50. In what way does the critical mind help
the writer in the writing process?
A. It refines his writing into better shape.
B. It helps him to come up with new ideas.
C. It saves the writing time available to him.
D. It allows him to sit on the side and observe.
C
My father’s reaction to the bank building at 43rd Street and Fifth Avenue in New York city was immediate and definite:
“You won’t catch me putting my money in there!” he declared, “Not in that glass
box!”
Of course, my father is a gentleman of
the old school, a member of the generation to whom a good deal of modern
architecture is upsetting, but I am convinced that his negative response was
not so much to the architecture as to a violation of his concept of the nature
of money. In his generation money was thought of as a real commodity (实物) that could be carried, or
stolen.
Consequently,
to attract the custom of a sensible man, a bank had to have heavy walls, barred
windows, and bronze doors, to affirm the fact, however untrue, that money would
be safe inside. If a building’s design made it appear impenetrable ((难以渗透的), the institution (公共机构) was necessarily reliable, and the meaning of the heavy wall as an
architecture symbol reflected people’s prevailing attitude toward money.
But the
attitude toward money has, of course, changed. Excepting pocket money, cash of
any kind is now rarely used; money as a tangible commodity has largely
been replaced by credit. A deficit(赤字) economy, accompanied by huge expansion, has led us to think of
money as product of the creative imagination. The banker no longer offers us a
safe: he offers us a service in which the most valuable element is the
creativity for the invention of large numbers. It is in no way surprising, in
view of this change in attitude, that we are witnessing the disappearance of
the heavy-walled bank.
Just as the
older bank emphasized its strength, this bank by its architecture boasts of
imaginative powers. From this point of view it is hard to say where
architecture ends and human assertion(人们的说法) begins.