《瘋狂英語(yǔ)》精選輯:我筆下的奇異世界
Me and Writing
This was the summer that I think I became a writer. I was thirteen years old. I wore steel-rimmed glasses and I was a very 1)solemn boy. Not that I was sad, but I simply was paying attention. I'd been given a typewriter by my Uncle George, when he got an electric. He gave me his old Underwood typewriter and I set it up in the 2)basement. I had a secret place under the stairs behind a 3)stack of sheet rock. I sat in there and wrote where my parents could not see me because they were worried, you know, that I didn't go outside. And they believed in the 4)illusion of a balanced life, you know, you do a little bit of this, you do a little bit of that. I just wanted to do one thing. I just wanted to find things to write about.
I liked to write about 5)tornadoes: Tornadoes, which come out of a peaceful summer day in the Midwest. And the sky's blue and then suddenly it's dark as night and this great snake-like cloud comes slithering across the 6)landscape, 7)smashing houses at random, destroying this one, leaving this standing. I liked that idea.
I wrote a story, a sort of 8)autobiographical story, about a family from New York, a microbiologist and his actress wife, and their son, who looked, and walked, and talked, and thought, and felt exactly like me. I sat in the 9)backseat and they were driving across the Midwest, and they forgot me... at a gas station. We stopped for a rest stop... and they forgot me, and they drove away. I walked up the road that they had driven and suddenly the sky turned dark and... a tornado came up and it picked me up and it carried me and dropped me, uninjured, in the yard of a 10)sanctified 11)Brethren family. I knocked on the door and a woman in a white 12)satin gown holding a flaming 13)torch came out and asked me what I wanted. And I was going to tell them that I had to leave to look for my parents and then the dog spoke to me. The dog said, "Stay." So, I stayed. But still, I missed the life of 14)glamour that I had known on New York's 15)exclusive Upper West Side. I love to write stories like that.
I sat there at my Underwood typewriter, but I wished that something real would happen.
That was the summer that my cousin, Helen-Marie, came to stay with us suddenly. She was seventeen. She was four years older than I and I'd always admired her. She was lovelier than the rest of us. The rest of us had our family's looks; we had 16)homely faces and she was pretty. She had 17)blonde hair, a rarity in our family.
Then I wrote a story about her; about a girl who is cooking lunch at home one day and a woman in a white satin dress holding a flaming torch bursts in through the door, and it startles the girl so much that she drops the 18)cast iron skillet on her dog and the dog bites her and she gets an 19)incurable blood disease from this. Doctors give her two weeks to live, and then, on top of everything, a tornado comes in and it blows the roof off the house and it 20)impales four blades of grass in her side. And there's something on that grass that cures that blood disease. Medical science has never seen anything like it. She's cured. She comes home. And that night the dog 21)scratches on her door, and the dog says, "Aren't you curious to know what it was on the grass that cured that blood disease?" I sort of liked the story.
我筆下的奇異世界
我想當(dāng)作家的念頭是在這個(gè)夏天冒出來(lái)的。那年我十三歲了，戴著一副銀邊眼鏡，是個(gè)不茍言笑的男孩。倒不是因?yàn)樾那椴缓?，我只是在琢磨事兒。喬治叔叔買了一臺(tái)電打字機(jī)后，就把手打打字機(jī)給了我。他給我的是一臺(tái)安德伍牌老式打字機(jī)，我把它架在地下室里。樓梯下石磚墻后是我的密室。我坐在里面寫東西，爸媽看不到我，你知道，我之所以要秘密行事是因?yàn)樗麄儞?dān)心我總不出門。他們相信生活應(yīng)該有多方面平衡，就是讓你做做這個(gè)又做做那個(gè)。而我只想做一件事--練筆。
我想寫寫龍卷風(fēng)：一個(gè)平靜的夏日里，在中西部驟然刮起了龍卷風(fēng)。蔚藍(lán)的天空霎時(shí)間變得像夜晚一樣漆黑，蛇一般的巨大煙云卷過(guò)地面，將房屋揉得粉碎，摧毀了這間，放過(guò)了那間。我太喜歡寫龍卷風(fēng)了。
我寫了一個(gè)故事，自傳式的故事，說(shuō)的是一個(gè)紐約家庭，家里有一個(gè)微生物學(xué)家，當(dāng)演員的妻子，還有他們的兒子--那孩子的模樣和走路、說(shuō)話、思考的方式簡(jiǎn)直跟我一樣。我坐在汽車的后座，他們開車穿越中西部，后來(lái)他們把我忘在了一個(gè)加油站。我們停車休息，然后他們就把我給落下了，開車走了。我沿著他們車駛?cè)サ姆较蜃咧?，突然間，天空暗了下來(lái)， 龍卷風(fēng)大作，風(fēng)卷起我吹啊吹，毫發(fā)不傷地把我扔在一個(gè)圣教徒家的后院里。我敲敲門，一個(gè)身穿白色緞袍的女人舉著一把熊熊的火炬，走出來(lái)問(wèn)我想干什么。我正想說(shuō)我想去找我的爸媽，一條狗沖著我說(shuō)話了：“留下來(lái)吧。”于是，我就留下了。但是，我還是很懷念在紐約高尚住宅區(qū)的好日子。我就喜歡寫這樣的故事。
我坐在安德伍牌打字機(jī)前，想寫些真實(shí)的事兒。
那年夏天，我的表姐海倫-瑪莉突然來(lái)我們家住下。她十七歲，比我大四歲，我很喜歡她。她比我們家的其他人都可愛(ài)。其他人都有著家族的容貌特征，臉蛋兒一點(diǎn)兒也不起眼，她卻很漂亮。那一頭金發(fā)在我們家族里是極少見(jiàn)的。
于是我就寫了一個(gè)關(guān)于她的故事，說(shuō)的是有一天，一個(gè)女孩正在家里做午飯時(shí)，有個(gè)穿著白色緞袍的女人手里舉著熊熊的火炬從門外闖了進(jìn)來(lái)，女孩嚇了一大跳，把鐵鍋砸到了她的狗，狗咬了她一口，她從此就得了一種沒(méi)法治的血液病。醫(yī)生說(shuō)她只能活兩個(gè)星期了，這時(shí)，一股龍卷風(fēng)刮了進(jìn)來(lái)，它掀掉屋頂，四片草葉子刺到她的身上。草葉子上面的什么東西就把她的血液病給治好了。醫(yī)學(xué)上從來(lái)沒(méi)有見(jiàn)過(guò)這種奇事。她痊愈了，回到了家。那天晚上，小狗抓撓著她的房門，那狗問(wèn)她說(shuō)： “你難道不想知道草葉子上面是什么東西治好了你的血液病嗎？”我喜歡這樣的故事。
注釋:
1) solemn a. 嚴(yán)肅的
2) basement n. 地下室
3) stack n. 堆，疊，書架
4) illusion n. 幻想
5) tornado n. 龍卷風(fēng)，旋風(fēng)
6) landscape n. 風(fēng)景，地形
7) smash v. 打碎，粉碎
8) autobiographical a. 自傳體的
9) backseat n. 后座
10) sanctified a. 神圣化的
11) Brethren n. 同胞，兄弟
12) satin n. 綢緞
13) torch n. 火炬
14) glamour n. 魅力，魔力
15) exclusive a. 唯一的，高級(jí)的
16) homely a. 不好看的
17) blonde a. 金發(fā)的
18) cast iron n. 鑄鐵
19) incurable a. 不能治愈的
20) impale v. 刺穿
21) scratch v. 刮，擦
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