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我的文学素养不是一般地差，知识面不是一般地窄。
我不知道这篇课文是不是“文学”，是不是“说理文”，但我就觉得它工整、有序。
除了词藻堆砌这点，我觉得这是一篇好范文。
还有下面这篇，截选自 Kimberly Willis Holt 的儿童小说 Dancing In Cadillac Light （在卡迪拉克灯光里舞蹈）
语言生动精彩，结构也很有章法。
看看是不是“八股文”？
In the kitchen, Momma lined canning jars on the table while a pot of stewed tomatoes waited on the stove. At the sink, Racine wiped a dish with a cloth as she wiggled to a song on the radio.
Even though I was only ten months older than Racine it might as well have been a hundred, because Racine had a hole in her head as big as Texas. She was one hundred percent female. She had a butt-twisting walk like the teenagers down at the park’s lodge even though she was only ten years old. She wanted dancing lessons more than anything in the world. I believe Racine would have given up Christmas for tap shoes and lessons at Lynette Logan’s Dancing and Baton-Twirling School. I’d rather drive.
“Move over,” I told her.
She cocked her head to the side, blinking her eyelashes. “What do you say?”
“Move over or I won’t help you with the dishes.”
“How about ‘Pretty please with whipped cream and a cherry on top’?”
“How about I go back outside and let you do the dishes by your pretty please with whipped cream and a cherry on top self?”
Momma sighed. “Enough.”
Racine snapped her tongue against the roof of her mouth and scooted a few inches to the left. She tucked a strand of her thin brown hair behind her ear. That was another thing different about us. Racine’s silky hair hung straight like the models’ on magazine covers. Mine waved and turned frizzy like a Brillo pad at the slightest hint of rain.
The phone rang and Momma glanced at the clock. Eight o’clock on the dot. Aunt Loveda. After Grandpap moved in with her family, Aunt Loveda called Momma every morning at eight, griping. Momma got where she could set her watch by Aunt Loveda’s call. The telephone barely rang the second time before Momma answered, “Hello, Loveda. What is it today?”
It was just about everything. One day Aunt Loveda complained that Grandpap walked through the neighborhood fetching everyone’s mail and bringing it to their door. Grandpap had been the mailman for twenty years in Moon, but Aunt Loveda said people who lived in nice, fancy neighborhoods didn’t take kindly to anyone opening their mailboxes, much less touching their letters and bills. Some grumpy old neighbor down the street even threatened to call the FBI or the CIA.
Last week Aunt Loveda marched into our house, swinging her hand bag with a gloved hand. Her teased brown hair looked like a football helmet. After plopping herself on our old couch she announced that Grandpap dug up half her yard to grow her sugarcane. With quick breaths between words, she kept patting her chest with her hand. “I, ah, declare, ah I ah, don’t know ah what ah to do!” I would have bet my prized squirrel tail that she was going to have a heart attack right smack in our living room.
Momma stayed calm while Aunt Loveda talked. The she asked, “Is it going to hurt anything to let him have a little garden? He’s always planted some sugarcane.”
Aunt Loveda took one giant breath, then released it. “But Arlen, I’ve planted an English rose garden for teas and luncheons.”
“Poppa dug up your roses?”
“No, but how can you have a sugarcane crop growing ten yards from an English rose garden? That would be tacky!”
Momma had always listened as Aunt Loveda went on and on, but today Momma’s forehead wrinkled as her ear pressed to the telephone. She said, “Loveda, we can’t do that.”
I heard Aunt Loveda’s muffled squawking coming from the phone. She sounded like a chicken getting its neck wrung.
“But Loveda,” Momma said, “we always swore we’d never do that to Momma or Poppa.”
Squawk, squawk, squawk.
“But---” Momma never got to say another word because Aunt Loveda had hung up. Momma stared at the phone in her hand.
“When did Aunt Loveda want now?” I asked.
Momma glanced my way and frowned. “Jaynell, be careful or you’ll break that dish. We only have four left as it is.”
She didn’t drop one hint about what Aunt Loveda said, although I could tell she was fretting about it. She plumb forgot about canning the tomatoes and started sweeping the floors.
Daddy came home from the ammunition plant for lunch and I finally learned what Aunt Loveda had said. I heard every word from beneath the open window on the screened porch. And once in a while I even stole a peek. I would make a great spy.
Daddy leaned back in his recliner, balancing a plate of red beans and a slice of white bread on his lap, while Momma sat on the edge of the lumpy couch, looking down at the floor, wringing her hands as she unraveled the story. It seems Grandpap had told Sweet Adeline that if she didn’t quit stuffing rock candy in her mouth, she’d look like Porky Pig. And everyone knew Aunt Loveda couldn’t handle anyone criticizing her precious babies.
The whole time Momma talked, she looked down at the floor. She always did that when she was fretting or when she was around other people outside our family. Finally, she looked up. “Loveda thinks we should put Poppa in a nursing home.”
My heart sank. My Sunday school class visited an old folks home once to sing Christmas carols. That place smelled like pee and cough syrup. Our teacher, Mrs. Geiger, told us to be “real sweet” to those old people, but they seemed out of their minds, sticking to us like flypaper, begging us to sing more songs. Even though we visited months ago, I could still see their pale, bony fingers reaching for me. Grandpap didn’t belong there. He belonged back at the homeplace.
“Why on earth does Loveda think that?” Daddy said with a mouthful of beans.
Momma turned her head, staring out the front window. “She’s convinced that Poppa is turning crazy and mean.”
I didn’t think what Grandpap said about Sweet Adeline sounded crazy at all, just honest. After all, she was already the squattiest ten-year-old I’d ever seen.
“What if she’s right, Rollins?” Momma asked.
Daddy scraped his fork across the plate, moving around the bean juice.
“I couldn’t bear to see him like that again,” she said.
Again? What did Momma mean? The only crazy person I’d ever known was Betty Jean Kizer. The night her son died, she’d cut off her hair and danced naked outside, howling at the moon. I couldn’t picture Grandpap doing that. Now Betty Jean lived in the backwoods. Every once in a while we caught a glimpse of her in town, walking around with a blank look on her face, snarled hair and a pack of pigs following her.
“I don’t know what to do,” Momma said.
Daddy sat up straight and wiped his chin with his napkin. “You know exactly what we have to do.”
I wondered if Daddy meant Grandpap should go to the old folks home, but after lunch, he announced, “Jaynell, you’re going to have to move in with Racine for a little while. You need to make room for our Grandpap until he’s ready to go back to the homeplace.”
Now I felt like I was going crazy. Living that close to Racine was sure to give me the urge to shuck my clothes, dance bare naked and howl at the moon. But at least Grandpap would be safe with us.
As Daddy headed to work in his old pickup, I heard the low groan of the gravel truck making its way down Cypress Road.
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狗仔卡
发表于 2007-11-6 15:11:57
发表于 2007-11-7 00:52:45
楼主
发表于 2007-11-7 13:53:57