If you live in New York City, you know the young Wall Street type: dark suit, wide-knot tie, meticulous hair, and an all-business demeanor that contradicts the baby face. Oh, and they're making a ton of money.

    But it turns out that wealth isn't free. The job is their life. The hours are excessive -- and not limited to the workweek. Their superiors own them. One iPhone ping and your friend must leave the movie and head to her office.

    At one point in Young Money, the well-written new book by Kevin Roose, a senior associate at a Wall Street firm lectures a young go-getter: "Helping the world is great and all, but you need to be motivated by money." We're meant to find such a quote shocking. But many who follow the world of finance will see it as confirming what they already thought.

    Thus, it's unclear who the audience really is for Young Money. The New York media world is buzzing about it, but the revelation that young bankers are unhappy does not constitute news for that world -- neither for financial journalists, nor for the bankers themselves, nor for any person working in business in Manhattan, San Francisco, or Boston. The picture Roose paints may indeed shock and enlighten the legions of people in America who live away from the power centers and are thus not already acquainted with young bankers or aware of the less glamorous, day-to-day demands of the job. But how much do they really care?

    Nevertheless, Young Money is a fun and fast read that will make you laugh out loud, or perhaps scoff instead. Chelsea isn't satisfied with her $25,000 bonus. Derrick entered finance because, "I want all those people in high school who thought I was stupid to fucking suck it." He cherishes his "deal toys" ("clear, Lucite hunks" commemorating big deals) and likes to look at them before bed. J.P. plays the rap song "Live Fast, Die Young" for inspiration -- but he's listening on headphones, at his desk, where he's crunching numbers into the night, alone, tired.

    If Roose has a mission, it's to inform America that until they hit a certain job level, Wall Street's ladder-climbers are in fact harried, frustrated, lonely, and, above all, dead tired. They lead an unhealthy lifestyle, physically and emotionally. One of Roose's subjects develops a brutal disease, perhaps not unrelated to his work stress. Many of their relationships collapse under the weight of their work; dinners out with girlfriends are cancelled night after night.

    Your reaction to all of this may be "boo-hoo" and an eye-roll. Pity the poor, overworked 22-year-old making $150,000 in her first year out of college. Roose acknowledges that these people have chosen this path, and that the sums they find disappointing are staggering to most of their non-banking peers. ("J.P. knew he wouldn't find much sympathy on Main Street, where being paid $90,000 as a twenty-four-year-old was still a tremendous accomplishment.") But in general, he resists from commentary.

    One highlight is the discussion around Soo-jin Park, a risk analyst at Deutsche Bank (DB) and one of only two women among Roose's eight subjects. An optimistic Wellesley College grad, Soo-jin "quickly discovered that her risk management group was still a man's world." She is the only female in her division who is not an administrative assistant. Her experience affords Roose the opportunity to discuss the important issue of women on Wall Street. "Women's progress in finance has been somewhat shallower than it appears," he explains, backing it up with numbers.

    如果你住在纽约，你肯定熟悉华尔街青年才俊的标准形象：深色西装，宽领带，一丝不苟的发型，一副与娃娃脸极不相称的生意人派头。哦，对了，他们正在赚很多很多的钱。

    但事实证明，财富不是天上掉下来的。这份工作就是他们的生活。顶头上司就是他们的主人。iPhone一响，你的朋友就必须离开电影院，直奔办公室。

    在凯文•卢斯的最新佳作《华尔街的年轻人》(Young Money)一书中，一位华尔街高级经理人这样教导一位工作劲头十足的年轻人：“帮助这个世界固然很了不起，但你需要金钱激励。”按理说，这番话应该让我们感到震惊。但在许多了解金融世界真相的人士看来，这只不过证实了他们已有的看法。

    因此，目前还不清楚谁才是《华尔街的年轻人》瞄准的目标受众。纽约媒体界正在热议这本书，但对于那个世界（无论是财经记者，银行家自己，还是任何一位供职于曼哈顿、旧金山或波士顿的商界人士）来说，“年轻的银行家们过得并不开心”已经算不上什么新闻。卢斯描绘的图景或许真的会让许多远离权力中心的美国人感到震惊，受到启发，因为他们原本并不了解这一群体，不清楚这份工作并不那么光鲜的日常要求。但他们到底有多关心这档事？

