1006G 备考日记 by qxn_1987——now

qxn_1987UID: 2610437

01.03(comments)

"A virtuous man is concerned with righteousness while a mean man, with gain,” Confucius（孔子）says. The "righteousness" and "gain" have long been a central theme in the Chinese philosophy of life. But, what if I am neither virtuous nor mean?

There was once a time when almost everyone claimed to be a gentleman and every word uttered was about righteousness. At that time, there might have been some truly virtuous men who were so righteous as to give up whatever was profitable. But, more likely, one might meet hypocrites（伪君子，伪善者） who used righteousness as a fig leaf（无花果树叶，遮羞布） for their cupidity, or pedants believed in whatever passed for righteousness. Gone are the old days. The social trend has taken on a dramatic change unawares: the reputation of righteousness nosedived（（飞机）俯冲，急降）, truly virtuous men became extinct, hypocrites dropped the fig leaf and the scales fell from the eyes of the pedants. With- out exception, they all joined in the scramble for gains. It is believed that the philosophy of life has changed and a new interpretation of righteousness and gain looms large（显得突出）: seeking material gains is not the exclusive patent of the mean, but a golden rule for all.

"Time is money" is a vogue word nowadays. Nothing is wrong when entrepreneurs apply it to boost productivity. But, when it is worshipped as a motto of life and commercialism takes the place of other wisdom of life, life is then turned into a corporation and, consequently, interpersonal relations into a market.

I used to mock at the cheap "human touch". But, nowadays even the cheap “touch” has become rare and costly. Can you, if I may ask, get a smile, a greeting, or a tiny bit of compassion for free?

Don’t be nostalgic, though. It is in fact of little help if you try to redeem the world or salvage the corrupt minds through preaching various brands of righteousness. Nevertheless, beyond righteousness and gain, I believe, there are other attitudes towards life; beyond virtue and meanness, there are other individualities. Allow me to coin a sentence in the Confucian style: "A perfect man is concerned with disposition."


Indeed, righteousness and gain, seemingly poles apart, have much essence in common. Righteousness calls for a devotion to the whole society while gain drives one to pursue material interests. In both cases, one’s disposition is over- looked and his true “self” concealed. "Righteousness" teaches one to give while "gain" induces one to take. The former turns one’s life into a process of fulfilling endless obligations while the latter breeds a life-long scramble for wealth and power. We must remember, however, the true value of life is beyond obligations and power. Both righteousness and gain are yoked by calculating minds. That’s why we often find ourselves in a tense interpersonal relationship whether Mr. Righteousness is commanding or Mr. Gain, controlling.

If "righteousness" stands for an ethical philosophy of life, and "gain," a utilitarian one, what I mean by "disposition" is an aesthetical philosophy of fife, which advocates taking your disposition as the operational guidance for your fife（n.横笛，吹横笛v.吹横笛）, whereby everyone is allowed to keep his true "self". You do not five for the doctrines you believe in or the materials you possess.（？“five”怎么讲？）
Instead, your true "self" makes you who you are. The true meaning of life lies not in giving or possessing, but in creating, which actively unfolds your true disposition, or, in other words, the emotional gratification you obtain through the exertion of your essential power. Different from giving, which is the performance of an external responsibility, creating is the realization of one’s true self. The difference between creating and possessing is more than crystal clear（完全明透的，【喻】极其明白，十分清楚）） Let’s take creative writing as an example: "Possessing" focuses on the fame or social status a piece of writing may bring, while "creating" highlights the pleasure in the process of writing. A man of disposition seeks nothing but the communication of feelings while in company, and the cultivation of taste while possessing something. More valuably, in a time when most people are busy hunting for wealth and being hunted by it, a man of disposition is always at ease in social intercourses（交往，交流）. Here I' m not talking about the leisure of traditional Chinese scholar-officials, nor the complacency of conservative peasants（农夫，乡下人）, but about a peaceful mind coming from a non-materialistic attitude towards life. Using the writing example again, I’ve been wondering why a writer needs to be prolific. If he dreams of being enshrined, an immortal short poem is enough. Otherwise,
he could be pretty much satisfied with a carefree life. In this sense, writing is merely a way for such a life.

