Chapter 25 Those who are regular followers of the doings of Arthur Dent may have received an impression of his character and habits which, while it includes the truth and, of course, nothing but the truth, falls somewhat short, in its composition, of the whole truth in all its glorious aspects. And the reasons for this are obvious. Editing, selection, the need to balance that which is interesting with that which is relevant and cut out all the tedious happenstance. Like this for instance. Arthur Dent went to bed. He went up the stairs, all fifteen of them, opened the door, went into his room, took off his shoes and socks and then all the rest of his clothes one by one and left them in a neatly crumpled heap on the floor. He put on his pyjamas, the blue ones with the stripe. He washed his face and hands, cleaned his teeth, went to the lavatory, realized that he had once again got this all in the wrong order, had to wash his hands again and went to bed. He read for fifteen minutes, spending the first ten minutes of that trying to work out where in the book he had got to the previous night, then he turned out the light and within a minute or so more was asleep. It was dark. He lay on his left side for a good hour. After that he moved restlessly in his sleep for a moment and then turned over to sleep on his right side. Another hour after this his eyes flickered briefly and he slightly scratched his nose, though there was still a good twenty minutes to go before he turned back on to his left side. And so he whiled the night away, sleeping. At four he got up and went to the lavatory again. He opened the door to the lavatory… and so on. It’s guff. It doesn’t advance the action. It makes for nice fat books such as the American market thrives on, but it doesn’t actually get you anywhere. You don’t, in short, want to know. But there are other omissions as well, beside the teethcleaning and trying to find fresh socks variety, and in some of these people have often seemed inordinately interested. What, they want to know, about all that stuff off in the wings with Arthur and Trillian, did that ever get anywhere? To which the answer is, of course, mind your own business. And what, they say, was he up to all those nights on the planet Krikkit? Just because the planet didn’t have Fuolornis Fire Dragons or Dire Straits doesn’t mean that everyone just sat up every night reading. Or to take a more specific example, what about the night after the committee meeting party on Prehistoric Earth, when Arthur found himself sitting on a hillside watching the moon rise over the softly burning trees in company with a beautiful young girl called Mella, recently escaped from a lifetime of staring every morning at a hundred nearly identical photographs of moodily lit tubes of toothpaste in the art department of an advertising agency on the planet Golgafrincham. What then? What happened next? And the answer is, of course, that the book ended. The next one didn’t resume the story till five years later, and you can, claim some, take discretion too far. This Arthur Dent, comes the cry from the furthest reaches of the galaxy, and has even now been found inscribed on a mysterious deep space probe thought to originate from an alien galaxy at a distance too hideous to contemplate, what is he, man or mouse? Is he interested in nothing more than tea and the wider issues of life? Has he no spirit? has he no passion? Does he not, to put it in a nutshell, fuck? Those who wish to know should read on. Others may wish to skip on to the last chapter which is a good bit and has Marvin in it. 第25章 持續關注阿瑟·鄧特的舉動的人可能會就他的性格和習慣得到一個印象，這個印象包含着真實情況，當然了，除了真實也沒有別的，但是從它的構成上來說，在所有的方面缺乏一個整體上的真實。 原因很明顯。編輯，挑選，平衡有趣的事情和有意義的事情、去掉枯燥冗長的內容的需要。 比方說這個。 “阿瑟?鄧特上牀睡覺。他上了樓梯，樓梯一共15級，打開門，進了房間，一件一件脫了鞋和襪子以及所有其他的衣服，整齊地疊好放在地板上。他穿上睡衣，那件藍色帶條紋的。他洗臉洗手，刷牙，上廁所，然後意識到他再次把這幾件事情順序全都搞錯了，於是不得不再次洗手然後上牀。他看了十五分鐘書，其中前十分鐘都在找前一天晚上他看到什麼地方了。然後他關了燈，過了一分鐘左右就睡着了。” “天黑了。他向左側躺着睡了一個小時。” “然後他在睡夢中不安的扭了一會，翻了個身右側躺着又睡着了。又過了一個小時，他的眼睛眨了兩下，輕輕撓了撓鼻子，再過二十分鐘他又會再次翻身左側躺着。他就這樣睡着度過整個夜晚。 “四點鐘他再次起牀去廁所。他打開了廁所門……——諸如此類。” 這都是扯淡。這些沒有推動任何進展。就像美國市場繁榮所依賴的那些厚厚的書一樣，實際上沒有帶給你任何信息。簡單地說，你根本不想去看。 但是還有些其他的東西被忽略掉了，除了刷牙和試圖穿襪子穿出點新意以外，就是這些被忽略的部分正是有些人似乎非常感興趣的內容。 他們想知道，阿瑟和崔莉恩之間接着怎麼着，會不會有些新的信息？ 當然了，答案就是，你該幹嘛幹嘛去吧。 他們說，那麼他在阪丘的那些晚上都在幹嗎？那個星球上沒有弗洛里斯噴火龍，也沒有恐怖海峽，但是這並不意味着所有人每天晚上就是坐着讀書啊。 拿一個更具體的例子來說，在史前的地球上，那場委員會會議後開了個派對，之後的晚上，阿瑟發現自己坐在山邊，看着月亮從樹木燃燒所形成的暗紅色光芒之上升起，身邊是一個名叫梅拉的漂亮女孩，這個女孩剛剛從高爾伽弗林查姆行星的一個廣告公司的藝術部門逃離出來，在那個部門中她的生活就是每天早上都要面對一百張幾乎相同的牙膏照片。然後呢？之後發生什麼事情了？當然了，答案是，那本書寫完了。 之後一本書講的故事已經是五年之後的事情了，有些人說，你可能扯得太遠了。 “這個阿瑟鄧特，”銀河系最遙遠的旋臂傳來這樣的呼聲，這種呼聲甚至於被發現刻在一個神祕的深空探針上，人們認爲這探針來自另一個更遙遠的銀河系，哪裏實在是太醜惡了，讓人沒法去看，“他是什麼？是人還是老鼠？他是不是隻對喝茶以及更廣泛的生命問題感興趣？他沒有靈魂嗎？他沒有情慾嗎？一句話，他不做愛嗎？” 想知道的人應該繼續讀下去。其他人則可能想直接跳到最後一章去，哪一章不錯，而且裏面還有馬文。
