单选题Through many years of evolution, your body has learned bow to respond to stress basing on its instinct for survival.
单选题The speaker was very much ______ by rude words and behavior of the audience in the hall.
单选题It is understandable that though adolescent maturational and developmental states occur in an orderly sequence, their timing ______ with regard to onset and duration.
单选题After all, the candidate was {{U}}endorsed{{/U}} by the governor's board and many of the local party members.
单选题John is reluctant to take the final step to solve this problem, because he knows clearly that it means the
irrevocable
breaking with best friend.
单选题what lies in pieces around them represents, in effect, a unique private exhibition open to a lucky few. A. in short B. in particular C. in fact D. in turn
单选题I regret to have not paid more attention to our English lessons at school.
单选题The accuracy of scientific observation and calculations is always {{U}}at the mercy of{{/U}} the scientist's timekeeping methods.
单选题Construction is expanding all over China, no doubt many materials will be needed at a very big amount in future.
单选题The self-important cant of musicologist on record jackets often suggests that true appreciation of the music is an ______ process closed to the uninitiated listener, however enthusiastic.
单选题Even by the standard of genius, Vladimir Nabokov"s work habits were odd.
He wrote much of
Lolita
in the backseat of the family car, a black 1946 Oldsmobile. (He said it was the only spot in America where he wasn"t plagued by noise and drafts.) He didn"t use regular paper. Instead he wrote in pencil on index cards, which his wife Vera later typed up for him.
Nabokov spent his last years in a grand hotel in Montreux, Switzerland—after
Lolita
he could afford it—working on a novel called
The Original of Laura
. But he died before he could finish it, leaving behind a box of 138 index cards that he instructed Vera to destroy. This she did not do.
Neither did his son Dmitri. Now Dmitri Nabokov has published
The Original of Laura
—what there is of it—in an elegant edition, priced at $ 35, that reproduces each index card on a single page. "Nobokov intended to win his 100-card dash against death but, given the course of events, could not foresee the exact form in which the book would ultimately appear," Dmitri explains in a written interview with TIME. "He was sure, however, that it would appear. He had been working on the novel since 1974 and, when asked in 1976 what three favorite books he was reading and would want to keep, he listed a new translation of Dante"s Inferno, a volume on North American butterflies and
The Original of Laura
. Those are not the words of an author who intends to have that novel burned."
The Original of Laura
is a fragment, or a collection of fragments—"the novel was probably half or one-third "written" in the strictly technical sense," Dmitri says. It is not a series of consecutive chapters. Nobokov liked to attack his subjects on multiple fronts, from all directions, an approach facilitated by his use of index cards. The book begins at a party attended by a woman named Flora. Her husband is not present, and she slips away to an absent-minded tryst with a lover, which Nobokov renders delicately but unsentimentally. "That first surrender of hers was a little sudden, if not downright unnerving. A pause for some light caresses, concealed embarrassment, feigned amusement, prefactory contemplation."
We meet, in due course, the deceived husband as well: "A brilliant neurologist, a renowned lecturer [and] a gentleman of independent means, Dr. Phillip Wild had everything save an attractive exterior." Phillip is older, eccentric and miserly, and he"s less interested in Flora than in a bizarre experiment he"s conducting on himself. As he feels his aging flesh deteriorating, he develops the habit of entering a trance wherein he pictures his body and then mentally erases portions of it; he begins with his toes, which instantly become numb. By this means, he imagines that he is bringing about his own death, piecemeal—seizing control of it and turning it into a volitional act, even an enjoyable one. "The process of dying by auto-dissolution affords the greatest ecstasy known to man," he tells us. The subtitle of
The Original of Laura is Dying Is Fun.
For readers who are devoted to Nabokov (I"m one),
The Original of Laura
affords its own ecstasies. It comes at you as a reprieve, a final appearance from an old friend you thought was already gone for good. It"s a shambles, a heap of shards, but they"re Nabokov"s shards and no one else"s: the "nasty compassion" the partygoers direct at a drunken Flora; the "alien creams" Flora spots in someone else"s bathroom (recalling the "solemn pool of alien urine" deposited by Mr. Taxovich in another bathroom in
Lolita
); the playful half-rhyme of
belie
and
belly
; the perhaps overly wink-winky inclusion of a pedophile named Mr. Hubert H. Hubert; and one lost, evocative phrase off by itself in the upper margin of a card, without a context—"the orange awnings of southern summers."
