研究生基础 英语课文原文
足彩合买-保卫部工作总结
Unit 2Text A
A Wedding Gift
I had
always dreamed of being proposed to in a Parisian
cafe, under dazzling stars,
like the one in a
Van Gogh knockoff that hangs in my studio
apartment. Instead, my
boyfriend asked me to
marry him while I was wandering the bathroom
mirror.
At 40 years old, it was my turn. I had
gracefully stepped aside and watched both my
twin sister and our baby sister take the
matrimonial plunge before me? I had been a
bridesmaid seven times and a maid of honor
three times. 1 had more pastel-colored,
taffeta dresses than a consignment shop.
My fiancé, George, and I are Greek-American,
but we wanted a simple, elegant
affair. No
entourage of bridesmaids and groomsmen. No silly
slideshow revealing details
of our courtship.
This would be an intimate gathering, neither big
nor fat, with 100 or so
guests. In our
families that is intimate.
My job as a
publicist to a monomaniacal orchestra conductor
had just vanished, so I
had lots of time to
devote to my new project. George, who worked 60
hours a week as a
pharmacist, now had a second
job: listening to me whine about the wedding.
After all,
this was my show, and I was the
director.
But the more time and effort 1 put
in, the more the universe tried to thwart me. The
Greek band from Los Angeles that I wanted
wasn't available. The stitching I had
requested for my cathedral veil was all wrong.
My ivory silk gown was being quarantined
somewhere in Singapore. And with our wedding
just a few weeks away, I was annoyed
that most
of my guests were responding after the deadline.
Then I received the call from my mother,
petite and brimming with energy at 68,
who a
few days before had been so thrilled about the
wedding. She’d been to the doctor
for her
annual checkup. Although she felt fine, the
diagnosis was stomach cancer.
Over the next
few days, the question became not kind of
wedding?but
I had thought of it as my Big Day.
I realized that a Big Day without my
mother
would be no day at all. Not having my dad, who
passed away three years before,
to walk me
down the aisle was painful, but the thought of not
having Mom there was
unbearable.
Within a
few days, I moved back home to Seattle from New
York City and
postponed the ceremony. I
switched from navigating wedding plans to
navigating the
health-care system. I had
picked out the song to be played for our first
dance as a husband
and wife, but now 1 was
hard-pressed to remember what it was. My wedding,
like a
dream, was vanishing against the harsh
reality of illness.
Meanwhile, my two sisters
and I, who lived in three different cities, were
united
once again in a hospital waiting room.
My twin sister flew in from Chicago despite being
eight months pregnant. Our baby sister, who'd
been looking after Mom since Dad's death,
was
gripped by fear as the familiar sights and smells
were eerily reminiscent of his final
days.
After consulting with doctors, we learned that
stomach surgery was Mom's only
option. We took
the first opening.
On a drab autumn morning,
as sheets of rain relentlessly poured over
Seattle, Mom
was admitted to the Swedish
Cancer Institute. During a five-hour operation,
surgeons
removed two thirds of her stomach.
Pacing in the waiting room, terrified, I wondered
what the future held for all of us.
George flew out to be with me.
nights he slept on the dank floor in
the hospital waiting area wrapped in a tattered
sheet
with a soiled sofa cushion under his
head. A week after the operation, the surgeon gave
us
his prognosis: cancer has not spread,he
said. Those were some of the loveliest
words
in the English language. George squeezed my hand
as tears trickled down my face.
The weeks
that followed were exhausting. My mother had to
rethink her diet, and I
had to figure out what
to prepare. Decadent Greek meals were replaced by
tiny portions
and lots of protein, which would
help mend the six-inch incision that ran from her
breastbone past her navel. Protein would also
bolster her immune system for the chemo
and
radiation that might follow.
Until then, my
idea of cooking had been microwaving the doggie
bag from the
chi-chi restaurant I'd eaten at
the night before. But after two months, I mastered
poached
eggs and T-bone steaks. What's more,
caring for my Mom made me realize how
consummately she had cared for all of us. I'll
never forget when I went to see her in the
intensive-care unit, just a few hours after
her surgery. She was strung out with a myriad
of plastic tubes protruding from her arms,
nose, and , make sure you eat
something,
Forget Paris. Mom's full recovery was my dream
now.
