评论
打印
Loving and Hating New York
亦爱亦恨话纽约
Thomas Griffith
托马斯格里非斯
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.
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。
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.
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色的单调局面的一隅逃遁之地而自鸣得意。
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.
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。
