Text 1

The Shadowland of Dreams

by Alex Haley

      Many people cherish the fond dream of becoming a writer but not many are able to see their dream come true. Alex Haley also wanted to be a writer and he succeeded. Read the following for reasons of his success.

    Many a young person tells me he wants to be a writer. I always encourage such people, but I also explain that there's a big difference between "being a writer" and writing. In most cases these individuals are dreaming of wealth and fame, not the long hours alone at a typewriter. "You've got to want to write," I say to them, "not want to be a writer."

    The reality is that writing is a lonely, private and poor-paying affair. For every writer kissed by fortune there are thousands more whose longing is never requited. Even those who succeed often know long periods of neglect and poverty. I did.

    When I left a 20-year-career in the Coast Guard to become a freelance writer, I had no prospects at all. What I did have was a friend in New York City, George Sims, with whom I'd grown up in Henning, Tenn. George found me my home, a cleaned-out storage room in the Greenwich Village apartment building where he worked as superintendent. It didn't even matter that it was cold and had no bathroom. I immediately bought a used manual typewriter and felt like a genuine writer.

    After a year or so, however, I still hadn't gotten a break and began to doubt myself. It was so hard to sell a story that I barely made enough to eat. But I knew I wanted to write. I had dreamed about it for years. I wasn't going to be one of those people who die wondering, What if? I would keep putting my dream to the test － even though it meant living with uncertainty and fear of failure. This is the Shadowland of hope, and anyone with a dream must learn to live there.

    Then one day I got a call that changed my life. It wasn't an agent or editor offering a big contract. It was the opposite － a kind of siren call tempting me to give up my dream. On the phone was an old acquaintance from the Coast Guard, now stationed in San Francisco. He had once lent me a few bucks and liked to egg me about it. "When am I going to get that $15, Alex?" he teased.

    "Next time I make a sale."

    "I have a better idea," he said. "We need a new public-information assistant out here, and we're paying $6 000 a year. If you want it, you can have it."

    Six thousand a year! That was real money in 1960. I could get a nice apartment, a used car, pay off debts and maybe save a little something. What's more, I could write on the side.

    As the dollars were dancing in my head, something cleared my senses. From deep inside a bull-headed resolution welled up. I had dreamed of being a writer － full time. And that's what I was going to be. "Thanks, but no," I heard myself saying. "I'm going to stick it out and write."

    Afterward, as I paced around my little room, I started to feel like a fool.  Reaching into my cupboard － an orange crate nailed to the wall － I pulled out all that was there: two cans of sardines. Plunging my hands into my pockets, I came up with 18 cents. I took the cans and coins and jammed them into a crumpled paper bag. There, Alex, I said to myself. There's everything you’ve made of yourself so far. I'm not sure I’ve ever felt so low.

    I wish I could say things started getting better right away. But they didn't. Thank goodness I had George to help me over the rough spots.

    Through him I met other struggling artists like Joe Delaney, a veteran painter from Knoxville, Tenn. Often Joe lacked food money, so he'd visit a neighborhood butcher who would give him big bones with morsels of meat and a grocer who would hand him some wilted vegetables. That's all Joe needed to make down-home soup.

    Another Village neighbor was a handsome young singer who ran a struggling restaurant. Rumor had it that if a customer ordered steak the singer would dash to a supermarket across the street to buy one. His name was Harry Belafonte.

    People like Delaney and Belafonte became role models for me. I learned that you had to make sacrifices and live creatively to keep working at your dream. That's what living in the Shadowland is all about.

    As I absorbed the lesson, I gradually began to sell my articles. I was writing about what many people were talking about then: civil rights, black Americans and Africa. Soon, like birds flying south, my thoughts were drawn back to my child-hood. In the silence of my room, I heard the voices of Grandma, Cousin Georgia, Aunt Plus, Aunt Liz and Aunt Till as they told stories about our family and slavery.