Bernard Shaw once said, “There are two tragedies in life. One is not to get your heart’s desire. The other is to get it." With it I couldn’t agree more. I did admire him for his easy and humorous way in describing the quandary of life. However, a deep ponder over it has brought home to me that Shaw’s standpoint is no other than "possessing", which keeps us stranded in a double dosage tragedy of life: it' s a pain not to possess your heart' s desire, and a tedium, to have possessed it. However, if we shift the standpoint from "possessing" to "creating", and look at life with an esthetic eye, we can interpret Shaw’s words the other way round: there are two comedies in life. One is not to get your heart’s desire, so you still have the opportunity to seek or create it. The other is to get your heart’s desire, and then you are able to enjoy tasting or experiencing it--Of course, life can never be free from pains, and a wealth hunter can not dream of the sadness of a man who places a premium on his true disposition. However, to be free from the mania for possession may at least save you many petty worries and pains, and let you enjoy a graceful life. I have no intention to prescribe the esthetic viewpoint as the cure for a corrupt world. I just want to express a belief: there is a life more worth living than the one haunted by righteousness and gain. And, this belief will help me sail through the unpredictable waters of my future life.


Comments:

How wonderful and insightful the article is.

Nowadays, people are more busily engaged in pursuing the materials than has ever been before. They are just like anxious social climbers, and have endless devotions to material things to live a real life in their mind. Nevertheless, they have misapprehended that, as a matter of fact, the true meaning of life lies not in possessing, but in creating, which actively unfolds your true disposition. Allow me to coin a sentence in the article: “Creating is the realization of one’s true self.”

What’s more, as we all know, our life is full of difficulties and setbacks. The life will be dramactically different if we treat life in different ways. If we shift our standpoint from possessing to creating, it will help us “sail through the unpredictable waters of my future life.”

Anyhow, I have learned a lot from the article, both knowledge useful for AW and philosophy of life.

123runfordreamUID: 2697608

I think you could talk more about your feelings.  such as what is your understanding of creating as what the author mention.
keep going!

qxn_1987UID: 2610437

93# 行单影只

？咦？

qxn_1987UID: 2610437

01.03
首先，感谢C。的建议！！
昨天寝室说什么也不能上网。。。
今天不晓得可不可以，先来网吧补一下昨天的日志：
小组任务出炉。。
2个list，过15个题目，当然还有comments。。
还有论文下午赶着交，撤。。

qxn_1987UID: 2610437

先补一下昨天日志：
01.04
昨天寝室一直不能上网。。
comments也没做，罪过！！

顺便把今天日志也写了：
01.05
没办法，今天去办了无线上网。。

最近。。。最近。。呃，这又怎么样，我要强大的坚持下去！！！
不管怎样，不管遇到什么，既然决定要做，就强大的坚持下去！！！

（。。每当看见那些老人，就会莫名的心痛。。）

miki7catUID: 2533330

Q，如果还发烧的一定要去看医生啊！

qxn_1987UID: 2610437

97# miki7cat

恩，恩，还是mica关心我！！抱 ~抱~呵。。

qxn_1987UID: 2610437

01.04(comments)


“As we have agreed, I think, things are known not according to their natures but according to the nature of the one who is comprehending them. Let us consider, then, insofar as we can, what the nature of divine substance must be so that we can have some inkling of（对…略有所知）the kind of knowledge the divine mind has. All who live by reason agree that God is eternal, and we must therefore think about what eternity means. This will clarify what the divine nature is and also what divine knowledge must be. Eternity is the whole, simultaneous, perfect possession of limitless life, which we can better understand perhaps by comparing it to temporal things. One who lives in time progresses in the present from the past and into the future. There is nothing in time that can embrace the entirety of his existence. He has no idea about tomorrow and has already lost his hold on the past. In this day-to-day life, he lives only in the transitory moment. 【Whatever is in time—even though, as Aristotle says, time had no beginning and has no ending and extends into infinity—is still not what may correctly be called ‘eternal.’】 Its life may be infinitely long, but still it does not comprehend its entire extent simultaneously. It is still waiting for the future to reveal itself and it has let go of （释放，放开）much of the past. What may properly be called eternal is quite different, in that it has knowledge of the whole of life, can see the future, and has lost nothing of the past. It is in an eternal present and has an understanding of the entire flow of time.

