Word: authorly
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...settle a lawsuit filed by Weaver and his three surviving daughters, the government agreed last week to pay them $3.1 million. Their lawyer, Gerry Spence, a sagebrush sage and best-selling author, says the settlement lets his clients avoid a trial that would require them to relive memories of a "dead mother on the floor for 11 days, rotting in the sun, and a dead boy out in back in the woodshed." Meanwhile, the FBI was spared the ordeal of facing an Idaho jury that might well have awarded the Weavers even more money, to say nothing of what could...
...cardboard characters," writes criticJohn Skow. Some writers can carry this off; Boyle definitely can't. His new novel (Viking; 355 pages; $23.95) has possibilities in its discussion of the shuddering distaste of California's Anglos for the Mexican illegals who perform the state's stoop labor. But the author mistrusts his skill and the reader's acuteness. "This is weak, obvious stuff," says Skow, "worth a raised eyebrow and a shrug...
...takes to open the door to the kind of microscopic scrutiny politicians from Gary Hart to Bob Packwood have endured. At first Gingrich quipped Gipperlike that he couldn't hear the questions, then he refused to respond to anything in the article (although he gave its author, Gail Sheehy, a long interview); finally, he resorted to calling a reporter "obnoxious." The next morning, in a radio interview, he suggested that Manning is politically motivated. "I knew...if we're going to have a revolution to replace the welfare state, we better expect those people who love it to throw...
...popular programs. After all, the Discovery Channel, Mind Extension University, the Learning Channel and the Arts & Entertainment Network, as well as C-SPAN, all survive and compete with PBS without tax subsidy. Alice Marquis reminds us that in 1973 the NEA issued a $5,000 grant to author Erica Jong to help her finish writing the novel Fear of Flying. How much could the endowment have received if it had requested a percentage of the royalties for putting up seed money for the work, which went on to become a huge best seller...
...effect of double image, of not quite being in focus, mars Ursula Hegi's Salt Dancers (Simon & Schuster; 235 pages; $22), a forcefully written novel of child abuse and parental desertion. The author's strength is her unfailing immediacy of language, which illuminated her fine previous novel Stones from the River. Her scenes, as character grates on troubled character, are real and vivid; they command attention. But the book's structure might have been designed by a committee to illustrate how bitter, unresolved childhood memories can be coped with. (Hegi's dedication is "For my women's group"; is there...