaper business, I began to entertain childish fantasies of revenge against Cousin Edwin. Wouldn’t it be delightful it Ibecame such an outstanding reporter that the Times hired me without knowing I was related to the great Edwin? Wouldn’t it be delicious if Edwin himself invited me into his huge office and said, “Tell me something about yourself, youngman?” What exquisist vengeance to reply, “I am the only son of your poor cousin Lucy Elizabeth Robinson.”在我从事报业的头几年，我就不怀着幼稚的要报复地表兄艾德文的怪念头。假如我能成为非常杰出的记者，让《纽约时代周刊》在不知道我和艾德文关系的情况下雇用我，这难道不是件快乐无比的事情吗？如果艾德文将我请到他那宽敞的办公室，对我说：年轻人，能请你介绍一下自己吗？我是你的穷表妹露西·伊丽莎白·罗宾逊唯一的儿子。这回答是多么绝妙的复仇啊。
27、What would one day happen was right out of my wildest childhood fantasy. The TIMES did come knocking at my door, though Cousin Edwin had departed by the time I arrived. Eventually I would be offered one of the gaudiest prizes in American journalism: a column in the New York Times.后来我的这种不着边际的少年狂想果真变成了现实。《纽约时代周刊》真的派人敲开了我的家门，尽管在我到达时，艾德文表兄已经有事离开了，美国新闻界还是给予了我一个炫丽的奖励—做《纽约时代周刊》的专栏作家。
28、It was not a column meant to convey news, but a writer’s column commenting on the news by using different literary forms: essay devices, satire, burlesque, sometimes even fiction. It was proof that my mother had been absolutely right when she sized me up early in life and steered me toward literature.那不是新闻报导专栏，而是一个用不同文学体裁评论新闻的专栏，如散文、讽刺、夸张的模仿、有时甚至是小说。这一切证明母亲早就看出是这块料并引导我走文学之路是完全正确的。
29、The column won its share of medals. Including a Pulitezer Prize in 1979. My mother never knew about that. The circuitry of her brain had collapsed the year before, and she was in a nursing home, out of touch with life forevermore.我负责的专栏后来赢得了它该得到的所有奖项，包括1979年的普利策奖，但母亲却不得而知。她在前一年患了脑瘫住进疗养院，她从此与生活没有了接触。
30、I can only guess how she’d have responded to news of Pulitzer. I’m pretty sure she would have said, “That’s nice, Buddy. It shows if you buckle down and work hard, you’ll be able to make something of yourself one of these days.”我只能去想象她得知我获得普利策奖的消息时的反应。她