    These were stories that black Americans had tended to avoid before, and so I mostly kept them to myself. But one day at lunch with editors of Reader's Digest I told these stories of my grandmother and aunts and cousins; and I said that I had a dream to trace my family's history to the first African brought to these shores in chains. I left that lunch with a contract that would help support my research and writing for nine years.

    It was a long, slow climb out of the shadows. Yet in 1976, 17 years after I left the Coast Guard, Roots was published. Instantly I had the kind of fame and success that few writers ever experience. The shadows had turned into dazzling limelight.

　

    For the first time I had money and open doors everywhere. The phone rang all the time with new friends and new deals. I packed up and moved to Los Angeles, where I could help in the making of the Roots TV mini-series. It was a confusing, exhilarating time, and in a sense I was blinded by the light of my success.

    Then one day, while unpacking, I came across a box filled with things I had owned years before in the Village. Inside was a brown paper bag.

    I opened it, and there were two corroded sardine cans, a nickel, a dime and three pennies. Suddenly the past came flooding in like a riptide. I could picture myself once again huddled over the typewriter in that cold, bleak, one-room apartment. And I said to my self, The things in this bag are part of my roots too. I can't ever forget that.

    I sent them out to be framed in Lucite. I keep that clear plastic case where I can see it every day. I can see it now above my office desk in Knoxville, along with the Pulitzer Prize; a portrait of nine Emmys awarded the TV production of Roots; and the Spingarn medal － the NAACP's highest honor. I'd be hard pressed to say which means the most to me. But only one reminds me of the courage and persistence it takes to stay the course in the Shadowland.

    It's a lesson anyone with a dream should learn.

    (1 182 words) TOP

课文一

梦想的阴暗之面

艾力克斯• 哈利

    许多人怀有美好的愿望，期望能成为作家，但是能够梦想成真的人不多。艾力克斯• 哈利也想成为作家，并且他成功了。阅读下面这篇文章，看一看他成功的原因。

    许多青年人对我说，他们想成为作家。我一直鼓励这样的人，但是我也向他们解释“成为作家”和写作之间存在着巨大的差别。多数情况下这些年轻人梦寐以求的是财富与名誉，从未想到要孤身一人长久地坐在打字机旁。“你们渴望的应该是写作，”我对他们说，“而不应该是当作家。”

  
    事实上，写作是一项孤单寂寞而又收入微薄的工作。有一个被命运之神垂青的作家，就有成千上万个永远无法实现梦想的人。即使那些成功人士也经常受到长久的冷落，穷困不堪。我便是其中之一。

    我放弃了在海岸警卫队做了20年的工作，为的是成为一名自由撰稿人，这时，我根本没有前途可言。我所拥有的只是一位住在纽约市的朋友，乔治• 西姆斯，他和我是在田纳西州的赫宁一起长大的。乔治为我找了个家，位于格林威治村公寓大楼中的一间腾空的储藏室，而他是那幢大楼的管理员。房子里冷嗖嗖的，没有卫生间，不过这没什么。我马上买了一台旧的手动打字机，感觉自己颇像一位名符其实的作家。

     然而，大约一年后，我的写作生涯依然没有任何起色，我开始怀疑自己。卖出一篇小说是如此艰难，以至我几乎填不饱肚子。但是，我清楚的是我想写作，我已梦寐以求了许多年。我并不准备成为一名到死时还在想假如的人。我会坚持把我的梦想付诸实践——即使这梦想意味着不稳定的生活和对失败的恐惧。这是希望的阴暗面，任何心存梦想的人都必须学会在这阴暗面下生存。

    后来有一天，我接到了一个电话，由此改变了我的一生。这并不是一位代理人或编辑打来电话，主动要求与我签大的稿约。恰恰相反——是一声鸣笛，诱使我放弃梦想。打电话来的是海岸警卫队的老熟人，现在在旧金山。他曾经借给我几美元，喜欢催我还给他。“我什么时候才能拿到那15美元，艾力克斯？”他逗我说。

    “等我下一次卖出作品吧。”

