最早知道这个故事是因为看了央视播的电影改编，A Merry War，翻译为《甜蜜的较量》（顺便说，电影的名字A Merry War来自书里对Gordon和Rosemary关系的描述。），当时被Richard E Grant那贱贱的龌龊和高傲打动了。后来一直对这个故事念念不忘，直到买到原著，读起来却发现小说的笔调和电影大相径庭。电影很诙谐，电影里的Gordon Comstock纵然落魄颓唐，也是好笑甚至可爱的。Richard E Grant的Gordon Comstock一定有几分是从Withnail借来的。

至于这本书，曾经看不下去，因为它的笔调太苦涩，太灰暗，主人公太愤世嫉俗，甚至放任自流，几乎沦为社会垃圾（挥霍稿酬酗酒召妓那段）。这样的主人公令人爱不起来。

然而Richard E Grant再次拯救了我（喂！），他读了有声书！这是怎样的幸福！况且他读得那么好！他读起对白来学各种阶层人士的口音简直惟妙惟肖！我最喜欢听他学Ravelston，就是那种很posh很有教养瓮声瓮气却尴尬抱歉的口吻。Ravelston是Gordon最好的朋友，人非常阔绰，而且善良到近乎迂腐。他总想在金钱方面帮助Gordon，却怕伤了Gordon的面子，导致两个人做不成朋友。于是对待Gordon他常带着抱歉的神气，好像有钱是他的错。

然而即便有Richard E Grant这样的灵丹，听到许多段落一而再再而三唧唧歪歪地谈贫贱我还是有点想掩鼻。这也是奥威尔嫌弃此书的原因一一。我的感觉是此书的体味和经历真切实在，然而结构和行文有点粗糙。后来得知奥威尔那个阶段就像Gordon一样，境况窘迫，于是艺术追求也降了等级，只是快快写完此书拿来换钱用。

其实我要求过高了，此书即便有这样的缺点，依然比某些当下名作家的书好看。奥威尔对时代怀有独一无二高屋建瓴的敏感。他在书里透彻地写出资本主义对个人生活的影响。那些对广告语，招贴画，营销手段的描述在80年后的今天依然让人产生强烈共鸣。他勾勒出的人物个个活现，包括次要人物，如Mr Cheeseman，或Gordon后来的上司，加拿大人Mr Warner。后者想出的那个治脚臭的广告语真的令人背后发寒。说到底Gordon奋力抵抗最终投降的所谓"good job"就相当于如今的市场部啊。奥威尔超越他的时代，令人赞叹不已。

奥威尔讽刺的笔触好笑有灵气，写Comstock的爷爷的段落我尤其印象深刻：

“值得指出的是，那刻着碑文的花岗岩差不多有5吨重。虽说这不是他的后代们最确切的愿望，但很可能出于故意，以确保Comstock爷爷不会从地里爬出来。如果你想知道人们对去世的亲戚是怎么看的，好的检验方法便是看看逝者的墓碑有多重。”

But it is worth pointing out that the chunk of granite on which it was inscribed weighed close on five tons and was quite certainly put there with the intention, though not the conscious intention, of making sure that Gran’pa Comstock shouldn’t get up from underneath it. If you want to know what a dead man’s relatives really think of him, a good rough test is the weight of his tombstone.

“Comstock家族，在Gordon的印象中乏味，破落，毫无作为，活着和死了差不多。他们缺乏生命力到令人吃惊的程度。这当然是Comstock爷爷一手造成的。等到他去世时，他的所有孩子都已长大成人，有些已步入中年。他已经早就把他们可能拥有的生命力碾碎榨干了...所有儿子都没什么像样的事业，因为Comstock爷爷曾费了不少功夫把他们个个都撵进了他们完全不合适的行当。”

The Comstocks, as Gordon knew them, were a peculiarly dull, shabby, dead-alive, ineffectual family. They lacked vitality to an extent that was surprising. That was Gran’pa Comstock’s doing, of course. By the time when he died all his children were grown up and some of them were middle-aged, and he had long ago succeeded in crushing out of them any spirit they might ever have possessed. ... None of the boys had proper professions, because Gran’pa Comstock had been at the greatest pains to drive all of them into professions for which they were totally unsuited.
最令我感动的章节是第11章，Gordon最终做出了困难的决定，同意回广告公司上班。他回心转意后突然如释重负，进而心理180度大转弯，从原先的憎恶叶兰变为觉得“叶兰是生命之树”。
这个转变也许牵强，但转变后讲的道理是真的。人生的束缚，被动，卑贱，以及明知道这一切却要保持乐观，维护自己的尊严。哪个成人不是这样的呢？我没有料到奥威尔会突然把这些大实话一股脑倒出来。自己毫无招架之力。

He was thirty and there was grey in his hair, yet he had a queer feeling that he had only just grown up. It occurred to him that he was merely repeating the destiny of every human being. Everyone rebels against the money-code, and everyone sooner or later surrenders. He had kept up his rebellion a little longer than most, that was all. And he had made such a wretched failure of it! He wondered whether every anchorite in his dismal cell pines secretly to be back in the world of men. Perhaps there were a few who did not. Somebody or other had said that the modern world is only habitable by saints and scoundrels. He, Gordon, wasn’t a saint. Better, then, to be an unpretending scoundrel along with the others. It was what he had secretly pined for; now that he had acknowledged his desire and surrendered to it, he was at peace.

He was making roughly in the direction of home. He looked up at the houses he was passing. It was a street he did not know. Oldish houses, mean-looking and rather dark, let off in flatlets and single rooms for the most part. ...

He wondered about the people in houses like those. They would be, for example, small clerks, shop-assistants, commercial travellers, insurance touts, tram conductors. Did they know that they were only puppets dancing when money pulled the strings? You bet they didn’t. And if they did, what would they care? They were too busy being born, being married, begetting, working, dying. It mightn’t be a bad thing, if you could manage it, to feel yourself one of them, one of the ruck of men. Our civilization is founded on greed and fear, but in the lives of common men the greed and fear are mysteriously transmuted into something nobler. The lower-middle-class people in there, behind their lace curtains, with their children and their scraps of furniture and their aspidistras—they lived by the money-code, sure enough, and yet they contrived to keep their decency. The money-code as they interpreted it was not merely cynical and hoggish. They had their standards, their inviolable points of honour. They ‘kept themselves respectable’—kept the aspidistra flying. Besides, they were alive. They were bound up in the bundle of life. They begot children, which is what the saints and the soul-savers never by any chance do.

连续加班多日的我曾经在上班的路上，听Richard E Grant读出这段话，泪流满面。