贵州交通职业技术学院英语协会《高级英语通关三部曲》第三部分：段落提炼

《高级英语通关三部曲》 第三部：段落提炼 1. It was late December, 1973. some 14,000 screaming fans were crunching up to the front of the stage at capital center ,outside Washington, D.C. Alice Cooper, America’s singing ghoul, was ending his act. He ends it by pretending to end his life——with a guillotine. His ―head‖ drops into a straw basket. ―Oh‖,gasped a girl dressed in black. 2. This strategy also has ancient antecedents. Ever since civilization began, certain individuals have tried to run away from it in hopes of finding a simpler, more pastoral, and more peaceful life. Unlike the dropouts, they are not parasites. They are willing to support themselves and to contribute something to the general community, but they simply don’t like the environment of civilization; that is, the city, with all its ugliness an tension. 3. Some of my best friends have been revolutionists, and a few of them have led reasonably satisfying lives, There are the ones whose revolutions did not come off; They have been able to keep on cheerfully ploting their holocausts right into their senescence. Others died young, in prison or on the barricades. But the most unfortunate are those whose revolutions have succeeded. They lived, in bitter disillusionment, to see the establishment they had overthrown replaced by a new one, just as hard-faced and stuffy. 4. At that, I ground my teeth in disgust. If only they wouldn’t use the word ― hurt‖ I might be able to get somewhere. But I did not allow myself to be hurried or disturbed but speaking quietly and slowly I approached the child again. 5. Some people believe that the time of death is appointed by God and that no man should put the clock on another. Yet if a patient’s philosophical views embrace enthanasia, it is not clear why the religious objections of others should intrude on his death. 6. If I said that being black is a greater handicap than being a woman, probably no one would question me. Why? Because ―we all know ‖ there is prejudice against black people in

America, That there is prejudice agaist women is an idea that still strikes nearly all men-and, I am afraid, most women-as bizarre. Prjudice against blacks was invisible to most white Americans, for many years. When blacks finally started to ―mention‖ it, with sit-ins, boycotts, and freedom rides, Americans were incredulous. 7. We parked the car, Elgie came over and settled himself in the back seat of the car. A police car moved slowly to the corner where we were parked and the patrolmen looked at the three of us intently and we pretended not to notice. The patrol car inched down the empty street and I turned cautiously toward Elgie. 8. He was tall, stiff, dignified, and she was wearing the ermine toque she’d bought when her hair was yellow. Now everything, her hair, her face, even her eyes, was the same colour as the shabby ermine, and her hand, in its cleaned glove, lifted to dab her lips, was a tiny yellowish paw. Oh, she was so pleased to see him--delighted! She rather thought they were going to meet that afternoon. She described where she’d been-everywhere, here, there, along by the sea. 9. She appealed to me because she was like people I had never met personally. Like women in English novels who walked the moors (whatever they were) with their loyal dog racing at a respectful distance. Like the women who sat in front of roaring fireplaces, drinking tea incessantly from silver trays full of scones and crumpets. 10 .She said that I must always be intolerant of ignorance but understanding of illiteracy. That some people, unable to go to school, were educated and even more intelligent than college professors. She encouraged me to listen carefully to what country people called mother wit. That in those homely sayings was couched the collective wisdom of generations. 11. The trouble with television is that it discourages concentration. Almost anything interesting and rewarding in life requires some constructive, consistently applied effort. The dullest, the least gifted of us can achieve things that seem miraculous to those who never concentrate on anything. But television encourages us to apply no effort. It sells us instant gratification. It diverts us only to divert, to make the time pass without pain. 12. Consider the casual assumptions that television tends to cultivate: that complexity must be avoided, that visual stimulation is a substitute for thought, that verbal precision is on anachronism. It may be old-fashioned but I was taught that thought is words, arranged in grammatically precise ways. 13. We are going the wrong way about all this, Everyone must draw lots. This isn’t the last draw we shall have, and picture to yourselves what it will be like in this cell if we have a privileged class-the ones who are left to the end. The rest of you will soon begin to hate us. 14. Chavel was filled with a huge and shameful joy. It seemed to him that already he was saved-twenty nine men to draw and only two marked papers left. The chances had suddenly grown in his favor from ten to-fourteen to one; the greengrocer had drawn a slip and indicated carelessly