    “我有个好主意，”他说，“我们这儿需要一位新的公共信息管理员，年薪6000美元。若想干，那就是你的了。”
　

    年薪6000美元！这个数目在1960年可真是值钱啊。我可以有一套上好的公寓，一辆二手车，可以还清债务，也许还可有些结余。另外，我还可以业余写作。
　

    当这些美元在我的脑海里晃动时，某种东西却使我神志清醒起来。我的内心深处升起一个坚强的信念。我曾经梦想成为一名作家——一名专业作家。那才是我的追求。“谢谢你，但是我不去，”我听见自己在说。“我会坚持到底来写作。”

　

    后来，我在蜗居里踱来踱去，开始觉得自己象个傻瓜。我打开橱柜——一只钉在墙上的桔黄色板条箱——把里面的东西全部弄了出来：两罐沙丁鱼。我把手伸进口袋，只摸出18美分。我把罐头和硬币一起塞进一个皱巴巴的纸袋中。你看，艾力克斯，我自言自语道，你迄今为止努力的结果都在这里。我不知道，自己是不是曾经情绪如此低落过。

    我希望自己能说，情况马上开始好转。但是并没有。感谢上帝，幸亏有乔治帮我渡过了难关。

    通过乔治，我结识了另外一些正在艰苦奋斗的艺术家，像乔• 德拉尼，一位来自田纳西州科诺科斯威尔市的老画家。乔经常没吃饭的钱，于是就去找附近社区的一位屠户和一个食品商。屠户会送给他一些带点肉的大骨头，从食品商那里他可以弄到一些发蔫的蔬菜。乔做家常炖汤需要的就是这些。

    村里另一位邻居是个年少英俊的歌手，他惨淡经营着一家餐馆。据说，如果有客人点牛排，这位歌手会火速冲到街对面的超市买一个。他的名字是哈利• 百拉芬特。
　

    德拉尼和百拉芬特这样的人都成了我笔下角色的原型。我懂得了，若要一直奋斗实现梦想，就得做出牺牲，创造性地生活。那就是生活在阴影里面的含义所在。
　

    在认识到这一点的同时，我逐渐开始卖出我的文章。我写的都是当时人们经常谈论的话题：人权、美国黑人和非洲。不久，我的思绪像鸟儿南飞一样回到了我的童年时光。在静寂的房间里，我仿佛听见了祖母、乔治亚堂兄、普鲁斯姑妈、利兹姑妈和提尔姑妈的声音，听见他们在娓娓而谈我们的家族和奴隶制的故事。


    这些故事是美国黑人以前尽量回避的，因此多数时候我并不对外人说。但是有一天，在与《读者文摘》的编辑们共进午餐时，我讲起了我的祖母、姑妈与堂兄们的那些故事，我还告诉他们，我梦想追溯我的家族史，一直追溯到第一批戴着手铐脚镣被运到美国海岸的非洲黑人。午餐结束离开时，我手中多了一张足以供我从事研究和写作长达9年的合同。

    那是为摆脱阴影进行的一次漫长而缓慢的攀登。然而，1976年，也就是我离开海岸警卫队17年后，《根》出版了。立刻我拥有了那种才有少数作家有幸体验的名望与成功。阴影此时已变成了令人眼花缭乱的聚光灯。

     有生以来第一次我是如此富有，第一次享受到处处受欢迎的礼遇。电话铃响个不停，带来了新朋新友，新交易。我收拾行装，搬到了洛杉矶。在那儿我可以协助制作《根》的电视 短篇系列片。那是一段令人困惑，又令人欣喜若狂的时期；从某种意义上说，我被成功的光芒照花了眼。
　

    后来有一天，在打开包着的东西时，我偶然发现了一个盒子，里面装着我数年前在格林威治村的全部家当，其中有一个棕色纸袋。
 
    我打开纸袋，里面有两罐锈迹斑斑的沙丁鱼，1枚五分硬币，1枚一角硬币和3枚一美分硬币。霎时，往事巨浪般地奔涌而来。我又一次看到自己在寒气逼人、冷冷清清的单室公寓蜷缩在打字机旁的情景。我自言自语道，袋子里的东西也是我的根的一部分，我永远也不能忘记。

