主持人大衛·萊特曼告別《深夜秀》

“You know what I’m going to devote the rest of my life to?” David Letterman said on his last night as the host of the “Late Show” on CBS. “Social media.”

“你知道我將用我的餘生拿來幹什麼嗎？”大衛·萊特曼(David Letterman)在他最後一次主持哥倫比亞廣播公司的《深夜秀》時自問自答道。“社交媒體。”

Mr. Letterman ended his 33-year career in late-night on Wednesday as he had started it — with the irreverence, self-mockery and mischief that made him such an iconoclastic talk-show host.

週三，萊特曼以他開始這個節目的方式結束了自己33年的深夜秀職業生涯，正是他不恭不敬、自我解嘲和惡作劇的特點，使他成爲一位非常反傳統的脫口秀主持人。

His farewell was much better than the usual mawkish television send-off: He mixed favorite segments like his Top 10 list with clips of classic skits and a few restrained fillips of sincerity and humility. His final show was not at all like the Pharaonic and mushy last bow Johnny Carson took when he left “The Tonight Show” in 1992. As could be expected, it was a bracing antidote to the weepy extravaganza that ushered his rival Jay Leno into retirement last year.

他的告別節目比通常自作多情的電視送別好得多：他在節目中穿插了最受喜愛的部分，例如他的10大名單，包括經典小品片段，以及幾個有誠意、謙遜的、有剋制的時刻。他在最後的節目裏一點也不像約翰尼·卡森(Johnny Carson)1992年最後一次主持《今夜秀》時那樣以法老自居、且多愁善感。正如所預想的，最後一集《深夜秀》是去年送別他的對手傑·雷諾(Jay Leno)退休時，那種傷感而又鋪張華麗表演的清新宜人的解藥。

Mr. Letterman’s retirement has gotten an extraordinary amount of focus — a frenzied outpouring of fan devotion, celebrity tributes and nonstop media attention — perhaps because he was so important to the last generation of viewers who grew up watching shows on a television set, and not on a smartphone.

萊特曼的退休已經得到特別大量的關注，粉絲們的忠誠、名人的獻禮辭，以及不間斷的媒體報道瘋狂地迸發，這也許是因爲他對在電視機前、而不是在智能手機上看着節目長大的最後一代觀衆如此的重要。

Mr. Letterman’s crack about younger performers who use Twitter and Facebook was a shout-out to the talk-show host’s core audience, the late-night viewers who decades ago defined themselves as the insurgents who preferred Mr. Letterman to Mr. Leno.

萊特曼對年輕表演者使用Twitter和Facebook的敲打，是這位脫口秀主持人向核心觀衆發出的呼喊，這些觀衆幾十年前用選擇萊特曼、而不是萊諾把自己定位爲反叛者。

All Mr. Letterman had to say was the date, June 17, 1996, and the studio audience began laughing appreciatively. He then showed a clip of one of his more famous pranks when he posed as a server at a drive-through Taco Bell and tormented customers with terrible service.

萊特曼只需要說出那個日子，1996年6月17日，現場觀衆就開始會意地發笑。然後，他播放了一段自己比較著名的惡作劇片段之一，他假裝塔可鍾(Taco Bell)的不必下車即可購買食物窗口的服務員，用極爲糟糕的服務折磨顧客。

The clips of his absurdist gags, riffs on conventional television comedy, were fun, but they were also a reminder of how inventive and seditious Mr. Letterman was in his heyday, and how much his successors in today’s late-night constellation owe him. One acolyte, Jimmy Kimmel, the host of his own late-night talk show on ABC, was so worshipful he ran a rerun on Wednesday so as to not pull focus from Mr. Letterman.

他的荒誕噱頭以及對傳統電視喜劇即興模仿的片段很逗樂，但它們也讓人記起萊特曼在其鼎盛時期多麼具有創意和煽動性，也提醒人們在當今深夜秀星空閃爍的他的後繼者們欠了他多少東西。其中一位後繼者吉米·金梅爾(Jimmy Kimmel)在美國廣播公司主持自己的深夜脫口秀節目，金梅爾是如此地崇拜萊特曼，以至於他在週三夜間，爲了不把觀衆的注意力從萊特曼那裏吸引走，重播了一箇舊集子。

On his show, Mr. Letterman demanded a lighter touch. In the Top 10 list, “Things I’ve Always Wanted to Say to Dave,” Julia Louis-Dreyfus, a “Seinfeld” alumna, said, “Thanks for letting me take part in another hugely disappointing series finale.”

在自己的節目中，萊特曼要求更輕的手法。在以“我一直想對大衛說的事兒”爲題的10大名單部分，曾擔任《宋飛正傳》演員的朱莉婭·路易斯-德雷福斯(Julia Louis-Dreyfus)說，“謝謝你讓我參加又一個非常令人失望的電視系列的結局。”

Mr. Letterman joined CBS in 1993, a year after HBO introduced “The Larry Sanders Show,” a behind-the-scenes parody of “The Tonight Show” that starred Garry Shandling as an insecure, self-absorbed talk-show host.