Recently, she went for a follow-up C-T
scan. As she removed her gold wedding
band for
the exam, her fragile 98-pound frame trembled.
There would be this scan, and
many more. But
the doctor said,Everything looks , my mother will
be
walking me down the aisle. I've forgotten
what kind of stitching is in my veil. But when I
remove it from my face , I’ll be staring at
the two people I love beyond all reason: my
soon-to-be husband and the woman who showed me
what' s really important.
Unit 2 Text B
Wedded Dis
In February，I got engaged to a guy
who I believe to be the most amazing man
alive．I feel so lucky，and I am very much in
love．I cannot wait to be married·
Since I
have been engaged，while I have gotten a lot of
congratulatory wishes from
friends，some
older，more cynical people just won’t let me be. I
have heard the following
comments, knocking me
from my I’m -getting -married -to -the -love -of
-my –life
pedestal:
difficult,
a
horribly sarcastic tone,
looks of sympathy,
and speeches on how terrible my life will be in
about l0 years when I
will apparently hate my
husband. Can't anyone just let me be happy? People
love my
fiancé and no one has ever said that I
am not ready. So why is this such a mistake? Why
do some adults who have had bad experiences
decide to kill my happiness with nasty
remarks
instead of just saying congratulations?
Don’t
get me wrong，I have not allowed my happiness to
overpower my common
sense. I know all about
the struggles of marriage．I know all about the
heartache：that
children can strain a
marriage，that money issues can blow up，that a
couple can lose their
connection，that job
stress can take a toll and that changing and
growing older can aid in
the dissolution of
what once was real love．I know it’s not always
easy or fun，and that it's
not perfect forever.
I saw this firsthand when my parents were
divorced last year. I watched their once
-perfect union fall apart amid
unhappiness, pain, desperation, frustration,
sadness and
anger. Marriage can be a beautiful
journey，but it isn’t for everyone．My mom and dad
are
much happier apart．I thought I wouldn’t
want to be married after living through that until
I met the man of my dreams and he changed my
mind．
My fiancé has incredible parents. They
have been together since they were in high
school, more than 30 years, and they have five
children, crazy work schedules, and the
same
issues as everyone else. But they are an exception
because they are still madly in
love. It's a
breath of fresh air to be with them. I see in them
a love that is different and I
think that I
have that as well. You never know where life will
take you, but I think it is a
dangerous
assumption that a marriage can never work out, or
that it isn't worth a try. It
can last. My
future in-laws are proof that a marriage can
withstand the many potential
catastrophes and
last a lifetime.
My relationship with my
fiancé is not perfect. But it is with him
brings out a better and happier version of
me．He makes me laugh harder than anyone
have
a healthy and wonderful way of communicating. But
most importantly,I
love him without condition.
And he loves me for who I am without judgment,
without
complaining about how messy I am or
getting annoyed at how crazy and neurotic I can
be.
We always put each other first and always
make time for each other no matter how busy
our world gets. He is as excited as I am to
get married, and together we are confident in
our compatibility and our ability to last
forever. We have the example of his parents and
mine,examples to learn from,what mistakes not
to make, and how to create a stable
foundation
that will last beyond the present time．
One
day, I may look back with stale, wrinkled eyes and
see a silly little girl who
didn’t know what
she was talking about. One day my relationship may
not be as
wonderful as it is now. But I am not
going to go into marriage waiting for everything
to
fall apart, I’m not planning ahead for my
divorce or imagining myself as a walking
statistic. When I say ―I do,‖I am saying I
promise to love forever; not ―until this isn’t
perfect and l want out.‖I mean forever.
When I was younger, I dreamed about getting
married. I dressed up in my mom’s
wedding
dress and veil, put on ridiculous amounts of
poorly-placed pink blush, carried a
bouquet of
fake flowers from the vase on the kitchen table
and thought about how
wonderful it would be to
do that for real. I know now that the dream I had
of married life
was a little too optimistic
and hopeful to say the least.