    我把这些东西送到鲁西提，用框架装起来。我一直把那个透明的塑料盒摆在天天能看得到的地方。现在它就放在科诺科斯威尔我的办公桌上，与普利策奖放在一起，还有一张《根》的电视制作 获得的九项艾美奖的照片，以及斯宾卡奖章——NAACP(全国有色人种促进协会)的最高荣誉。很难说哪一个对我最重要，然而，仅有一件能提醒我在阴影之地坚持下去所需要的勇气和坚韧不拔精神。

    这是每一位拥有梦想的人都必须汲取的教训。
　

    (1182个单词) 返回

Text 2

Isambard Kingdom Brunel

by Miles Kington

I can honestly say that all the good fortune I have ever had has been due not to luckiness but to unluckiness. Looking back through my career, I can see that everything fortunate that has happened to me has come about through a misfortune in some other undertaking.

    This might be a hereditary quality, as my father shared it in great degree. He was a Frenchman by birth and was destined for the priesthood. But he showed much talent for drawing and making things, and little for worshipping God. So even the priest urged my father's parents to divert him from the Church. Accordingly he became a great maker and designer of things. He would no doubt have prospered well in France were it not for a little event called the Revolution, which caused him to flee France to the USA with a price on his head.

    After many adventures there (including being made Chief Engineer of New York City and taking American citizenship) he came to England. He married an English girl and found himself with a great reputation, being employed to design and build the first tunnel under the Thames. It was, I believe, the first tunnel under a great river anywhere. My father had to invent the process as he proceeded.

    His process was a good one. Unfortunately (how often that word has occurred in my life!), the survey done by geologists for us showed that the bed of the Thames lay on firm clay which would permit us to dig the tunnel with safety. They were wrong.

    The river was set on gravel which let the water through. This we did not find out until we were halfway across the river and the water broke in.

    I myself was in the tunnel at the time. I can still remember the crunching of the timbers and the dousing of the gas lights as the water sped towards us and we ran for our lives. The Thames in those days was little more than an open sewer and the water in which I found myself was, let us say, far from healthy. Little wonder that when I escaped from the watery grave under the Thames I succumbed to some bad fever and was dispatched to recuperate, not at Brighton as I had hoped (this was judged too exciting a place for a young man) but at Bristol.

    So there I was, a young, ambitious engineer with no work and not much health, in a place I had never seen before. But I was resolved to make the best of a bad job.
    I recovered my strength by clambering about the rocks of the Clifton Gorge and making sketches of the environs.
    This was to prove a golden experience when it was known that the merchants of Bristol wished to have a bridge built
across the Clifton Gorge and invited designs for it. I submitted a design.

    It was rejected by the aged Thomas Telford, acting for the judges. Luckily, all the designs were rejected and the judges asked for fresh ideas, including some from Telford himself. Thus challenged, the old man came up with what I can only call a senile design involving gigantic columns reaching up from the floor of the gorge itself.  

    This was duly rejected and my new design was accepted. Overjoyed, I set to work immediately.

    All would have been well had not the money run out. Some worthy citizen had set aside a large sum half a century previously in order to accrue interest and build up enough funds to build the bridge. Unfortunately (that word again!) either he had not set enough aside or the interest had been insufficient and the proceeding came to a halt. Other plans I had afoot at the time (new designs for Bristol docks, a canal scheme in Lincolnshire, etc.) were all suspended for one reason or another. So all I had behind me was incompleteness and disappointment.

    You might have noticed that everything I had done until now (or not done) fell into different areas of engineering. I had tried tunnels, bridges, canals, just as my father before had tried everything from a design for the Congress building in Washington (which was accepted but not built due to lack of money) to a process for manufacturing army boots by machine. This process was encouraged by the War Office in 1815. The result was that just as the Battle of Waterloo was fought and peace descended on Europe, my father was producing the largest heap of unused army boots the world had seen at that time. It led to a condition of penury which led him briefly into a debtor's prison, a thing I have always dreaded.

