在这四段中的每一段中，作者都使用精确的描述细节来唤起一种独特的情绪，并传达一幅令人难忘的画面。在阅读每一篇文章时，请注意位置信号如何帮助建立凝聚力，清楚地引导读者从一个细节到下一个细节。

洗衣房

"The windows at either end of the laundry room were open, but no breeze washed through to carry off the stale odors of fabric softener, detergent, and bleach. In the small ponds of soapy water that stained the concrete floor were stray balls of multicolored lint and fuzz. Along the left wall of the room stood 10 rasping dryers, their round windows offering glimpses of jumping socks, underwear, and fatigues. Down the center of the room were a dozen washing machines, set back to back in two rows. Some were chugging like steamboats; others were whining and whistling and dribbling suds. Two stood forlorn and empty, their lids flung open, with crudely drawn signs that said: "Broke!" A long shelf partially covered in blue paper ran the length of the wall, interrupted only by a locked door. Alone, at the far end of the shelf, sat one empty laundry basket and an open box of Tide. Above the shelf at the other end was a small bulletin board decorated with yellowed business cards and torn slips of paper: scrawled requests for rides, reward offers for lost dogs, and phone numbers without names or explanations. On and on the machines hummed and wheezed, gurgled and gushed, washed, rinsed, and spun." —Student assignment, unattributed

这一段的主题是放弃和遗留下来的东西。这是一个很好的拟人化例子，情感和动作投射到机器和无生命物体上。洗衣房是一个人性化的环境，为人的功能服务，然而，人似乎失踪了。

提醒，如留言板上的注释，强化了一种感觉，即本质上属于这里的东西不在这里。还有一种高度的期待感。这就好像房间本身在问：“每个人都去了哪里，他们什么时候回来？”

梅布尔的午餐

"Mabel's Lunch stood along one wall of a wide room, once a pool hall, with the empty cue racks along the back side. Beneath the racks were wire-back chairs, one of them piled with magazines, and between every third or fourth chair a brass spittoon. Near the center of the room, revolving slowly as if the idle air was water, a large propeller fan suspended from the pressed tin ceiling. It made a humming sound, like a telephone pole, or an idle, throbbing locomotive, and although the switch cord vibrated it was cluttered with flies. At the back of the room, on the lunch side, an oblong square was cut in the wall and a large woman with a soft, round face peered through at us. After wiping her hands, she placed her heavy arms, as if they tired her, on the shelf." —Adapted from "The World in the Attic" by Wright Morris

作者赖特·莫里斯（Wright Morris）的这段话谈到了长期以来的传统、停滞、厌倦和投降。节奏就是慢动作的生活。能量是存在的，但被升华了。所有发生的事情以前都发生过。每一个细节都增加了重复感、惰性和不可避免性。

这个女人，无论是最初的梅布尔还是接替她的一系列女人中的一个，看起来既疲惫又接受。即使面对她以前可能没有服务过的客户，她也不会有任何不寻常的期望。尽管被历史和习惯的重负拖累，她还是会像往常一样做，因为对她来说，这就是过去和将来。

地铁站

"Standing in the subway station, I began to appreciate the place—almost to enjoy it. First of all, I looked at the lighting: a row of meager light bulbs, unscreened, yellow, and coated with filth, stretched toward the black mouth of the tunnel, as though it were a bolt hole in an abandoned coal mine. Then I lingered, with zest, on the walls and ceilings: lavatory tiles which had been white about fifty years ago, and were now encrusted with soot, coated with the remains of a dirty liquid which might be either atmospheric humidity mingled with smog or the result of a perfunctory attempt to clean them with cold water; and, above them, gloomy vaulting from which dingy paint was peeling off like scabs from an old wound, sick black paint leaving a leprous white undersurface. Beneath my feet, the floor a nauseating dark brown with black stains upon it which might be stale oil or dry chewing gum or some worse defilement: it looked like the hallway of a condemned slum building. Then my eye traveled to the tracks, where two lines of glittering steel—the only positively clean objects in the whole place—ran out of darkness into darkness above an unspeakable mass of congealed oil, puddles of dubious liquid, and a mishmash of old cigarette packets, mutilated and filthy newspapers, and the debris that filtered down from the street above through a barred grating in the roof." —Adapted from "Talents and Geniuses" by Gilbert Highet

令人目瞪口呆地背诵肮脏的事情和疏忽是一项对比研究：曾经质朴的事物现在被肮脏所覆盖；高耸的拱形天花板不是鼓舞人心的，而是黑暗而压抑的。即使是提供逃生通道的闪闪发光的铁轨，在争取自由之前，也必须先通过腐烂的废料和垃圾的挑战。

这一段的第一行“站在地铁站，我开始欣赏这个几乎可以享受它的地方”，这与随后对腐败和腐朽的地狱般描述形成了反讽的对比。这篇文章的妙处在于，它不仅详细地描述了地铁站本身的物理表现，而且有助于深入了解一个叙述者的思维过程，他可以在如此明显令人厌恶的场景中找到乐趣。

厨房

"The kitchen held our lives together. My mother worked in it all day long, we ate in it almost all meals except the Passover seder, I did my homework and first writing at the kitchen table, and in winter I often had a bed made up for me on three kitchen chairs near the stove. On the wall just over the table hung a long horizontal mirror that sloped to a ship's prow at each end and was lined in cherry wood. It took up the whole wall, and drew every object in the kitchen to itself. The walls were a fiercely stippled whitewash, so often re-whitened by my father in slack seasons that the paint looked as if it had been squeezed and cracked into the walls. A large electric bulb hung down the center of the kitchen at the end of a chain that had been hooked into the ceiling; the old gas ring and key still jutted out of the wall like antlers. In the corner next to the toilet was the sink at which we washed, and the square tub in which my mother did our clothes. Above it, tacked to the shelf on which were pleasantly ranged square, blue-bordered white sugar and spice jars, hung calendars from the Public National Bank on Pitkin Avenue and the Minsker Progressive Branch of the Workmen's Circle; receipts for the payment of insurance premiums, and household bills on a spindle; two little boxes engraved with Hebrew letters. One of these was for the poor, the other to buy back the Land of Israel. Each spring a bearded little man would suddenly appear in our kitchen, salute us with a hurried Hebrew blessing, empty the boxes (sometimes with a sidelong look of disdain if they were not full), hurriedly bless us again for remembering our less fortunate Jewish brothers and sisters, and so take his departure until the next spring, after vainly trying to persuade my mother to take still another box. We did occasionally remember to drop coins in the boxes, but this was usually only on the dreaded morning of 'midterms' and final examinations, because my mother thought it would bring me luck." —Adapted from "A Walker in the City," by Alfred Kazin

阿尔弗雷德·卡辛（Alfred Kazin）的《布鲁克林成年故事》（Brooklyn coming of age tale）中这一段对犹太人公寓生活的超现实主义观察，是作者早期日常生活中的人物、事物和事件的目录。不仅仅是一种怀旧的运动，传统的拉力和进步的推力之间的并列几乎是显而易见的。

最重要的细节之一是厨房的一面巨大的镜子，正如叙述者所做的那样，“把厨房里的每一个物体都吸引到了自己身上。”镜子的本质是以相反的方式展示房间，而作者则通过自己独特的经历和个人反思，从一个角度传达了一个经过过滤的现实版本。

来源

• 莫里斯，赖特。《阁楼上的世界》，斯克里布纳出版社，1949年
• 嗨，吉尔伯特。《天才与天才》，牛津大学出版社，1957年
• 卡辛，阿尔弗雷德。《城市中的步行者》，《收获》，1969年