正文
《达克》.作者：里克·杰寇斯基.坎农格特出版社;299页;£16.99.
DR JAMES DARKE, a retired teacher of literature who collects first editions of Dickens, has walled himself off from the world. For a long
stretch
of this unusual first novel, the reason is
hinted
at, but not revealed. It is an
extreme
reaction to the pain of loss, the reader learns. Darke
retreats
and
broods
, cutting off his only daughter, Lucy.
詹姆斯·达克博士是一个收藏狄更斯初版书的退休文学教师，他过着与世隔绝的生活。其原因在这本不同寻常的小说里用很长的篇幅加以暗示而并未挑明。读者慢慢发现，这是他对失去的事物感到痛苦而作出的极端的反应。达克避开人群，忿恨计较，还切断了他与唯一的女儿露西的联系。
The plot would not seem promising. But in Darke, Rick Gekoski has created an extraordinarily memorable character.
He is an epic misanthrope and equal-opportunity bigot whose every
utterance
is filled with invective or despair.
（读者试译）
He trashes Jews and Catholics, the working class and writers from “fucking T.S. Eliot” to “that frigid snitbag”, Virginia Woolf. Literature may have been his life, but in his darkest moment, it lets him down.
虽然小说的情节貌似不太明朗，但是瑞克·杰寇斯基在《达克》中塑造了一位特别突出、令人难忘的角色。
（期待您的翻译，明天会有针对这句话的长难句解析哟~）
他看不起犹太人和天主教徒，还看不起工薪阶层和“该死的T·S 艾略特”和“冷淡的小贱人弗吉尼亚·伍尔芙”之类的作家。文学算得上是他一生的追求，但是在他生命里最黑暗的时期，文学却使他失望了
It’s a
sly turnabout
for Mr Gekoski, a British-American academic and rare-book dealer known for
chronicling
the bookish life in broadcast, and in books such as “
Outside of a Dog
”. His first
foray
into fiction, at the age of 72, is nonetheless stuffed with
literary allusions
, along with much wonderful writing. A colleague acts out a Tennyson poem “waving his arms like a drowning fairy”. Darke speaks in “a strangulated croak, like a frog singing Wagner”.