Now I have a
gorgeous wedding dress of my own. I’ll wear it
proudly and say―I do!‖
and dance and eat cake
that costs way too much money. I will enjoy that
one amazing day
with all of my being. But I
know that day will end, and once it’s over, I have
to make
plans for the future, and my husband
and l will have to work hard to reach our mutual
goals．And I’ll try with everything I am to
prove to everyone that we can make it work，
to
make the 6-year-old version of me proud.
So,
for all of you divorced folk out there, or those
of you unhappily married, or
those who are
just plain cynical, I am sorry that you aren’t
crazy in love anymore. I’m
sorry if you never
found someone who makes you catch your breath. But
for now, let me
have my fun, let me back in
the glory of ridiculous, consuming, delicious,
beautiful,
wonderful, once-in-a-lifetime love.
You don't have to tell me what I already know. For
now, just let me be happy.
Unit 3Text A Tracing the
cigarette’s path from sexy to deadly
Unit 3Text B
Marketing to your mind
Unit 5 Text A
Aristotle Got It Right
Well-being, not
just wealth, should mark the progress of our
societies. It is hard to
escape the fact that
in developed societies, despite progress,
innovation and prosperity,
there is nothing
not quite right. In some cases, it is hard for
people to put a finger on it: a
feeling of
emptiness and not belonging, a lack of defined
relationships and solid social
structures. In
other respects, it is really quantifiable:rates of
drug abuse, violent crime and
depression and
suicide are rocketing. Why are we unhappy?It seems
that the
Enlightenment brought forth
unparalleled liberty in economic,social and
political life, but
we are now undergoing a
midlife crisis.
The politics of happiness is
nothing new. In his Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle
said
that eudaimonia, or happiness , is the
goal of life. But for me , the person who brings
the
great conundrum of personal happiness is
Robert Kennedy . In a beautiful1y crafted
speech , he said what
their education, the
joy of their play,on to
our countryour wisdom
and he pointed out that none of
these could
be measured by gross national product.
Nor
could we be surprised by the politics of
happiness. Ask people how they are,
and they
will answer in terms of their family life,
community life and work life, rather
than just
what they are paid.
Despite this , it is a
notoriously difficult subject for politicians to
grasp. One reason
is that happiness and well-
being are generally not well served by statistical
analysis.
Politicians, obsessed with inputs
and outputs , targets and controls, are flummoxed
by
immeasurable concepts such as the value
people place on spending time with their
families. Another reason ,which is related ,
is that electoral cycles lend themselves to a
culture of short-termism, with a need for
immediate, quantifiable measurements and
results.
One such measurement is GDP. In
many ways , increasing this has been the raison
dêtre for many center-right political parties
since the 1980s. Back then, many
developed
economics were in a state of economic malaise,
with persistently high
inflation and
unemployment. We needed something to reverse this
stagnation and put us
back onto the path of
prosperity. Thankfully, we got that.
Today we
need to be just as revolutionary to put us back on
track to social prosperity:
to respond to
that yearning for happiness. That is why I have
been arguing in Britain
that we need to
refocus our energies on GWB—general well-being. It
means recognizing
the social,cultural and
moral factors that give true meaning to our lives.
In particular, it
means focusìng on a
sustainable environment and building stronger
societies. And yes, it
also means recognizing
that there is more to life than money: indeed,
that quality of life
means more than the
quantity of money.
I thìnk the center-right
can be the champions of this cause. The center-
left never
really get the well-being agenda
because they treat indivìduals as units of
account. And
they find it difficult to
understand how it cannot be delivered simply by
the push of a
legislator's pen.
Instead ,
the politics of well-being is a polìtics that
needs to be founded on sharing
responsibility.
of course, government must take its own
responsibilities. But that needs to
be part of
a wider cultural change: a cultural change that
will occurs as a consequence of
legislation, leadership and social
change.
What' s the government's role? It is
to show leadership and set the framework.
