2017年英语专八阅读理解考前练习试题及
答案解析
On a nondescript block south of New York's Union Square’up a dreary staircase and through a black-barred gate, there is a long, narrow room that might be mistaken for a very small museum of literary counterculture. On one wall hangs two rows of iconic posters：a print of Che Guevara's proud head; a photograph of the authors Jean Genet, William S. Burroughs, and Allen Ginsberg marching at the 1968 Democratic National Convention ;a portrait of Bobby Kennedy. Ixiose-leaf binders of correspondence with groundbreaking authors line floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. Beside the bookcases, Samuel Beckett peers out of a black-and-white photograph with a fierce crow's gaze. Next to him in the picture stands a shorter, milder-looking man named Barney Rosset.
Rosset's publishing house, Grove Press, was a tiny company operating out of the ground floor of Rosset's brownstone when it published an obscure play called Waiting for Godot in 1954. By the time Beckett had won the Nobel Prize in 1969 ’Grove had become a force that challenged and changed literature and American culture in deep and lasting ways. Its impact is still evident——from the Che Guevara posters adorning college dorms to the canonical status of the house's once controversial authors. Rosset is less well known—but late in his life he is achieving some wider recognition.
"Hie story of Rossel's life is essentially one of creative
destruction. He found writers who wanted to break new paths, and then he picked up a sledge-hammer to help ihem whale away at the existing order.
Rosset saw many crises. He or his company was forever going broke, being attacked, breaking the law. In his legal battles, Rosset made his most enduring impact. Before Rosset challenged federal and slate obscenity laws, censorship was an accepted feature of publishing. His victories in high courts helped to change that. Rosset believed that it was impossible to represent life in the streets and in the dark recesses of the heart and mind honestly without using language that in ihe mid-20th century was considered “obscene"—and therefore illegal to sell or mail. To a significant extent, the books he published convinced others that this was true.
Rosset wasn't the only publisher who took risks, but he was one of the most visible and uncompromising. Not everything he published was high-minded. Some of it aimed below the belt, and he was uncompromising about that too. His stubbornness made his achievements possible, bul it also helped to undo him. At the end of the 60s, Grove moved into fancy offices, into film, and, to some extent, away from books. The repression of the 50s and freewheeling openness of the 60s were over, and other houses, now free from fear of censorship, took more chances. The left splintered. The feminist movemenl attacked him. Grove began to drift. But Rosset, as always, kept doing what he wanted, everything else be damned.
1.Which of the following statements contains a metaphor?
