（外文电子版资料）Fritz Leiber - The Girl with the Hungry Eyes.pdf

Fritz Leiber - The Girl with the Hungry Eyes The Girl with the Hungry Eyes FRITZ LEIBER ========== “The Girl With the Hungry Eyes,”published in 1949, is a classic and will probably never become dated. The advertising industry is still searching for “The Look” to sell products to the great American maw. And with new technology continually being developed, the industry becomes more and more adept at insinuating itself into our lives. ========== All right, I’ll tell you why the Girl gives me the creeps. Why I can’t stand to go downtown and see the mob slavering up at her on the tower, with that pop bottle or pack of cigarettes or whatever it is beside her. Why I hate to look at magazines any more because I know she’ll turn up somewhere in a brassiere or a bubble bath. Why I don’t like to think of millions of Americans drinking in that poisonous half- smile. It’s quite a story—more story than you’re expecting. No, I haven’t suddenly developed any long-haired indignation at the evils of advertising and the national glamour-girl complex. That’d be a laugh for a man in my racket, wouldn’t it? Though I think you’ll agree there’s something a little perverted about trying to capitalize on sex that way. But it’s okay with me. And I know we’ve had the Face and the Body and the Look and what not else, so why shouldn’t someone come along who sums it all up so completely, that we have to call her the Girl and blazon her on all the billboards from Times Square to Telegraph Hill? But the Girl isn’t like any of the others. She’s unnatural. She’s morbid. She’s unholy. Oh it’s 1948, is it, and the sort of thing I’m hinting at went out with witchcraft? But you see I’m not altogether sure myself what I’m hinting at, beyond a certain point. There are vampires and vampires, and not all of them suck blood. And there were the murders, if they were murders. Besides, let me ask you this. Why, when America is obsessed with the Girl, don’t we find out more about her