“Those philosophers are wrong, then, who took Plato’s dictum that the world had no beginning and had no end and inferred from that that the created world is co-eternal with the Creator. It is one thing to proceed through infinite time, as Plato posits, but quite another to embrace the whole of time in one simultaneous present. This is obviously a property of the mind of God. 【God should not be thought of as older than the created world but different in his grasp of （在…掌握中）time in the immediacy of his being.（这个怎么理解？）】
The endless and infinite changing of things in time is an attempt to imitate eternity, but it cannot equal its immobility and it fails to achieve the eternal present, producing only an infinite number of future and past moments. It never ceases to be（不再是） and therefore is an imitation of eternity, but it is balanced on the knifeedge of the present, the brief and fleeting instant, which we may call a kind of costume of eternity. But since it is not equal to that eternal state, it falls from immobility to change, from the immediacy of a continuing present to the infinite extent of past and future moments, and it confers on whatever possesses it the appearance of what it imitates.

“Now, since every judgment is able to comprehend things only according to the nature of the mind making that judgment, and since God has an eternal and omnipresent nature, his knowledge surpasses time’s movements and is made in the simplicity of a continual present, which embraces all the vistas of the future and the past, and he considers all this in the act of knowing as though all things were going on at once. This means that what you think of as his foreknowledge is really a knowledge of the instant, which is never-passing and never-coming-to-be. It is not pre-vision (praevidentia) but providence (providentia), because, from that high vantage point（有利位置，优越地位，优势）, he sees at once all things that were and are and are to come. You insist that those things of the future are inevitable if God can see them, but you must admit that not even men can make inevitable those things that they see. Your seeing them in the present does not confer any inevitability, does it?”

“Now, if you were to say that what God sees as going to occur cannot not occur and that what cannot not occur happens of necessity, and make a problem of the word ‘necessity,’ I will answer that it is absolutely true but is, indeed, a problem, not so much for logicians as for theologians（神学家，空头理论家）. All I can tell you is that this future event from the point of view of divine knowledge is necessary, but from its own nature is utterly and entirely free. There are actually two necessities, one of them simple—as that all men are mortal—and the other conditional—as that when you see a man walking it is necessary that he be walking. Whatever you know cannot be otherwise than（与…不同的，除…之外） as you know it.

be bound to（一定要..）
So are things that you look at with the senses singular, but if you look at them from the point of view of reason, they are universal.

“And now you may perhaps object that it lies in your power to change your intention and thereby to frustrate providence and turn it into nonsense, because whatever providence may have foreseen, you can do something else. …It is in this light that we can answer the question you posed a while back about our providing a part of God’s knowledge. The power of his knowledge includes everything in an eternal present and does not at all rely on the unfolding of later events. In this way, man’s freedom is maintained in its integrity, and therefore God’s rewards and punishments are meted out fairly and appropriately, because free will is operating and men are not compelled by necessity. God has prescience and is a spectator from on high, and as he looks down in his eternal present, he assigns rewards to the good and punishments to the wicked. In this way, our hopes and our
prayers are not at all in vain. Our prayers, if they are of the right kind and are pleasing to God, are not without effect. And the conclusion, then, is clear, that you must avoid wickedness and pursue the good. Lift up your mind in virtue and hope and, in humility, offer your prayers to the Lord. Do not be deceived. It is required of you that you do good and that you remember that you live in the constant sight of a judge who sees all things.”