    Where was I? Yes, I was pointing out the multiplicity of things I attempted, as an illustration of how engineers in my day were not limited to one activity. A man who designed and cut a canal one year might well be building and shooting a new cannon the next.

    Science was simpler then, or perhaps it was just that we were more ambitious, less specialized. Today, I believe, you will find an engineer who can only design office desks. Such a thing was undreamed of in my day. And in fact the next I was to embark on was something I had never attempted before: the building of a railway.

    I was, you will recall, in Bristol on account of an illness and had stayed there on account of a botched bridge. Then it was time for my fortunes to take an upward swing again. The merchants of Bristol decided that it was time to counter the great threat of the port of Liverpool to take over their position as the second port after London, and that the only way to accomplish this was to engage me to engineer a railway from Bristol to London.

    I had never built a railway in my life! But then, nobody else had. Everything we did in those days seemed to be for the first time, whether it was tunneling under the Thames or spanning the Avon. And I might say that my winning design for the Clifton Bridge involved a span longer than any built in the history of the known world!

    Today you have loftier plans. You aim for the moon, and we only aimed to get to Bristol. There is this difference: that having reached the moon, you decided it was not worth doing a second time. Our link between London and Bristol has never been out of use or fashion.

    Of course, I was never content to see Bristol as a destination. I always dream of starting at London, proceeding to Bristol by train, transferring to the largest and fastest new ship in the world and arriving in New York in record time. I was to build that ship. It was, unfortunately, to be my greatest disappointment.

    So my last break was like my first － both lucky and unlucky. If I had time to tell you the whole story of my life, how elated you would be － and how tragically cast down as well!

    (1 197 words) TOP

 课文二

伊萨姆巴德• 金德姆• 布鲁内尔

米历斯• 金顿

    老实说，我以前曾经遇到的好事情并非得因于好运，而是来自背运。回顾我的事业，我发现，凡发生在我身上的幸运之事，皆源于其他某件不幸的事。

    这也可能是遗传，因为我父亲在很大程度上也是如此。他生在法国，打算当牧师的。然而，他在绘画与制作方面颇具才能，在信奉上帝方面却鲜有其才。因此，连牧师都劝我父亲的父母让父亲改行。就这样，父亲成为了一名伟大的制作者和设计者。倘若不是因为那次名为法国大革命的小事件悬赏父亲的头颅，使他从法国逃至美国，他无疑会在法国得到很好的发展。

    在美国的数次历险之后（包括被任命为纽约市的总工程师和加入美国国籍），他来到了英国。他娶了位英国姑娘，受聘设计、建造泰晤士河第一条隧道， 名声大震。我相信，那也是全世界在大河下面建造的第一条隧道。父亲得一边设计，一边施工。

    他的工程进展很出色。不幸的是（这个词在我的一生中出现得多么频繁啊！），地质学家为我们做的调查显示，泰晤士河的河床着在坚硬的泥土上，允许我们安全地挖掘隧道。但他们搞错了。

    河的底部是由沙砾构成，水从沙砾中流过。我们挖到河的中部，水涌进来时，才发现这一点。
 

    我当时人就在隧道中，现在我仍然清晰地记得，水向我们急涌而来，大伙儿仓惶逃命，木桩发出嘎吱嘎吱的声音，煤气灯也被水淹没了。当时的泰晤士河不过是一个露天的下水道，我身边的水，我可以说，远不是有益健康的。难怪我从泰晤士河下面的水墓中逃出来后，就发起了高烧，被送去疗养，不过并非如我所愿送到布莱顿（人们认为这个地方过于激动人心，不适宜青年人），而是把我送到了布里斯托尔。

