雅思阅读第048套P2-Are ArtistsLiars?

READING PASSAGE 2

You should spend about 20minutes on Questions 14-26, which are based on Reading Passage 2below.

Are Artists Liars?

A

Shortly before his death,Marlon Brando was working on a series of instructional videos about acting, tohe called "Lying for a Iiving”. On the surviving footage, Brando can heseen dispensing gnomic advice on his craft to a group of enthusiastic, ifsomewhat bemused, Hollywood stars, including Leonardo Di Caprio and Sean Penn. Brandoalso recruited random people from the Los Angeles street and persuaded them toimprovise (the footage is said to include a memorable scene featuring twodwarves and a giant Samoan). "If you can lie, you can act." Brandotold Jod Kaftan, a writer for Rolling Stone and one of the few people to haveviewed the footage. “Are you good at lying?” asked Kaftan. "Jesus."said Brando, “I'm fabulous at it".

B

Brando was not the first personto note that the line between an artist and a liar is a line one. If art is akind of lying, then lying is a form of art, albeit of a lower order-as OscarWilde and Mark Twain have observed. Indeed, lying and artistic storytellingspring from a common neurological root-one that is exposed in the cases ofpsychiatric patients who suffer from a particular kind of impairment. Bothliars and artists refuse to accept the tyranny of reality. Both carefully craftstories that are worthy of belief - a skill requiring intellectualsophistication, emotional sensitivity and physical self-control (liars arewriters and performers of their own work). Such parallels are hardlycoincidental, as I discovered while researching my book on lying.

C

A case study published in 1985by Antonio Damasio, a neurologist, tells the story of a middle-aged woman withbrain damage caused by a series of strokes. She retained cognitive abilities,including coherent speech, but what she actually said was rather unpredictable.Checking her knowledge of contemporary events, Damasio asked her about theFalklands War. In the language of psychiatry, this woman was “confabulating”.Chronic confabulation is a rare type of memory problem that affects a smallproportion of brain damaged people. In the literature it is defined as"the production of fabricated, distorted or misinterpreted memories aboutoneself or the world, without the conscious intention to deceive”. Whereasamnesiacs make errors of omission, there are gaps in their recollections theyfind impossible to fill - confabulators make errors of commission: they make tilingsup. Rather than forgetting, they are inventing. Confabulating patients arenearly always oblivious to their own condition, and will earnestly giveabsurdly implausible explanations of why they're in hospital, or talking to adoctor. One patient, asked about his surgical sear, explained that during theSecond World War he surprised a teenage girl who shot him three times in thehead, killing him, only for surgery to bring him back to life. The samepatient, when asked about his family, described how at various times they haddied in his arms, or had been killed before his eyes. Others tell yet morefantastical tales, about trips to the moon, fighting alongside Alexander inIndia or seeing Jesus on the Cross. Confabulators aren’t out to deceive. They engagein what Morris Moseovitch, a neuropsychologist, calls “honest lying".Uncertain and obscurely distressed by their uncertainty, they are seized by a“compulsion to narrate": a deep-seated need to shape, order and explainwhat they do not understand. Chronic confabulators are often highly inventiveat the verbal level, jamming together words in nonsensical but suggestive ways:one patient, when asked what happened to Queen Marie Antoinette of France,answered that she had been “suicided" by her family. In a sense, thesepatients are like novelists, as described by Henry James: people on whom"nothing is wasted". Unlike writers, however, they have little or nocontrol over their own material.

D

The wider significance of thiscondition is what it tells us about ourselves. Evidently, there is a gushingriver of verbal creativity in the normal human mind, from which both artisticinvention and lying are drawn. We are born storytellers, spinning, narrativeout of our experience and imagination, straining against the leash that keepsus tethered to reality. This is a wonderful thing; it is what gives us outability to conceive of alternative futures and different worlds. And it helpsus to understand our own lives through the entertaining stories of others. Butit can lead us into trouble, particularly when we try to persuade others thatour inventions are real. Most of the time, as our stories bubble up toconsciousness, we exercise our cerebral censors, controlling which stories wetell, and to whom. Yet people lie for all sorts of reasons, including the factthat confabulating can be dangerously fun.

