Loving and Hating New York
Thomas Griffith
1 Those ad campaigns celebrating the Big Apple, those T-shirts with a heart design proclaiming “I love New York,” are signs, pathetic in their desperation, of how the mighty has fallen. New York City used to leave the bragging to others, for bragging was “bush” Being unique, the biggest and the best, New York didn’t have to assert how special it was.
2 It isn’t the top anymore, at least if the top is measured by who begets the styles and sets the trends. Nowadays New York is out of phase with American taste as often as it is out of step with American politics. Once it was the nation’s undisputed fashion authority, but it too long resisted the incoming casual style and lost its monopoly. No longer so looked up to or copied, New York even prides itself on being a holdout from prevailing American trends, a place to escape Common Denominator Land.
3 Its deficiencies as a pacesetter are more and more evident. A dozen other cities have buildings more inspired architecturally than any built in New York City in the past twenty years. The giant Manhattan television studios where Toscanini’s NBC Symphony once played now sit empty most of the time, while sitcoms cloned and canned in Hollywood, and the Johnny Carson show live, preempt the airways from
California. Tin Pan Alley has moved to Nashville and Hollywood. Vegas casinos routinely pay heavy sums to singers and entertainers whom no nightspot in Manhattan can afford to hire. In sports, the bigger superdomes, the more exciting teams, the most enthusiastic fans, are often found elsewhere.
4 New York was never a good convention city – being regarded as unfriendly, unsafe, overcrowded, and expensive – but it is making something of a comeback as a tourist attraction. Even so, most Americans would probably rate New Orleans, San Francisco, Washington, or Disneyland higher. A dozen other cities, including my hometown of Seattle, are widely considered better cities to live in.
5 Why, then, do many Europeans call New York their favorite city They take more readily than do most Americans to its cosmopolitan complexities, its surviving, aloof, European standards, its alien mixtures. Perhaps some of these Europeans are reassured by the sight, on the twin fashion avenues of Madison and Fifth, of all those familiar international names – the jewelers, shoe stores, and designer shops that exist to flatter and bilk the frivolous rich. But no; what most excites Europeans is the city’s charged , nervous atmosphere, its vulgar dynamism .
6 New York is about energy, contention, and striving. And since it contains its share of articulate losers, it is also about mockery, the put-down , the loser’s shrug “whaddya gonna do”. It is about con
stant battles for subway seats, for a cabdriver’s or a clerk’s or a waiter’s attention, for a foothold , a chance, a better address, a larger billing. To win in New York is to be uneasy; to lose is to live in jostling proximity to the frustrated majority.
7 New York was never Mecca to me. And though I have lived there more than half my life, you won’t find me wearing an “I Love New York” T-shirt. But all in all, I can’, t think of many places in the world I’d rather li, ve. It’, s not easy to define why.
8 Nature’s pleasures are much qualified in N, ew York, . You ne ver see a star-filled sky; the city’s bright glow arrogantly obscures the heavens. Sunsets can be spectacular: oranges and reds tinting the sky over the Jersey meadows and gaudily reflected in a thousand windows on Manhattan’s jagged skyline. Nature constantly yields to man in New York: witness those fragile sidewalk trees gamely struggling against encroaching cement and petrol fumes. Central Park, which Frederick Law Olmsted designed as lungs for the city’s poor, is in places grassless and filled with tras h, no longer pristine yet lively with the noise and vivacity of people, largely youths, blacks, and Puerto Ricans, enjoying themselves. On park benches sit older people, mostly white, looking displaced. It has become less a tranquil park than an untidy carnival.
9 Not the glamour of the city, which never beckoned to me from a distance, but its opportunity –
to practice the kind of journalism I wanted –drew me to New York. I wasn’t even sure how I’d measure up against others who had been more soundly educated at Ivy League schools, or whether I could compete against that tough local breed, those intellectual sons of immigrants, so highly motivated and single-minded, such as Alfred Kazin, who for diversion for heaven’t sake played Bach’s Unaccompanied Partita s on the violin.