    这就是我的处境，一位雄心勃勃的年轻工程师，没有工作，健康状况不佳，身处我从没有见过的地方。但是，我下定决心要尽量利用这次不利的境遇。

    我攀登克利夫顿峡湾的岩石，对周围环境写生，渐渐恢复了体力。

   当我得知布里斯托尔的商家希望在克利夫顿峡谷上建一座桥并招集桥梁设计方案时，这一次经历就将被证明是非常宝贵的。我提交了一项设计方案。
　

    年迈的托马斯• 泰尔福特代表评判员否决了这份设计方案。不过，幸运的是，所有的设计方案都遭到否决，评判们要求有新意（包括要求泰尔福特本人提出一些新意）。 这位年迈的老人面临挑战，提出了一项我可以说是老得不中用的方案。此方案提出从峡谷底部架起巨柱。

    他的方案理所当然地遭到了否决，而我的新方案通过了。我欣喜若狂，马上投入了工作。
　

    如果不是经费耗尽的话，一切就会进展得很顺利。某位有威望的市民早在半个世纪之前就已经留置了一大笔钱，为的是增长利息，积累足够的资金建造这座桥。不幸的是（又是这几个字！），不是他没有留置足够的款项就是增长的利息尚不充裕，于是工程搁浅。我当时准备的其他方案（布里斯托尔码头的新设计，林肯郡的运河规划等等）全都因为这个或那个的原因被搁置。于是我所剩的，只是半途而废和失望沮丧。

    你可能已经注意到，至今我所做成的(或没做成的)一切都属于工程学的不同领域。我尝试过修隧道、架桥梁、挖运河，恰如我父亲以前一样，他什么都干过，从华盛顿的国会大厦 设计（方案被采纳，但因资金缺乏而夭折）到用机器生产军靴的设计。此项设计受到了1815年战争委员会的鼓励。结果，在滑铁卢大战结束，和平降临欧洲之时，父亲还在生产当时全世界上最多但是无用的 军靴。这直接导致了父亲极度的贫困，也使他被投入负债人监狱，监禁了一段时间，这是一件我一直害怕的事。

    说到哪儿啦？对了，我正指出我所尝试的工作种类的多样性，来说明我那个年代工程师们如何不局限于一种活动。一个人这一年从事的是设计和开挖一条运河，下一年可能做的 就是制造和发射一门新大炮。


    当时科学较为简单，或者，也许是我们有较多的雄心，较少的专业化。今天，我相信你能找到只会设计办公桌的工程师。这样的事情在我那个时代是做梦也想不到的。实际上， 接下去我要做的一件事是我以前从未尝试过的：建造铁路。


    你还记得，我是因为生病才来到布里斯托尔，呆在那儿是因为一座弊脚的桥梁。现在该是我又走好运的时候了。布里斯托尔的商家们 得出结论，反击利物浦港威胁的时候到了，因为利物浦意欲取代布里斯托尔，位居伦敦之后的第二大港。他们认为唯一能取得胜利的途径，是由我着手建造一条由布里斯托尔通往伦敦的铁路。


    我平生从未建过铁路！不过那个时候，也没谁建过。那个年代里，我们所做的每一件事似乎都是生平第一遭，无论是泰晤士河下挖隧道，还是亚芬河上架飞桥。我可以说，我为克利夫顿大桥所做的成功设计中，桥梁跨度居世界历史上架桥之最！


    如今你们怀有更加宏伟的计划。你们的目标是到达月球，而我们只想能抵达布里斯托尔！这二者之间的区别在于：到达月球之后，你们会得出结论，此事不值得重复。而我们在伦敦与布里斯托尔之间建立的联系从来没有失去过功用或过时。

    当然，我从不满足于把布里斯托尔视为我事业的终点。我总是梦想能从伦敦出发，乘火车到布里斯托尔，然后再换乘世界上最大最快的新船，以创记录的时间抵达纽约。我原打算建造这样一艘船，不幸的是，它注定是我最大的失望。


    因此，我最后一次的转机与我的第一次相同——既幸运又不幸！倘若我有时间把我一生的经历全说给你听，你一定会非常兴奋——同样也会悲剧性地感到沮丧！
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