Showing leadership means leading the change in
the many areas that impact on
well-being. For
example, everyone would agree that spending more
time with family is
crucial to happiness .
Here governments should be pioneers of flexible
working with
public-sector employees.
Setting the right framework means creating
incentives and removing barriers to
remodel
the context within which the whole of society
makes choices. Take the
environment for
example. Everyone would agree that a cleaner local
environment would
enhance our well-being. By
setting a framework that creates a price for
carbon in our
economy and encourages green
innovation, the government can help people make
the
better choice.
Ultimately, society's
happiness requires us all to play our part.
Indeed, playing our
part is part of being
happy. That is why we need a revolution in
responsibility. Corporate
responsibility means
businesses taking a provocative role, and taking
account of their
employees' lives. Civic
responsibility means giving power back to local
government,
community organizations and social
enterprises so they can formulate local solutions
to
local problems. And personal responsibility
means we all do our bit in cleaning up our
local environment or participating in local
politics.
Neil Browne, professor of economics
at Bowling Green State University, recently
wrote an article:
It is not that markets
are bad or that we are all doomed to a life of
perpetual unhappiness.
Rather, given our
advances in terms of political freedom, economic
enterprise and
cultural ingenuity, life could,
and should, be more satisfying. That is why
focusing on
general well-being could be the
big, defining political concept of the 21st
century. And by
recognizing the responsibility
every section of society has, we also have the
means to
enhance it.
Unit 5 Text B
Finding your true calling
Unit 6 Text A
Give
globalization a hand
Here's a fact worth
reiterating: despite the severe shocks and
imbalances that have
hit it off and on during
the early years of this century, the world economy
continues to
grow, with low inflation. Of
course, performance varies across countries and
continents,
but there are two generalizations
you can make: The already rich countries keep
enjoying
expanding economies, and in the rest
of the world millions of people overcome poverty
every year, thanks to economic growth. Is
there a force underlying this benign evolution
that transcends national borders?Yes. That
force is international economic integration or
globalization, if you wish. The market
economy's capacity to fulfill human needs is being
enhanced to an unprecedented extent by
international trade and investment.
National economies have become increasingly
interdependent, and on the whole
this process
has added scale, flexibility and productivity to
the global
tated by modern transportation and
communications and the elimination
of trade
barriers, specialization - that crucial vehicle of
the market economy--has become
more and more
sophisticated, as shown by the complexity and
efficiency of contemporary
supply chains. In
today's global economy, firms and countries no
longer specialize in the
production of goods
alone but increasingly in the finer tasks that
make up the
manufacturing, commercial and
financial processes, bringing about lower costs,
better
quality and more choices for consumers.
Great Source of Strongth
Globalization is providing the world with not only
greater economic opportunities
but also a
remarkable resilience to events that in the past
would have proven highly
disruptive. If you
considerecent regional wars, terrorism, the
skyrocketing prices of oil
and other
commodities, and the laxity in the fiscal and
monetary policies of some of the
major
economies, you may conclude that it's only through
the globalization of the market
economy that
we've been able to sail through such stormy
waters.
For example, the slack in global
demand created by the sluggishness in the
European and Japanese economies during past
years was more than compensated for by
the
rapid and vigorous globalization of China and
other emerging new'
players have made world
trade more dynamic and enlarged the pool of world
savings
available to nance the substantial
current account deficits2 incurred by the U.S. in
recellt
years. Although of questionable
sustainability and convenience in the medium and
long
term, these deficits have nevertheless
helped to support overall demand and growth in the
short term— without, as yet, shaking
international financial stability. The sharp
increase
in commodity prices over the last
three years has not led to unbearable inflationary
pressure because of the increasing presence of
labor-abundant countries in world markets
and
the rise in productivity brought about by the
intensification of global competition.
Don't
Forget History
Globalization has, in
short, been an incredible force for good in the
world. But
is this force inexhaustible?