10 A testing of oneself, a fear of giving in to the most banal and marketable of one’s talents, still draws many of the young to New York. That and, as always, the company of others fleeing something constricting where they came from. Together these young share a freedom, a community of inexpensive amusements, a casual living, and some rough times. It can’t be the living conditions that appeal, for only fond memory will forgive the inconvenience, risk, and squalor. Commercial Broadway may be inaccessible to them, but there is off- Broadway, and then off-off-Broadway. If painters disdain Madison Avenue’s plush art galleries, Madison Avenue dealers set up shop in the grubby precincts of Soho. But the purity of a bohemian dedication can be exaggerated. The artistic young inhabit the same Greenwich Village and its fringes in which the experimentalists in the arts lived during the Depression, united by a world against them. But the present generation is enough of a subculture to be a source of profitable boutiques and coffeehouses. And it is not all that estranged.
11 Manhattan is an island cut off in most respects from mainland America, but in two areas it remains dominant. It is the banking and the communications headquarters for America. In both these roles it ratifies more than it creates. Wall Street will advance the millions to make a Hollywood movie only if convinced that a bestselling title or a star name will ensure its success. The networks’ news centers are here, and the largest book publ ishers, and the biggest magazines –and therefore the largest body of critics to appraise the films, the plays, the music, the books that others have created. New York is a judging town, and often invokes standards that the rest of the country deplores or ignores. A market for knowingness exists in New York that doesn’t exist for knowledge.
12 The ad agencies are all here too, testing the markets and devising the catchy jingles that will move millions from McDonald’s to Burger king, so that the ad agency’s “creative director” can lunch instead in Manhattan’s expense-account French restaurants. The bankers and the admen. The marketing specialists and a thousand well-paid ancillary service people, really set the city’s brittle tone— catering to a wide American public whose numbers must be respected but whose tastes do not have to shared. The condescending view from the fiftieth floor of the city’s crowds below cuts these people off from humanity. So does an attitude which sees the public only in terms of large, malleable numbers— as impersonally as does the clattering subway turnstile beneath the office towers.
design翻译
13 I am surprised by the lack of cynicism, particularly among the younger ones, of those who work in such fields. The television generation grew up in the insistent presence of hype, delights
in much of it, and has no scruples about practicing it. Men and woman do their jobs professionally, and, like the pilots who from great heights bombed Hanoi, seem unmarked by it. They lead their real lives elsewhere, in the Village bars they are indistinguishable in dress or behavior from would-be artists, actors, and writers. The boundaries of “art for art’s sake” aren’t so rigid anymore; art itself is less sharply defined, and those whose paintings don’t sell do illu strations; those who can’ get acting jobs do commercials; those who are writing ambitious novels sustain themselves on the magazines. Besides, serious art often feeds in the popular these days, changing it with fond irony.
14 In time the newcomers find or from their won worlds; Manhatten is many such words, huddled together but rarely interaction. I think this is what gives the city its sense of freedom. There are enough like you, whatever you are. And it isn’t as necessary to know anything about an apartme nt neighbor- or to worry about his judgment of you- as it is about someone with an adjoining yard. In New York, like seeks like, and by economy of effort excludes the rest as stranger. This distancing, this uncaring in ordinary encounters, has another side: in no other American city can the lonely be as lonely.
15 So much more needs to be said. New Your is a wounded city, declining in its amenities . Overloaded by its tax burdens. But it is not dying city; the streets are safer than they were five years age; Broadway, which seemed to be succumbing to the tawdriness of its environment, is astir again.
16 The trash-strewn streets, the unruly schools, the uneasy feeling or menace, the noise, the brusqueness- all confirm outsiders in their conviction that they w ouldn’t live here if you gave them the place. Yet show a New Yorker a splendid home in Dallas, or a swimming pool and cabana in Beverly Hills, and he will be admiring but not envious. So much of well-to-do America now lives antiseptically in enclaves, tranquil and luxurious, that shut out the world. Too static, the New Yorker would say. Tell him about the vigor of your outdoor pleasures; he prefers the unhealthy hassle and the vitality of urban life. He is hopelessly provincial. To him New York- despite its faults, which her will impatiently concede “so what else is new” — is the spoiler of all other American cities.
