Mark Twain’s instructions were quite clear: his autobiography was to remain

游客2023-12-05 33

问题 Mark Twain’s instructions were quite clear: his autobiography was to remain unpublished until 100 years after his death. You couldn’t imagine a writer doing something like that these days. Who could resist a pay cheque in the here and now for deferred immortality in the hereafter? More to the point, could any modern writer be certain their lives would still be interesting to anyone so long after their death?
Hubris never came into Twain’s calculations. He was the American writer, the rags-to-riches embodiment of the American dream, and it never seems to have occurred to him that his popularity would fade. Nor has it. He is still the writer before whom everyone from Faulkner to Mailer has knelt. And even though his literary executors might not have followed his instructions to the letter — various chunks of his autobiography have been published over the years— this year’s publication of the first of three planned collections of Twain’s full autobiographical writings to coincide with the centenary of his death has still been one of the literary events of the year.
They are about the abstract. Such as religion.
"There are some extracts, including one in which he confuses the Virgin birth and the Immaculate Conception, in which he declares his religious scepticism robustly, about which Twain was extremely nervous," says Smith. "He was so worried he would be ostracised and shunned for this by God-fearing Americans that he actually set a publication date of 2406 for those sections."
Imagine. A man so protective and nervous of his own reputation that he sought to keep some of the ideas he thought might alienate his public silent for 500 years. Yet equally a man so sure of his reputation that he had no doubts people would still want to read him 500 years after his death. There, in essence, is Twain’s ambivalence between the public and the private, between truth and spin. Needless to say, his executors didn’t adhere to the 500-year diktat and the American public continue to adore him regardless. Then Twain being Twain, he’d have hardly expected anything less. [br] What does Claire Tomalin think of Mark Twain’s autobiography?

选项 A、Objective.
B、Positive.
C、Incomplete.
D、Optimistic.

答案 C

解析根据题干中人名Claire Tomalin把问题定位于第七段。本段五、六句陈述Claire Tomalin的观点：“任何专为出版的日记——即使在100年后一很可能在某种程度上作出了妥协，唯一接近完全真实的作家是塞缪尔·佩皮斯，因为他的日记从没打算让别人看。”所以Claire Tomalin认为吐温的自传是经过删节的、不完全真实的，选项[C]中incomplete和文中原词compromised、unexpurgated的意思相当。

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