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  3. We sometimes hear that essays are an old-fashioned form, that so-and-so is the "last essayist", but the facts of the marketplace

We sometimes hear that essays are an old-fashioned form, that so-and-so is the "last essayist", but the facts of the marketplace

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问题     We sometimes hear that essays are an old-fashioned form, that so-and-so is the "last essayist", but the facts of the marketplace argue quite otherwise. Essays of nearly any kind are so much easier than short stories for a writer to sell, so many more see print, it’s strange that though two fine anthologies(collections)remain that publish the year’s best stories, no comparable collection exists for essays. Such changes in the reading public’s taste aren’t always to the good, needless to say. The art of telling stories predated even cave painting, surely; and if we ever find ourselves living in caves again, it(with painting and drumming)will be the only art left, after movies, novels, photography, essays, biography, and all the rest have gone down the drain — the art to build from.
    Essays, however, hang somewhere on a line between two sturdy poles: this is what I think, and this is what I am. Autobiographies which aren’t novels are generally extended essays, indeed. A personal essay is like the human voice talking, its order being the mind’s natural flow, instead of a systematized outline of ideas. Though more changeable or informal than an article or treatise, somewhere it contains a point which is its real center, even if the point couldn’t be uttered in fewer words than the essayist has used. Essays don’t usually boil down to a summary, as articles do, and the style of the writer has a "nap" to it, a combination of personality and originality and energetic loose ends that stand up like the nap(绒毛)on a piece of wool and can’t be brushed flat. Essays belong to the animal kingdom, with a surface that generates sparks, like a coat of fur, compared with the flat, conventional cotton of the magazine article writer, who works in the vegetable kingdom, instead. But, essays, on the other hand, may have fewer "levels" than fiction, because we are not supposed to argue much about their meaning. In the old distinction between teaching and storytelling, the essayist, however cleverly he tries to conceal his intentions, is a bit of a teacher or reformer, and an essay is intended to convey the same point to each of us.
    An essayist doesn’t have to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth, he can shape or shave his memories, as long as the purpose is served of explaining a truthful point. A personal essay frequently is not autobiographical at all, but what it does keep in common with autobiography is that, through its tone and tumbling progression, it conveys the quality of the author’s mind. Nothing gets in the way. Because essays are directly concerned with the mind and the mind’s peculiarity, the very freedom the mind possesses is conferred on this branch of literature that does honor to it, and the fascination of the mind is the fascination of the essay.
What chiefly distinguishes essays from articles may be in______.
选项 A、the different amount of words used in representation
B、the acute sensibility and keen insight of essayists
C、the distinction between animal and vegetable worlds
D、the variation of arguments about their meanings
答案B
解析 这是一道细节题。文章第二段指出：散文的风格犹如一层绒毛，作者的个性、独创性以及激情的点缀在散文上，如同毛衣上的绒毛，你无法将其熨平；散文属于动物皮毛王国，与杂志文章作者的普通、传统的棉衣相比，散文可以产生火花，像一件毛皮大衣。这说明，散文的作者通常异常敏锐。B说“散文家的异常灵敏度与敏锐的见识”，这与文章的意思符合。与A有关的信息是该段的第四句话，文中是说“虽然散文比文章和专题论文更容易变化、更不正式，但某种情况下，它含有表达其真正中心的要点，即使表达这个要心所使用的语言不能用少于散文家使用的语言”，并没有说它们使用的词汇量不同，所以A不对。C只是文中的比喻，并不是真实情况，所以不对。与D有关的信息是该段的“散文没有小说那样有起伏，那是因为我们不想过多地探讨其意义”这句话，说明D不对。
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