17 It is possible in twenty other American cities to visit first-rate art museums, to hear good music and see lively experimental theater, to meet intelligent and sophisticated people who know how to live, dine, and talk well; and to enjoy all this in congenial and spacious surroundings. The New Yorkers still wouldn’t want to live there.
18 What he would find missing is what many outsiders find oppressive and distasteful about New York – its rawness, tension, urgency; its bracing competitiveness; the rigor of its judgments; and the congested, democratic presence of so many other New Yorkers, encased in their own worlds, the defeated are not hidden away somewhere else on the wrong side of town. In the subways, in the buses, in the streets, it is impossible to avoid people whose lives are harder than yours. With the desperate, the ill, the fatigued, the overwhelmed, one learns not to strike up conversation which isn’t wanted but to make brief, sympathetic eye contact, to include them in the human race. It isn’t much, but it is the fleeting hospitality of New Yorkers, each jealous of his privacy in the crowd. Ever helpfulness is often delivered as a taunt: a man, rushing the traffic light, shouts the man behind him. “ You want to be wearing a Buick with Jersey plates” — great scorn in the word Jersey, home of drivers who don’t belong here.
19 By Adolf Hitler’s definition, New York is mongrel city. It i s in fact the first truly international metropolis. No other great city- not London, Paris, Rome or Tokyo- plays host or hostage to so many nationalities. The mix is much wider- Asians, Africans, Latins - that when that tumultuous variety of European crowded ashore at Ellis Island. The newcomers are never fully absorbed, but are added precariously to the undigested many.
20 New York is too big to be dominated by any group, by Wasps or Jews or blacks, or by Catholics of many origins — Irish, Italian, Hispanic. All have their little sovereignties, all are sizable enough to be reckoned with and tough in asserting their claims, but none is powerful enough to subdue the others. Characteristically, the city swallows up the United Nations and refuses to take it seriously, regarding it as an unworkable mixture of the idealistic, the impractical, and the hypocritical. But New Yorkers themselves are in training in how to live together in a diversity of races- the necessary initiation into the future.
