基础描写（上）

在这一阶段，我们将和大家一起学习讨论各种英文文体的写作方法，依次探讨记叙描写文体、说明文体以及议论文体的写作。

所选的文章内容涉及各个领域，它们大多出自名家之手，结构严谨，构思精巧，具有不同的写作风格和艺术特色，堪为学习和模仿的范例。每篇文章之后，有针对文章进行的鉴赏，借以全面理解和深入分析各篇佳作。同时，我们每次还配合例文布置了一些小练习，供大家实战演习。

今天，我们先从最基础的描写说起。描写可以分为人物描写和事件描写，人物描写又是我们日常生活中最容易碰到的一种。那么，怎么样才能使我们的描写生动形象呢？我们先来看一看下面这篇文章。

Mr. And Mrs. X
It is not hard to imagine Mr. Southworth—let us call him Mr. X, since the following picture is purely imaginary: I want merely to describe a type. You can see him as one of those decent, pleasant, well-pressed and well-barbered people who may be seen around country clubs. He represents “the better element.” Though his satisfactions are more bound up than he realizes with things that money can buy him, he never spends money ostentatiously: and he has a conscience about civic affairs, giving to charitable causes and being opposed to political corruption, especially as practiced by low politicians who have never been to Amherst His wife feels this even more strongly; she was opposed to Al Smith in the White House on the ground of his dreadful commonness. She dresses extremely well, and she usually notices in a Pullman that she is the only really smart woman there. Mr. X plays a pretty good game of something—probably tennis or golf. He may collect first editions or etchings. He gets his liquor from the same high-class bootlegger who serves the very rich, but he never drinks to excess.

Yet Mr. X's conviction of his intrinsic importance has very little basis in fact. He is as helpless, he occupies just as cramped a position between the upper and the nether millstones of society, as the old West Virginia detective who, as superintendent as Ward, has to shortweight the miners at the tipple, or as “Hurry Up” Crowe at Boulder Dam. Mr. X had to explain to the shop committee when they came to protest the wage-cut that he could make “no promises or recommendations,” And because he has no real authority, the culture and the distinction of Mr. and Mrs. X, all that Mr. and Mrs. X regard as the foundation of their social position, have no solid or durable value. Such pretensions can only be valid in the case of a real governing class. And Mr. X does not govern. He gets his orders from officials higher up, and these may very well get their orders from the bankers from whom they borrow. Yet neither bankers nor higher officials constitute a government class: they are all merely people of various origins, various ideals and capacities, who come and go in lucrative positions. The system they belong to governs, but they are only individuals on the make. They take no collective responsibility, and their power is not hereditary; they have none of the special training which permanent position requires and which may dignify a well-established owning class.

Yet Mr. and Mrs. X are firmly convinced of their superiority. Let us see what this superiority consists of. If Mr. X is descended from some family who have already been property-holders for a generation or two during the simpler days of the Republic, he will attach himself to the memory of family habits as if they were in fact the characteristics of such an established class—a higher civilization from whose standards the present is a lamentable lapse. If, say, Mr. X is a Southerner, he will like to talk about the Civil War, will cherish family photographs of the Civil War Generation, will dream of retiring from industry and going to live in the country, where he will be able to keep hunting dogs and perhaps a stable. If a Bostonian, he may still live in a family house, square and solid but rather bleak and Spartan, in the taste of his fathers who built it, and decorated with copies of painting and old brown photographs of Italy brought back from abroad by his mother. If a Now Yorker or a Philadelphian, the glamour of his ancestral memories will gleam from an expensive social life, polo and yachting, champagne and brandy, and historical research of civic reform. If Mr. X, on the other hand, is a Middle Westerner, he will have the pride of affluence hard-won, of virtue and distinction maintained amidst the deprivations of the wilderness. If Mr. X is a Californian, he will look back to the days when food and drink were so plentiful and cheap out there, when people were so hearty and gay, when life was so easy, so free. In any case, he will respect his college as the stronghold of good-fellowship and learning, guard his club as the temple of manners and honor, and in his business and domestic relations he will scrupulously observe the old-fashioned rules of integrity among equals.

这段文字是美国作家和评论家埃德蒙·威尔逊的作品《美国地震》中节选出来的。1930-1931年，经济萧条引发劳工动荡，埃德蒙往返于美国各地进行报道。他在文章中写了西弗吉尼亚矿工的不满，写了顽石坝筑坝工人的情感，在《美国地震》中又写了马萨诸塞州一家纺织工厂的工人罢工。文中第一段提到的Mr. Southworth就是和工人们谈判，企图迫使他们接受减薪的一个管理层人员。