Word: authority
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...trouble is with the author's photo on the reverse side of his new book, a shrewd and amiable thriller called A Matter of Honor. Archer is shown in full color, posing authoritatively in a blue pinstripe power suit, and carries an open volume, perhaps one of his previous tomes. His smile is that of a man who would not be surprised if a headwaiter applauded...
...when one of Eric Ambler's down-at-the-heels protagonists makes a dodgy border crossing, the tension is palpable. Readers know that if the policeman in the greasy uniform were a shade more intelligent, he would realize that the hero's accent is bogus, his passport fake. An author who sees himself in boardroom costume, however, seems unlikely to grasp the concepts of weary connivance that nourish the standard thriller...
...peace treaty within the year with the Vatican." Irma, heading back to the States, is consoled by expectations: "I am beginning to think 1929 is going to be a great year for us. There is nothing that makes me feel more alive than making money." With that sentence, the author sums up an epoch. In the process, she conspires with her readers who know, as her characters cannot, that after Black Thursday of the following October, the world will change. With certain notable exceptions, neither hereditary titles nor accumulated wealth -- nor resolutely unfashionable novels -- will ever be the same...
...anxiety, humiliation and the trial itself, what she calls "the price I had to pay." And the novel generates enough suspense to tug even those readers who know they are being hoodwinked into its wake. But a shuffling of cliches does not qualify as a literary breakthrough. The author seems skillful enough to have tried something truly daring -- a story, say, about a woman who breaks up with a boring painter and finds ethereal sex with a corporation lawyer. But such is not the stuff of which best sellers are now manufactured...
...expression of anxiety by males who are threatened by the women's movement. But some of the more militant feminists take a darker view: porn is a conscious assault against women, comparable to antiblack and anti-Semitic literature. "Pornography is virulent propaganda against women," says Author Susan Brownmiller. "It promotes a climate in which the ideology of rape is not only tolerated but encouraged." In her book Pornography, Andrea Dworkin calls violence "the prime component of male identity" and says porn is an expression of men's abusive control of women...