and without pleasure that he was safe. Indeed from the first draw any mark of pleasure was taboo: One couldn’t mock the condemned man by any sign of relief. 15. What a bundle of contradictions is a man! Surely, humor is the saving grace of us, for without it we should die of vexation, with me nothing illustrates the contrariness of things better than the matter of sleep. If, for example, my intention is to write an essay, and I have before me ink and pens and several sheets of virgin paper, you may depend upon it that before I have gone very far I feel an overpowering desire for sleep, no matter what time of the day it is. 16. Discussing the question, some time ago, with an old friend she gave me her never-failing remedy for sleeplessness, which was to imagine herself performing some trivial action over and over again until, her mind becoming disgusted with the monotony of life, sleep drew the curtain. Her favourite device was to imagine a picture not hanging quite plumb upon the wall, and then to proceed to straighten it. 17 I give all this background information because I do not think one can assess a writer’s motives without knowing something of his early development. His subject matter will be determined by the age he lives in-at least this is true in tumultuous, revolutionary ages like our own-but before he ever begins to write he will have acquired an emotional attitude from which he will never completely escape. 18. Work therefore is desirable, first and foremost, as a preventive of boredom for the boredom that a man feels when he is doing necessary though uninteresting work is as nothing in comparison with the boredom that he feels when he has nothing to do with his days. With this advantage of work another is associated, namely that it makes holidays much more delicious when they come provided a man does not have to work so hard as to impair his vigor, he is likely to find far more zest in his free time than an idle man could possibly find. 19. perhaps it would be more correct to say that those who find satisfaction in construction find in it greater satisfaction than the lovers of destruction can find in destruction, for if once you have become filled with hate you will not easily derive from construction the pleasure which another man would derive from it. 20. The investigation was not staged so that veterans could spill out their hearts or purge their souls; It was done to prove that the policy of the United States in Indochina is tantamount to genocide, and that not only the soldiers are responsible for what is happening, but that everyone here in America who has allowed the brutalization and depersonalization to go on is responsible. 21. But the press isn’t the only party in this country that’s guilty of this rampant insensitivity. When I went to the chairman of the board of a large New York--based firm and asked him for money to help us get transcripts of the testimony to present to each member of congress so that we

can press our demands for open hearings, I was told in seriousness: ―I don’t think you can market war crimes-It’s a marketing question, you know?‖ 24. Our anger goes beyond the simple policy matters. It goes into the fact that all the things we were told about Vietnam we found untrue when we got there. We found that too often American men were dying in those rice paddies from want of support from our so-called allies. We saw first hand the money-your taxes-squandered by a corrupt dictatorial regime. 25. Her skin was a rich black that would have peeled like a plum if snagged, but then no one would have thought of getting close enough to Mrs. Flowers to ruffle her dress, let alone snag her skin. She didn’t encourage familiarity. She wore gloves too. 26. As I ate she began the first of what we later called my lesson in living she said that I must always be intolerant of ignorance but understanding of illiteracy. That some people, unable to go to school were more educated and even more intelligent than college professors. She encouraged me to listen carefully to what country people called mother wit. That in those homely sayings was couched the collective wisdom of generations. 27. literacy may not be an in alienable human right, but it is one that the highly literate Founding Fathers might not have found unreasonable or even unattainable. We are not only not attaining it as a nation, statistically speaking, but we are falling further and further short of attaining it. And, while I would not be so simplistic as to suggest that television is the the cause. I believe it contributes and is an influence. 28. The mayor began to undo his watch: the discovery that his rival was safe seemed to confirm his belief that as the owner of time he was bound to be the next victim. He looked from face to face and choose charel, perhaps because he was the only man with a waistcoat fit to take the chain. 29. To share a bedroom with one of these fellows is to lose one’s faith in human nature, for, even after the most eventful day, there is no comparing notes with them, no midnight confidence, no casting up the balance of the day’s pleasure and pain. They sink, at once, into stupid, heavy slumber, leaving you to your own mental devices. And they all snore abominably! 30. What I have most wanted to do throughout the past ten years is to make political writing into an art. My starting point is always a feeling of partisanship, a sense of injustice. When I sit down to write a book I do not say to myself, ―I am going to produce a work of art‖ I write it because there is some lie that I want to expose, some fact to which I want to draw attention, and my initial concern is to get a hearing. 31. Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can

