Word: brackets
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...shifting symbols of success, where the status is very seldom quo. Most of them live in Manhattan or commute to its skyscraper hives, for that is where the honey is. But somehow their lives, loves and labors leave the cuprous taste of pennies in their mouths; the middle-income bracket is their social vise. Few writers have probed the masked anxieties of the "have-not-enoughs" with the skill and authority of John (The Wapshot Chronicle) Cheever, 46. After Marquand, he is the ablest chronicler of the interior life of the organization...
...many years ago, almost every man who achieved the $20,000-a-year bracket-or even $15,000-could join a country club and enjoy it. Today, country club managers quote J. P. Morgan's dictum on yachts: He who asks how much it costs cannot afford it. Country club dues and assessments are rising fast. In the past few years, dues doubled (to $350-$1,000 plus 20% federal tax) in some clubs; they went up as much as 120% in Detroit alone last year, almost 20% in Los Angeles in the past few months. The villain...
...novel's European narrator calls himself Humbert Humbert and the doubletalk name sets the note of self-mockery that runs-laughter questioning the validity even of despair-throughout the book. Humbert's ignominious, fatal obsession is for little girls in the 9-14 bracket-not ordinary little girls but a special kind he calls "nymphets." As Humbert explains it in a passage that is typical of his style: "You have to be an artist and a madman, a creature of infinite melancholy, with a bubble of hot poison in your loins and a super-voluptuous flame aglow...
What are the specifications for a spaceman? Dr. Balke and his crew supplied partial answers: he will be a lean, athletic type (bulging muscles are useless excess baggage), a scientist, and aged 35 to 45-men in this bracket have it over their juniors in greater emotional stability, endurance for tedious tasks, and better judgment as the result of longer training and experience...
...American History, a score which would put an independent school student in the 78th percentile ranking would put him into the 99th percentile ranking of a Southern high school. If the same student ranked in the 50th percentile in the independent scale, he would place in the 91st bracket of Southern schools. These figures do indicate that the Southern high schools are considerably behind the private schools, but the Midwestern or Eastern public schools would rank somewhere in the middle of these two extremes...