Miles and miles of rolling night

将文字作用于感知上 —— 这可能是读完夜色最大的感受。Fitz 的风格在这本中走向极致，细碎散乱，繁复华丽，没有着重于具体的情节，甚至倒叙的结构也让夜色的叙事更不清晰。但夜色又那么好，Fitz不陈述不定义，用大量暗喻，用文字的节奏与韵律，来营造 “氛围”，传递感受。在气氛的描绘上 Fitz 是天才的，Rosemary 的生动新鲜，Dick 与 Nicole 之间最初的心动，以及 Dick 暗淡绵延无法阻止的下坠，这些都如盖茨比的绿光一样，不是通过具体细节而是通过感受性的力量让人产生情绪共振。

Dick 尽管曾纯粹的追求智性却也逐渐意识到自己和大多数人一样，有的只不过是几个想法而不是真正的智慧: “Like so many men he had found that he had only one or two ideas—that his little collection of pamphlets now in its fiftieth German edition contained the germ of all he would ever think or know.” Dick 尽管坚持经济上的独立却也还是在 Nicole 的物质牢笼中不断被消耗：" Yet he had been swallowed up like a gigolo, and somehow permitted his arsenal to be locked up in the Warren safety-deposit vaults." Dick 与 Nicole 之间的关系从一开始就不对等，生病时的 Nicole 虽然也曾脆弱天真感性，但她仍然是 Fitz 笔下典型的女性角色，如同 Leslie Fielder 所形容的那样： “the fair goddess as bitch”。种种因素似乎都在指向 Dick 的下坠，但 Dick 真的无能为力么，Fitz 没有给出解释似乎也觉得无需解释，“The silver cord is cut and the golden bowl is broken and all that, but an old romantic like me can’t do anything about it." Fitz 早在故事的开始就给出了结局，Dick的下坠是浪漫主义在时代中必然的幻灭。

"The purpose of a work of fiction is to appeal to the lingering after-effects in the reader's mind.” 或许在Fitz 看来，小说的目的不是诠释因果，而是留下感受，而 Fitz 在这方面是出色的，拖着人下陷的阅读体验仿佛是和 Dick 一起经历了这十年，facing miles and miles of rolling night。