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

游客2023-12-07 18

问题 Mark Twain’s instructions were quite clear: his autobiography was to remain unpublished until 100 years after his death.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] The greatness of Mark Twain lies in all the following EXCEPT that

选项 A、he’s able to arouse sympathy in readers.
B、he’s able to bring fun to the most boring topics.
C、he’s able to make literature heard as well as seen.
D、he is able to judge the world objectively.

答案 B

解析文章第三段末提出问题：吐温为何能够成为“美国的小说之父”?接着第四段提到Sutherland的看法，大意是吐温是一位天才的公众演说家，他将文学变成可闻可见的东西([C])；把自己作为一个旁观者，坚决地、不满地、烦躁地关注着这个世界，由此推断，吐温能够客观地评论这个世界，即[D]；第五段第二句提到，我们能听到他穿越坟墓对我们说话，即使在看上去索然无味的段落中，他的叙述依然能够引起对不幸的共鸣，也就是说吐温可以引起读者的共鸣，即[A]；最无趣的段落也能引起读者情感上的共鸣，并不是说能让最无趣的话题变得有趣，[B]错误，所以本题的答案是[B]。

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