E

During a now-famous libel casein 1996, Jonathan Aitken, a former cabinet minister, recounted a tale toillustrate the horrors he endured after a national newspaper tainted his name.The case, which stretched on for more than two years, involved a series ofclaims made by the Guardian about Aitken's relationships with Saudi armsdealers, including meetings he allegedly held with them on a trip to Pariswhile he was a government minister. Whitt amazed many in hindsight was thesheer superfluity of the lies Aitken told during his testimony. Aitken’s casecollapsed in June 1997, when the defence finally found indisputable evidenceabout his Paris trip. Until then, Aitken's charm, fluency and flair fortheatrical displays of sincerity looked as if they might bring him victory,they revealed that not only was Aitken’s daughter not with him that day (whenhe was indeed doorstepped), but also that the minister had simply got into hiscar and drove off, with no vehicle in pursuit.

F

Of course, unlike Aitken,actors, playwrights and novelists are not literally attempting to deceive us,because the rules are laid out in advance: come to the theatre, or open thisbook, and we'll lie to you. Perhaps this is why we fell it necessary to inventart in the first place: as a safe space into which our lies can be corralled,and channeled into something socially useful. Given the universal compulsion totell stories, art is the best way to refine and enjoy the particularlyoutlandish or insight till ones. But that is not the whole story. The key wayin which artistic “lies" differ from normal lies, and from the"honest lying” of chronic confabulators, is that they have a meaning andresonance beyond their creator. The liar lies on behalf of himself; the artisttell lies on behalf of everyone. If writers have a compulsion to narrate, theycompel themselves to find insights about the human condition. Mario VargasLlosa has written that novels “express a curious truth that can only heexpressed in a furtive and veiled fashion, masquerading as what it is not.” Artis a lie whose secret ingredient is truth.

SECTION 2: QUESTIONS 14-26

Questions 14-19

Reading Passage 2 has sixparagraphs, A-F.

Choose the correct heading foreach paragraph from the list of headings below.

Write the correct number, i-viii,in boxes 14-19 on your answer sheet.

14 __________    Paragraph A

15 __________    Paragraph B

16 __________    Paragraph C

17 __________    Paragraph D

18 __________    Paragraph E

19 __________    Paragraph F

List of Headings

i

Unsuccessful deceit

ii

Biological basis between liars and artists

iii

How to lie in an artistic way

iv

Confabulations and the exemplifiers

v

The distinction between artists and common liars

vi

The fine line between liars and artists

vii

The definition of confabulation

viii

Creativity when people lie

Questions 20-21

 

Choose TWO letters, A-E.

Write the correct letters inboxes 20-21 on your answer sheet.

Which TWO ofthe following statements about people suffering from confabulation are true?

AThey have lost cognitive abilities.

BThey do not deliberately tell a lie.

CThey are normally aware of theircondition.

DThey do not have the impetus to explainwhat they do not understand.

EThey try to make up stories.

Questions 22-23

Choose TWO letters, A-E.

Write the correct letters inboxes 22-23 on your answer sheet.

Which TWO ofthe following statements about playwrights and novelists are true?

AThey give more meaning to the stories.

BThey tell lies for the benefit ofthemselves.

CThey have nothing to do with the truth outthere.

DWe can be misled by them if not careful.

EWe know there are lies in the content.

Questions 24-26

Complete the summary below.

Choose NO MORE THAN TWOWORDS from the passage for each answer.

Write your answers inboxes 24-26 on your answer sheet.

A 24 _________________ accused Jonathan Aitken, a former cabinet minister, who was selling and buying with 25 _________________. Aitken’s case collapsed in June 1997, when the defence finally found indisputable evidence about his Paris trip. He was deemed to have his 26 _________________. They revealed that not only was Aitken’s daughter not with him that day, but also that the minister had simply got into his car and drove off, with no vehicle in pursuit.