Word: compassion
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...brief compass the author manages to bring off a remarkable range of scenes and situations, from academic Cambridge to the black underbelly of Roxbury (where Ken teaches awhile) to an orgy involving the apple pickers, a family Civil War sword and a death by drowning. Under the black comic claptrap in Black Conceit is a deeply felt, uncompromising book about an idealist's disappointment that human nature does not prove perfectible, that human decency, liberally applied, cannot suspend the law of the jungle. "We go on making choices, after the original helplessness," Coffin reflects, "and ultimately it becomes...
...living, about the manners and aspirations of a generation that endured to see its values-not well defended but well believed in-derided across the generation gap. The genre is women's fiction, and the book lapses occasionally into jargon and sentimentality. But in a very short compass, with extraordinary deftness, humor and a rueful shrewdness edging toward wisdom, it rises above genre to something not unlike small genius. "Nowadays, everyone knows a little something about the mind," thinks the lady, "though it doesn't seem to have helped as much as one could wish." And that...
Chances of survival looked bleak. Their inflatable life raft had a slow leak. There was no radio or compass. The food supply consisted of only a few oranges and lemons, some fortified bread and glucose packed aboard the raft...
...some press conferences devoted to a single subject; last month's session at San Clemente was virtually that, but only because of Watergate and the long lag between meetings. Regularly scheduled sessions-say two a month -would also relieve the pressure to gallop to all points of the compass...
...sailors who cannot find what he wants in the catalogues of the big builders." He is a man who shuns complex modern gear that he cannot service himself. He can work with rope or wire or canvas, and the sailmaker's "palm" sits comfortably in his hand. His compass and sextant are instruments to be treated with care and reverence. He can read the tides and the weather, and he knows the movements of the navigator's stars. His library is charts and pilot manuals. His bible is the American Practical Navigator by Nathaniel Bowditch, a one-volume...