2018年6月大学英语六级听力常考时文：Toni Morrison

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　　1.When was Toni Morrison's sixth novel published? ...
        　　2.What problem was Morrison faced with just like other creative artists?
The intrusion of the outside world into ...
        　　3.What was Morrison's life like after she won Nobel Prize? It was deluged
by congratulations, ... and ...
        　　After finishing her sixth novel, Jazz, published in 1922, Toni Morrison
began casting about for the subject of her next book. Constant reading, a habit
and passion she developed as a little girl, eventually led her to an obscure
chapter in 19th century U.S. history: the westward emigration of former slaves
into the sparsely settled territories of Oklahoma and beyond. Some found the
promise of a new life in wide-open spaces, touted in numerous newspaper
advertisements in the 1870s, irresistible and a challenge besides. As she began
imagining how this historical material might generate a work of fiction,
Morrison bumped into one of the banes of creative artists everywhere: the
intrusion of the outside world into the space of private concentration. In
October 1993 she was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. “I was so happy
that I had a real book idea in progress,” she said of the beleaguered period
following the announcement. “If I hadn’t, I would have thought, ‘Can I ever
write a novel again?” At that moment, deluged by congratulations, invitations
and preparations, never mind another novel, Morrison found herself stymied by
her acceptance speech. She had no free time to work on it, and when she stole
some, she produced nothing she liked. “I called someone at the Nobel Committee
and said, if you are going to keep giving prizes to women — and I hope you do —
you are going to have to give us more warning.”