Word: contrarian
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...times when almost everyone believes that “the world is flat” it would be more than contrarian not to worry about the financial disarray that is depleting America’s resources and confidence. When the world is “interconnected” doesn’t it follow that the richest country’s struggle will lead to an inferno everywhere else? Not quite. As economics professor Kenneth S. Rogoff recently put it in his op-ed for The Financial Times: “It is almost as if the more...
People have written that you are contrarian. Do you agree with that? I tend to speak my mind, which is not necessarily a good idea. I do not think I am the soul of tact...
This one is unique in that buttoned-down field, though, owing to its massive authorial flamboyance. A born contrarian and self-promoter with a taste for the outrageous pronouncement, Dennis is given to advice like "If it flies, floats or fornicates, always rent it." A published poet, Dennis loads the pages with dozens of quotations from such literary luminaries as Goethe and T.S. Eliot. By turns pretentious and earnest, the book is sui generis. At worst, it reads like a huge ego trip. But the author is nothing if not entertaining, even inspiring. The unvarnished title says it all: Dennis...
...asked Roy Blount Jr., a literary humorist in the Twain tradition, to put the author in perspective. In his essay, Roy plumbs Twain's deeply contrarian nature and his abiding sadness and even bitterness at what he saw as collective human folly. For Twain's influence on race relations, we asked novelist and scholar Stephen L. Carter to address Twain's views on slavery and African Americans. There have been few books more controversial in U.S. history than Huck Finn, but Carter concludes that the novel is profoundly antislavery and that Twain pioneered the sophisticated literary attack on racism...
...generational effect of perpetuating defective genomes [May 19]. As a former genetics graduate student, I've seen tragic outcomes when parents with inherited diseases (or propensities for them) decide to pass their genes on to future offspring. Sometimes this is done with ignorance, sometimes with hopeful fatalism, sometimes with contrarian determination to prove that "I really am quite O.K.!" Carrying deleterious genes is certainly not within the carrier's control, but dooming a not yet conceived child to receive them certainly is. Discrimination is not always a pejorative term. John T. Lowry, AUSTIN, TEXAS...