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我參加過很多專題討論會，不幸的是，它們大多空洞乏味，根本討論不出什么東西。有的簡直就成了一小撮人互相吹捧的“秀場”。而作為與會者的我從來都沒有發言的機會，往往只能灰溜溜地提前退場。
By John Barry
冉洋洋 選注
I’ve been to a lot of panel discussions. I know what they’re like. When one hears the phrase panel discussion, one likes to think it’s a discussion that goes somewhere—like Plato’s Symposium[1]. This is not always the case. Panels frequently fail to adhere to the template of dialectical inquiry.[2] Attending a panel discussion is often about schmoozing[3], bringing your business card, drinking as much beer as possible, and recognizing at least a few people in the crowd. I have no problem with that part.
The problem occurs later on, when people are supposed to file into[4] a hall to listen to the panel discussion itself. I tend to find myself in the audience at these occasions. Maybe I shouldn’t, but I usually take that as an insult. I don’t assume that I know more than any of the people who get chosen to discuss things in panel form. I’m not more charismatic[5] than they are; my knowledge of various subjects is limited. But it strikes me that, even if I don’t know anything about, say, string theory[6], they never bothered to ask if I did.
I’m not sure why I keep showing up at these things. I always go expecting to learn something and expecting to eat something. And I always leave embittered, bursting with gotcha questions, and a little miffed at the fact that,[7] by being invited to a panel discussion and then told to sit in the audience, I’d actually been invited not to speak on the topic in question.
My wife asked me if I wanted to go to a panel discussion a week ago. She did it as a favor. She works in marketing. This particular panel discussion was conducted in honor of a design firm in our city of Baltimore. The firm, apparently, doesn’t exist anymore. But when it did, she told me, they represented the bold future of design in an age when design wasn’t bold. I went to this discussion with an open mind, assuming that I would be in front of a small colony of Mad Men, people with fire and vision, who had transformed the universe and built up the service-based American economy as we now know it.[8]
When my wife told me that she’d wrangled[9] tickets, I said I’d be glad to go. It sounded like they were the hottest tickets in town. I would learn something about design. I also had visions of a huge sideboard, loaded with hors d’oeuvres, jellies, compotes, and reasonably good wines.[10] I don’t know much about design, I don’t pretend to, and I wouldn’t even think of bringing my business card to a meeting like that. But I do know the difference between cheap wine and reasonably good wine.
On the night in question, we submitted our tickets at the desk. There was a large, buzzing[11] crowd of people I had never seen before. There was a large ice-filled bucket full of Amstel Light.[12] I walked immediately to the table required. There were also glasses, with wine, white and red. I was ready to double fist[13]—this really was the life —when the waiter behind the table put his hand on mine. Did he need an ID? I reached for my wallet. No, he said, I needed to buy a three-dollar ticket.
A three-dollar ticket, to pay for the open bar?
No, he said, to pay for a single drink.
What? Maybe I hadn’t heard right. A single drink? I could go two blocks[14] north, to any bar, I told him, and buy a National Bohemian for $2, and $1 on Friday nights. I could spend another 50 cents, and get a 24-ounce Budweiser.[15] And here, at this so-called panel, jammed in a crowd of people with strange glasses and weird haircuts, I was supposed to pay $3 per Amstel Light? Imperturbable[16], the bar person told me that, Yes, I had heard right, and that, fine, I was free to go to the Rendezvous. And could I move over[17] please, because there was a line forming behind me?
Finally, we filed into the chamber itself, a cavernous university auditorium, which boasted the most sophisticated sound system ever.[18] I’m assuming that it was sophisticated, because otherwise, there wouldn’t be much point in hanging corrugated steel[19] at weird angles above the stage. The rear seats were roped off, presumably to condense the audience a bit for the camera.[20] And on the stage itself was a large table, glowing under the dim spotlight, with six people behind it, all people who had been highly placed in the firm, most of them white-haired. The names of the respective people, presumably, in front of the respective people themselves.
“Without further ado[21]...”
That phrase was spoken immediately by a stammering ex-student who proceeded to read in barely audible tones what was apparently a tribute to one of the people on the panel.[22] The person he was paying a tribute to was a white-haired man with a huge, thick mustache, who was wandering behind him on the stage, shuffling[23], with this hands clasped behind his back. The tribute went on. It included a list of awards, which the person himself, whose name I forget, seemed to acknowledge with a self-deprecating shrug,[24] while the speaker, or payer of tribute, offered a self-deprecating assessment of his own tribute.
The man with the thick mustache eventually took over from the student and began to pay tribute to the payer of tribute. After a few grumpy[25] jokes, which were evidently intended to make it seem that he’d been dragged, kicking and screaming, to this conference, not because he didn’t want to be there, but because he didn’t deserve to be there, there was a long silence. I had lost track of what he was paying tribute to at that point. He had left a letter in his leather satchel[26], which, fortunately, he had had the presence of mind to bring with him on stage. He opened the satchel, and after burrowing around in it for a while, offered a murmured explanation to the audience,[27] which was sitting there in puzzlement. “This isn’t because I’m nervous,” he said. “It’s because there’s something in here I want to read which I can’t find.”
