VOA常速英语2007年-American Author, Cultural Icon, Norman Mailer D

By David Hubler and Faith Lapidus
Washington
10 November 2007

For nearly 60 years, Norman Mailer was one of America's most prolific¹ and controversial authors. A colleague says Mailer died early Saturday at a hospital in New York City. He was 84.

Mailer was just 25 years old when he burst on the literary scene with his first novel, The Naked And The Dead. The World War II tale is universally recognized as one of the best war novels to emerge from that conflict. Published in 1948, it is all the more remarkable² because Mailer wrote realistically of combat without ever actually having taken part in battle.

Many critics saw flashes of Ernest Hemingway in the young Mailer's novel. A recurring³ theme in his writing, as in Hemingway's, was man testing his masculinity. Even as an author, Norman Mailer considered himself a battler, a fighter. He closely identified himself with boxing champions such as Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier, just as Hemingway identified himself with hunters and bullfighters.

Mailer acknowledged that he modeled himself publicly after Hemingway, that he tried to become the all-around male symbol. But Hemingway observed that becoming a public figure clouds a writer's sharpness, and Mailer agreed.

"It's the dilemma⁴ because if you go out, you get battered⁵ in a varying degree of . . . Hemingway used to speak of it as getting dulled, that you dull the edge of your blade (eds: lose your ability to write well). Then he used some continuing metaphor⁶ to the effect, 'Well, you take the blade and you put it on the grindstone and you keep writing.," he said.

With the publication of The Naked and the Dead, Mailer became a celebrity⁷, and he basked⁸ in the attendant publicity⁹. His second novel, Barbary Shore, was a critical and financial failure. Mailer had trouble finding a publisher for his third effort, The Deer Park, because it was considered too overtly¹⁰ sexual. Reviewers dismissed it and wondered whether mailer was a one-book author who would never again write anything as good as The Naked and The Dead. But today critics have reassessed The Deer Park, and many believe it to be Mailer's best work.

Mailer became the articulate voice of the 1960s with writing such as his novel Why Are We In Vietnam? and his eyewitness¹¹ account of the 1968 presidential nominating conventions, "Miami and the Siege of Chicago." He won the prestigious¹² National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize for Armies Of The Night -- a personal account of the 1967 march on the Pentagon by anti-war activists¹³. He was awarded a second Pulitzer in 1979 for The Executioner's Song, the true story of self-confessed murderer Gary Gilmore.

Always a supremely¹⁴ confident extrovert¹⁵, Mailer at times seemed like a publicity-seeking clown. In 1968, for example, he ran for mayor of New York, campaigning to make the city a separate state. Yet even his harshest critics agreed that Mailer was brilliant, if not a genius. Raised in New York City, Mailer entered Harvard University at the unusually young age of 16. His plan was to become an engineer. But he began writing short stories, and when he won a collegiate literary prize, Norman Mailer knew that his true calling was as a writer.

In 1984, Mailer wrote his first mystery novel, Tough Guys Don't Dance. As the author readily admitted, he was again dealing¹⁶ with the Mailer theme of man testing himself.

"Well, I wanted to try something different with this one, which is, I always thought 'Why not have somebody as your detective who's really no braver than any of us?' because the one thing about 'tough guy' murder mysteries is we read them and the pleasure we got out of them is that we're in the hands of someone who really is macho (masculine) man, who really is in control of things. And I thought, 'What if you have a guy who is only half-macho and half-wrecked? And full of fear and spooked (tormented) and suffering from all sorts of low woes¹⁷ like bad memory, too much drinking?'"

In addition to his novels, creative nonfiction, short stories and essays, Mailer wrote, produced, directed and acted in several films. His first new novel in a decade was published earlier in 2007. The Castle in the Forest is a fictional¹⁸ chronicle of Adolf Hitler's boyhood, and explores themes of good and evil. In October, as he was recovering from surgery to remove scar tissue from around his lungs, On God: An Uncommon¹⁹ Conversation was released. In his final work, Norman Mailer offers his concept of the nature of God… showing that even at 84, the author's blade had not been dulled.

This audio report is voiced by Alex Villareal.

