Word: cardboard
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...former CIA man's liking; it so irked him that he knocked out a review. The Hill, a congressional weekly, heard that the review was circulating and, given Ames' unique body of knowledge, offered to publish it (for no fee). "Safire uses heavy-duty cardboard for his characters," writes Ames, adding that the plot is "preposterous." But Safire isn't hurt. "It's always an honor to be panned by a traitor," he says...
...Indeed, the items are often striking but decidedly noncontroversial. There is a plate decorated with one of Mapplethorpe's virginal-looking calla-lily photos (price: $125) and a sand-filled "remembrance box" designed by Finley as a "personal altar" to dead loved ones ($54). One can also buy a cardboard chair that supports a 250-lb. person ($35), as well as assorted candles, lamps, place mats, letter openers and dog toys...
Items which students can recycle currently include glass, bottles and cans, as well as paper and cardboard...
...what about those cardboard characters? "I guess I have three answers," Crichton responds. "First of all, I'm doing the best I can. I really try hard. Second, I think there is a way where often you don't know motivation. I don't believe you can know it. So I hesitate to write it. And it makes a cold quality, an exterior quality. And I guess the third reason is that very often I'm not, in some way or another, interested in the characters. For many years, I really wasn't interested...
T.Coraghessan Boyle is an overpraised novelist with an unpleasant habit of sneering at his own cardboard characters. Some writers can carry this off, some can't. Aldous Huxley adopted a toplofty attitude toward his creatures, but he had the intellectual force to transform snobbery into satire. Among current novelists, Martin Amis lacks intellectual force but is well supplied with nastiness, which occasionally resembles humor. Boyle merely sounds as if he needs an antacid...