Weekly note

words

Dr. Fleishman was the first adult in my experience who admitted that youth has no monopoly on verbal sludge.

verbal sludge 言语上的污泥（类似clutter，verbiage）

I urged them to believe in themselves as writers and not to relinquish control.

relinquish 放弃，出让

It has a certain mounting hilarity—a figure freak amok at his typewriter.

hilarity 欢笑，嬉闹

amok  发狂

One column was on the petty squabbling over the shape of the table at the Vietnam peace conference in Paris.

squabbling 口水战，争吵

Don’t search for the outlandish and scorn what seems too ordinary; you will touch more chords by finding what’s funny in what you know to be true.

outlandish 稀奇古怪的，异乎寻常的

chords 激起共鸣，触动心弦

He had a cutting edge and an acerbic wit that no earlier American humorist had.

had a cutting edge 最前沿的，最尖端的；优势

acerbic 幽默辛辣的，尖刻的

But he was also lampooning the holy conventions of playwriting, in which yards of italic type are used to establish what’s happening onstage.

lampoon 讥讽

Onto this element of constant surprise he grafted the dazzling wordplay that was his trademark, a rich and recondite vocabulary

graft 将...接到另一思想或制度

recondite 知识或学问深奥的

Singer’s lethal potion is concocted of hundreds of outlandish facts and quotes—he is a tenacious reporter—and a style that barely suppresses his own amusement.

lethal 危害极大的，毁灭性的，致命的

concoct 捏造；调制

Enjoyment, finally, is what all humorists must convey—the idea that they are having a terrific time, and this notion of cranked-up audacity is what I wanted my Yale students to grapple with.

cranked-up 加紧的

audacity 胆大妄为

summary

reflection

本周读的内容中，作者讲述了在具体的不同题材应如何写作，针对不同的目的，他也给出了相应的原则以及具体做法。每一种类型都有相应的侧重点，但从上文的summary中，我注意到了其实每一分支下面都有共同的一点——humanity，这也和作者从第一章开始便强调的理念相同。说实话，在读这本书之前，我从来没有把这一点看的如此重要，语法和用词总是第一位的，花两个小时堆砌出一个好看的段落，总是让我十分满足，毕竟自己也付出了相当多的努力与时间。读书的这三周来，humanity这个角度开始逐渐渗透到我的生活中来，不光是在审视其他文章中有意识寻找，在日常生活中，我也更多从别人的角度思考，比之前更加宽容了，这是一种可喜的变化。

上周又偷懒了，每天只读了书，没有写过总结，自我反省...明天继续！