Word: authorly
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Albany in his new novel, 'The Flaming Corsage' (Viking; 209 pages; $23.95). Kennedy once described his hometown as an 'improbable city of political wizards, fearless ethnics, spectacular aristocrats, splendid nobodies, and underrated scoundrels.' "The aforementioned now rub elbows and knock heads in a novel that once more demonstrates the author's passion for place and his skill as a literary magician, says TIME's R.Z. Sheppard. "How else should one describe a writer who moves effortlessly through time and who can summon ghostly characters from previous books to play full-blooded roles in his latest work?" Readers familiar with Kennedy...
...assassination; nor is it likely that the book's audience will want it to be. Instead, In the Name of Sorrow and Hope is, as Publishers' Weekly declares in the book's promotional literature, "filled with the beautiful anguish and sincerity of youth"--it is a chance for the author to memorialize her grandfather while representing Israel to the world in a noncontroversial...
...topics-- Rabin's personal manner, her experience of growing up in Israel in times of war and strife, a trip to Auschwitz and her life in the army--in a style that is unremittingly sentimental and naive. What interest there is in the book is seldom in the author's treatment of events; rather, the inherent pathos of what she is describing shines through a generally unenlightening description...
Unfortunately, the book is studded with the author's attempts to make the things she is describing even more touching, a forcing of emotion that can be frankly embarrassing. Her recollection of Samuel Gogol's story, for example, is preceded by this observation: "Fifty years later, birds still do not sing in Auschwitz. Was it just my impression? No, other people noticed the same thing: there are no birds in Auschwitz." And while it would be churlish to fault her expression of her grief for her grandfather, it is just those most powerful and universal emotions that are hardest...
...relish. His key assertion is that affirmative action harms "the morale of the institution, which depends almost entirely on its devotion to academic excellence." If there is a widespread sentiment that the university's academic excellence and morale are threatened by incapable minority students, such feelings have escaped this author's notice. Counselors and tutors repeatedly report that students find life at Harvard stressful, competitive and tiring. Few students have the time or energy to engage in philosophical speculation as to whether Harvard's "excellence" is eroding...