Louis Kronenberger - A Note on Privacy (Excerpt) 汉译

What is perhaps strangest today is the keen widespread interest displayed toward people who are, on the one hand, not real celebrities and, on the other, not personally known to one. Most gossip that doesn’t concern one’s friends and acquaintances has, classically, a certain snob appeal-has to do with people of great wealth or fame or beauty. But much that one reads today in the gossip columns has to do, it might almost be said, with people whose reputations are being made at the same time they’re being unmade-people who only exist, as it were, in terms of the gossip. The who’s-dating-whom, the rumors of divorce, the shifts of affection, the speculations as marriage, the pregnancies and births, are for the most part-in New York, at any rate-about people only marginally in the limelight and often actually on the side lines. That Sonny Tink, the underwear heir, is dating a starlet, or even a showgirl; that a TV scriptwriter is horning in on the happy home of a candy-bar maker; that it’s a boy at the Gumbridges (his pajama company sponsors a minor radio program); that a dog-biscuit tycoon has taken to investing in Broadway shows-this is the run of such stuff; and in a city of 8,000,000 people-a city that teems with real celebrities-this would seem to me of a piece with the trailer items in an old-fashioned small-town society column.<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

目下最奇怪的事，也许就是对于既非名人，又非熟识的人们所展示的一般热烈的兴趣。和自己的朋友或相识无关的大部分的闲谈，在传统上有一种诉诸俗物气质的魅力，而老是和富豪，名士或美人有关的。但是我们今日在闲话栏中所读到的多数的社会新闻，差不多可以说，都是有关以丑行而出名的人物的，以及有关那些可谓只存在于闲谈的世界中的人物的。谁又在跟谁闹恋爱，离婚的谣诼，移情别恋，关于结婚，怀孕及出生的臆测，大部分——至少是在纽约——都是关于一些不大出名的，而实际常是一些角落里的人的。说那个爽利丁克内衣公司的小开，正在爱上了一个小明星，甚至是一个歌女哪；又说一个写电视脚本的人，正在勾引着一个糖果制造商的妻子，而进行破坏他们的幸福家庭哪；又说赞助一个小型广播节目的，开睡衣公司的简家生了一个男孩哪；又说饲狗饼干业的大亨正有意投资于百老汇的戏剧哪，诸如此类，都是一般闲谈的材料：而在一个有八百万人口的，像纽约这样的大城市，其中充满着真正的名士，我觉得这些张家长李家短的玩意，就和旧式小镇上社交栏中所出现的附加的记事，没有什么两样呢。