下面是第四章的讀書筆記。
（接上篇）
9.
He was balancing himself on the dashboard of his car with that resourcefulness of movement that is so peculiarly American - that comes, I suppose, with the absence of lifting work or rigid sitting in youth and, even more, with the formless grace of our nervous, sporadic games. This quality was continually breaking through his punctilious manner in the shape of
restlessness.
我覺得，這句話算是比較難的了。不過，菲茨傑拉德就最愛寫這種風格的句子。
10.
It was a rich cream color, bright with nickel, swollen here and there in its monstrous
length with triumphant hat-boxes and supper-boxes and tool-boxes, and terraced with a labyrinth of wind-shields that mirrored a dozen suns.
這是描寫20年代的一輛豪華汽車的。我覺得，用在描寫暴發戶身上也很合適。不過，令人不解的是擋風玻璃為什麼會是"terraced with a labyrinth"呢？今天的汽車似乎都只有一塊擋風玻璃的呀。
11.
A little overwhelmed, I began the generalized evasions which that question deserves.
當你遇到你不想回答的問題，開始搪塞了。就可以用到上面這句話來描述你的反應。
12.
I saw him opening a chest of rubies to ease, with their crimson-lighted depths, the gnawings of his broken heart.
對於某些人來說，金錢的意義在於它有助於撫平內心的空虛。
13.
Over the great bridge, with the sunlight through the girders making a constant flicker upon the moving cars, with the city rising up across the river in white heaps and sugar lumps all built with a wish out of non-olfactory money. The city seen from the Queensboro Bridge is always the city seen for the first time, in its first wild promise of all the mystery and the beauty in the world.
這句話寫的是透過皇后區大橋進入紐約時的情景。這個城市令人驚奇，充滿希望和奇蹟。最後一句中的"promise"一詞令人歎服。
14.
She began to cry - she cried and cried. I rushed out and found her mother's maid, and we locked the
door and got her into a cold bath. She wouldn't let go of the letter. She took it into the tub with her and squeezed it up into a wet ball, and only let me leave it in the soap-dish when she saw that it was coming to pieces like snow. But she didn't say another word. We gave her spirits of ammonia and put ice on her forehead and hooked her back into her dress, and half an hour later, when we walked out of the room, the pearls were around her neck and the incident was over.
這段很像後來海明威的風格。
15.
They moved with a fast crowd, all of them young and rich and wild, but she came out with an absolutely perfect reputation.
在這句裡面，move是"交往"的意思，fast是行為放蕩的意思。
16.
The clear voices of girls, already gathered like crickets on the grass, rose through the hot twilight.
很詩意的句子。
17.
A phrase began to beat in my ears with a sort of heady excitement: "There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy and the tired.."
（中譯）我的耳邊興奮的跳出一句警句："世界上只有追求者，被追求者，忙碌的人和疲倦的人......"
18.
Unlike Gatsby and Tom Buchanan, I had no girl whose disembodied face floated along the dark cornices and blinding signs, and so I drew up the girl beside me, tightening my arms. Her wan, scornful mouth smiled, and so I drew her up again closer, this time to my face.
肉體的幸福勝於相思的痛苦。