英语听力：寻羊冒险记—寻找村上春树 1

 I’m on the trail of Haruki Murakami, the elusive¹ Haruki Murakami. He’s Japan’s most successful novelist. He writes off-beat books where dream, memory and reality often swap² places with one another. His stories are fueled by his great passion—music, especially jazz. And his fame has spread far beyond Japan. He’s been translated into over 40 different languages. Murakami’s most recent book After Dark happens down there.

 

Even at a time like this, the street is bright enough and filled with people coming and going, people with places to go and people with no place to go; people with a purpose and people with no  purpose; people trying to hold back time and people trying to urge it forward. The date is just about to change. I think about the old days a lot. Memory is so crazy. You know what I think, she says, that people’s memories are maybe the fuel they burn to stay alive.

 

Haruki Murakami grew up in the 1950s in a country fueled by the very darkest memories, memories of a shameful³ war, of devastation⁴, humiliation⁵ and defeat. The cult⁶ hero of Japanese literature when Murakami was growing up was Yukio Mishima, a nationalist, a militarist, a writer obsessed⁷ with Japan’s past and traditions, who ended up committing hara-kiri, in the ultimate act of devotion to his samurai ideals. Murakami despised everything Mishima stood for. He wrote, all I could think about when I began writing fiction in my youth was how to run as far as I could from the Japanese condition. I wanted to distance myself as much as possible from the curse of Japanese. 

1 elusive   

adj.难以表达(捉摸)的；令人困惑的；逃避的

参考例句：

• Try to catch the elusive charm of the original in translation.翻译时设法把握住原文中难以捉摸的风韵。
• Interpol have searched all the corners of the earth for the elusive hijackers.国际刑警组织已在世界各地搜查在逃的飞机劫持者。

2 swap   

n.交换；vt.交换，用...作交易

参考例句：

• I will swap you my bicycle for your radio.我想拿我的自行车换你的收音机。
• This comic was a swap that I got from Nick.这本漫画书是我从尼克那里换来的。

3 shameful   

adj.可耻的，不道德的

参考例句：

• It is very shameful of him to show off.他向人炫耀自己，真不害臊。
• We must expose this shameful activity to the newspapers.我们一定要向报社揭露这一无耻行径。

4 devastation   

n.毁坏；荒废；极度震惊或悲伤

参考例句：

• The bomb caused widespread devastation. 炸弹造成大面积破坏。
• There was devastation on every side. 到处都是破坏的创伤。 来自《简明英汉词典》

5 humiliation   

n.羞辱

参考例句：

• He suffered the humiliation of being forced to ask for his cards.他蒙受了被迫要求辞职的羞辱。
• He will wish to revenge his humiliation in last Season's Final.他会为在上个季度的决赛中所受的耻辱而报复的。

6 cult   

n.异教，邪教；时尚，狂热的崇拜

参考例句：

• Her books aren't bestsellers,but they have a certain cult following.她的书算不上畅销书，但有一定的崇拜者。
• The cult of sun worship is probably the most primitive one.太阳崇拜仪式或许是最为原始的一种。

7 obsessed   

adj.心神不宁的,鬼迷心窍的,沉迷的

参考例句：

• He's obsessed by computers. 他迷上了电脑。
• The fear of death obsessed him throughout his old life. 他晚年一直受着死亡恐惧的困扰。