The Great Gatsby — Page 111

这是一个随意的猜测，然而这位记者的直觉是对的。

It was a random shot, and yet the reporter's instinct was right.

盖茨比的名声，因数百位曾接受过他款待、并因此成为谈论其过去的权威人士而四处传播，整个夏天不断扩大，直到他几乎就要成为新闻人物。

Gatsby's notoriety, spread about by the hundreds who had accepted his hospitality and so become authorities upon his past, had increased all summer until he fell just short of being news.

诸如"通往加拿大的地下管道"之类的当代传说附着在他身上，还有一个始终流传的故事，说他根本不住在房子里，而是住在一艘看起来像房子的船上，那船沿长岛海岸秘密地来回移动。

Contemporary legends such as the "underground pipeline to Canada" attached themselves to him, and there was one persistent story that he didn't live in a house at all, but in a boat that looked like a house and was moved secretly up and down the Long Island shore.

这些虚构的故事究竟为什么会令北达科他州的詹姆斯·盖茨感到满足，实在不容易说清楚。

Just why these inventions were a source of satisfaction to James Gatz of North Dakota, isn't easy to say.

詹姆斯·盖茨——那才是他真正的，或者至少是法律上的名字。

James Gatz—that was really, or at least legally, his name.

他在十七岁时改了名字，改名的那一刻正是他事业起步的开端——当时他看到丹·科迪的游艇在苏必利尔湖最险恶的浅滩上抛下了锚。

He had changed it at the age of seventeen and at the specific moment that witnessed the beginning of his career—when he saw Dan Cody's yacht drop anchor over the most insidious flat on Lake Superior.

那天下午，正是詹姆斯·盖茨穿着一件破旧的绿色运动衫和一条帆布裤子，沿着海滩漫无目的地闲逛，但借来一艘划艇、划向图洛米号、并告知科迪风暴可能在半小时内将他的船击碎的，却已经是杰·盖茨比了。

It was James Gatz who had been loafing along the beach that afternoon in a torn green jersey and a pair of canvas pants, but it was already Jay Gatsby who borrowed a rowboat, pulled out to the Tuolomee, and informed Cody that a wind might catch him and break him up in half an hour.

我想他早在那时就已经把这个名字准备好了很长时间。

I suppose he'd had the name ready for a long time, even then.

他的父母是一对懒散而不成器的庄稼人——他的想象力从来都没有真正接受过他们是他的父母这一事实。

His parents were shiftless and unsuccessful farm people—his imagination had never really accepted them as his parents at all.