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北京外国语大学
2002 年硕士研究生入学考试
基础英语试题
I. Reading Comprehension
This section contains two passages. Read each passage and then answer the questions given at
the end of the passage.
Passage One
Just before Sept. 11 changed storytelling in America forever, my Hollywood agent explained
that my new novel was doomed in movieland because it lacked sufficient “explosive moments.”
Given this, the fact that the Defense Department is currently consulting with Hollywood
scriptwriters and producers to help U.S. generals “think outside the box” is beyond comprehension.
Hollywood storytellers invented the box. They worship the box. They have spent their lives
mass-producing the box.
As American movie geniuses scramble to reinvent their formula and edit out scenes that
might offend post-Sept. 11 sensibilities. I feel a wonderful release. The box is dead. The tyranny
of Hollywood has temporarily abated. What will fill this storytelling vacuum has yet to be seen,
but my bet is that the appetite for stories that explore violence and mayhem, rather than exploiting
them, will have an even broader appeal.
Although the body count is traditionally high in my genre, the best thrillers and crime novels
have never been about thrills or crime. They are about the often subtle, often banal inner workings
of evil, and about the many shapes of heroism－those impossible struggles of the individual
challenged by forces that threaten his soul more than his body.
Certainly, some of the landscape of popular fiction is changed. Stock characters that have
been so reliable in their ability to scare us silly－serial killers, stalkers, hit men, mob bosses,
psychopathic cannibals－wither and turn to dust in the face of the far more potent forms of evil
we have encountered.
Real-life heroes reshape standards for bravery. Who has not tested his imagination by
banding together with strangers on that doomed plane, throwing together a hasty plan, then
storming down the narrow aisle to tackle a group of razor-wielding thugs? Who hasn’t imagined
himself pushing upward into those smoke-darkened hallways as choking civilians rush out of
harm’s way, while all around us a faint rumble rises?
Thriller writers grapple with the devilish distinction between revenge and justice, and show
violence and bravery in their starkest forms. Books like Huckleberry Finn, Moby-Dick and A
Farewell to Arms share the gritty sensibility and brutally honest portraits of violence that
distinguish the modern thriller.
Since Sept. 11, my Hollywood agent has changed her tune. Now the reason my book will
never be made into a film is that the one explosive moment it did contain is a scene portraying an
airliner brought down by terrorists. In a book written over a year ago, I’ve broken a brand new
taboo. I get no points for prescience and want none. My barometer was twitching: that’s all I can
say. I write about what scares me.
And these days everywhere I look, I see material.
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