Eventually it was found, and the show was back on the road. What he had pulled out was an epistolary[28] tribute to the guy sitting closest to him at the table. His name was, well, let’s call him Ray. He had white hair, a close-cropped[29] beard, and he looked like he was in tears. Because of the tribute? No; Ray had weak eyes; the spotlight bothered him. Anyway, the laudatory[30] letter was read, acknowledging something—something good—about Ray, and then, once the man with the mustache had finished reading it, he placed it back in his leather satchel and asked Ray to comment. It was a softball question[31], but it was not a question that Ray chose to answer immediately.
Instead, Ray, with hands folded in front of him, began to pay tribute to the people next to him, people, he said, who were more deserving of being paid tribute to first than he was. The people at the table, some of whom were designers, seemed to nod their heads reluctantly, and modestly, the implication being that there were other, even more talented people, who deserved to be up there more than they did, and that it was absurd that those people couldn’t participate in the panel. The man on the far right of the table, who looked particularly frail, was motionless and seemed to have his chin pressed against his collar. He wasn’t responding in one way or another to what was being said.
That may have been the cue for the next topic of discussion: all those who deserved to be there at the table, but couldn’t, because they were dead. Ray listed the names, which flew by, and, as he listed them, he paid each one an effusive[32] tribute of one or two lines. None of the people named, of course, had the alternative of softening the compliments, or modestly deflecting them, or naming people for whom those generous appraisals were more deserved, because they were, in fact, dead.[33] Paradoxically, the fact that they weren’t around to deflate the praise with a well-chosen self-deprecating remark made them seem a little pompous.[34]
At about this time, I was beginning to feel that I had heard enough. This was, I understand, a design firm, but it could easily have been any other kind of firm, because nothing the panelists said offered any inkling[35] of what it was the Firm actually did. The assumption was that anybody who was fortunate enough to make it here already understood what this firm had done, even if it no longer existed. That was when I decided that, once again, I had come to the wrong panel discussion. With my wife, I joined the slow stream of early exiters.
Vocabulary
1. Plato’s Symposium: 柏拉圖的《會飲篇》，主要記錄了古希臘一群優秀的人物在一次酒宴之中的談話，他們輪流對愛（Love）和愛神（Eros）進行贊頌。
2. template: 模板，典范；dialectic: 邏輯辯證的。
3. schmooze: 親密交談，閑聊。
4. file into: 魚貫而入。
5. charismatic: 有魅力的，有感召力的。
6. string theory: 宇宙弦理論，一種基于存在宇宙弦的宇宙哲學理論。
7. 我總是悻悻離開，腦子里裝滿了刁難人的問題，并對以下情形有點兒生氣。
8. 我帶著開放的心態去參加這次討論會，滿以為自己將面對一小群“瘋子”——他們有熱情，有遠見，曾改變這個世界的面貌，建立起我們今天所知的服務型美國經濟體系。
9. wrangle: =wangle，設法弄到，用計獲得。
10. 我還想象到了一個巨大的餐櫥，里面擺滿了開胃小菜、果子凍、果盤和相當不錯的葡萄酒。
11. buzzing: 亂哄哄的，嘰嘰喳喳的。
12. bucket: 桶；Amstel Light: 一種淡味啤酒。
13. double fist: 雙手開工，指一手抓一樣東西。
14. block: 街區。
15. ounce: 盎司；Budweiser: 百威啤酒。
16. imperturbable: 冷靜的，沉著的。
17. move over: 挪動一下，讓個地方。
18. chamber: 會議廳；cavernous: 大而深的；auditorium: 禮堂，會堂；boast: 擁有。
19. corrugated steel: 波紋鋼，波紋鋼板。
20. 后排座位被圈了起來，可能是為了讓觀眾坐攏點，以便拍攝。
21. without further ado: 閑言少敘（開始正題）。
22. stammering: 結結巴巴的；audible: 聽得見的；tribute: 稱贊，頌詞。
23. shuffle: 拖著腳走。
24. self-deprecating: 自嘲的，謙虛的；shrug: 聳肩（表示不當回事或滿不在乎等）。
25. grumpy joke: 指讓人感覺不爽的笑話。
26. satchel:（有長背帶和翻蓋的）書包。
27. burrow: 翻尋；murmur: 低語，嘟噥。
28. epistolary: 書信體的。
29. close-cropped: 剪得很短的。
30. laudatory: 頌揚的。
31. softball: 無關痛癢的。
32. effusive: 熱情洋溢的。
33. deflect:（使）轉向；appraisal: 評價。
34. paradoxically: 看似荒謬地；deflate: 減緩，此處為自謙；pompous: 自大的，自負的。
35. inkling: 粗淺的認識，暗示。
（來源：英語學習雜志）
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