Word: attempted
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...difficult role to play. Alceste is often the proud, arrogant misanthrope, as when he pompously shreds a fop's attempt at sonnetry. But when near his love, Celimene, he is an absurd blunderbuss...
Some of Schulman's music is so bad that one must conclude it is intentionally tacky. "Dig Right In" appears to be a take-off of those insipid chorus bits favored by the likes of Carol Burnett. But this attempt at satire fails because many of Schulman's other numbers are as insipid as those chorus bits he tries to satirize. Unless he has a specific objective--for example, to parody a '50s song as he does in "Mummy Knows Best"--his tunes slide into something reminiscent of a Burt Bacharach medley. The satire in the book, like the satire...
...ventriloquizing bleak pronouncements on the state of the union: "Gold knew that the most advanced and penultimate stage of a civilization was attained when chaos masqueraded as order, and he knew we were already there." Or, "No society worth its salt would watch itself perishing without some serious attempt to avert its own destruction. Therefore, Gold concluded, we are not a society. Or we are not worth our salt. Or both...
Tabor's pivotal case arises when the politicians and legal establishment attempt to do her in: Gabriel Zampa, an eccentric sculptor builds three Watts-like towers jutting out of the tan wasteland, "Cause eve'yt'ing aroun' was gettin' ugly." The city orders them demolished, but Tabor argues that they are works of art. Craftily, the city hires Ellen Trask, a woman whose credentials are even more formidable than Tabor's, and with the ceremony of gunfighters, the two legal amazons go at it. Tabor wins, but neither she nor the towers are safe...
...that ex-servicemen, policemen and even prison officials were being thrown into the regime's defense. Amin appealed to the Organization of African Unity to persuade Tanzania's President Julius Nyerere to call off his invasion. But the OAU leaders, meeting in Kenya, made only a halfhearted attempt to do so. They seemed to agree with Milton Obote, whom Amin overthrew as Uganda's President in 1971. In Tanzania, where he has been living in exile, Obote declared, "Now is the time for Amin to pay the price of tyranny...