Lesson Fifteen
Is America Falling Apart?
15-1 I am back in Bracciano, a castellated town about 13 miles north of Rome, after a year in New Jery.
I find the Italian Government still unstable, gasoline more expensive than anywhere in the world, butchers and bank clerks and tobacconists ready to go on strike at the drop of a hat, neo-fascists at their dirty work, the hammer and sickle painted on the rumps of public statues, a thousand-lira note (officially worth about $1.63) shrunk to the slightness of a dollar bill.
15-2 Nevertheless, it's delightful to be back.
People are underpaid but they go through an act of liking their work, the open markets are luscious with esculent color , the community is important than the state, the human condition is humorously accepted.
吴孟超The northern wind blows viciously today, and there's no central heating to turn on, but it will be pleasant when the wind drops.
The two television channels are inadequate, but next Wednesday's return of an old Western is something to look forward to.
Manifold consumption isn't important here. 揭秘英语
The quality of life has nothing to do with the quantity of brand names.
What matters is talk, family, cheap wine in the open air, the wresting of minimal sweetness out of the long-known bitterness of living .
I was spoiled in New Jery.
美国在分崩离析吗？
在新泽西呆了一年后，我又回到了布拉格奇阿诺，这是位于罗马北部13英里外的一个城堡式的小镇。
我发现意大利政府仍不稳定，汽油价高于世界的其他各地，肉店、银行职员和烟草商随时都有可能罢工，新法西斯主义者正在搞他们的卑劣阴谋，公共场所雕像的臀部上面画着镰刀和斧头，一千里拉的钞票（官方约合1.63美元）的价格下跌至1美钞。
存款证
尽管这样，回到这里仍叫人高兴。
这里的人们工资很低，但是他们却不尽力做出喜欢自己工作的样子，露天市场里的美味瓜果蔬菜，让人垂涎欲滴，社区比国家更重要，人们以幽默的方式接受了这种人生状况。
今天强烈的北风正肆意地吹着，这里没有中央供暖设备可用，但风停了就好了。
两个电视频道节目远远不能满足人们的需求，但下周三重新放映的一部老西部影片让大家有个盼头。壁纸手机高清图片
这里并不重视多样化消费，
生活的质量与名牌数量没有关系。
人们看重的是聊天、家庭、在露天喝廉价酒以及从多年熟知的困苦生活中奋力获取一点快
乐。
但我却在新泽西被宠坏了。
15-3 In New Jery, I never had to shiver by a fire that wouldn't draw, or go without canned food .
America made me develop new appetites in order to make proper u of the supermarket.
A character in Evelyn Waugh's
Put out More Flags said that the difference between prewar and postwar life was that, prewar, if one thing went wrong the day was ruined; postwar, if one thing went right the day would be made.
America is a prewar country, psychologically unprepared for one thing to go wrong.
Hence the neurosis, despair, the Kafka feeling that the whole marvelous fabric of America
n life is coming apart at the ams.
15-4 Let us stay for a while on this subject of consumption.
American individualism, on the face of it an admirable philosophy, wishes to manifest itlf in independence of the community.
You don't share things in common; you have your own things.
A family's strength is signalized by its posssions.
Herein lies a paradox.
For the desire for posssions must eventually mean dependence on posssions.
Freedom is slavery.
Once let the acquisitive instinct burgeon, and there are ruggedly individual forces only too ready to make it come to full and monstrous blossom.
New appetites are invented; what to the European are bizarre luxuries become, to the American, plain necessities.
在新泽西，我从来不用坐在烟道不通的火炉前冷得发抖，或吃不上罐头食品。
为了合理地利用超市，美国使我养成了新口味。
伊芙林沃写的《挂上更多的旗子》中的一个人物说，战前和战后生活的区别在于，战前如有一件事不顺利，你的整个一天都被毁了，战后若有一件事顺利，你这一天就好极了。
美国是一个战前国家，心理上没有为一件不顺利的事做好准备。
高纬度地区因此出现了神经质、绝望以及卡夫卡式的感觉，认为美国整个美妙的社会结构正在从根本上逐渐瓦解。
现在让我们在消费这个话题上多说几句。
美国的个人主义表面看来是一种值得赞赏的哲学，它希望在独立于社区的情况下表现自己。
一个不与别人共用一个东西，你有你自己的东西。
一个家庭的力量强弱是由财富来代表的，
这里存在着自相矛盾，
因为对财富的渴望定会导致对财富的依赖，去爬山英语
火灾自救常识自由就是奴役，
一旦让人的占有本能发芽生长，就会有强大的个人主义观念迫不及待地要是他成长壮大并开出巨大的话来，
职场关系新的欲望造出来了。对欧洲人来说是不寻常的奢侈品，在美国人看起来却是平淡无奇的必需品。
15-5 During my year's stay in New Jery I let my appetite flower into full Americanism except for one thing
I did not posss an automobile.
This lf-elected deprivation was a way into the nastier side of the consumer society.
Where private ownership prevails, public amenities decay or are prevented from coming into being.
The rundown rail rvices of America are something I try, vainly, to forget.
The nightmare of filth, outside and in, that enfolds the trip from Springfield, Mass., to Grand Central Station would not be accepted in backward Europe.
But far wor is the nightmare of travel in and around Los Angeles, where public transport does not exist and people are literally choking to death in their exhaust fumes .
