【有声英语文学名著】CHAPTER TWO（14）

He wasn‘t much of a writer, knew little about politics, spoke¹ bad restaurant-French, lacked all training and qualifications, possessed² only a passport and a vivid image of himself smoking beneath a ceiling fan in tropical countries, a battered³ Nikon and a bottle of whisky by his bedside.

Of course what he really wanted was to be a photographer. At sixteen he had completed a photo-project called "Texture‘, full of black and white close-ups of tree bark and sea-shells which  had  apparently  "blown‘  his  art  teacher‘s  mind. Nothing  that  he  had  done  since  had given  him  as  much  satisfaction  as  "Texture‘  and  those  high-contrast  prints  of  frost  on windows  and  the  gravel  in  the  driveway.  Journalism  would  mean  grappling  with  difficult stuff  like  words  and  ideas,  but  he  thought  he  might  have  the  makings  of  a  decent photographer, if only because he felt he had a strong sense of when things looked right. At this stage in his life, his main criterion for choosing a career　was that it should sound good in a  bar, shouted  into  a  girl‘s  ear,  and  there  was  no  denying  that  "I‘m  a  professional photographer‘  was  a  fine  sentence,  almost  up  there  with  "I  report  from  war  zones‘  or "actually, I make documentaries.‘

1 spoke   

n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说

参考例句：

• They sourced the spoke nuts from our company.他们的轮辐螺帽是从我们公司获得的。
• The spokes of a wheel are the bars that connect the outer ring to the centre.辐条是轮子上连接外圈与中心的条棒。

2 possessed   

adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的

参考例句：

• He flew out of the room like a man possessed.他像着了魔似地猛然冲出房门。
• He behaved like someone possessed.他行为举止像是魔怔了。

3 battered   

adj.磨损的；v.连续猛击；磨损

参考例句：

• He drove up in a battered old car.他开着一辆又老又破的旧车。
• The world was brutally battered but it survived.这个世界遭受了惨重的创伤,但它还是生存下来了。