Unfortunately, no. Modern globalization has so far
proved
stronger than the forces and events
arrayed against it, but there's no guarantee this
will
always be the case. Just as with any
other economic or social phenomenon, globalization
faces risks that could challenge its growth
or, worse, cause its has happened
before,
most dramatically in 1914, with the outbreak of
World War I, the beginning of the
end of an
extraordinary expansion in international
trade,investment and migration that
had
taken place during most of the 19th and early 20th
centuries.
Historians and economists
increasingly remind us that human folly could once
again cause the unthinkable. The inability to
prevent violent conflict, as well as faulty
policies in the face of economic adversity,
were at the root of the incredible destruction of
life, capital, trade and prosperity suffered
by the pre-baby-boom generations of the 20th
century. The strategies to tackle a new wave
of globalization reversal are no mystery;
they
were learned through hard experience.
The pursuit of progress and security at the global
level starts by every country's
keeping its
house in order, especially those that have a
responsibility to lead by example.
Part of
this includes a country's supporting, in a
rational way, its own people as they adapt
to
the rigors inherent in free and open markets.
Another essential component is
rules-based
international cooperation, particularly when it
comes to containing or
dissipating
geopolitical threats to global stability.
Following World War 2 this concept of cooperation
was embodies in various
institutions and
covenants,which,for the most part,worked well for
many
,however,the value of international
cooperation seems to have been
frequently
than not international ents and institutions are
bypassed,and various attempts to update these
indispensable instruments have failed
vision
and leadership that created and sustained them
over time is now
were harshly reminded of
this vacuum this summer,first with the latest
collapse of the Doha Round and hen with a new
military conflagration in the Middle
ately,the
latter has—at least for the time being—been
subdued,revealingly,by
old-fashioned diplomacy
and an institution much vilified in recent
years:the United
Nations.
Unit 6 Text B All Cultures Are Not
Equal
Let’s say you are an 18-year-old
kid with a really big ’re trying to figure
out
which field of study you should devote your life
to ,so you can understand the forces
that will
be shaping history for decades to into the field
certain national traits
endure over certain
certain cultures embrace technology and
economic growth others resist them.
This is the line of inquiry that is now impolite
to pursue. The gospel of
multiculturalism
preaches that all groups and cultures are equally
are a
certain number of close-minded
thugs,especially on university campuses,who accuse
anybody who asks intelligent questions about
groups and enduring traits of being racist or
economists and scientists tend to assume that
material factors drive
history—resources and
brain chemistry—because that’s what they can
measure and
count.
But none of this
helps explain a crucial feature of our time: while
global economies
are converging, cultures are
diverging, and the widening cultural differences
are leading
us into a period of conflict,
inequality and segmentation. Not long ago, people
said that
globalization and the revolution in
communications technology would bring us all
together. But the opposite is true. People are
taking advantage of freedom and technology
to
create new groups and cultural zones. Old national
identities and behavior patterns are
proving
surprisingly durable. People are moving into self-
segregating communities with
people like
themselves, and building invisible and sometimes
visible barriers to keep
strangers out.
If you look just around the United States you find
amazing cultural segmentation.
We in America
have been ―globalized‖ (meaning economically
integrated) for centuries,
and yet far from
converging into some homogeneous culture, we are
actually diverging
into lifestyle segments.
The music, news, magazine and television markets
have all
segmented, so there are fewer
cultural unifiers like life magazine or Walter
Cronkite.
Forty-million Americans move
every year, and they generally move in with people
like themselves, so as the late James Chapin
used to say, every place becomes more like
itself. Crunchy places like Boulder attract
crunchy types and become crunchier.
Conservative places like suburban Georgia
attract conservatives and become more so.
Not
long ago, many people worked on farms or in
factories, so they had similar lifestyles.
But
now the economy rewards specialization, so
workplaces and lifestyles diverge. The
military and civilian cultures diverge. In the
political world, Democrats and Republicans
seem to live on different planets.
