Word: cons
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...degree manslaughter is applicable when the killer is found to have been in the throes of "an extreme emotional disturbance." On the night he was killed last July, Adan had explained to Abbott that his tiny, bohemian café lacked a bathroom for customers. He then led the ex-con outside to show him where he could discreetly relieve himself. Yet Abbott's 24 years in violence-steeped prisons and reform schools, Fisher argued, had caused him to mistake Adan's ordinary gestures for provocation. It was a "tragic misunderstanding," Abbott claimed in court, that made him lash...
...read with pleasure your review of Gary Lindberg's The Confidence Man in American Literature [Dec. 28]. Surely you should have cited one of the most noteworthy examples of American con: Tom Sawyer lining up the young and unsuspecting to whitewash Aunt Polly's fence. Dale G. Haake Rock Island...
...example of a good literary con can be found in Poor Richard's Almanack. Benjamin Franklin, in a friendly rivalry with Titan Leeds, his chief competitor in the almanack business, foretold Leeds' death year after year until the prediction came true. Martin Mangold Hyattsville...
More important, however, Trow fails to delve any deeper into the causes of the emptiness of popular culture. Loneliness, after all, has always existed, but talk shows haven't. Trow's sole explanation, which consists of his pointing a finger at the marketplace and calling it a "con," is facile. Certainly, popular culture has its moguls and manipulators who know how to supply the required "comfort," even how to mold the public yearning for it. Yet one must wonder if the success of the transaction, the apparent (if usually silent) satisfaction of the consumers, does not suggest a widespread desire...
...trades becomes the shape-shifting diddler, a reminder of how many occupations can be made to turn on the evasion of work. The cultural promise that one can make a self by shrewdness and diligence has, then, in the world of Huckleberry Finn, soured into a battle of con artists...