Word: authorization
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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This seems to portend more than what follows, which is a long, fairly routine mini-series of a novel. Without appearing to have much on his mind, the author follows the adventures of three families -- one Welsh, one Russian- American, one Jewish-English -- through three wars. The founding patriarch is a young ship's cook, a Welshman named David Jones, first seen surviving the sinking of the Titanic. He meets and marries a beautiful Russian immigrant named Ludmila in New York City, resettles in England, volunteers for the army, is mistakenly reported dead in World...
Mighty events pass quickly; 40 years of calamitous European history slide by as a diverting panorama. No character is on view long enough to be irksome, or for the reader to wonder unduly at arbitrary choices of personal traits and adventures assigned by the author. Burgess, as always, throws in bits of the many languages he knows, mostly untranslated. But where the invented Russian- English slang in Clockwork Orange had a brilliant sting to it (horrorshow from horosho, meaning good, and lewdies from lyudi, people), the phrases here in Russian and Latin appear, after a dash to the dictionary...
...unserious playacting. One of his protagonists, in exasperation, chucks the sword into a pond, where it sinks without a deathbed speech. He explains, "I had to grasp a chunk of the romantic past and find it rusty." Which does not entirely answer a last-page question to the author: "What was that all about...
...nation's civil servants. Now, as chairman of the New York City investment bank James D. Wolfensohn Inc., Volcker is making big money for the first time in his life. With Administrations changing in Washington, Volcker sat in the study of his Manhattan apartment for a TIME interview with author Lawrence Malkin...
...most travel journalists. What distinguishes her work is an ability, if not need, to write with her senses as well as her intellect. The sights and sounds of what she calls Hong Kong's "fructifying untidiness" are abundant and enthusiastically conveyed. So are the odors, especially what the author calls a blend of "duck-mess" and gasoline...