    然而，《华尔街的年轻人》是一本非常有意思，毫无阅读障碍的好书，它会让你开怀大笑，但也有可能让你嗤之以鼻。切尔西对刚刚领到手的2.5万美元奖金很不满意。德里克进入金融界是因为，“我想让那帮认为我愚蠢到家的高中同学睁开狗眼，好好见识一下我的能耐。”他非常珍惜自己的“交易玩具”（“搞定，绝世大帅哥”是他庆贺大交易的口头禅），喜欢在睡觉前盯着它们看。J.P.时常播放说唱歌曲《早死快活》(Live Fast, Die Young)，以寻找灵感。但他听歌时戴着耳机，坐在办公桌旁，因为他总是独自一人，疲惫不堪地鼓捣各种数字，一直至深夜。

    如果卢斯有一个使命，那就是告诉美国人，华尔街“往上爬的人们”在熬到某个级别之前其实非常忙碌，沮丧且孤独，尤其是，累得要死。他们过着一种不健康的生活方式，无论是就身体，还是就情绪而言。卢斯笔下的主人公之一患上了一种残酷的疾病，这也许与他的工作压力不无关系。在工作的重压下，他们的许多关系轰然崩溃；这些年轻人一次又一次地取消与女友共进晚餐的约定。

    对所有这一切，你或许会翻个白眼，“唏嘘一番”。你或许会对那位大学毕业第一年就赚到了15万美元年薪、但过度劳累的22岁年轻人表示怜悯。卢斯承认，这条路是这些年轻人自己选的；在金融圈以外就职的同龄人看来，让银行家们倍感失望的年薪额简直就是天文数字。（“J.P.知道，普罗大众是不会同情他的，因为在其他行业，一位24岁的年轻人能拿到9万美元的年薪仍然是一个巨大的成就。”）但他通常不会就此发表评论。

    这本书的亮点之一是一段围绕德意志银行(Deutsche Bank)风险分析师朴秀珍（卢斯笔下8个主人公中仅有的两位女性之一）展开的讨论。这位乐观的卫尔斯利女子学院(Wellesley College)毕业生“很快就发现，她就职的风险管理部依然是男人的天下。”在朴秀珍所在的部门，只有她没有达到行政助理级别。她的经历给了卢斯一个机会，来讨论华尔街女性的处境这个重要的议题。他解释说，“女性在金融职场的进展一直比表面看起来的情形更加微弱，”随即列举了详实的数据证实自己的这种判断。

    Roose's style is more "just the facts, ma'am" than the magazine feature formula of quote plus commentary. At times, that can be disappointing. When we learn that Bank of America (BAC) recruit Chelsea "fought back tears" after learning she'd be placed in public finance ("she would be doing something she barely understood yet again ... she went out to a bar with friends and drank until the world blurred"), we crave some analysis from our guide: Is this the case with all Wall Street recruits -- they have no clue what they're doing at first, and pick it up as they go? But Roose doesn't pursue it. Instead, he follows her quote up with a line that you could imagine is written with a wink: "Three days later, things were looking a little brighter. A boozy corporate field day was hardly the worst way to start a job."

    Well, yes. Watch Chelsea play flip-cup with her bosses at the annual Bank of America Merrill Lynch field day, "held at a posh New Jersey country club" with "a keg of beer at each activity station," and you'll have trouble sympathizing with her. Roose never overtly pities nor mocks his subjects. He is mostly absent from the narrative -- a Michael Lewis romp, this is not -- which can be a positive or negative, depending on how you like your nonfiction.

    One notable exception is the book's finest scene, a thrilling undercover operation in which Roose sneaks into a bizarre, closed-door affair: the annual dinner of Wall Street society Kappa Beta Phi. (New York magazine wisely chose this as its excerpt of the book, headlining it "What I saw when I crashed a Wall Street secret society," and has reaped the resulting clicks. There is also some must-hear audio.)

    The highlights of the event are so ludicrous that Roose finally just rattles them off as bullet points: a man singing about money while clad in a Confederate flag hat; a joke about Hillary Clinton (she "has whiskers and stinks"); a group performing a song from The Book of Mormon with the lyrics rewritten ("I believe that the Lord God created Wall Street"). Inevitably, someone picks up on Roose's presence: Billionaire investor Michael Novogratz asks Roose to identify himself, then demands his cell phone. "His eyes were bloodshot, and his neck veins were bulging," we learn -- some of the most vivid writing in the book, at last, perhaps because it happened to the author himself. Our fearless guide narrowly escapes to the lobby, where two of the group's members try to convince him "that what I'd just seen wasn't really a group of wealthy and powerful financiers making homophobic jokes, mocking poor people, and bragging about their business conquests."