Meanwhile ,if you look around the world you see
how often events are driven by
groups that
reject the globalize culture. Islamic extremists
reject the modern cultures of
Europe ,and have
created a hyperaggressive fantasy version of
traditional Islamic
a much different and less
violent way ,some American Jews have moved to
Hebron and become Africa to
Seattle,religiously orthodox students
reject
what they see as the amoral mainstream culture,and
carve out defiant revival
movements .From Rome
to Oregon ,anti-globalization types create their
own
subculture .The members of these and many
other groups did not inherit their
identities
.They took advantage of modernity,affluence and
freedom to become
practitioners of a do-it-
yourself are part of a great reshuffling of
identities ,and the creation of new,often more
rigid have the zeal of
converts.
Meanwhile,transnational dreams like European
unification and Arab unity
falter,and
behaviour patterns across nations
example,fertility rates between
countries like
the U.S. and Canada are habits between the U.S.
And
Europe are diverging. Global inequality
widens as some nations with certain cultural
traits prosper and others with other traits
don not.
People like Max Weber , Edward
Banfield , Samuel Huntington, Lawrence Harrison
and Thomas So well have given us an inkling of
how to think about this stuff,but for the
most
part,this is open you are 18 and you have got
that big brain,the whole field
of cultural
geography is waiting for you.
Unit 7 Text A
The Cult
of Celebrity Professors
Few species have as
many natural enemies as the celebrity professor.
Other academics
envy their money and fame;
journalists dislike their cleverer-than-thou airs;
and
everybody hates their determination to
have it all—the security of academic tenure and
the glitz of media stardom. So these are happy
days for the rest of us. Plagiarism, lying,
waffle-mongering: hardly a week goes by
without some academic celebrity or other
biting the dust, his reputation in tatters.
Stephen Ambrose was arguably America’s
favorite historian, a man who wrote
bestsellers
faster than most people read them.
An inspirer of Hollywood blockbusters, he can also
claim credit for two of the best presidential
biographies around, on Eisenhower and
Nixon.
But it now turns out that five of his books
contain extensive ―borrowings‖ from
other
historians. (―I’m not writing a PhD‖, he has
offered as an explanation—an
unsurprising
claim, as he would not get one for somebody else’s
work.)
Mr. Ambrose must be grateful that
attention has shifted to another cutter and
paster, Doris
Kearns Goodwin. She was a
fixture on American television, always ready with
a telling a
necdote on, say, Lyndon Johnson
(whom she knew) or Abraham Lincoln (the subject of
h
er next blockbuster).Her handling of the
plagiarism charges against her has arguably
been worse than the charges themselves. In the
last 1980s she quietly mollified one of her
chief victims, paying her some money. Now she
explains her behavior by the fact that
she
relied on handwritten notes—something other
historians have managed to do without
such
dire consequences. Amazingly, Ms. Goodwin remains
on Harvard’s board of
overseers, despite the
fact that she committed sins that might get an
undergraduate
expelled.
The hunt is
now on for the next serial plagiarist. Meanwhile,
other charges are also being
hurled at
celebrity professors. Take compulsive lying.
Joseph Ellis, the author of a
first-rate
study of the Founding Fathers, told the students
that he had fought in Vietnam
when the
closest he came to combat was sitting in a
university library. Or take hypocrisy.
Paul
krugman, a professor of economics at Princeton
University, used his column in the
New York
Times to Savage the Bush administration for its
links to Enron, when the
fearless professor
had himself received ＄37,500 from the energy firm.
Or take general
flatulence. A squabble
between Larry Summers, Harvard’s combative new
president, and
Cornel West, a professor of
black students , alerted the world to the
latter’s recent work,
which turns out to be a
mixture of post-structuralist mumbojumbo,
religious rhetoric and
rap music. More should
be expected from one of only 17 people to hold the
exaltedtitle of
university professor at
Harvard.
Is this a case of a few bad
apples? In public intellectual (Harvard University
Press)
Richard Posner, a federal judge,
argues that it is the whole barrel. Although the
book
looks at all sorts of thinkers(not just
whorish academics),Mr. Posner suggests that
celebrity professors owe their influence to a
fraud. They build their reputations tilling
some minuscule academic field, and then
pontificate on Charlie Rose about everything
under the sun.
