英語(yǔ)四級(jí)閱讀模擬實(shí)戰(zhàn) 16

16

Analysts have had their go at humor, and I have read some of this interpretative literature, but without being greatly instructed. Humor can be dissected, as a frog can, but the thing dies in the process and the innards（內(nèi)在部分）are discouraging to any but the pure scientific mind.

In a newsreel theatre the other day I saw a picture of a man who had developed the soap bubble to a higher point than it had ever before reached. He had become the ace soap bubble blower of America, had perfected the business of blowing bubbles, refined it, doubled it, squared it, and had even worked himself up into a convenient lather. The effect was not pretty. Some of the bubbles were too big to be beautiful, and the blower was always jumping into them or out of them, or playing some sort of unattractive trick with them. It was, if anything, a rather repulsive sight. Humor is a little like that: it won't stand much blowing up, and it won't stand much poking. It has a certain fragility, an evasiveness, which one had the best respect. Essentially, it is a complete mystery. A human frame convulsed with laughter, and the laughter becoming mysterious and uncontrollable, is as far out of balance as one shaken with the hiccoughs or in the throes of a sneezing fit.

One of the things commonly said about humorist is that they are really very sad people—clowns with a breaking heart. There is some truth in it, but it is badly stated. It would be more accurate, I think, to say that there is a deep vein of melancholy running through everyone's life and that the humorist, perhaps more sensible of it than some others, compensates for it actively and positively. Humorists fatten on trouble. They have always made trouble pay. They struggle along with a good will and endure pain cheerfully, knowing how well it will serve them in the sweet by and by. You find them wrestling with foreign languages, fighting folding ironing boards and swollen drainpipes, suffering the terrible discomfort of tight boot (or as Josh Billings wittily called them, "tire boots"). They pour out their sorrows profitably, in a form that is not quite a fiction not quite a fact either. Beneath the sparking surface of these dilemmas flows the strong tide of human woe.

Practically everyone is a manic-depressive of sorts, with his up moments and his down moments, and you certainly don't have to be a humorist to taste the sadness of situation and mood. But there is often a rather fine line between laughing and crying, and if a humorous piece of writing brings a person to the point where his emotional responses are untrustworthy and seem likely to break over into the opposite realm, it is because humor, like poetry, has an extra content. It plays close to the bit hot fire, which is truth, and sometimes the reader feels the heat.

1.In the first paragraph the author wants to say that _______.

A.just as scientists can dissect a frog, so analysts can dissect humor

B.detailed, scientific analysis is not appropriate for humor, for it may make humor lose its aesthetic value

C.some people's analysis of humor are too scientific

D.analysts' attempts at humor are not instructive enough to interest the author

2.The author uses the example of the soap bubble blower to show that _______.

A.skill is required to produce humor

B.neither too much exaggeration nor absolute explicitness is fit for humor

C.people should perfect the art of humor just as the bubble blower does to the bubbles

D.humor should make people frantic for a while

3.According to the author, humorists differ from ordinary people in the sense that _______.

A.they give vent to their sorrows in a laughable way

B.they have much trouble in their life and they are melancholy

C.they are more sensible of the sadness of life and they endure and express the pain cheerfully

D.they are mostly clowns with a breaking heart

4.A humorous piece of writing can make the reader's emotional responses untrustworthy because _______.

A.it expresses the truth of the sadness of human life with a sparkling surface

B.everyone has his happy moments and unhappy moments

C.there is an obvious line between laughing and crying

D.it is like poetry, very rhythmic

5.The passage's success lies in its extensive use of _______.

A.parallelism　　B.metaphors　　C.metonymy　　D.similes