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While we pay lip service to the virtues of reading, the truth is that there is still in our culture something that suspects those who read too much, whatever reading too much means, of being lazy, aimless dreamers, people who need to grow up and come outside to where life is, who think themselves superior in their separateness.
我们虽然口头上也说读书的好处，但实际上，我们的文化却始终怀疑那些读书太多的人——无论读书太多意味着什么），认为他们懒惰、胸无大志，需要成长并接触现实生活；认为他们不屑与他人为伍。
There is something in the American character that is even secretly hostile to the act of aimless reading, a certain hale and heartiness that is suspicious of reading as anything more than a tool for advancement. America is also a nation that prizes sociability and community, that accepts a kind of psychological domino effect: alone leads to loner, loner to loser. Any sort of turning away from human contact is suspect, especially one that interferes with the go-out-and-get-going ethos that seems to be at the heart of our national character. The images of American presidents that stick are those that portray them as men of action: Theodore Roosevelt on safari, John Kennedy throwing a football around with his brothers. There is only Lincoln as solace to the inveterate reader, a solitary figure sitting by the fire, saying, "My best friend is a person who will give me a book I have not read."
我们美国人的性格里，甚至有一种偏见，暗中敌视无目的的阅读，总认为读书不过是升职的一种手段。美国是一个强调社交和群体的国家，因此她有一种心理上的多米诺骨牌效应：独处会导致不合群，而不合群的人会变成失败者。任何拒绝交际活动的行为都是可疑的，尤其是和“走出去、干起来”这一精神相矛盾的行为就更可疑了，因为这一精神似乎是我们民族性格的核心所在。人们印象中的美国总统总是在行动：在野外狩猎的西奥多·罗斯福，和兄弟们传橄榄球的约翰·肯尼迪。对于那些顽固不化的书虫，唯一的安慰是林肯：他独自坐在火炉旁边，说道谁给我一本我没有读过的书，谁就是我最好的朋友。”
There also arose, as I was growing up, a kind of careerism in the United States that sanctioned reading only if there was some point to it.
我长大成人的那些年里，在美国还兴起了一种追求名利的风气。人们只认可那些有用的阅读。