All true. Yet
the judge, himself a leading intellectual for
hire, is a little too harsh. Each
celebrity
professor may be a nauseous beast. Yet there are
two big arguments in favor of
what they do.
Most obviously, they help to circulate ideas. They
give educated laypeople
a chance to get their
information from real authorities rather than mere
journalists. They
give universities a chance
to pay back some of their debt to the societies
that nurture them
. The fact that America’s
bestseller lists feature works written by academic
authorities
amongst the ghost-written memoirs
and celebrity suck-up jobs should be cause for
rejoicing.
The second point is that
they help to keep talented people in academia.
Some noble souls
will always be willing to put
up with low salaries in exchange for a chance to
pursue the
truth :it is hard to imagine John
Rawls hustling for a bit of extra cash. But others
are
inevitably attracted to money and bright
lights. A bit of moonlighting is a relatively easy
way for universities to keep some of their
smarter faculty happy.
What about the
costs of this moonlighting? Don’t academic
superstars short-change their
universities?
Well, a bit. Yet the ostentatiously ludicrous Mr.
West has undoubtedly
helped to attract bright
students to Harvard in the same way that those
rather more serious
once did. Surveys suggest
that academics who engage in outside activities
are actually
more likely to do their share of
teaching than those who don’t. Besides, the link
between
popular success and lower academic
standards is not sharp. Mr. Ambrose and Ms.
Goodw
in both started ―borrowing‖ other
people’s work before they hit the big time.
Fundamentally, the besetting sin of American
academia is not celebrity professors but
hyper-specialization. Academics have a bit of
crawling along the frontier of knowledge
with
a magnifying glass, blind to the wide vistas
opening up before them, and often
reducing
the most engaging subjects to tedious debates
about methodology. By looking at
the big
picture, populists restore the excitement of
intellectual life. Who has done more
for
literary studies in the United States: Harold
Bloom or the thousands of post-
structuralists
and their insufferable conferences? Who has more
to advance the
understanding of American
business: Peter Drucker, who has never been
employed by an
Ivy League university, or the
entire list of contributors to the Journal of
Supply Chain
Management?
And the
market does work. The same media machine that
turned Mr. Ambrose and Ms.
Goodwin into
superstars is now trashing their reputations. The
honest majority of
celebrity professors
improve the world by spreading the fruits of
academic research. The
dishonest minority pay
for their sins with the loss of their cherished
reputations.
Unit 7 Text B What’s wrong with
copying?
Every one knows the feeling. In a
timely flash, the perfect quip forms in the mind
and
rolls onto the tongue. You deliver it to
the table, and wait for the gasps or guffaws. In
the
silence that follows a dry violence says
instead, Yes I read it too.
Authors have
to wait longer to find out that their words are
not theirs alone. But‖
unconscious
borrowing‖, as critics call such silent plunder,
is common among writers,
even the best of
them. Perhaps because night-foraging by the
imagination is so vital to
literature, good
writers react warily when, as now, chargers of
plagiarism fly. Though
naturally eager to
protect their own published words, and not above a
malicious smile or
two when others get
caught, most authors recognize that this is boggy
ground. Between
imitation and theft, between
borrowing and plagiarism, lies a wide, murky
borderland.
Since proving plagiarism is
hard, legal redress is normally an expensive
dream. The most
that aggrieved authors can
catch on is to shame the wrongdoer. But sham means
attention,
and attention brings sales.
Recently, Ben Okri, a Nigerian-born novelist,
claimed that
Calixthe Beyala, a French one,
lifted whole chunks of his 1991 Booker-winning
novel,
for her bestsellers. Plagiarism means
copying delicately the exact words. His were
English, hers French. Showing that a plundered
book is not the only source is also a
defense. On the advice of lawyers, he has
dropped his case against her, and in effect the
affair has died.
The personal
vendetta carries different risks, as Neal Bowers,
a wronged poet and teacher
at Iowa State
University, recounts in words for the taking: The
Hunt for the plagiarist.