Comments:

This article is a bit abstract and obscure to me, though I have read several times.

Anyhow, the author, from my point of view, the author’s opinion is extraordinarily insightful on the consolation of philosophy. I receive a purety ablution from the passage, which tells us that what the real eternal is, which is so different from our previous comprehension, and convinces us that the God who has divine prescience is eternal and omnipresent. If only are we pious and pleasing to God, do we pursue the good and abstain wickedness, “our hopes and prayers are not at all in vain.”

What’s more, one of the most compelling points in the passage, as I reckon, is the example, the author has proposed in the passage, of the rising sun and the walking man. Though the example is so simple and common, the speaker is capable to use and analyse it vividly and logiacally to express his view clearly and explicitly. Bruntly put, I could understand, to some extent, the passage, mostly attributing to this example.

qxn_1987UID: 2610437

01.06
首先，强烈感谢mica的关心！！抱mica。。
其次，汇报一下今天的工作：
发烧，脑袋有点沉，效率很低。。呃。。
2个list&题库。。
还有comments没补上。。

呃。。好多作业要补，加油！！
加油！！

qxn_1987UID: 2610437

How do business schools remain relevant in today’s changing world?AS THE clamour grows for more regulation to address the corporate failings that led the world into a two-year recession, business schools sense a chance to drive the agenda. By producing academic research that can inform the debates within Washington and Brussels, there is a chance to become relevant once again. But business is also changing its mind about it wants from MBA students. The super-confident, gung-ho（同心协力的，强烈的，雄心壮志的） leader, that was once their calling card（名片）, has fallen out of fashion. So can schools adapt to a changing world?
To find out, The Economist spoke to two prominent business deans from either side of the Atlanti: Santiago Iñiguez de Ozoño, dean of Spain’s IE Business school, and Paul Danos, dean of Dartmouth College’s Tuck School of Business in America.

Has the role of the business school changed as a result of the economic crisis?

Santiago Iñiguez de Ozoño: Actually management is very much demanded these days. Management is everywhere. All our universities are demanding programmes in management from many different quarters（住处，岗位）: for engineers, for doctors, for architects.
But some things have changed. The presence of the visible hand [of regulation] is now more explicit. This means that business schools may have a role in preparing members of governments and the administration. The collaboration between the public and private is becoming one of the fastest growing areas of business schools.
We also see more demand for entrepreneurship courses. In times of crisis managers need to reinvent their existing businesses, launch new products and diversify. But also there are many opportunities for the creation of new business—start-ups in fields like technologies, biotechnology, in energy, even in education.
Then we also see some things changing at business schools. We field the demand from the real world to develop research which can actually address the real problems of business. This will probably affect the profile of professors. Not only must they be solid in terms of their research skills and teaching skills, they should also be able to interface with the top management.

Have you seen a change in what professors are researching over the last two years?

Paul Danos: Research grinds slowly. …So it's subtle, nuanced.

So something that may come out from this crisis is the need of managers to come back to school and update their knowledge and validate what they do in the real world.

Paul Danos: I think one thing I've walked away from the crisis with is that no-one can know it all. You need the right kind of probing mindset when you attack problems of such complexity because no one could have ever seen the combination of factors before. So it's not the understanding of every eventuality（不测的事，可能性，可能发生的事）—which is impossible—it's the right mindset.

esoteric（深奥）
hook up
overtly
inculcate
rally

Paul Danos: The crisis was not caused by the broad 90% of our students who went into businesses. It was caused by the dynamics of the interplay between big banks and the regulators. Now you might say [that] those are business people too and they were trained at business schools. True, but ordinary corporations didn't do what banks did. I'm on boards of corporations and we weren't blinded, we weren't 40-to-1 leveraged（杠杆作用）…

Can business schools exert any leverage over regulators?

