It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way--in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

我们的这个时代当然也和它不同，用不着“最高级”的形容词来形容——这是一个什么样的时代呢？一个有趣的时代。怎么有趣，我不知道，正如我不知道“那个”时代为什么那么“最”——偶然看见《纽约时报》有篇op-ed专栏作者David Brooks和Gail Collins的对话，题目就是‘We Live in Interesting Times’（http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/14/we-live-in-interesting-times/?scp=12&sq=Alan%20Sokal&st=cse），我想也可以用来说更广大的“我们”。

两位的对话，是谈美国的大选，我不熟悉那些角色，也分不清什么党，尽管只有两个——可见还是一个党比较好，老百姓做选择题不会错——下面的几行，我觉得有趣，所以他们的时代有趣；我们与他们是同时的（当然要忽略相对论效应），所以我们的时代也跟着有趣：

David:  My own theory draws from my meta-narrative about recent American political history. In normal times there is one majority party and one minority party. After the New Deal the Democrats were the majority party. After Reagan, the Republicans were. Then we went through a period from 1996 to 2004 when the country was basically tied. Now we have two minority parties.

【meta-narrative大概是说比narrative更了不起，还有个meta-history，大约一样的意思——它们都从metaphysics演绎出来，仿佛比原来的东西更高级、更深刻、更基础。这是后现代派造的新词儿，是为了解说narrative的narrative（即retelling stories）。CNN记者喜欢用，显得他们很聪明。这个词儿的出现，似乎也可以算时代有趣的一个标志。New Deal指罗斯福新政。】

Both parties are unpopular, while the number of disaffected voters grows. This kind of period is extremely volatile because many voters are not for anyone. They vote against whichever party they hate most at that moment. Since hatred is so common you get these big swings ……

Gail: Yeah, and somebody wins in the end by 2 percent. That’s the way it’s supposed to be. But we live in interesting times.