新视野大学英语第二版第四册读写教程课文原文.doc

1、Unit1Para1 An artist who seeks fame is like a dog chasing his own tail who, when he captures it, does not know what else to do but to continue chasing it.The cruelty of success is that it often leads those who seek such success to participate in their own destruction.Para2 Dont quit your day job! is

2、 advice frequently given by understandably pessimistic family members and friends to a budding artist who is trying hard to succeed. The conquest of fame is difficult at best, and many end up emotionally if not financially bankrupt. Still, impure motives such as the desire for worshipping fans and p

3、raise from peers may spur the artist on. The lure of drowning in fames imperial glory is not easily resisted.Para3 Those who gain fame most often gain it as a result of exploiting their talent for singing, dancing, painting, or writing, etc. They develop a style that agents market aggressively to ha

4、stenpopularity, and their ride on the express elevator to the top is a blur. Most would be hard-pressed to tell you how they even got there. Artists cannot remain idle, though. When the performer, painter or writer becomes bored, their work begins to show a lack of continuity in its appeal and it be

5、comes difficult to sustain the attention of the public. After their enthusiasm has dissolved, the public simply moves on to the next flavor of the month. Artists who do attempt to remain current by making even minute changes to their style of writing, dancing or singing, run a significant risk of lo

6、sing the audiences favor. The public simply discounts styles other than those for which the artist has become famous.Para4 Famous authors styles a Tennessee Williams play or a plot by Ernest Hemingway or a poem by Robert Frost or T.S. Eliotare easily recognizable.The same is true of painters like Mo

7、net, Renoir, or Dali and moviemakers like Hitchcock, Fellini, Spielberg, Chen Kaige or Zhang Yimou. Their distinct styles marked a significant change in form from others and gained them fame and fortune. However, they paid for it by giving up the freedom to express themselves with other styles or fo

8、rms.Para5 Fames spotlight can be hotter than a tropical junglea fraud is quickly exposed, and the pressure of so much attention is too much for most to endure.It takes you out of yourself: You must be what the public thinks you are, not what you really are or could be. The performer, like the politi

9、cian, must often please his or her audiences by saying things he or she does not mean or fully believe.Para6 One drop of fame will likely contaminate the entire well of a mans soul, and so an artist who remains true to himself or herself is particularly amazing. You would be hard-pressed to underlin

10、e many names of those who have not compromised and still succeeded in the fame game. An example, the famous Irish writer Oscar Wilde, known for his uncompromising behavior, both social and sexual, to which the public objected, paid heavily for remaining true to himself. The mother of a young man Osc

11、ar was intimate with accused him at a banquet in front of his friends and fans of sexually influencing her son. Extremely angered by her remarks, he sued the young mans mother, asserting that she had damaged his good name. He should have hired a better attorney, though. The judge did not second Wild

12、es call to have the woman pay for damaging his name, and instead fined Wilde. He ended up in jail after refusing to pay, and evenworse, was permanently expelled from the wider circle of public favor. When things were at their worst, he found that no one was willing to risk his or her name in his def

13、ense. His price for remaining true to himself was to be left alone when he needed his fans the most.Para7 Curiously enough, it is those who fail that reap the greatest reward: freedom! They enjoy the freedom to express themselves in unique and original ways without fear of losing the support of fans

14、. Failed artists may find comfort in knowing that many great artists never found fame until well after they had passed away or in knowing that they did not sell out. They may justify their failure by convincing themselves their genius is too sophisticated for contemporary audiences.Para8 Single-mind

15、ed artists who continue their quest for fame even after failure might also like to know that failure has motivated some famous people to work even harder to succeed. Thomas Wolfe, the American novelist, had his first novel Look Homeward, Angel rejected 39 times before it was finally published. Beeth

16、oven overcame his father, who did not believe that he had any potential as a musician, to become the greatest musician the world. And Pestalozzi, the famous Swiss educator in the 19th century, failed at every job he ever had until he came upon the idea of teaching children and developing the fundame

17、ntal theories to produce a new form of education. Thomas Edison was thrown out of school in the fourth grade, because he seemed to his teacher to be quite dull. Unfortunately for most people, however, failure is the end of their struggle, not the beginning.Para9 I say to those who desperately seek f