Flora"s surrender to lazy, loveless sexual pleasure and Phillip"s intensely strange abdication of bodily life together make, or would have made,
The Original of Laura
a melancholy meditation on our fleshly predicament. And what else? The novel"s title refers to a novel-within-a-novel called
My Laura
, about a character based on Flora. This in turn rhymes with Aurora, the name of an early love of Phillip"s who Flora physically resembles, creating a chain of resemblances and echoes that leads us... where?
We"ll never know.
The Original of Laura
is a beautiful ruin, like the
Venus de Milo
, not a novel. To pretend otherwise is wishful thinking, no different from Phillip"s belief that he can master death. At some moments the book seems to anticipate its shattered future—Nabokov compares Flora to "an unwritten, half-written, rewritten difficult book."
That"s part of her appeal and, oddly, part of Laura"s too.
You admire what you can see, and you dream about what you might have seen. (
Time
, December 28, 2009-January 4, 2010)
单选题Although his family is poverty-stricken, he finished his 4-year
university study by his {{U}}perseverance{{/U}} and self-reliance.
A. persistence
B. prudence
C. patience
D. perfection
单选题After long time of hesitation, the woman gave free vent to her pent-up emotion. A.intense B.written C.strong D.confined
单选题Since the shipment consists of seasonable goods, it is important that it is ______ as soon as possible.
单选题After the conference, the participants were scattered into smaller groups to have a free session of talks. A. bee B. donkey C. cow D. bull
单选题I always think of books with unutterable feelings, being deeply indebted to them, as I am, for the warmth they have brought me. A. preferred B. mixed C. profound D. dissatisfied
单选题That seemingly cheerful celebrity had a shy, retiring side to her personality that was completely at odds with her public ______.
单选题Hitler is a monster of wickedness,
greedy
in his lust for blood and plunder.
单选题The senior senator has in the past three terms
both experienced
the sweet taste of success and the bitterness of defeat in his legislation fights with his opponents.
单选题For some people, the light of human attention has an unbearable brilliance. Like ivy along the dim edge of a garden, they prefer the social shadows, shunning parties, publicity and fame of any sort. Then there are the flowers of the human
arboretum
. For them, being in the view of others seems necessary for life itself. From Hollywood to fabricated prime-time reality, this spotlight-de-pendent species is thriving.
But what about the individuals who crave attention for more desperate reasons? Those who resort to unusual ways to get it? Lately, it seems, a dark bloom of these characters has emerged. For motives known only to themselves, they have won
notoriety
by drawing on an almost sacred well of social status: victim hood.
In early April, US national news outlets tracked the disappearance of Audrey Seiler, a sophomore at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. Police and hundreds of concerned citizens searched for four days before Seiler was discovered. Seiler said she was kidnapped. Within hours, however, her story fell apart. Police announced that her
abduction
had been a hoax. Why would a popular student make herself disappear? Her motive remains a mystery, but perhaps it had something to do with the search parties and the news bulletins that surrounded her.
Sympathy is a powerful sentiment that can connect complete strangers. But if it"s used to manipulate, the backlash can be much more intense.
In February, a Waterbury, Connecticut, man was arrested as a result of exploiting sympathy. Edward Valentin told reporters that he had received word that his wife, serving in Iraq, had been killed in an explosion. Police said Valentin admitted the fabrication, reasoning that if people felt sorry for him maybe the military would send his wife home. Evidence, however, points elsewhere.
In its extreme form, such a craving shows up in mental disorders, where sufferers may seek attention by causing themselves harm. But even when it comes with no diagnosis, a deep craving to be noticed can have a wide impact.
For these individuals, victim hood represents a "pure state of guilt-free entitlement," said psychologist Richard Levak, of Del Mar, California. "They go from being utterly deprived to being
utterly
indulged. In today"s world... people have become more depressed and disconnected from each other. So you get people who crave affection and attention and approval. They don"t know how to ask for it and they don"t know how to get it. That leaves them vulnerable," Levak said.