neither resist nor understand. For all one knows that demon is simply the same instinct that makes a baby squall for attention. And yet it is also true that one can write nothing readable unless one constantly struggles to efface one’s own personality. 32. There are in work all grades, from mere relief of tedium up to the profoundest delights, according to the nature of the work and the abilities of the worker. Most of the work that most people have to do is not in itself interesting, but even such work has certain great advantages, To begin with, it fills a good many hours of the day without the need of deciding what one shall do. 33. But we’re angry because of statements like the one Vice President Agnew made when he spoke at west point in 1970. He spoke of how some people glamorize the criminal misfits of society while the best men die in Asian rice paddies to preserve the freedoms that those misfits abuse. Support the boys in Vietnam. But for us, those boys in Vietnam whom the country is supposed to support, this is a terrible distortion from which we draw only the deepest revulsion. 34. We are different, and we take pride in that. We have forty-one lawyers, so we are small compared with other firms. We don’t hire too many people; about one every other year. We offer the highest salary and fringes in the country, and I’m not exaggerating. So we are very selective. We selected you. The letter you received last month was sent after we screened over two thousand third-year students at the best schools. Only one letter was sent. 35.The fact is significant. To what is it due? In part, I suppose, to a general increase in prosperity. The rich have always cultivated their personal appearance. The diffusion of wealth-such as it is –now permits those of the poor who are less badly off than their fathers to do the same. 36.The senior partner studied the resume for the hundredth time and again found nothing he disliked about Mitchell Y.MC Deere, at least not on paper. He had the brains, the ambition, the good looks, And he was hungry, with his background , he had to be. He was married, and that was mandatory. The firm also frowned heavily on divorce, as well as womanizing and drinking. Drug testing was in the contract. He had a degree in accounting and wanted to be a tax lawyer, which was of course a requirement with a tax firm. 37. They are always on trial, always on the verge of failure, collectively and individually. They strain, even the most secure and self-assured of them to look good on paper; and there is much paper for them to look good on. Each week, for example, a record of the sales results of the preceding week for each sales office and for the sales Department as a whole for each division of the company is kept and compared to the sales results for the corresponding week of the year before. 38. When salesmen are doing well, there is pressure upon them to begin doing better, for fear

