The Alchemist - a plain story with a few good passages

前幾天剛看完Paulo Coelho的The Alchemist，沒想像中那麼好看，說教意味有點太濃，反而壓縮了讀者自我省思的空間；書皮上引用Austin American-Statesman的書評：「As memorable and meaningful as Saint-Exupery's The Little Prince.」，我倒認為小王子在故事創意和作者隱身的功力上還是勝上好幾籌。

但我還滿喜歡下面這段對話的：

The camel driver, though, seemed not to be very concerned with the threat of war.

"I'm alive," he said to the boy, as they ate a bunch of dates one night, with no fires and no moon. "When I'm eating, that's all I think about. If I'm on the march, I just concentrate on marching. If I have to fight, it will be just good a day to die as any other."

"Because I don't live in either my past or my future. I'm interested only in the present. If you can concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man. You'll see there is life in the desert, and there are stars in the heavens, and that tribesmen fight because they are part of the human race. Life will be a party for you, a grand festival, because life is the moment we're living right now."

Two nights later, as he was getting ready to bed down, the boy looked for the star they followed every night. He thought that the horizon was a bit lower than it had been, because he seemed to see stars on the desert itself.

"It's the oasis," said the camel driver.

"Well, why don't we go there right now?" the boy asked.

"Because we have to sleep."

讓我想起探險家爺爺的幽默。