萊特曼於1993年加盟CBS，一年後，HBO推出了《拉里·桑德斯秀》(The Larry Sanders Show)，那是對《 今夜秀》幕後情節的滑稽模仿劇，由加里·贍德令(Garry Shandling)扮演缺乏信心、又自我陶醉的脫口秀主持人。

But Mr. Letterman’s onstage persona, as host of “Late Night” at NBC, and later at CBS, was a one-man sendup of the talk-show genre. Even after more than 30 years, Mr. Letterman never lost his arch, ironic self-awareness; he did not sink into the easy, quid pro quo conventions of late-night talk shows, but kept defying them.

但是，萊特曼作爲NBC《深夜秀》、後來是CBS節目主持人的舞臺角色，是脫口秀體裁的單人滑稽模仿。即使在30多年後，萊特曼從未失去他特有的、具有諷刺意味的自我意識；他並沒有陷入深夜脫口秀節目等價交換慣例的輕車熟路，而是不斷地違抗慣例。

Over the last few weeks, a parade of celebrity guests including Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts and George Clooney have paid their respects to Mr. Letterman. On Wednesday, he described all the encomiums as “over-the-top” and said he found it “flattering, embarrassing and gratifying.”

在過去的幾個週中，包括湯姆·漢克斯(Tom Hanks)、朱莉婭·羅伯茨(Julia Roberts)和喬治·克魯尼(George Clooney)在內的名人嘉賓紛紛對萊特曼表示敬意。週三，他把所有這些頌辭描述爲“過頭了”，並說他覺得那些話“令人榮幸、尷尬、滿足。”

Mixed feelings make sense in a comedian who was always paradoxical — a winning, witty and supremely confident performer who offstage was practically a hermit and riven by self-doubt.

複雜的感情對這位喜劇演員來說言之有理，他總是充滿矛盾，他是一位成功、機智、具有超級自信的表演者，但在臺下，他實際上是一位隱士，備受自我懷疑的折磨。

Fans are devoted to Mr. Letterman in part because they know his psyche so well: He is an intensely private celebrity who kept processing his personal life in front of the camera. He helped the nation heal after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks by movingly expressing his feelings of sadness and helplessness. He brought his medical team onto his show after his 2000 quintuple bypass, and he even described his affairs with women in his office as “creepy” in an unnerving mea culpa in 2009.

粉絲們效忠萊特曼，部分是因爲他們熟識他的心靈：他是一個極爲隱祕的名人，而他又不斷地在鏡頭前處理他的個人生活。他曾用悲傷和無助情感的動人表達幫助美國從2001年9月11日襲擊所帶來的創傷中康復。在2000年做了五道心臟旁路手術後，他把自己的醫療團隊帶到電視臺上。在2009年的一個令人不安的自我認錯中，他甚至把自己與辦公室中女性的婚外情描述爲“令人毛骨悚然”。

On Wednesday, Mr. Letterman said that one of the worst things about retiring was that, as he put it: “When I screw up now, and Lord knows I’ll be screwing up, I have to go on somebody else’s show to apologize.”

週三，萊特曼說了退休最糟糕的事情之一，用他的話來說是：“我今後做錯事時，得去別人的節目上表示歉意，老天知道我是一定會做錯事的。”

He mixed jokes about his future with serious references to pivotal moments in his past. He chose as his last musical guests the Foo Fighters because the band canceled a tour in South America to play on his first show after the heart surgery.

他開着關於自己未來道路的玩笑，也同時會嚴肅地提到自己過去的關鍵時刻。他選擇Foo Fighters樂隊作爲他最後的音樂客人，因爲該樂隊爲了在他心臟手術後的首次節目上表演，取消了一次南美巡演。

As he has on many a night, Mr. Letterman made a humorous reference to his son, Harry, imitating his voice in a squeaky falsetto. He also paid a solemn, quite personal tribute to his son and his wife, Regina, who were seated in the audience.

與他以往很多夜晚一樣，萊特曼幽默地提到他的兒子哈利(Harry)，用尖尖的假聲模仿兒子的聲音。他對坐在觀衆席中的兒子和妻子里賈納(Regina)表達了莊重敬意。

“Thank you for being my family,” he said. “I love you both and really, nothing else matters, does it?”

“謝謝你們，我的家人，”他說。“我愛你倆，真的，再沒有比你們重要的了，不是嗎？”

Mostly, though, he did what he did best: make fun of himself. “It’s beginning to look like I’m not going to get the ‘Tonight Show,’ ” Mr. Letterman joked.

然而，大多數時候，他做了他最會幹的事：用自己打趣。“看起來越來越有可能我不會去主持《今夜秀》了，”萊特曼開玩笑說。

Mr. Letterman defined himself as the loser in his long, bitter battle with Mr. Leno. His rival got “The Tonight Show” gig and higher ratings, but in the end, Mr. Letterman won the legacy.

萊特曼把自己在與萊諾的漫長、艱苦的競爭中定義爲失敗者。他的對手得以主持《今夜秀》，贏得了更高的收視率，但最終是萊特曼在最後節目中勝出。