18、ame and fortune: good luck. But alas, you may find that it was not what you wanted. The dog who catches his tail discovers that it is only a tail. The person who achieves success often discovers that it does more harm than good. So instead of trying so hard to achieve success, try to be happy with w

19、ho you are and what you do. Try to do work that you can be proud of. Maybe you wont be famous in your own lifetime, but you may create better art.Unit2Para1 He was born in a poor area of South London. He wore his mothers old red stockings cut down for ankle socks. His mother was temporarily declared

20、 mad.Dickens might have created Charlie Chaplins childhood. But only Charlie Chaplin could have created the great comic character of the Tramp, the little man in rags who gave his creator permanent fame.Para2 Other countriesFrance, Italy, Spain, even Japanhave provided more applause (and profit) whe

21、re Chaplin is concerned than the land of his birth.Chaplin quit Britain for good in 1913 when he journeyed to America with a group of performers to do his comedy act on the stage, where talent scouts recruited him to work for Mack Sennett, the king of Hollywood comedy films.Para3 Sad to say, many En

22、glish people in the 1920s and 1930s thought Chaplins Tramp a bit, well, crude. Certainly middle-class audiences did; the working-class audiences were more likely to clap for a character who revolted against authority, using his wicked little cane to trip it up, or aiming the heel of his boot for a w

23、ell-placed kick at its broad rear. All the same, Chaplins comic beggar didnt seem all that English or even working-class. English tramps didnt sport tiny moustaches, huge pants or tail coats: European leaders and Italian waiters wore things like that. Then again, the Tramps quick eye for a pretty gi

24、rl had a coarse way about it that was considered, well, not quite nice by English audiencesthats how foreigners behaved, wasnt it? But for over half of his screen career, Chaplin had no screen voice to confirm his British nationality.Para4 Indeed, it was a headache for Chaplin when he could no longe

25、r resist the talking movies and had to find the right voice for his Tramp. He postponed that day as long as possible: In Modern Times in 1936, the first film in which he was heard as a singing waiter, he made up a nonsense language which sounded like no known nationality. He later said he imagined t

26、he Tramp to be a college-educated gentleman whod come down in the world. But if hed been able to speak with an educated accent in those early short comedies, its doubtful if he would have achieved world fame. And the English would have been sure to find it odd. No one was certain whether Chaplin did

27、 it on purpose but this helped to bring about his huge success.Para5 He was an immensely talented man, determined to a degree unusual even in the ranks of Hollywood stars. His huge fame gave him the freedomand, more importantly, the moneyto be his own master. He already had the urge to explore and e

28、xtend a talent he discovered in himself as he went along. It cant be me. Is that possible? How extraordinary, is how he greeted the first sight of himself as the Tramp on the screen.Para6 But that shock roused his imagination. Chaplin didnt have his jokes written into a script in advance; he was the

29、 kind of comic who used his physical senses to invent his art as he went along. Lifeless objects especially helped Chaplin make contact with himself as an artist. He turned them into other kinds of objects. Thus, a broken alarm clock in the movie The Pawnbroker became a sick patient undergoing surge

30、ry; boots were boiled in his film The Gold Rush and their soles eaten with salt and pepper like prime cuts of fish (the nails being removed like fish bones). This physical transformation, plus the skill with which he executed it again and again, is surely the secret of Chaplins great comedy.Para7 He

31、 also had a deep need to be lovedand a corresponding fear of being betrayed. The two were hard to combine and sometimesas in his early marriagesthe collision between them resulted in disaster. Yet even this painfully-bought self-knowledge found its way into his comic creations. The Tramp never loses

32、 his faith in the flower girl wholl be waiting to walk into the sunset with him; while the other side of Chaplin makes Monsieur Verdoux, the French wife killer, into a symbol of hatred for women.Para8 Its a relief to know that life eventually gave Charlie Chaplin the stability and happiness it had earlier denied him. In Oona ONeill Chaplin, he found a partner whose stability and affection spanned the 37 years age difference between them, which had seemed so threatening, that when the official who was marrying them in 1942 turned to the beautiful girl of 17 who