研究生精读教程（第三版）PPT下册Unit 8 l Am a Highbrow教材课程.ppt

《研究生英语精读教程》(第三版下);Unit Eight;l Am a Highbrow*;Menu; ［2］Conversely, I am not a lowbrow*, because I do not enjoy lowbrow processes and experiences. Thus I derive a great deal less pleasure from jazz and thrillers* than from the music, let us say, of Beethoven or the novels, for example, of Dostoevsky①;;And the slaughtering* of animals for fun is a pastime that leaves me either cold with disgust or hot with indignation.; ［4］There is no disputing, says the proverb*, about taste - though, in fact, human beings spend at least half their leisure doing nothing else - and if highbrowism and lowbrowism were exclusively (as it is certain that they are in great part) matters of individual taste, there would be no more to say about them than what I have said in the preceding lines.; ［5］But more than mere taste is at stake; and, realizing this, the supporters of either party have rationalized* their preferences in terms of arguments that involve an appeal to more objective standards than those of a simple personal preference.;［6］Thus lowbrows are never weary* of condemning highbrows for their inhumanity*, nor of admiring themselves for being so admirably* human.;At the same time they argue that they must be in the right because they are so much more numerous than the highbrows. To the attacks of the lowbrows (attacks which have grown increasingly vocal* and violent in the course of the last few years) the highbrows generally reply in a tone of patronizing* contempt.;［7］They start, like the Pharisee① in the parable*, by thanking God that they are not as other men are, and proceed to paint a picture of those other men, hardly more flattering than that which Swift② painted of the Yahoos③.;Then explicitly* or implicitly*, they associate their highbrowism with virtue, and speak of their own learned refinements* as good and of their adversaries ignorance and crudity* as bad.; ［8］Each partys arguments seem to me equally futile* and each partys emotional attitude equally deplo