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“The important thing is, Gig, that now I can teach you because you have the tools. And, in all immodesty, I know a lot about the trade.
“重要的是，吉格，现在我可以教你了，因为你具备了必要的工具。我可以毫不谦虚地说，我很了解这一行。
“I've wanted to cut down for a long time. The writing doesn't come so easily for me anymore. But I'll be just as happy helping you as doing it myself. Let's have a drink to celebrate.”
“很久以来我就想少写一些了。写作对我来说不再是那么轻而易举了。可帮助你学习写作，我就跟自己写作一样高兴。让我们来喝一杯，庆祝一下。”
Only once before can I remember papa being as pleased with me — when I tied for the pigeon-shooting championship. And he was confident that there was another winner in the family when I entered the short story for a school competition and won first prize.
我只记得一次爸爸对我这么满意—当时我跟别人获得并列射鸽子冠军。后来我用这篇短篇小说参加学校作文比赛，并获得一等奖的时候，他自信地以为家里又出了个文坛高手。
Turgenev should have won the prize. He wrote the story. I merely copied it, changing the setting and the names, from a book I assumed papa hadn't read because some of the pages were still stuck together.
得那个第一名的应该是屠格涅夫。他写了那篇短篇小说。我不过是从一本书里抄袭了这个故事，把背景和人名改了，我猜爸爸还没读过这本书，因为有不少页仍粘连在一起。
I didn't feel like a winner and wondered how long it would be before pa?pa found out that the only creative contribution I had made to the story was to alter “suddenly” to “all of a sudden.”
我没觉得自己是个获奖者，而是在想，不知什么时候爸爸会发现，我对那篇小说所作的唯一创造性贡献便是将“suddenly”改成了“all of a sudden”。
Fortunately I wasn't around when papa discovered my plagiarism. It got back to me that someone asked him if his son Gregory wrote. “Yes,” he replied, with gusto and sparkle, flashing that “say cheese” smile he sometimes affected. “Gregory writes an occasional bad check.” And, of course, everyone laughed.
爸爸发现我的剽窃行为时，我很幸运地不在场。我听说是有人问他，他儿子格雷戈里搞不搞写作。他兴致勃勃、神采飞扬地回答说“写的，”脸上闪现出一种拍照时做出来的笑容，他有时会做出这种笑容。“格雷戈里偶尔会写张空头支票。”当然，大家都哈哈大笑。
Someone in that crowd might have thought, “What a brutal bastard to make such a callous wisecrack about his son. I guess all those stories I've heard about him being a hard-shell bully are true.”
那群人中也许有人会想，“真是个狠心的家伙，竟然对自己的儿子开这种冷酷的玩笑。想来我听说过的那些说他是个执迷不悟的恶棍的传闻都是真的。”
Hard-shelled, yes, but I helped make that shell.
执迷不悟，没错，可我帮着造成了这种执迷不悟。
