The serious writer is an interpreter, not an inventor. Like a good actor, he is an intermediary between a segment of experience and an audience. The actor must pay some consideration to his audience: he must be careful, for instance, to face toward it, not away from it. But the great actor is the one who is wrapped up in the thoughts and feelings of the role he is playing, not the one who is continually stealing glances at the audience to determine the effect of his last gesture or bit of business. The actor who begins taking his cues from the audience rather than from the script soon becomes a "ham": he exaggerates and falsifies for the sake of effects. The writer, too, though he must pay some consideration to his reader, must focus his attention primarily on his subject. If he begins to think primarily of the effect of his tale on his reader, he begins to manipulate his material, to heighten reality, to contrive and falsity for the sake of effects. The serious writer selects and arranges his material in order to convey most effectively the feeling or truth of a human situation. The less serious writer selects and arranges his material so as to stimulate a response in the reader.
It is emphasized in the passage that the main concern of a great writer ____.
is to give a powerful representation of the human condition
is to persuade his readers to believe as he does
is not to interpret a human situation but to evoke a memory
is to give multiple meanings to a single situation
is not so much content as form and style
According to the passage, a second-rate actor ____.
is very conscious of the truth of what he is playing
gives priority to the text not to the audience
is selective about the roles he is willing to play
likes to interpret his role in different ways
gives too much importance to pleasing his audiences
We understand from the passage that one quality the great actor and the great writer have in common is ____.
their need for encouragement from the public
the importance each gives to his art, not to the responses to it
the desire to please at all costs
the tendency to present everything in a more colorful and exciting manner
their fondness for exaggeration and stimulation
The expression "the great actor is the one who is wrapped up in the thoughts and feelings of the role he is playing" ____.
denotes that what makes an actor great is his absorption in the role
signifies that an actor must give more emphasis to his own thoughts and feelings
means that the greatness of an actor results from his fondness for his role
suggests that the success of an actor depend upon his manipulation of the audience
indicates the actor's concern with the reactions of the audience to his performance