The Gilded Age_其他_趣味英语-查字典英语网

The Gilded Age

"This book", says the authors in the preface, "was not written for private circulation among friends; it was not written to cheer and instruct a diseased relative of the author's; it was not thrown off during intervals of wearing labor to amuse an idle hour. It was not written for any of these reasons, and therefore it is submitted without the usual apologies.

"It will be seen that it deals with an entirely ideal state of society; and the chief embarrassment of the writers in this realm of the imagination has been the want of illustrative examples. In a State where there is no fever of speculation, no inflamed desire for sudden wealth, where the poor are all simple-minded and contented, and the rich are all honest and generous, where society is in a condition of primitive purity and politics is the occupation of only the capable and the patriotic, there are necessarily no materials for such a history as we have constructed out of an ideal commonwealth."

Twain's sarcasm was unmistakable, and the Gilded Age, originally referring to the post-Civil War period in the United States, came to represent an era of rapid industrialization "characterized by ruthless pursuit of profit, government corruption, conspicuous consumption, and vulgarity in taste and manners", according to some.

Twain might just as well be talking about today. The ruthless pursuit of profit goes on unabated, as usual. Spending on luxuries is certainly beyond historical compare. And vulgarity in taste and manners seems the rage as well, if you come to think of some of the stuff that passes off as news and commentary in cyberspace.