A kisregény első mondatai, áttördelve.
In my younger and more vulnerable years
my father gave me some advice
that I’ve been turning over in my mind
ever since.
“Whenever you feel like criticizing any one,
he told me
“just remember that all the people in this world
"haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.”
He didn’t say any more,
but we’ve always been unusually communicative
in a reserved way,
and I understood
that he meant a great deal more than that.
In consequence,
I’m inclined to reserve all judgments,
a habit that
has opened up many curious natures to me
and also
made me the victim of not a few veteran bores.
The abnormal mind
is quick
to detect and attach itself to this quality
when it appears in a normal person,
and so it came about
that in college
I was unjustly accused of being a politician,
because I was privy
to the secret griefs
of wild, unknown men.
Most of the confidences
were unsought
—frequently I have feigned
sleep,
preoccupation, or
a hostile levity
when I realized
by some unmistakable sign
that an intimate revelation
was quivering on the horizon;
for the intimate revelations of young men,
or at least the terms in which they express them,
are usually plagiaristic
and marred by obvious suppressions.
Reserving judgments is a matter of infinite hope.
* A regény a 20. szdi amerikai próza egyik legfontosabb szövege, standard tananyag minden angolszakon, középiskolai tananyag az USAban. Mivel a szöveg copyright alatt van, számos helyről eltávolították a netről. Magyar fordítása létezik, de siralmas.
Retorikusan olvasók felfigyelhetnek a sententiákra, a gondosan választott jelzőkre, a mondatszerkezetekre, és a feketén ironikus tónusra.
"She's got an indiscreet voice," I remarked. "It's full of-" I hesitated."Her voice is full of money," he said suddenly. That was it.
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