Paul Danos: I think so. We have a group at Tuck right now that is made up of several schools—finance professors and economists—and they are writing white papers on many aspects of regulation. So they, as an independent party, are trying to get their voice into Washington and into Europe about the future of regulation and the future regime. They are able to get into congressional and other hearings, but it's just one voice. You know how politics is: there are many voices and lobby groups trying to influence the future of regulation.

Is the nature of leadership changing?

Santiago Iñiguez de Ozoño: It is a different sort of leadership than the one which has grown in the past decade. It is not charismatic leadership, but teamwork. We will also see in the future many institutions getting rid of this spirit of elitism or arrogance which has contributed to create this atmosphere of overconfidence. They [believed that they] were actually beyond any controls or rules—that Nietzschean moral of the super-masters. We will get back to more controls, the golden rules, more supervision, getting rid of superficial things. History is very recurrent and we are attending again a move of the pendulum.


Comments:

Frankly speaking, the debate is not so clear to me as I have expected. It is neither so explicit, from my personal point of view, as the economic debate we have commented on a few days before.

Bluntly put, MBA is a profession always means, to me, that who are admirable decision-makers and have excellent managing skills, furthermore, always take a great amount of money home.

Nowadays, some people begin to think that some things have changed at business school attribute to the financial recession, while others not. Then we have a deans debate today.

I am more willing side with Paul Danos, as this debate, since his refutation is more convictive and suasive to me. And yet, the debate is not so clear to me that I am afraid I could not elaborate.

qxn_1987UID: 2610437

01.06(comments)

More than 400 have been located around stars other than the sun, 【by looking for the wobbles（这个地方该怎么理解这个单词？） in parent stars that orbiting planets cause.】（？）

putative（推定的，假定的，被公认的）
hypothetical
modus operandi（做法, 惯技）
in question（正被讨论，可怀疑）
peculiar
planetary atmospheres（行星雾围）


Comments:

As the pollution become more and more serious and grievous, such as the severe climate change due to the superfluous emissions of greenhouse-gas. At the same time, some scientists set up to establish a scientific prophesy or presumption that there will be one day the earth is no more suitable for our human beings to live on, if we continue to pollute and destory it. The assumption did cause a great panic---we will be homeless someday-- among us, though while some still take it unconcernedly. Then some scientists begin to search solutions to that catastrophe, seeking a life-bearing planet just like the earth is another way other than the global coooperation and communication to tackle the global problems.

And yet, it would be more practical, valid and timely, from my personal point of view, to appeal all the country in the world to confront with and solve the promblem by cooperating and communicating with each other, than seeking a life-bearing planet, which is so time- and money-consuming ---in terms of how the money and time might be spent toward addressing society’s more immediate problems.

海王泪UID: 2673613

102# qxn_1987

wobble这里是指星星闪来闪去吗？ 感觉就像一颤一颤的～

qxn_1987UID: 2610437

Once upon a time in the annals of women's stories, getting married was the fairy-tale ending. These days, marital ambivalence rules the literary scene. December brought Julie Powell's new memoir, Cleaving: A Story of Marriage, Meat and Obsession (Little, Brown; 307 pages), in which the Julie & Julia author tells the sad, sordid tale of the recent years she spent butchering（n.屠夫，屠户 v.屠宰，屠杀） pigs, cows and her husband's heart. 【Meanwhile, in a New York Times Magazine story, writer Elizabeth Weil detailed her efforts to subject her "perfect union" to every kind of therapeutic scrutiny available in Northern California.】【Her goal of complete marital introspection — needed or otherwise（或相反） — inspired heated holiday-party conversations and terror at the thought of the memoir to follow, as well as giving single women everywhere a new appreciation of their unburdened ring fingers.】(See the 100 best novels of all time.)

