Word: aridity
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...Mallory, the narrator, is an Englishman working for the World Health Organization in the arid northern province of a former French colony "in the dead heart of the African continent, a land as close to nowhere as the planet could provide." The southward creep of the Sahara and the drying up of nearby Lake Kotto have driven most of the native residents away, leaving the physician with hardly anyone to treat but General Harare and his ragtag band of Marxist guerrillas. But these rebel patients do not trust Mallory, because he has conceived a scheme to drill the dry lake...
Updike's letter of choice is "S", for sex. The switch reflects the irrelevance of sin in the modern world. Extramarital sex violates no norms, it's simply an act. The novel takes Sarah Worth out of a suburban sterility as arid as any Arizona desert and into a empty series of heterosexual and homosexual love affairs. We are even provided with an actual transcription of her first sexual encounter with the Ahrat, courtesy of a miniaturized tape recorder fastened to her breast. The endless repetition of these erotic adventures strips them of any moral aspect...
...cancer made him aspire to be the best at his work. John Nino, the great-grandson of Italian immigrants to central California, runs a large Brahman cattle ranch by himself and for fun ropes four nights a week. Mohammed Talbi, a Tunisian villager educated in France, works for the Arid Land Institute in North Africa. Ron Lister arrived in Arizona three weeks before the workshop began with $40 in his pocket and a flat tire, and had never cowboyed. Mary Caldwell, sixtyish, has whittled a piece of wood into a horse during the week, and says she does...
From Reno I took a bus to L.A., but the bus broke down in the desert and all we could find to eat in the arid wasteland were dried peyote buds...
...movie Ishtar features arid Moroccan dunes, so it may seem appropriate that its studio, Columbia Pictures, is thirsting for box-office receipts. In its first 19 days, Ishtar grossed $11.6 million, trading on the presence of Superstars Warren Beatty and Dustin Hoffman. That sounds good, but the film cost $45 million or more to make...