Consider The Lobster

读到"vaguely dangerous"一下子被逗乐了。DFW这也算轻黑了一把摇滚党吧（当然可以看出他自己是非常亲近滚石所代表青年文化的）:

...I will confess that I even borrowed a friend's battered leather jacket to wear on the Trail so I'd better project the kind of edgy, vaguely dangerous vibe I imagined an RS (Rolling Stone) reporter ought to give off..

170页当写到自己被十二猴子（指代十二个大媒体的前线记者）当做门童使唤的时候，他用“Rolling Stone”来作为自己的人称代词，就好像一下子把这个事情上升到民族（摇滚人民）感情层面了:

As you might already have gathered, Rolling Stone dislikes the 12M intensely, for all the above reasons, plus the fact that they're tight as the bark on a tree when it comes to sharing even very basic general-knowledge political information that might help somebody write a slightly better article, plus the issue of two separate occasions at late-night hotel check-ins when one or more of the Twelve Monkeys just out nowhere turned and handed Rolling Stone their suitcase to carry, as if Rolling Stone were a bellboy or gofer instead of a hardworking journalist just them even if he didn't have a portable Paul Stuart steamer for his slacks.

书以外我还听过一个关于DFW和滚石的段子：David Lipsky (滚石记者，电影《旅途终点》的原著作者）上节目被问到当年滚石作为一个摇滚乐杂志，为什么要破天荒地要去采访一个作家（要知道那时候滚石已经十年没采访作家了）。他回答说DFW当年发表《无尽玩笑》引起轰动吼，他老板就人肉了一下DFW的照片，结果一看照片上这货系着头巾，一脸嚣张的样子，一拍桌子：他是我们一伙的！（"He's one of us!")

At root, vulgar just means popular on a mass scale. It is the semantic opposite of pretentious or snobby. It is humility with a comb-over. It is Nielsen ratings and Barnum's axiom and the real bottom line. It is big, big business.

奥斯卡

** Am I a good person? Deep down, do I even really want to be a good person, or do I only want to seem like a good person so that people (including myself) will approve of me? Is there a difference? How do I ever actually know whether I’m bullshitting myself, morally speaking? **

** What exactly does “faith” mean? As in “religious faith,” “faith in God,” etc. Isn’t it basically crazy to believe in something that there’s no proof of? Is there really any difference between what we call faith and some primitive tribe’s sacrificing virgins to volcanoes because they believe it’ll produce good weather? How can somebody have faith before he’s presented with sufficient reason to have faith? Or is somehow needing to have faith a sufficient reason for having faith? But then what kind of need are we talking about? **

** Is the real point of my life simply to undergo as little pain and as much pleasure as possible? My behavior sure seems to indicate that this is what I believe, at least a lot of the time. But isn’t this kind of a selfish way to live? Forget selfish—isn’t it awful lonely? **

** But if I decide to decide there’s a different, less selfish, less lonely point to my life, won’t the reason for this decision be my desire to be less lonely, meaning to suffer less overall pain? Can the decision to be less selfish ever be anything other than a selfish decision? **

** Is it possible really to love other people? If I’m lonely and in pain, everyone outside me is potential relief—I need them. But can you really love what you need so badly? Isn’t a big part of love caring more about what the other person needs? How am I supposed to subordinate my own overwhelming need to somebody else’s needs that I can’t even feel directly? And yet if I can’t do this, I’m damned to loneliness, which I definitely don’t want … so I’m back at trying to overcome my selfishness for self-interested reasons. Is there any way out of this bind? **

** What is “an American”? Do we have something important in common, as Americans, or is it just that we all happen to live inside the same boundaries and so have to obey the same laws? How exactly is America different from other countries? Is there really something unique about it? What does that uniqueness entail? We talk a lot about our special rights and freedoms, but are there also special responsibilities that come with being an American? If so, responsibilities to whom? **

** Does this guy Jesus Christ’s life have something to teach me even if I don’t, or can’t, believe he was divine? What am I supposed to make of the claim that someone who was God’s relative, and so could have turned the cross into a planter or something with just a word, still voluntarily let them nail him up there, and died? Even if we suppose he was divine—did he know? Did he know he could have broken the cross with just a word? Did he know in advance that death would just be temporary (because I bet I could climb up there, too, if I knew that an eternity of right-hand bliss lay on the other side of six hours of pain)? But does any of that even really matter? Can I still believe in JC or Mohammed or Whoever even if I don’t believe they were actual relatives of God? Except what would that mean: “believe in”?**