Word: contrivedness
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As freshmen will soon discover, few types on the Harvard campus arouse such universal ire as “that kid” in your humanities section. He crowds out other discussion with big, overreaching generalizations. He challenges the TF whenever possible. His vocabulary is expansive, but he is given...
Admirers of Ondaatje's spare, yet poetical prose will find much to enjoy. Describing two people who make love robustly in a grounded plane, he writes: "Their sex takes place in the late afternoons, and shortly afterwards they emerge from the Airstream like humbled dormice." Ondaatje has a gift for...
Chanda also draws plenty of parallels with our own day. It's hard to tell whether these comparisons are contrived, elucidative or banal, but they mostly entertain in the way that popular history can. For example, he writes that today's sprawling multinational corporations are modeled on the crown-backed...
One of the things Kevin Rudd claims to have discovered during his time in politics is that Australians can spot a fraud at 50 paces. "Be who you are," Rudd tells interviewers who ask about his public image or leadership style. The needle on an Aussie fake detector, however, can...
There’s nothing less satisfying than a bad ending to a mystery novel—except one with no ending at all, only themes strewn about everywhere and an excessively long and unnecessary line of accusations made at an innocent and unknowing reader. It seems that in ?...