Word: cardboarded
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Sincerity, that most elusive of virtues, is the one thing that only an individual can truly know, and simultaneously the one virtue that cannot be expressed simply, unlike so many cardboard cinema emotions. What really could be more phony than Richard Nixon's claim, straining for the sincerity he would never achieve, that "I am not a crook"? He who doth protest ... dispenses with any chance of conveying more than the ersatz...
...still devoted to "quiet, workmanlike, parochial novels" like those of Barbara Pym and Elizabeth Taylor. "I'm not against that," he says. "I'm just against the idea that it's the only way to write novels and be esteemed in Oxbridge." Floods of mail, piling up in cardboard boxes around his desk, assure him that he is esteemed around the world. But for someone worried about finding time to finish all his projected books, this too can be a burden. "The most appalling letters," he groans, "are the ones that say, 'I've got a wonderful story...
...suffused with a soft-focus romanticism. Firelight plays over the fantasy. Everyone seems amazingly successful. The columns are populated by Ph.D.s. Sometimes one encounters a millionaire. Occasionally a satirical wit breaks the monotony: "I am DWM, wino, no teeth, smell bad, age 40--look 75. Live in good cardboard box in low- traffic alley. You are under 25, tall, sophisticated, beautiful, talented, financially secure, and want more out of life. Come fly with...
Jose Luis Villa, who slipped across the Mexican border last fall, has even worse prospects. He makes his home on a ragged mattress, one of about 30 lying in a row underneath the roaring traffic of Los Angeles' San Diego Freeway. Next to Villa's mattress stands a cardboard Perrier carton that contains most of his worldly possessions: a toothbrush, a tube of Colgate toothpaste, a cracked and yellowing bar of soap, a flashlight and a beginner's manual of English. Villa looks 13, but he claims to be 16. Every morning he hikes over to the "slave market...
...Founding Father's found surprising acceptance his month at the normally liberal BROWN UNIVERSITY, where students joined townspeople in re-enacting the Contras' heroie struggle. Over 75 "Freedom Fighters" staged a mock Contra take-over of downtown Providence on April Fool, Day, replete with khaki fatigues, mock rifles, and cardboard tanks. After an hour of make-belive firing squad executions of "communist sympathizers," the play freedom fighters proclaimed victory from the steps of City Hall and declared Rhode Island's capital under martial law. The phony Contras were quick to agree with President's description of their Yankee forebears: shouted...