they may start doing worse. When they are doing poorly, they are doing terribly. When a salesman lands a large order or brings in an important new account, his elation is brief, for there is danger he might lose that large order or important new account to a salesman from a competing company the next time around. 39. Most of the information we use now is obtained free from trade associations and some governmental organizations, and there is no way of knowing anymore whether the information on which we base our own information for distribution is true or false. 40. I am very good at these techniques of deception, although I am not always able anymore to deceive myself, in fact I am continuously astonished by people in the company who fall victim to their own propaganda. There are so many now who actually believe that what we do is really important. 41. Actually, I enjoy my work when the assignments are large and urgent and somewhat frightening and will come to the attention of many people, I get scared, and am unable to sleep at night, but I usually perform at my best under his stimulating kind of pressure and enjoy my job the most. 42. Actually, I enjoy my work when the assignments are large and urgent and somewhat frightening and will come to the attention of many people, I get scared, and am unable to sleep at night, but I usually perform at my best under this stimulating kind of pressure and enjoy my job the most. I handle all of these important projects myself, and I rejoice with tremendous pride and vanity in the compliments I receive when I do them well. But between such peaks of challenge and elation there is monotony and despair. 43.She was about to explore another life with Frank. Frank was very kind, manly, open-hearted. She was to go away with him by the night-boat to be his wife and to live with him in Buenos Ayres, where he had a home waiting for her. How well she remembered the first time she had seen him; he was lodging in a house on the main road where she used to visit. It seemed a few weeks ago. He was standing at the gate, his peaked cap pushed back on his head and his hair tumbled forward over a face of bronze. 44. The fact is that although network television still allots too little time to the vital service of informing the public, it does a better job in that little time than the nation’s press as a whole. And when I speak of the nation’s press as a whole, I’m not speaking of the five or six splendid newspapers-and the one great newspaper-which serve the world as models of responsible public information . 45. Television lives on advertising to an even greater extent than newspapers, and since advertising is big business, advertising is by nature Republican yet nowhere in network newscasts

or network commentaries on current events have I encountered the intense partisanship, the often rabid bias that colors the editorial pages of the majority of newspaper in this country. 46. It is easier to print wire services dispatches than have a reporter on the beat. It is easier to buy syndicated columns than find-and train-local talent. It’s easier to let the ads dictate the format than develop a format that elevates news above dogfood. It is easier to write editorial copy that appeals to emotion rather than reason. 47. The process of aging and eventual death must ultimately be accepted as the natural progression of the life cycle, the old completing their prescribed life spans and making way for the young, Much that is unique in old age n fact derives from the reality of aging and the imminence of death. 48. The American dream promised older people that if they worked hard enough all their lives, things would turn out well for them. Today’s elderly were brought up to believe in pride, self-reliance and independence, Many are tough, determined individuals who manage to survive against adversity. But even the tough ones reach a point where help should be available to them. 49. Women have an average life expectancy of seven years longer than men and tend to marry men older than themselves; so two-thirds of all older women are widows. When widowed they do not have the same social prerogatives as older men to date and marry those who are younger. As a result, they are likely to end up alone –an ironic turn of events when one remembers that most of them were raised from childhood to consider marriage the only acceptable state. 50.She moved from that chair to this one over here, and just sat there with her hands held together and looking down. I got a feeling that I ought to make some conversation, so I said I had come in to see if John wanted to put in a telephone, and at that she started to laugh, and then she stopped and looked at me –scared. 51.The sheriff follows the county attorney into the other room. Then Mrs. Hale rises, hands tight together, looking intensely at Mrs. Peters ,whose eyes make a slow turn, finally meeting Mrs. Hale’s. A moment Mrs. Hale holds her ,then her own eyes point the way to where the box is concealed. Suddenly Mrs. Peters throws back quilt pieces and tries to put the box in the bay she is wearing. 52.When with a sudden injection of saxophones, the tempo quickened, he spun her out carefully, keeping the beat with his shoulders. Her hair brushed his lips as she minced in, then swung away, to the end of his arm: he could feel her toes dig into carpet. He flipped his own hair back from his eyes. The music ate through his skin and mixed with the nerves and small veins; he seemed to be great again. 53. limitations also came into the cheese business. There are American duplications of most of

