人生的后半场(6)

林嘉文（简称林）在1998年出生在一个知识分子家庭，他的母亲是一名小学教师，父亲在一所法律院校任职，在他读小学的那阵子有一种读史、说史的风尚，家里人看百家讲坛的时候他也亦步亦趋地紧随其后，同时他埋头苦读了诸如《资治通鉴》和《吕氏春秋》一类的大部头专著，随着时间的流逝，他积累的知识越来越多，他的技巧也日趋成熟，读初中的时候他已经具备了深究民族史和翻阅一手宋史资料的能力，同时他自学了西夏文、文献学、目录学和学术规范的知识，并在社交媒体上跟史学界的前辈们交流和探讨历史。尽管他在绝大多数人眼里只不过是个乳臭未干的小孩子和一个中学生而已，他已经是两部学术专著的作者了：《当道家统治中国：道家思想的政治实践与汉帝国的迅速崛起》，一部洋洋洒洒三十万字从道家政治的视角重新解读文景之治的书和《忧乐为天下：范仲淹与庆历新政》，一本宋史巨擘李裕民破例为其作序并称赞其为“自解放以来最年轻的具有学术研究能力的作者”，这两本颇有影响力的书使林嘉文成了宋史领域冉冉升起的一颗新星，并使其被媒体誉为“史学研究天才”。
Nevertheless, like most geniuses, Lin had difficulty in dealing with people around him. He always put on airs of superiority when he got along with his classmates and gave them a feeling that he was talented without a equal. He always sneered at those top students, "you can only study, you have no ability to do research". His praise of one of the few close friends of himself goes like this, "all of you know nothing, even if Zhang (his friend's name) knows something, it is very superficial." So, you can easily infer he was an antipathy to everybody. "He was generally disliked because of his loftiness, his habit of keeping himself from doing the cleaning and his unsociability." One of his classmates recalled. Half a year earlier, he was diagnosed with depression and had to take medicine. "The side effect of it, as the instruction says, is gaining weight, yet I feel pain and sleepy everyday after taking it…