I have sympathy for the butler in The Big Sleep. Marlowe detects him in a contradiction and asks him aggressively, "You made a mistake, didn't you?" To which the man replies, sadly and sweetly, "I make many mistakes, sir." And so do I. I am, by instinct and training, a very specific writer, and so my errors are numerous. Recent ones include misspelling Geoffrey Madan's name —I phoned the printers with a correction but my page had already gone to press — and crediting Richard Tauber with Donald Peers's signature-tune, "By a babbling brook" (Tauber's, of course, was "You are my heart's delight"). I apologise for these mistakes, and for others in the past, and for those to come.

　　我同情《長眠》這部影片中的男管家。馬洛探長發(fā)現(xiàn)了他講話前后有矛盾，就逼問道：“你犯了一個錯，對不?”管家傷感而乖巧地答曰：“我犯下的錯可多去啦，先生�！� 我又何嘗不是如此呢?我有點靈氣并且訓練有素，寫起東西來旁征博引，力求翔實，自然就言多語失嘍。最近犯下的錯誤包括把杰弗瑞·馬丹的名字拼寫錯了——我給印廠打了個電話，把更正告訴他們，可是我的那頁已經(jīng)開印了;我把唐納德·皮爾斯的信號曲“在潺潺的小溪旁”安到了理查德·陶波的頭上(陶波的信號曲自然是“你是我心中的喜悅”。)對于這些錯誤，以及過去犯的錯誤和今后會犯的錯誤，在下這廂有禮啦。