Word: asking
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...myths are fresh and exciting (if slightly bizarre and grotesque) fairy tales of a sort, not historical or ideological records, and are accompanied by a running modern philosophical commentary by the articulate and learned Calasso ("Is there any part of literary history Calasso isn't familiar with?", you may ask yourself by the end of this book) on the bizarre and sometimes grotesque events of the stories. Two birds are killed with one tome (groan), in a sense: on the one hand there is the excitement of these ancient and unusual non-Western tales; on the other hand, there...
...simply bad writing mar the novel considerably. For example, Ray continually has "conversations" with inanimate objects, ghosts (such as Billy's) and animals. These are included, in some cases, for no discernible reason, such as this "exchange" with Jean's stuffed animal, the poodle Bojo: "'Scared, Bojo?' I ask him. `No,' he answers, staring straight forward." The author also leaves the reader in unnecessary suspense about what happened during the crucial "perfect summer, awful summer," includes characters with dubious importance to the plot and tells the reader too much about them. This is Ray ostensibly talking about Jill Thompson...
...investing in the political repression of the Ogoni people, Harvard weakens its educational mission and contributes to social regression. I ask the Corporation to remove this ugly stain from our intellectual community and our legacy, to wash our hands of the deplorable execution of the modern hero Ken Saro-Wiwa and to divest all $34 million from Shell...
...endowment has already reached $13 billion, far more than anybody else's, they argued. Who could ask for anything more? And, instead of spending it well, Harvard is using a lot of it for dubious purposes such as those fueled by political correctness. For having done what I considered a good deed, I was suddenly on the defensive. Was I a naif, unaware of what everybody on the inside knows, that Harvard is foisting on its alums a fund-raising scam? Perhaps those snooty Faculty classmates were right in ridiculing my expectation that they should be expected to contribute...
...they cannot hope for a shot at professional opportunity and other social goods enjoyed by the members of the middle class is the kind of education offered by Harvard and other colleges of reputation. So that's why, despite some grief, I call classmates from time to time and ask for money...