the celebrated European cheeses, mass-produced and cheaper by far than the imports. They would cause European food-lovers to gag and guffaw-but generally. The imitations are all that’s available in the supermarkets. People buy them and eat them. . Homes and restaurants do what they can with this stuff-which my mother-in-law would discard on the spot. I have long thought that the famed blindfold test for cigarettes should be applied to city vegetables. For I am sure that if you pureed them blindfold, you couldn’t tell the beans from the peas, the turnips from the squash. 55. It’s only lately that I have found how much science of genetics is involved. Agronomists and the like have taken to breeding all sorts of vegetables and fruits-changing their original nature. This sounds wonderful and often is insane. For the scientists have not as a rule taken any interest whatsoever in the taste of the things they’ve tampered with. 56. Rumors spread quickly that I was a FBI agent. I was suspect because I was not supposed to return. Some people said I was suspect because I was not supposed to return. Some people said I was either a federal agent or a fool, for no reasonable man, they said, returns to watts by choice. 57. News of Harlem rioting jolted the multi-national student community there, The typical European response was unlike anything had seen before. They had no homes or business to worry about protecting. They wanted to know why Negroes did not riot more often. As the only Negro in the summer session I felt awkward for a time. I was being asked questions about the black man in America that no one had ever asked me before. I was embarrassed because I did mot have any answers. 58.I suspected at the time and now realize that the riots were perhaps the most significant massive action taken by Northern Negroes. It was a watershed in the ghetto’s history. Before the riots, the reach of the Negro movement in America seemed within the province of a small civil rights leadership, now watts, and places like watts, were redefining the role of black men in their city’s life. 59. Operationally excellent companies deliver a combination of quality, price, and ease of purchase that no one else in their market can match. They are not product or service innovators, nor do they cultivate one-to-one relationships with customers. They execute extraordinarily well, and their proposition to customers is guaranteed low price or hassle-free service, or both. 60. Product leaders have a vested interest in protecting the entrepreneurial environment that they have created. To that end, they hire, recruit, and train employees in their own mold. When it is time for Vistakon to hire new sales people, for example, its mangers do not look for people experienced in selling contact lenses; they look for people who will fit in with J&J’s culture. That means their first question isn’t about a candidate’s related experience; it’s more likely to be,

―could you work cooperatively in teams?‖

61. A Company that delivers value via customer intimacy builds bonds with customers like those between good neighbors. Customer-intimate companies don’t deliver what the market wants but what a specific customer wants. The customer-intimate company makes a business of knowing the people it sells to and the products and services they need. It continually tailors its products and services and does so at reasonable prices. 62.Red Indians, while they were still unaffected by white men, would smoke their pipes, not calmly as we do, but orgiastically, inhaling so deeply that they sank into a faint. And when excitement would stir them up to attack a neighboring tribe, which would give them all the enjoyment that we (according to our temperament), derive from a horse race or a General Election. 63.Downtown, she parked her car in a garage. Everything was getting ready for this moment. She did not carry the flowers in her car but she carried them in her heart. Now she was going to find out whether it was death or life. Either she could tolerate. .Modernity-snobbery, though not exclusive to our age， has come to assume an unprecedented importance. The reasons for this are simple and of a strictly economic character. Thanks to modern machinery, production is outrunning consumption. Organized waste among consumers is the first condition of our Industrial prosperity. The sooner a consumer throws away the object he has bought and buys another, the better for the producer. 65. Another solitary man was fishing further along the canal, but Auther knew that they would leave each other in peace, would not even call out greetings. No one bothered you: you were a hunter, a dreamer, your own boss, away from it all for a few hours on any day that the weather did not throw down its rain. Like the corporal in the army who said it was marvelous the things you thought about as you sat on the lavatory. 66. Another solitary man was fishing further along the canal, but Auther knew that they would leave each other in peace, would not even call out greetings. No one bothered you: you were a hunter, a dreamer, your own boss, away from it all for a few hours on any day that the weather did not throw down its rain. Like the corporal in the army who said it was marvelous the things you thought about as you sat on the lavatory. Even better than that, it was marvelous the things that came to you in the tranquility of fishing. 67.And Americans ought to note that, however things may seem to be falling apart, arts and the humane scholarship are flourishing here. I am not suggesting that writers and artists have the task of finding a solution to the American mess but they can at least clarify its nature and show how it relates to the human condition in general.

68.She frowned, conscientiously worrying over what amusements he might secretly be longing for which she had been too busy or too careless to imagine. He was very familiar with that anxious, apologetic smile. Contrition sent him running after her.