Text 3
JOY WILLIAMS'S quirky fourth novel "The Quick and the Dead" follows a trio of 16-yearold misfits in a warped "Charlie's Angels" set in the American south-west. Driven hazily to defend animal rights, the girls accomplish little beyond diatribe: they rescue a putrefied ram and hurl stones at stuffed elephants. In what is structurally a road novel that ends up where it began, the desultory threesome stumbles upon both cruelty to animals and unlikely romance. A mournful dog is strangled by an irate neighbor, a taxidermist falls in love with an 8-year-old direct-action firebrand determined that he atone for his sins. A careen across the barely tamed Arizona prairie, this peculiar book aims less for a traditional storyline than a sequence of jangled (often hilarious) conversations, ludicrous circumstances, and absurdist tableaux. The consequent long-walk-to-nowhere is both the book's limitation and its charm.
All three girls are motherless. Fiercely political Alice discovers that her erstwhile parents are her grandparents, who thereupon shrivel: "Deceit had kept them young whereas the truth had accelerated them practically into decrepitude." Both parents of the doleful Corvus drowned while driving on a flooded interstate off-ramp. The mother of the more conventional Annabel ("one of those people who would say, `We'll get in touch soonest' when they never wanted to see you again") slammed her car drunkenly into a fish restaurant. Later, Annabel's father observes to his wife's ghost, "You didn't want to order what I ordered, darling." The sharp-tongued wraith snaps back: "That's because you always ordered badly and wanted me to experience your miserable mistake."
Against a roundly apocalyptic world view, the great pleasures of this book are line-by-line. Ms Williams can lacerate setting and character alike in a few slashes: "It was one of those rugged American places, a remote, sad-ass, but plucky downwind town whose citizens were flawed and brave." Alice's acerbity spits little wisdoms: putting lost teeth under a pillow for money is "a classic capitalistic consumer ploy, designed to wean you away at an early age from healthy horror and sensible dismay to greedy, deluded, sunny expectancy."
Whether or not the novel, like Alice, expressly advocates animal rights, an animal motif crops up in every scene, as flesh-and blood "critters" (usually dead) or insipid decoration on crockery. If Ms Williams does not intend to induce human horror at a pending bestial Armageddon, she at least invokes a future of earthly loneliness, where animals appear only as ceramic-hen butter dishes and endangered-species Elastoplasts. One caution: when flimsy narrative superstructure begins to sag, anarchic wackiness can grow wearing. While "The Quick and the Dead" is edgy from its first page, the trouble with starting at the edge is there is nowhere to go. Nevertheless, Ms Williams is original, energetic and viscously funny: Carl Hiaasen with a conscience.
31. The girls in the novel
A.did nothing about reflecting the society facts.?
B.protected animals successfully.
C.were cruel to the animals.
D.murdered their neighbor’s dog.
32. This novel is attentive to each of the following except
A.backgrounds
B.conversations
C.traditional storyline
D.scenes
33. The main idea of the novel is
A.care about the children
B.how to make crockery
C.fight with the animal-killers
D.animal protection
34. The second paragraph tells us
A.the miserable life of the girls.
B.the girls’ parents are growing old.
C.society contradiction and circumstances the girls live in.
D.the backgrounds of the story and the heroines.
35. For Alice, putting lost teeth under a pillow for money is not
A.just a beautiful dream.
B.a way to be away the cheating.?
C.a way to be away the lust .?
D.a way to prevent one from illness.
Text 4
FEW people, except conspiracy theorists, would have expected so public a spat as the one this week between the two ringmasters of Formula One (F1) motor racing. Bernie Ecclestone, a fabulously wealthy British motor sport entrepreneur, is at odds, it would seem, with his longstanding associate, Max Mosley, president of F1's governing body, the Federation International de l'Automobile (FIA).
Ostensibly, the dispute has broken out over what looked like a done deal. Last June, the FIA voted unanimously to extend Mr. Ecclestone's exclusive rights to stage and broadcast F1 racing, which expire in 2010, by 100 years. For these lucrative rights, Mr. Ecclestone was to pay the FIA a mere $360m in total, and only $60m immediately. The FIA claims that Mr. Ecclestone has not made the payment of $60m, a claim denied by Mr. Ecclestone, who insists the money has been placed in an escrow account. Mr. Mosley has asked Mr. Ecclestone to pay up or risk losing the deal for the F1 rights after 2010, perhaps to a consortium of car makers that own F1 teams. For his part, Mr. Ecclestone has, rather theatrically, accused Mr. Mosley of "trying to do some extortion".
What is going on? Only three things can be stated with confidence. First, the idea that Mr. Ecclestone cannot find the $60m is ludicrous: his family trust is not exactly short of cash, having raised around $2 billion in the past two years. Second, it would not be in Mr. Ecclestone's long-term financial interest to forgo a deal which could only enhance the value of his family's remaining 50% stake in SLEC, the holding company for the group of companies that runs the commercial side of F1. Third, the timing of the dispute is very interesting.
Why? Because the other 50% stake in SLEC, owned by EM. TV, a debt- ridden German media company, is up for sale. EM. TV badly needs to sell this stake in the near future to keep its bankers at bay. The uncertainty created by the dispute between Mr. Ecclestone and Mr. Mosley might depress the value of EM. TV's holding. Could that work to Mr. Ecclestone's advantage? Quite possibly. The lower the value of EM. TV's stake, the higher the relative value of an option Mr. Ecclestone holds to sell a further 25% of SLEC to EM. TV for around $1 billion--and the better the deal Mr. Ecclestone might be able to extract for surrendering the option. Whoever buys EM. TV's stake in SLEC will have to negotiate with Mr. Ecclestone over this instrument. The Economist understands that Mr. Ecclestone has the right to veto a plan proposed last December by Kirch, a privately owned German media group, to buy half of EM. TV's holding for $550m.
In the coming weeks, Mr. Ecclestone will doubtless be deploying his formidable negotiating skills to best advantage. It would be rash to bet against his securing a good deal out of EM. TV's difficulties. His dispute with the FIA may then be easily resolved. As usual, he holds all the cards.
36. FIA would give its partner the right to stage the racing till
A.Mr. Ecclestone gave all the money.
B.The contract time is reached.
C.The 100th year after 2010.
D.Mr. Ecclestone gave it 60m$.
37. The word “extortion”(last line, para 2 ) means
A.abjection
B.negotiation
C.cheating
D.racketeering
38. Which statement is probably true?
A.Mr. Ecclestone just wanted to get more benefits through the EM.TV sale.
B.Mr. Ecclestone wanted to give up the benefits from the contract.
C.The timing of the dispute is very improper.
D.Mr. Ecclestone cannot afford the money.
39. The last sentence of the passage implies
A.Mr. Ecclestone can win at cards.
B.Mr. Ecclestone will achieve great success in the negotiation.
C.Mr. Ecclestone cheated all his partners.
D.Mr. Eccestone will lose the whole contract with FIA.
40. According to the last paragraph, “he holds all the cards” as
A. he deploys to best advantage
B. he wins all the cards
C. he never fails himself
D. he takes the cards in hand