    The scene feels a bit out of place, delightful though it is, because the naughty KBP revelers are top dogs: They are the old guard, now swimming in money. The focus of Roose's book is the newest generation of Wall Street strivers. But you get the sinking feeling that many of the naive young bucks he focuses on are the aspiring KBP members of tomorrow -- that once they're billionaires in their fifties, their days on the bottom will be distant memories, and the cycle will continue.

    不同于叙述加评论的杂志特稿风格，卢斯更加偏重于描述事实——“这就是现实，女士”。有时候，这种风格可能会令人失望。书中写道，当切尔西得知自己被分配到美国银行(Bank of America)公共财政部门之后，她“强忍着几乎夺眶而出的泪水，”原因是，“她将要从事一件她自己几乎一无所知的工作。她随后约了几位朋友去酒吧，一醉方休。”读到这里，我们渴望作者提供一些分析：是不是所有的华尔街新人都会遭遇这种事情——他们最初一点也不了解自己正在从事的业务，都是边干边学吗？但卢斯并没有进一步阐述。相反，在引用了切尔西的话之后，他眼睛一眨，写了一句你完全能够想象到的句子：“三天后，情况稍微有点明朗。一个醉意朦胧的公司实习日绝对算不上最糟糕的履新方式。”

    就算是吧。当你看到切尔西在美银美林(Bank of America Merrill Lynch)一年一度的实习日与她的老板们把酒言欢——这些活动通常“在新泽西州一家豪华的乡村俱乐部举行，每个活动站都备有一桶啤酒，”你就会很难对她产生同情心。卢斯从未非常明显地怜悯或嘲笑过他的主人公们。阅读这部著作时，你基本上感受不到他的存在，卢斯可不是欢蹦乱跳的迈克尔•刘易斯【刘易斯的代表作包括《说谎者的扑克牌》(Liar's Poker)一书——译注】。这种风格可能是正面的，也可能是负面的，这取决于你对非虚构文学的理解。

    一个值得注意的例外情况恰好也是这本书最精彩的场景。在一场惊心动魄的卧底行动中，卢斯偷偷溜进了一个光怪陆离的闭门活动，也就是华尔街Kappa Beta Phi社团的年度晚宴现场。【《纽约》杂志(New York)非常明智地选择了这段经历作为本书的摘录，还给它加了一个噱头十足的标题——“揭秘华尔街秘密社团”，收获了不少点击量。它还配有好几段不容错过的音频文件。】

    这次活动的高潮部分荒诞不经，以至于卢斯最终只是简单地列举了一下：一位男子头戴印有南部联盟旗帜的帽子，演唱了一首关于金钱的歌曲；一个拿希拉里•克林顿开涮的笑话（她“长着胡子，臭不可闻”）；一个团体表演一首源自《摩门经》(The Book of Mormon )，但歌词经过改写的歌曲（“我相信，是上帝创造了华尔街”）。不可避免的是，卢斯最终还是被人盯上了：亿万富豪投资者迈克尔•诺沃格拉茨要求卢斯表明身份，接着还要没收他的手机。“他的眼睛布满血丝，脸红脖子粗，”我们认识到，本书最栩栩如生的描述终于出现，这或许是因为这件事碰巧是作者本人的真实经历。随后，我们这位无畏的向导勉强逃到了大厅。在那里，这个团体的两位成员试图让他相信，“我刚才看到的景象其实不是一群极富权势的金融家在讲同性恋的笑话，嘲笑穷人，吹嘘自己的商业成就。”

    尽管读起来令人愉快，但这个场景似乎与本书主题不太搭调，因为这些顽皮的狂欢者都是有头有脸的大人物：他们是正在财富之海游弋的华尔街保守派。卢斯关注的则是最新一代的华尔街奋斗者。但你会产生一种不祥之感：他笔下那些天真无邪、精力旺盛的年轻人都怀抱着一颗加入Kappa Beta Phi社团的野心。一旦他们熬到五十多岁，最终跻身亿万富豪的行列，他们在最底层打拼的艰难岁月就将变成遥远的记忆。于是，华尔街这样的轮回还会继续下去。（财富中文网）

    译者：叶寒