Unit 5 Love is a Fallacy
爱情是谬误
Max Shulman
马克斯·舒尔曼
Charles Lamb, as merry and enterprising a fellow as you will meet in a month of Sundays, unfettered the informal essay with his memorable "Old China" and "Dream's Children." There follows an informal essay that ventures even beyond Lamb's frontier. Indeed, "informal" may not be quite the right word to describe this essay; "limp" or "flaccid" or possibly "spongy" are perhaps more appropriate.
像査尔斯·兰姆这样快乐和富有创新精神的人物并不常见，他写了《古瓷》和《梦中的孩子》两篇文章，这两篇文章可以说解放了散文。下面的这篇散文颠覆了兰姆的所有文体。当然，用“散”的字眼来评价这篇文章并非特别贴切，用“残缺”“无力”或者可能用“富有弹性”或许更为恰当。
Vague though its category, it is without doubt an essay. It develops an argument; it cites instances; it reaches a conclusion. Could Carlyle do more? Could Ruskin?
尽管很难对这篇文章进行归类，但毫无疑问，这是一篇散论文：有论点，有例证，有结论。卡莱尔能写得更好吗？罗斯金呢？
Read, then, the following essay which undertakes to demonstrate that logic, far from being a dry, pedantic discipline, is a living, breathing thing, full of beauty, passion, and trauma.
那么，就读读下面这篇文章吧，它将向我们展示逻辑并不是一门枯燥乏味、迂腐不堪的学科；恰恰相反，逻辑是一个活生生的事物，充满美丽、激情和心灵的创伤。
—Author's notes
——作者简介
Cool was I and logical. Keen, calculating, perspicacious, acute and astute—I was all of these. My brain was as powerful as a dynamo, as precise as a chemist's scales, as penetrating as a scalpel. And-think of it! —I was only eighteen.
我头脑冷静，逻辑缜密。敏捷、缜密、熟虑、洞见、睿智是我的特点。我的大脑像发电机一样强有力，像化学家的天平一样精确，像手术刀一样锋利。能想到吗？我刚18岁。
It is not often that one so young has such a giant intellect. Take, for example, Petey Butch, my roommate at the University of Minnesota. Same age, same background, but dumb as an ox. A nice enough young fellow, you understand, but nothing upstairs. Emotional type. Unstable. Impressionable.
这么智力非凡的年轻人世所罕见。就令我在明尼苏达大学的同寝同学皮蒂·伯奇来说吧，我们年龄相同，背景一样，可他却愚蠢到了极点。你能明白，他是个不错的家伙，可惜脑子空空。他属于易于激动的类型：情绪无常，易受左右。