On Writing Well -Day19 (Ch19)

Content:

Part I | Principles

1. The Transaction

2. Simplicity

3. Clutter (Writing clean English Sentence)

4. Style (Preserving your identity)

5. The audience (Who am I writing for)

6. Words (The only tools you’ve got)

7. Usage (What is good usage)

Part II | Methods

8. Unity (Anchor of good writing)

9. The lead and the ending

10. Bits and pieces

Part II | Forms

11. Nonfiction as Literature

12. Writing About People: The Interview

13. Writing About Places: The travel article

14. Writing About Yourself: The Memoir

15. Science and Technology

16. Business Writing:Writing in Your Job

17. Sports

18. Writing About the Arts Critics and Columnists

19. Humor

....

Words and Expressions:

1. Joseph Heller and Stanley Kubrick heightened the truth about war just enough to catch its lunacy.

lunacy在这里是荒诞，愚蠢的意思。

1. N-UNCOUNT 荒诞；愚蠢

If you describe someone's behaviour as lunacy, you mean that it seems very strange or foolish.

【语用信息】：disapproval

...thelunacyof the tax system...

税制的荒谬

It remainslunacyto produce yet more coal to add to power stations' stockpiles.

煤越产越多，而发电站的煤堆越来越高，这始终是愚蠢的行为。

2.N-UNCOUNT 精神错乱

Lunacy is severe mental illness.

【STYLE标签】：OLD-FASHIONED 过时

2. sermons are the death of humor.

N-COUNT 布道;讲道

A sermon is a talk on a religious or moral subject that is given by a member of the clergy as part of a church service.

【例】He gave a long sermon against abortion

3. The writer must find some comic device—satire, parody, irony, lampoon, nonsense—that he can use to disguise his serious point.

1.N-UNCOUNT 讽刺;讥讽

Satire is the use of humour or exaggeration in order to show how foolish or wicked some people's behaviour or ideas are.

The commercial side of the Christmas season is an easy target forsatire.

圣诞季商业化的一面很容易招来讥讽。

2.N-COUNT 讽刺作品

A satire is a play, film, or novel in which humour or exaggeration is used to criticize something.

【搭配模式】：oft Nonn

...a sharp satire on the American political process.

一部尖刻讽刺美国政治进程的作品

4. I wear baby pink rollers, jumbo size.

1.ADJ （主要用于广告和产品名称中）巨大的，巨型的，特大的

Jumbo means very large; used mainly in advertising and in the names of products.

【搭配模式】：ADJ n

...a jumbo box of tissues.

特大盒纸巾

...grilled jumbo prawns.

烤大虾

2.N-COUNT 大型喷气式客机

A jumbo or a jumbo

jet is a very large jet aircraft that can carry several hundred passengers.

...a British Airwaysjumbo.

英国航空公司的大型喷气式客机

5. Today the outlandish becomes routine overnight.

1.ADJ-GRADED 稀奇古怪的；异乎寻常的；不切实际的

If you describe something as outlandish, you disapprove of it because you think it is very unusual, strange, or unreasonable.

【语用信息】：disapproval

They appeared at parties in outlandish clothes...

他们穿着奇装异服参加各种聚会。

This idea is not as outlandish as it sounds.

这主意听上去荒诞不经，实际并非如此。

6. How rattled we all become when dealing with banks.

VERB 使紧张;使不安

If something or someone rattles you, they make you nervous.

【语法信息】：V n

The news from Body Shop rattled the rest of the retail sector...

从“美体小铺”传来的消息令整个零售行业不安。

She refused to be rattled by his £3,000-a-day lawyer.

她拒绝被他以每天3,000英镑雇来的律师骚扰。

rattled

He swore in Spanish, another indication that he was rattled.

他用西班牙语破口大骂，这再次表明了他极为烦躁。

Thoughts:

“幽默”一词源于拉丁语的“fluid”，意思是“体液”。古希腊著名医生、被誉为“医学之父”的希波克拉底认为，人的身体中有四种体液：血液、粘液、黄胆汁和黑胆汁，四种体液配合恰当，身体就健康，而“幽默者”指的是体液不平衡、因此表现像神经病的人。

而幽默文学作为一种写作形式，与严肃文学并无本质区别，只是作者看问题的角度不同。

If you’re trying to write humor, almost everything you do is serious.
It’s a special angle of vision granted to certain writers who already write good English.

一方面，作者要有把幽默传达给读者的能力:

Enjoyment, is what all humorists must convey.

需要遵循以下原则:

Master the craft of writing good “straight” English;

Don’t search for the outlandish and scorn what seems too ordinary;

Don’t strain for laughs; humor is built on surprise, and you can surprise the reader only so often.

另一方面，要把握好幽默的“度”。

幽默是“想一下才笑”的艺术，而不是粗鲁的呵痒，不要用过于直白的描述削弱幽默的价值。

Humor may seem to be an act of gross exaggeration. But, but control is vital to humor.