Elizabeth Gilbert does these reluctant wives one better. The author of Eat, Pray, Love returns with Committed: A Skeptic(n.) Makes Peace with Marriage (Viking; 285 pages), in which she is a vehemently（激烈地，暴烈地） wary second-time bride, due to be dragged down（把…向下拖，使衰弱） the aisle by Uncle Sam's immigration henchmen, who will otherwise toss her beloved, Brazilian-born "Felipe," as she calls the older man she met in the last section of EPL, out of the U.S. for good. They hadn't planned to marry. Like Gilbert, Felipe had endured a hard divorce, and they were content to be "lifers" together. But a helpful Homeland Security officer prescribes marriage as the only certain way out of Felipe's immigration dilemma, and the couple agree that they love each other enough to do it. (See a Q&A with Elizabeth Gilbert.)

Gilbert cites statistics, scientific studies and her painful experience with her first marriage —【 the impetus for the worldwide spiritual ramble of EPL 】— as her reasons for not wanting to tie the knot. She demonstrates how the institution threatens her independence and the well-being of many women. 【Her fears hold up even when she's considering union with a man who loves her, excuses her memoirist tendencies and has been known to tell her that the curves of her body "look like sand dunes（沙丘）."】

But whereas in Eat, Pray, Love the journey was what mattered, the end of Committed is, as of page 18, a foregone conclusion（预料中的结局）. As Gilbert puts it, she and her lover are "sentenced to marry." 【This makes the book a supreme act of navel-gazing, even for a memoir. 】While the legal complexities are being worked out, the two kill time by traveling together. 【Along the way, Gilbert, ever the good journalist, gathers string on marriage and love from various sources, including the humble Hmong women of North Vietnam, seagulls（海鸥）, a humble frog-farming family in Laos and her humble 96-year-old Grandma Maude back in Minnesota. (Gilbert practices humility with vigor, even when sweetly patronizing（俨然以恩人态度的，要人领情的） Third World cultures.) Her process is exhaustive, and the results are exhausting, though some of her points are astute. This slog（v.艰难进行） through one woman's relationship angst（n.焦虑，担心） feels, in the end, like much ado about nothing（庸人自扰，小题大做，无事空忙）.

Gilbert is a highly conversational writer — a blessing if you are in the memoir business. Four years after its publication, Eat, Pray, Love remains on the New York Times best-seller list, giving its author a chance, with the likely sales of this new book, to become the Malcolm Gladwell of soul-searching（真挚的自我反省，深思）. Gilbert left her loyalists believing that a year of spiritual questing would end with peace, love and the address of the best pizzeria in Naples. There could be no doubt that her readers wanted more. She and Felipe had gone off into（开始，爆发出） the sunset; could she now describe the rosy glow? (See the top 10 fiction books of 2009.)

【But Committed — and to a certain extent, Powell's Cleaving — demonstrates the curse of the conversational writer. I confess to having found EPL tedious at times（有时，不时） and to struggling with the fortuitous arrival of true love at the end of Gilbert's year of self-discovery（自我发现）.】 (In Committed, she pokes fun at（取笑） herself, quoting her sister Catherine's response to her gushy（流出的，易动感情的） e-mails from Bali: "Yeah, I was planning to go to a tropical island this weekend with my Brazilian lover, too ... but then there was all that traffic.") There was no denying, however, that she was a vibrant woman on a cool adventure, with stories to tell. The pressure to return to that fertile ground must have been enormous. Just as she was sentenced to marrying, she was sentenced to sequel（结局） writing. (See questions and answers about retirement.)

Committed gives us a woman trapped in a command performance she's too smart not to be dubious about. She seems self-conscious（自觉） about the need to remain everyone's best friend, littering her prose with chirpy asides ("Listen, I want to make it clear here that I am not intrinsically against passion. Mercy, no!") and cutesy（矫揉造作的，忸怩作态的） interjections ("Just a little free advice there, from your Auntie Liz"). Then there are the apologies for anything that might offend. Her eloquent defense of gay marriage, for instance, is diminished by this chatty advisory: "You see where I'm heading with this, right? Or rather, you see where history is heading with this? What I mean to say is, you won't be surprised, will you, if I now take a few minutes to discuss the subject of same-sex marriage?"

