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

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

游客2023-12-07  27
问题     Mark Twain’s instructions were quite clear: his autobiography was to remain unpublished until 100 years after his death.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] Which of the following is true about Mark Twain’s autobiography?
选项 A、It follows the chronological order in narration.
B、It has never been published before.
C、It holds no interest for modern readers.
D、It crosses out some sensitive passages.
答案 D
解析 本题考查文章中心内容马克·吐温自传的细节。文章第十段大意是吐温自己也承认自传中隐去了某些事实真相，第十一段前两句接着讲，吐温明白自己形象的价值，并尽可能地保护它，因此自传中一些敏感内容被删去，由此判定[D]正确。第六段第一句明确指出自传没有使用线性叙事法，换言之就是不是以时间为序的，所以排除[A]。从第二段第五句中破折号中间的内容得知，以前也曾出版过吐温部分的自传，所以[B]“以前从未出版过”错误。第二段前三句大意是，吐温并没有高估自己100年后的声望，他是美国梦的体现，他从未想过自己的声望会有所下降，事实上他的声望也从未下降过；最后一段最后两句的大意是，吐温仍是美国公众崇拜的对象，吐温仍是那个德高望重的吐温，由此可以推断，即使是现代读者也还是会对吐温的作品感兴趣，排除[C]。
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