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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  25
问题     Mark Twain’s instructions were quite clear: his autobiography was to remain unpublished until 100 years after his death.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 statements is true, according to Blake Morrison?
选项 A、The author has to ask for permission before writing about others’ privacy.
B、The reader should believe what the author has to say in his autobiography.
C、The author may feel tortured in writing privacies.
D、The reader should be critical in reading other’s works.
答案 B
解析 根据题干中人名Blake Morrison把问题定位于第八、九段。根据第八段第一句，布雷克·莫里森的结论是：一个作家只能讲述他或她的真实经历，而读者必须要接受这是作者本人而不是别人的故事，由此推断。Blake Morrison认为读者要相信作者在自传中的陈述，[B]正确而[D]错误。第八段第二、三两句莫里森谈到的一个细节是在他的作品中，按照他妈妈的要求隐瞒了她的宗教身份，是为了说明写作时某些时候不得不作一些妥协，而不是为了说明[A]“写作涉及别人隐私时要征求同意”：但第九段笔锋一转，继续说明他没有刻意隐瞒，相反，他觉得把有些事写在纸上比说出来更容易些，随后举例证明，由此可以看出，Blake Morrison认为把隐私写出来更容易，排除[C]。
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