发布时间 : 星期三 文章英语4课后习题答案及课文讲解翻译更新完毕开始阅读50968c9d49649b6648d74765
托尼离开搁脚凳和旁边几个人说话。记住：索尔兹伯里酒吧是在市中心，这里所有的顾客都在银行、保险或证券市场工作。第二天，他拿着几张价值共2 万英镑的支票来到酒吧，他对我说：―这是给你的创业贷款，你唯一的贷款担保是我对你的信任，相信有一天你赚了钱会把钱还给我们。如果你还不了钱，那就太糟了，金融生意就是这样。但是，我相信你还得了。‖
我没说话，我怕我自己要哭了。世上这么好的人能有几个？ 那些花怎么处理？我叫花店改送到妈妈那里去了，我生日那天鲜花正好送到她家。她最该得到这些鲜花，不是吗？
依我看，回顾这些年的经历，我发现人一辈子只需要一两次的转折就能成功。就算吃苦受累也不要紧，那还是值得的。
在索尔兹伯里酒吧干了一年之后，我去了伦敦经济学院深造。拿到硕士学位之后，我在一家投资银行找到了一份工作。我把那两万英镑投进了证券市场，在2008 年金融崩盘之前卖掉了所有的股票。
我把托尼和其他投资者的钱还了，付给他们10% 的年息，并成立了自己的公司。公司的生意好得超乎意料，至今还红红火火。托尼给我写了一封感谢信。他出了车祸，现在不能走路了。我还给他的钱正好可以用来改造房子，房子改造后他就可以坐着轮椅在家里自由活动了。下面是他信里写的话：―我从事银行业35 年来最好的投资就是给你的这笔贷款，你连本带利地偿还了贷款，我对你的信任和你的诚实都获得了百倍的回报。依我看，在人身上投资能带来你最希望看到的回报。‖
依我看，他说得对。你说呢？
Unit 2
Active reading (1)
Danger! Books may change your life Culture points
Lewis Carroll (1832–1898) is the pen-name of Charles Dodgson. He was a priest, a mathematician who
taught at Oxford University, a photographer, humorist and writer of children‘s literature. Alice’s Adventures
in Wonderland (1865) was immediately successful, a masterpiece which revolutionized children‘s literature,
giving coherence and logic through wit and humour to unlikely or impossible episodes in which imaginary
creatures embody recognizable human characteristics. He is also known for Through the Looking Glass and
what Alice found there (1871) and nonsense poems, such as The Hunting of the Snark (1876). William Cowper (1731–1800): a notable English poet, writer of hymns and letter-writer. He wrote gentle,
pious, direct poems about everyday rural life and scenes of the countryside which have been seen as
forerunners of the Romantic movement: Coleridge called Cowper ―the best modern poet‖. He translated
Homer‘s Greek epics. The Odyssey and The Iliad into English. Another example of his verses
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which have
become common sayings is ―God moves in mysterious ways, His wonders to perform…‖
John Steinbeck (1902–1968): American novelist who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962.
The Grapes of Wrath (1939) is a well-known, long tragic novel about an American family of farmers who are
driven off their land in Oklahoma by soil erosion in the famous ―dust bowl‖ era. They flee to California to
what they hope will be a better life. The book won the Pulitzer Prize and was made into a film in 1940. Other
well-known novels include Of Mice and Men (1937), Cannery Row (1945), The Pearl (1947), East of Eden
(1952) and an account of a personal rediscovery of America, Travels with Charlie (1962).
John Irving (1942– ): American novelist and screenwriter who taught English at college and was a wrestling
coach. The Fourth Hand (2001) is a comic-satirical novel about a TV journalist, Wallington, whose hand is
seen by millions of viewers to be bitten off by a circus lion. A surgeon gives him a hand transplant (a third
hand) but the wife of the dead donor wants to visit her husband‘s hand and have a child by Wallington, who
feels where his original hand used to be (the fourth hand).
Audrey Niffenegger (1963– ): American college professor who teaches writing to visual artists and shows
students how to make books by hand. Her first novel, The Time Traveller’s Wife (2003) – filmed in 2009 – is a
science fiction and romance bestseller about a man who travels uncontrollably in time to his own history and
visits his wife in her childhood, youth and old age. His wife needs to cope with his absences and dangerous
life while he travels. The story is a metaphor for distance and miscommunication in failed relationships.
