我多希望能为你们工作(1)
Eudora Welty’s Amazing Cover Letter To The New Yorker
尤多拉·韦尔蒂写给《纽约客》的求职信
March 15, 1933
1933年3月15
Gentlemen,
先生们，
I suppose you’d be more interested in even a sleight-o’-hand trick than you’d be in an application for a position with your magazine, but as usual you can’t have the thing you want most.
我猜，你们应该会觉得比起看一封写给贵刊的求职信，连看个戏法都比这个更有趣。但世事不能尽随人愿是常理。
I am 23 years old, six weeks on the loose in N.Y. However, I was a New Yorker for a whole year in 1930-31 while attending advertising classes in Columbia’s School of Business. Actually I am a southerner, from Mississippi, the nation’s most backward state. I have a B.A. (’29) from the University of Wisconsin, where I majored in English without a care in the world. For the last eighteen months I was languishing in my own office in a radio station in Jackson, Miss., writing continuities, dramas, mule feed advertisements, santa claus talks, and life insurance playlets; now I have given that up.
我今年23岁，在纽约赋闲六周。1930～1931那一整年，我曾是一个纽约客，在哥伦比亚大学研究生院专修广告学。而我其实是个南方人，家乡在密西西比州—我国最落后的一个州。我1929年在威斯康星大学取得文学学士学位，在大学里主修英语，不问世事。过去18个月里，我在密西西比州杰克逊市一家电台的办公室里冥思苦想、笔耕不辍，写分镜头剧本、广播剧、骡饲料广告、圣诞老人台词、人寿保险短剧，现在我已经辞去了这份工作。
As to what I might do for you — I have seen an untoward amount of picture galleries and 15￠ movies lately, and could review them with my old prosperous detachment, I think; in fact, I recently coined a general word for Matisse’s pictures after seeing his latest at the Marie Harriman: concubineapple. That shows you how my mind works — quick, and away from the point. I read simply voraciously, and can drum up an opinion afterwards.
至于我可以为贵刊做什么—我发现近来涌现了一批画廊和15美分电影，我认为自己可以用一贯擅长的客观笔触写评论。实际上，我近日在玛丽·哈里曼画廊看了马蒂斯的新作品后，创造了一个词来概括他的画：“concubineapple（情妇与菠萝）”。这能告诉你们我的思维方式—灵敏，与众不同。我如饥似渴地博览群书，并能在阅读后得出自己的见解。