阅读训练《逝去的影像》_第2页

What is most interesting about Auchincloss, is not the elegance of the lives he chronicled but the complexities, the unfulfilled ambitions, the restless hearts of his characters. In Auchincloss's novels (and in The Catcher in the Rye), little is what it seems to be. The exterior appears solid and secure. But the interior is a constantly roiling emotional battlefield. Glib analysis was insufficient to the problems of the heart Auchincloss was surveying. His 1974 memoir, A Writer's Capital,should be required reading for anyone interested in the craft. It is a book that manages to be honest and personal without being self-indulgent. He writes of his mother's anxiety about breaking the conventions of her caste, a reluctance dictated by fear.

"Fear of what?" Auchincloss recalled. "It is hard to describe. Fear of a grading system in which one started with a handicap. Fear of not coming up to some kind of scratch. Fear of being measured in the balance and found wanting."

Like many of his works, Auchincloss's Rector is in part about the tragic nature of lives that at first glance appear immune to tragedy. Who can feel sorry for a headmaster who laments that his school produces more stockbrokers than priests or public servants? Auchincloss's answer is that his readers should care, for the specialized disappointments and frustrations of the well established are particular expressions of the universal truth that life is never precisely what we want it to be, no matter how many houses one has.

词句笔记：
forbidding：形容人神情严肃的，不苟言笑的

crack a joke：讲笑话，开玩笑

ethos：社会思潮，普遍信仰

in the wake of：紧紧跟随
例句：In the wake of the removal of this forest for cultivation is a desolate, bare, and rocky eroded land.
开垦土地而砍伐森林所留下的迹象是一片荒芜,裸露和岩石被侵蚀的土地。

be immune to：不受……影响的
例句： the tragic nature of lives that at first glance appear immune to tragedy
第一眼看上去似乎与悲剧绝缘的真正悲剧性的生活