Paul Torday (1946– ): a British businessman who worked for a company that repaired ship‘s engines for
many years. Salmon Fishing in the Yemen (2007) was his first novel. It is a political satire and comedy about
a dull civil servant who becomes involved in a plan to populate the desert with Scottish salmon. Politicians
manage the media to ―spin‖ this as a plan they support in order to divert attention from problems in the
Middle East. There are themes of cynicism and belief, and East-West culture clashes.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008): a Russian writer who was imprisoned in Soviet labour camps in
1945; after eight years, he was exiled to Kazakhstan and not freed until 1956, when he became a
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teacher.
In 1970 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature but not receive it until 1974. He went to Germany,
Switzerland and the USA, returning to Russia in 1994. His best known novels were based on his experiences
as a prisoner and include: One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962), Cancer Ward (1968), The Gulag
Archipelago (1974–1978). His later works were about Russian history and identity.
Graham Greene (1904–1991): a British novelist, short-story writer, playwright, travel writer and essayist.
He wrote a number of thrillers (he called them ?entertainments‘) which dramatize an ambiguous moral
dilemma, often revealing guilt, treachery, failure and a theme of pursuit. Greene was also a film critic and
all of these novels have been made into films: Brighton Rock (1938), The Power and the Glory (1940),
The Heart of the Matter (1948), The Third Man (1950), The Quiet American (1955), and Our Man in
Havana (1958).
E. M. Forster (1879–1970): a British novelist and writer of short stories and essays. He lived at different
periods in Italy, Egypt and India and taught at Cambridge University. His best known novels include A Room
with a View (1908), Howard’s End (1910), A Passage to India (1924) which have all been made into films.
His writing about reading and writing includes a book of lectures, Aspects of the Novel (1927). Thomas Merton (1915–1968): an American Catholic writer, who was a Trappist monk in Kentucky. He
wrote over 70 books, including many essays about Buddhism and a translation into English of the Chinese
classic, Chuang Tse. He had a great deal to say about the meeting of Eastern and Western cultures and wrote
many letters to writers, poets, scholars and thinkers. He read a lot in English, Latin, French and Spanish and
said he always had at least three books which he was reading at any one time.
William Blake (1757–1827): a British poet, artist and mystic, who read widely in English, French, Italian,
Latin, Greek and Hebrew. He made many engravings to illustrate the work of such writers as Virgil, Dante
and Chaucer, as well as his own poems. He stressed that imagination was more important than rationalism
and the materialism of the 18th century and criticized the effects of the industrial revolution in England, but
his work was largely disregarded by his peers. He is best known for his poetry in Songs of
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Innocence (1787)
and Songs of Experience (1794). His belief in the oneness of all created things is shown in his much-quoted
verse, ―To see the world in a grain of sand / And a heaven in a flower, / Hold infinity in the palm of your
hand / And eternity in an hour.‖
Clifton Fadiman (1904–1999): an American writer, radio and TV broadcaster and editor of anthologies. For
over 50 years he was an editor and judge for the Book-of-the-Month Club. In 1960 he wrote a popular guide
to great books for American readers, The Lifetime Reading Plan, which discusses 133 authors and their major
work: the 1997 edition includes 9 authors from China.
J. K. Rowling (1965–): British writer of the seven Harry Potter fantasy books. She studied French and
Classics at Exeter University, before teaching English in Portugal and training to teach French in Scotland.
The main idea about a school for wizards and the orphan Harry Potter came on a delayed train journey
from Manchester to London in 1990. She began to write as soon as she reached London. Twelve publishersrejected the first book before Bloomsbury, a small London publisher, agreed to publish it. Later books have
repeatedly broken all the sales records (as have some of the films). She is one of the richest women in the UK
and a notable supporter of many charities. Language points
1 Variety?s the very spice of life, / That gives it all its flavour … (Para 2)
Spices are made from plants and added to food to give it its particular flavour or taste. The English proverb
―Variety is the spice of life‖ (the proverb comes from Cowper‘s poem) therefore means that variety gives
life extra value and allows you to appreciate life in particular ways.
2 We learn to look beyond our immediate surroundings to the horizon and a landscape far away from home. (Para 3)
This means that through reading we learn to look beyond our immediate experience or familiar environment to things beyond our immediate experience, ie to completely different things that we can
imagine and experience through books.
3 When a baseball player hits a home run he hits the ball so hard and so far he?s able to run round the
four bases of the diamond, and score points not only for himself but for the other runners already
on a base. (Para 9)
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