日韩色综合-日韩色中色-日韩色在线-日韩色哟哟-国产ts在线视频-国产suv精品一区二区69

手機APP下載

您現(xiàn)在的位置: 首頁 > 口譯筆譯 > 筆譯高級 > 翻譯訓(xùn)練 > 正文

遠離令人絕望的事(雙語)

來源:可可英語 編輯:alex ?  可可英語APP下載 |  可可官方微信:ikekenet

I was reading on the crowded subway when a distraught-looking woman stumbled into me.

“Please, please help me out,” she said. “Please. I’m trying to buy flowers for a funeral arrangement.”

She was African-American, middle-aged, wide-eyed. Her words were not addressed to me but to the whole subway car. The slightness of her build belied the strength of her voice. So many things are dying at the moment — an entire free-spending epoch is being laid to rest — that I wondered which particular burial she had in mind.

“My cousin was a good kid,” she said. “Please, please. For the funeral arrangement, I need flowers.”

People averted their eyes. Early-evening fatigued, city-churned, they did not want to hear talk of funerals, much less help pay for them. They were headed home to hear a new president diagnose the state of America. Some shook their heads, thinking, “She’s crazy!”

I returned to my reading, a profile of the British author Ian McEwan in The New Yorker. I admire McEwan, enjoy his novels, often read them in a sitting or two, but do not feel transported by him.

There is something too carefully plotted in his effects that precludes falling under his spell. His studied brilliance never quite attains greatness. Still, he takes a scalpel to sexual need and obsessive violence, the dark undertows of life, in ways that can be utterly compelling.

I read this phrase from McEwan — “Narrative tension is primarily about withholding information” — and nodded.

Having part of the picture incites an anxiety, the desire to see it whole, completed. I wondered who the stumbling subway woman’s cousin was, how “the kid” died, in a knife fight or from withering illness, what flower arrangement she had in mind (chrysanthemums? gladioli?) — or whether the whole story was made up, just a scam.

Piecing together fragments is what we do right now as we emerge from the Grand Illusion, a time when the human herd frolicked in limitless pastures to the seductive lilt of Ponzi promises.

We are trying to get our bearings, find out where the bottom is in order to put one foot in front of the other. Bernard Madoff’s investment firm did not buy any securities for clients in 13 years. And nobody noticed.

You couldn’t make this stuff up. It’s not only narrative tension that withheld information produces; it’s $50 billion going poof in the night.

As it happened, I’d been reading McEwan that morning on the late John Updike in The New York Review of Books: the profiled as profiler. He quotes Updike describing the facts of life as “unbearably heavy, weighted as they are with our personal death. Writing, in making the world light — in codifying, distorting, prettifying, verbalizing it — approaches blasphemy.”

But what beautiful, what necessary, blasphemy!

Perhaps the Age of Excess had to end before we could all turn inward just enough to rediscover the gold standard of the perfectly formed phrase, and make connections again. McEwan chooses a sentence from Updike’s “Couples” that could describe his own work: “Nature dangles sex to keep us walking toward the cliff.”

It dangles chance,too.

In the same New York Review was Anita Desai’s piece on Azar Nafisi, best known for her much-loved “Reading Lolita in Tehran.” I’d just returned from Tehran and devoured the review of Nafisi’s new book, “Things I’ve Been Silent About: Memories.”

“Reading Lolita” was precisely about turning inward, away from desperate events — in this case a revolution that had betrayed many of its protagonists, offering veils of repression rather than long-sought freedom — to the consolation of great Western literature. It was a book of passionate personal transcendence.

Nafisi’s new book is essentially a family memoir, but in the tumult of Iran, her story and the nation’s overlap. She alludes to the terrible misconceptions of Iranian democrats and leftists about Ayatollah Khomeini in the revolutionary fervor of 1979:

“Too arrogant to think of him as a threat and deliberately ignorant of his designs, we supported him. We welcomed the vehemence of Khomeini’s rants against imperialists and the Shah and were willing to overlook the fact that they were not delivered by a champion of freedom.”

This was truly a tragic illusion for which a heavy price has been paid by Iranians, their nation now scattered in a diaspora stretching from California to Australia. Many ache still for their homeland.

By comparison, the cost of American illusions pales. A decimated 401(k) is painful, but no exile. It is true, as President Obama said in his first address to a joint session of Congress: “We will rebuild; we will recover.” That, at least, is what American history suggests.

As the woman proceeded down the car, I could hear that phrase being repeated — “Please I’m trying to buy flowers for a funeral arrangement” — until at last it grew muffled in a kind of ruckus and a smooth-voiced recorded announcement overwhelmed it: “Courtesy is contagious. It begins with you.”

So does change from within.

重點單詞   查看全部解釋    
illusion [i'lu:ʒən]

想一想再看

n. 幻覺,錯覺,錯誤的信仰(或觀念)

聯(lián)想記憶
compelling [kəm'peliŋ]

想一想再看

adj. 強制的,引人注目的,令人信服的

 
diagnose ['daiəgnəuz]

想一想再看

v. 判斷,診斷(疾病)

聯(lián)想記憶
vehemence ['vi:iməns]

想一想再看

n. 熱烈;激烈

聯(lián)想記憶
exile ['eksail]

想一想再看

n. 放逐,流放,被放逐者
vt. 放逐,流放

 
willing ['wiliŋ]

想一想再看

adj. 愿意的,心甘情愿的

 
announcement [ə'naunsmənt]

想一想再看

n. 通知,發(fā)表,宣布

聯(lián)想記憶
courtesy ['kə:tisi]

想一想再看

n. 禮貌,好意,恩惠

 
narrative ['nærətiv]

想一想再看

n. 敘述,故事
adj. 敘事的,故事體的

 
revolution [.revə'lu:ʃən]

想一想再看

n. 革命,旋轉(zhuǎn),轉(zhuǎn)數(shù)

聯(lián)想記憶
?
發(fā)布評論我來說2句

    最新文章

    可可英語官方微信(微信號:ikekenet)

    每天向大家推送短小精悍的英語學(xué)習(xí)資料.

    添加方式1.掃描上方可可官方微信二維碼。
    添加方式2.搜索微信號ikekenet添加即可。
    主站蜘蛛池模板: 囚禁空姐| 永远的紫荆花简谱| 电影《死亡权限》免费观看 | 普通日记200字可抄| 12123交强险查询入口| 苏打绿改名鱼丁糸的原因| 夫人电影| 黎小军| 寄诚庸| 飞头魔女电影完整版免费观看| 新生儿喂奶粉的量和时间| 柯佳青| 侠客行演员表| 毕业论文3000字范文| 日韩电影免费在线观看| 摘抄现代诗| 捉迷藏剧情全解析| 我在皇宫当巨巨| 法医秦明之幸存者 2018 经超| 那些女人 电影| 新人类电影| 天津电视台体育频道| 押韵表实用大全| 王盼盼| 我的冠军男友在线看全集完整| 古灵精探演员表| 思想理论问题| 2024头像| 6套电影频道节目表| 红电视剧演员表| 性视频动态图| 《我的太阳》电视剧| 都市频道在线直播观看| 赖小子电影| 小学生必用头像| 朱莉·安妮·普雷斯科特| 小数加减法100道题| 孔大山| 青木玲挤奶喂奶| 加入青协的个人简历模板| 抓特务|