One day, Mr. Bowers
got a fax from California of a page from a poetry
magazine
containing, under the name of David
Jones, a slightly altered version of a poem he had
written for his dead father. Worse, he
learned, had plagiarized other poets. Some editors
sympathized; others did not bother even to
respond. Mr. Bowers became, on his own
admission, obsessed. He lost friends. But in
the end he found the plagiarist, through a
lawyer, only to be offered $$100 in
compensation, and a whining apology.
Copyright and self-defense are not the only
protection for authors. Humble readers are
among their best police. The border between
theft and borrowing is also vigilantly
patrolled by scholars. John Frow, a university
professor in Australia, has charged Graham
Swift with pillaging William Faulkner. According
to Mr. Frow , Last Orders, which won
Mr. Swift
last year’s Booker prize , takes liberally from
the theme and the fictional
devices of As I
Lay Dying .Its topic—how people dispose of the
dead—is the same .
Faulkner’s book has a one-
sentence chapter, a chapter with itemized points
and different
speaking voices in different
chapters. So dose Last Orders. That is not
plagiarism, Mr.
Frow argues, but ‖. Mr.
Swift’s fault, he suggests, is not to have made an
explicit nod to the grand old man from Oxford,
Mississippi.
But there speaks a
professor. Novelists are not bound by rules of
doctoral quotation. The
charge by Richard
pipes that Orlando Figes pinched finding of his
without due mention
has provoked a quarrel
between these two well-known historians of Russia.
But theirs is
not a row-over literary
plagiarism .The allusion of novelists and poets
are different from a
cademic citations.
When T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound freighted their
verse with learned
listings from across the
planet, they called it ‖. Eliot did at times give
sources
but was laughed at for
pretentiousness. In his Cantos, Pound seldom
bothered to mention
whose fusty trunk he was
happily ransacking.
Where, then, dose
honest allusion, which authors want readers to
catch, stop and sly
thievery begin? Samuel
Fuller, an American film director, put it well
when he said of
admiring French new-wave film
makers,‖
Questions of imitation, unflagged
quotation and borrowing, unconscious or not, lead
straight to the middle of the middle of the
boy. Between mortal pedantry and wet
indulgence, is there safe ground?
Intention has a lot to with it. Poets,
especially, are prone to unwitting copying since
verse
has mnemonic properties that prose does
not possess. Thom Gunn, reading poems of his
in London two years ago:
else will point
out to me--that I have stolen another man’s words,
thinking them my own‖
Plagiarists, like
forgers, have guilty intent, but of interestingly
different kinds. An
infamous early 20-century
faker such as Hans van Meegeren wanted his
paintings taken
for Vermeer’s. A plagiarist,
by contrast, tries to pass off another writer’s
words as his own
. Forgers sin against
authenticity, plagiarists against originality.
There are copying traditions in which
originality and its cousin, diversity, are not
only not
celebrated but positively frowned on.
Sacred literature, with its frozen, canonical
texts, is
an obvious example. But originality
and variety have always been prized in western
writing, burden that they are on authors.
Copyright laws date from the spread of the
printed book in the 16th century. But interest
in authorship is ancient. All writers hate
Homer, because Homer said everything first.
Martial, a Latin poet and lewd gag-writer,
likened his words to slaves, and an author who
had stolen them to a plagiarist, or abductor
.
Varro, a scholar and friend of Cicero’s, stripped
the number of plays by Plautus from 13
0 to
less than two dozen.
Most readers want a
personal voice, hopefully one that belongs to
someone who has read,
thought and imagined a
lot. People are maybe more knowing nowadays about
how
certain-personal voices‖ come into being.
Authors have editors; they have co-authors an
d
ghost-writers, not to mention models and literary
godparents to borrow from. But the id
ea-or
idea –of poems and novels as unique, personal
creations is still essential.
It is not
hard to imagine two extreme sorts of writing where
literary communication has
broken down. One
is so private, so personal and so original as to
be hermetic and
unintelligible. The other is
so repetitive, mechanical and clichéd as to be
empty. Between
them is a pool of shared
references and allusions fed by writers, but also
by readers.
Plagiarists drain the pool;
borrowers put back what they take-though not
necessarily
in the same place.