【Gilbert also repeats, incessantly（不间断地）, information she's already conveyed, whether it be the vastness of the belly of a pregnant woman she's dining with or the details of a coat — wine-colored, with a fur collar — once owned by her grandmother.】(We hear about its beauty four times in three pages.) There are useful insights into the dilemma of modern marriage here, but the overall effect of the heavily padded（填补） Committed is like that of being called, over and over, by a friend who wants to talk your ear off（对某人叨叨不休） about her impending nuptials. Only instead of debating the floral arrangements, she's wondering, Should I really be taking the leap? Halfway through Committed, I wanted to put the phone down and walk away, leaving Gilbert to figure it out on her own.

How to Butcher a Marriage

It would be much harder to hang up on Powell. She makes no apologies and no effort to be likable（可爱的） in Cleaving, a ghastly work of revelation without enough self-reflection（自省）. Soon after wrapping up（掩饰, 伪装, 使全神贯注, 围好围巾, 包起来）Julie & Julia, Powell began cheating on（对…不忠） the kindly Eric, that husband who dutifully ate her butter-soaked Julia Child meals for a year. Her lover and S&M partner was Damian, a former college fling with "Mick Jagger lips, and a weak chin." I am saddened that I have a clearer vision of Damian's masturbatory methods than of his actual appeal, and sadder still at the mental images Powell provides of herself tied up, awaiting his next "R-owwr." (Since when is talking like Austin Powers sexy?) This recipe for marital disaster comes with scattered recipes you'd hesitate to trust, given the horrific disorder of Powell's upstairs kitchen. (See the top 10 nonfiction books of 2009.)

Cleaving is, however, a much livelier book than Committed, in the way that your narcissistic pal is more riveting than your earnest, loyal girlfriend. Powell's interest in butchery is genuine, and the passages set during her internship at Fleisher's, an upstate New York butcher shop, bristle with（充满） clarity. That's not to say the intended metaphor — that as she learns to butcher, she's also exploring the anatomy of her tumultuous love life — is clear or convincing, largely because her journey feels so incomplete.

What is fascinating is the impact of previous writing successes on these pages. In one heartbreakingly venal passage, Powell thrills at Damian's audacity in pretending to be Eric for an eager reader who recognizes her on the street. The honesty of the admission doesn't cleanse（v.纯净） the implied disrespect for those — from the real Eric to her fans — who adore her. Powell was also sentenced to sequel, although her amply demonstrated lack of humility suggests she was happier to comply than Gilbert. But when she runs out of story — the Fleisher's internship complete — she copies earlier Gilbert, setting forth on（动身） a haphazard journey around the world. Her "Eat, Sulk, Stew" wraps up with a return to the husband she belittled and betrayed. Now here is a marriage to be debated. Maybe one of Weil's therapists could lend a hand.

Both books feel rushed into（仓促行动） print. Cleaving begs for（乞求） better boundaries and structure; the ladylike Committed is too confined to feel truly intimate. Gilbert overshares only in the department of exclamation points, and if you want to know what life postsunset is like, be advised: she takes us only to the altar. But these two writers share more than just marital ambivalence. It may be difficult to work up sympathy for best-selling authors who end up portrayed on the big screen by the likes of Amy Adams and Julia Roberts. (EPL the movie is scheduled for release this year.) Yet these women have been caged by the expectations of voracious publishers and readers. Their escape methods are different — Powell appears to be chewing her own leg off, Gilbert gently boring her captors into letting her go — but it's hard not to empathize with someone in a trap, even one built on success.

Comments:

The passage is mainly about a comment on two authors and their books--- Cleaving and Committed. Bluntly put, I am not so interested in this passage, and which is a bit abstract and obscure to me to some extent.

Anyhow, we can see,obviously, that the author’s writing skill is graceful, masterly and workmanlike. The passage is highly effective in its use of language---such as effective vocabulary and sentence varity, the language is precise and often figurative. At the same time, there are a great amount of vocabulary or glossary for me to learn, and which will take me a long time to assimilate them completely.