Questions 11-15
The British author Salman Rushdie is selling his personal archive to a wealthy American university. The archive, which includes personal diaries written during the decade that he spent living in hiding from Islamic extremists, is being bought by the Emory University in Atlanta for an undisclosed sum. The move has sparked concern that Britain's literary heritage is being lost to foreign buyers. The archive also includes two unpublished novels.
Rushdie, 59, said last week that his priority had been to "find a good home" for his papers, but admitted that money had also been a factor. "I don't see why I should give them away," he said. "It seemed to me quite reasonable that one should be paid." The sum involved is likely to match or exceed similar deals. In 2003 Emory bought the archive of Ted Hughes, the late poet laureate, for a reported $600,000. Julian Barnes, the author of Flaubert's Parrot, is said to have sold his papers to the University of Texas at Austin for $200,000.
Rushdie was born in Bombay (Mumbai) but educated in Britain. His book Midnight's Children was voted the best Booker prize winner in 25 years and he is regarded as a leading British literary novelist. The sale of his papers will annoy the British Library, which is about to hold a conference to discuss how to stop famous writers' archives being sold abroad.
Yesterday Clive Field, the director .of scholarship and collections at the library, said: "I am pleased that Rushdie's papers will be preserved in a publicly accessible institution, but disappointed that we didn't have an opportunity to discuss the acquisition of the archive with him." Rushdie' said the British Library "never asked me about the archive".
Questions 16-20
At the tail end of the 19th century, Friedrich Nietzsche suggested that natural history—which he saw as a war against fear and superstition—ought to be narrated "in such a way that everyone who hears it is irresistibly inspired to strive after spiritual and bodily health and vigour," and he grumbled that artists had yet to discover the right language to do this.
"Nonetheless," Nietzsche admitted, "the English have taken admirable steps in the direction of that ideal ... the reason is that they [natural history books] are written by their most distinguished scholars—whole, complete and fulfilling natures."
The English language tradition of nature writing and narrating natural history is gloriously rich, and although it may not make any bold claims to improving health and wellbeing, it does a good job—for readers and the subjects of the writing. Where the insights of field naturalists meet the legacy of poets such as Clare, Wordsworth, Hughes and Heaney, there emerges a language as vivid as any cultural achievement.
That this language is still alive and kicking and read every day in a newspaper is astounding. So to hold a century's worth of country diaries is, for an interloper like me, both an inspiring and humbling experience. But is this the best way of representing nature, or is it a cultural default? Will the next century of writers want to shake loose from this tradition? What happens next?
Over the years, nature writers and country diarists have developed an increasingly sophisticated ecological literacy of the world around them through the naming of things and an understanding of the relationships between them. They find ways of linking simple observations to bigger issues by remaining in the present, the particular. For writers of my generation, a nostalgia for lost wildlife and habitats and the business of bearing witness to a war of attrition in the countryside colours what we're about. The anxieties of future generations may not be the same.
Articulating the "wild" as a qualitative character of nature and context for the more quantitative notion of biodiversity will, I believe, become a more dynamic cultural project. The re-wilding of lands and seas, coupled with a re-wilding of experience and language, offers fertile ground for writers. A response to the anxieties springing from climate change, and a general fear of nature answering our continued environmental injustices with violence, will need a reassessment of our feelings for the nature we like—cultural landscapes, continuity, native species—as well as the nature we don't like—rising seas, droughts, "invasive" species.
Whether future writers take their sensibilities for a walk and, like a pack of wayward dogs unleashed, let them loose in hills and woods to sniff out some fugitive truth hiding in the undergrowth, or choose to honestly recount the this-is-where-I-am, this-is-what-I-see approach, they will be hitched to the values implicit in the language they use. They should challenge these.
Perhaps they will see our natural history as a contributor to the commodification of nature and the obsessive managerialism of our times. Perhaps they will see our romanticism as a blanket thrown over the traumatised victim of the countryside. But maybe they will follow threads we found in the writings of others and find their own way to wonder.
16. The major theme of the passage is about ______.
(A) the 19th century philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche
(B) the development of the discipline of natural history
(C) the English language tradition of nature writing
(D) the style of nature writing and country diaries
17. In writing the essay, the author seems to be directly talking to the "future generations" and "future writers" probably because ______.
(A) they will carry forward the tradition of nature writing
(B) they will confront a changing environment and have their own perspective of natural history
(C) they will study the causes of climate change and promote the notion and significance of biodiversity
(D) they will value more the sophisticated ecological literacy of the nature writers and country diarists
18. The author says that our feelings for the nature we like (as well as the nature we don't like) will need a "reassessment" probably because ______.
(A) we should not like the cultural landscapes, continuity and native species
(B) we should not hate the rising seas, droughts, and "invasive" species
(C) our feelings are often irrational and subjective
(D) our feelings are always focusing on ourselves
19. It can be concluded that the tone of the passage is basically ______.
(A) assertive and radical
(B) explicit and straightforward
(C) neutral and impartial
(D) implicit and explorative
20. Which of the following statements is NOT in agreement with the author's view?
(A) The English tradition of nature writing should be reflected and reconsidered.
(B) The values implicit in the language of natural history should be challenged.
(C) The re-wilding of human experience and language will greatly benefit us.
(D) The re-wilding of lands and seas will bring us more disasters.