1 prolific   

adj.丰富的，大量的；多产的，富有创造力的

参考例句：

• She is a prolific writer of novels and short stories.她是一位多产的作家，写了很多小说和短篇故事。
• The last few pages of the document are prolific of mistakes.这个文件的最后几页错误很多。

2 remarkable   

adj.显著的，异常的，非凡的，值得注意的

参考例句：

• She has made remarkable headway in her writing skills.她在写作技巧方面有了长足进步。
• These cars are remarkable for the quietness of their engines.这些汽车因发动机没有噪音而不同凡响。

3 recurring   

adj.往复的，再次发生的

参考例句：

• This kind of problem is recurring often. 这类问题经常发生。
• For our own country, it has been a time for recurring trial. 就我们国家而言，它经过了一个反复考验的时期。

4 dilemma   

n.困境，进退两难的局面

参考例句：

• I am on the horns of a dilemma about the matter.这件事使我进退两难。
• He was thrown into a dilemma.他陷入困境。

5 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。

6 metaphor   

n.隐喻，暗喻

参考例句：

• Using metaphor,we say that computers have senses and a memory.打个比方，我们可以说计算机有感觉和记忆力。
• In poetry the rose is often a metaphor for love.玫瑰在诗中通常作为爱的象征。

7 celebrity   

n.名人，名流；著名，名声，名望

参考例句：

• Tom found himself something of a celebrity. 汤姆意识到自己已小有名气了。
• He haunted famous men, hoping to get celebrity for himself. 他常和名人在一起, 希望借此使自己获得名气。

8 basked   

v.晒太阳，取暖( bask的过去式和过去分词 )；对…感到乐趣；因他人的功绩而出名；仰仗…的余泽

参考例句：

• She basked in the reflected glory of her daughter's success. 她尽情地享受她女儿的成功带给她的荣耀。
• She basked in the reflected glory of her daughter's success. 她享受着女儿的成功所带给她的荣耀。 来自《简明英汉词典》

9 publicity   

n.众所周知，闻名；宣传，广告

参考例句：

• The singer star's marriage got a lot of publicity.这位歌星的婚事引起了公众的关注。
• He dismissed the event as just a publicity gimmick.他不理会这件事，只当它是一种宣传手法。

10 overtly   

ad.公开地

参考例句：

• There were some overtly erotic scenes in the film. 影片中有一些公开色情场面。
• Nietzsche rejected God's law and wrote some overtly blasphemous things. 尼采拒绝上帝的律法，并且写了一些渎神的作品。

11 eyewitness   

n.目击者，见证人

参考例句：

• The police questioned several eyewitness to the murder.警察询问了谋杀案的几位目击者。
• He was the only eyewitness of the robbery.他是那起抢劫案的唯一目击者。

12 prestigious   

adj.有威望的，有声望的，受尊敬的

参考例句：

• The young man graduated from a prestigious university.这个年轻人毕业于一所名牌大学。
• You may even join a prestigious magazine as a contributing editor.甚至可能会加入一个知名杂志做编辑。

13 activists   

n.（政治活动的）积极分子，活动家( activist的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• His research work was attacked by animal rights activists . 他的研究受到了动物权益维护者的抨击。
• Party activists with lower middle class pedigrees are numerous. 党的激进分子中有很多出身于中产阶级下层。 来自《简明英汉词典》

14 supremely   

adv.无上地，崇高地

参考例句：

• They managed it all supremely well. 这件事他们干得极其出色。
• I consider a supremely beautiful gesture. 我觉得这是非常优雅的姿态。

15 extrovert   

n.性格外向的人

参考例句：

• A good salesman is usually an extrovert,who likes to mingle with people.一个好的推销员通常很外向，喜欢和人们交往。
• Do you think you're an extrovert or introvert?你认为你是个性外向的人还是个性内向的人？

16 dealing   

n.经商方法，待人态度

参考例句：

• This store has an excellent reputation for fair dealing.该商店因买卖公道而享有极高的声誉。
• His fair dealing earned our confidence.他的诚实的行为获得我们的信任。

17 woes   

困境( woe的名词复数 )； 悲伤； 我好苦哇； 某人就要倒霉

参考例句：

• Thanks for listening to my woes. 谢谢您听我诉说不幸的遭遇。
• She has cried the blues about its financial woes. 对于经济的困难她叫苦不迭。

18 fictional   

adj.小说的，虚构的

参考例句：

• The names of the shops are entirely fictional.那些商店的名字完全是虚构的。
• The two authors represent the opposite poles of fictional genius.这两位作者代表了天才小说家两个极端。

19 uncommon   

adj.罕见的，非凡的，不平常的

参考例句：

• Such attitudes were not at all uncommon thirty years ago.这些看法在30年前很常见。
• Phil has uncommon intelligence.菲尔智力超群。