21 The diversity gives endless color to the city, so that walking in it is constant education in sights and smells. There is wonderful variety of places to eat or shop, and though the most successful of such places are likely to touristy hybrid compromises, they too have genuine roots. Other American cities have ethnic turfs jealously defended, but not, I think, such an admixture of groups, thrown together in such jarring juxtapositions . In the same way, avenues of high-rise luxury in New York are never far from poverty and mean streets. The sadness and fortitude of New York must be celebrated, along with its treasures of art and music. The combination is unstable; it produces friction, or an uneasy forbearance that sometimes becomes a real toleration.
22 Loving and hating New York becomes a matter of alternating moods, often in the same day. The p
lace constantly exasperates , at times exhilarates . To me it is the city of unavoidable experience. Living there, one has the reassurance of steadily confronting life.
第十四课亦爱亦恨话纽约
托马斯格里非斯
那些赞美"大苹果"的广告活动，还有那些印着带有"我爱纽约"字样的心形图案的T恤衫，只不过是它们在绝望中发出悲哀的迹象，只不过是纽约这个非凡的城市日趋衰落的象征；纽约过去从不自我炫耀，而只让别的城市去这样做，因为自我炫耀显得"小家子气"；纽约既然是独一无二的、最大的而且是最好的城市，也就没有必要宣称自己是如何与众不同了;
然而，今日的纽约再不是头号城市了；至少，在开创时尚、领导潮流方面，纽约是再也配不_卜这个称号了；今日的纽约非但常常跟不上美国政治前进的步伐，而且往往也合不上美国人生活情趣变化的节拍；过去有一个时期，它曾是全国流行服装款式方面无可争议的权威，但由于长期抵制越来越流行的休闲服装款式而丧失了，其垄断地位；纽约已不再是众望所归、纷起仿效的对象了，如今它甚至以成为风行美国的时装潮流的抵制者，以成为摆脱全国清一的单调局面的一隅逃遁之地而自鸣得意; 纽约无力保持排头兵的地位这一点已是越来越明显了；有十多座其他城市都已经有了一些在建筑艺术上很富有创造性的建筑物，而纽约最近二十年来所造的任何一幢建筑物都不能与之相比；曾是托斯卡尼尼
全国广播公司交响乐团演出场所的巨人般的曼哈顿电视演播厅，现在经常是空无一人，而好莱坞大量生产出的情景喜剧和约翰尼·卡森节目的实况转播却占满了加利福尼亚的广播电视发送频道；美国流行歌曲创作发行中心从纽约的廷潘胡同转移到了纳什维尔和好莱坞；拉斯韦加斯的经常出高薪聘请曼哈顿没有哪一家夜总会请得起的歌手和艺员；而体育运动方面，那些规模较大的体育馆、比较激动人心的球队以及热情最高的球迷们，往往都出现在纽约以外的地方; 纽约从来都不是召集会议的好场所--因为那儿少友情.不安全，人口拥挤，消费高昂--但现在它似乎正在一定程度上争回其作为旅游胜地的地位；即便如此，大多数美国人对新奥尔良、旧金山、华盛顿或迪斯尼乐园等地的评价可能还是高于纽约；人们普遍认为，还有十几座其他城市，包括我的家乡西雅图，都比纽约更适于居住;
那么，为什么有许多欧洲人称纽约是他们最喜爱的城市呢他们比大多数美国人更欣赏纽约这个国际大都市的五彩缤纷的生活，它那残存的、独此一家的欧洲社会准则以及它那众多外来民族混杂而居的社会；这些欧洲人中有些人也许是因为在麦迪逊大街和第五大街这两条双胞胎似的繁华大街上看到那些熟悉的国际名牌商号--那些专为迎合并蒙骗那些轻浮浅薄的有钱人而存在的珠宝店、鞋店和服装设计店…而感到心头踏实；然而事实并非如此，最令欧洲人激动不已的是这个城市的那种精神饱满的紧张气氛和它那种野性的活力;
纽约充满着活力、竞争和奋斗；同时，由于存在着一批能说会道的失意者，它也充满着嘲笑、轻侮和失意者的心灰意冷"你说该咋办"；它充满着无休无止的斗争一一为了地铁上的座位，为了引起一个的
士司机、一个办事员或一个侍者的注意，为了有一个立足之地，为了一次成功的机会；为了一个较好的居住地方，为了让自己名字出现在一张大一点的海报上；在纽约，一个人若成功了，他会感到惶惶不安；如果失败了，他就得和那灰心丧气的大多数人一起苦熬岁月; 纽约从来都不是我心目中的麦加圣地；尽管我在那儿生活了大半辈子，你却休想看到我穿上一件印着"我爱纽约"的文化衫；但总的说来，我倒还想不出这世界上有多少个地方我更愿意去居住；至于为什么，就很难说得清; 在纽约所能欣赏到的自然美景非常有限；你从来看不到一片繁星点点的夜空，城里的万家灯火交相辉映使得天空黯然失；唯有日落时分的景尚可谓壮观：泽西市草地上的天空染上了一块块深浅不一的橙红，在曼哈顿那些高高矮矮、大大小小的建筑物上的万千扇玻璃窗的反射下，更显得绚丽多彩；大自然对纽约人总是低头服输；只须看看人行道上那些脆弱的树木迎着四面进逼的水泥路面和阵阵袭来的石油烟气拚命挣扎的样子，就足以说明问题了；由弗雷德里克·劳·奥姆斯特德设计的纽约中央公园本应是城市贫民休养身体、呼吸新鲜空气的场所，但如今园内有些地方已寸草不生，垃圾遍地，无复当年的清新质朴之气，然而依旧人声嘈杂，生意盎然，许多人一一多数为年轻人、黑人和波多黎各人，仍在其间自得其乐；公园中的长条椅上则坐着一些上了年纪的人，其中以白人居多，看样子都是一些流离失所的人；这里已经不是什么静造的公园了，倒更像是一个乱哄哄的狂欢场所;
吸引着我来到纽约的不是这个城市的魅力--它从没有在远方向我遥遥招手呼唤，而是它给我提供了一个从事我梦寐以求的新闻事业的机会；我当时甚至拿不准自己的能力如何能比得上那些在东北部一些名牌大学受

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