Word: decays
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...differs from individual sickness as pneumonia differs from plague. A decadent act must, it seems, possess meaning that transcends itself and spreads like an infection to others, or at least suggests a general condition of the society. Decadence (from the Latin decadere, "to fall down or away," hence decay) surely has something to do with death, with a communal taedium vitae; decadence is a collection of symptoms that might suggest a society exhausted and collapsing like a star as it degenerates toward the white dwarf stage, "une race à sa derniere heure," as a French critic said...
...second model is the metaphor of natural decay, the seasons of human life, for example. Animals, people, have birth, growth, periods of vigor, then decline and death. Do societies obey that pattern? The idea of decadence, of course, implies exactly that. But it seems a risky metaphor. Historians like Arnold Toynbee, like the 14th century Berber Ibn-Khaldun and the 18th century Italian Giovanni Battista Vico, have constructed cyclical theories of civilizations that rise up in vigor, flourish, mature and then fall into decadence. Such theories may sometimes be too deterministic; they might well have failed, for example, to predict...
...spacecraft is imminently expected. It will carry believers to an enigmatic "garden" where they will get "energy" from their coequal, the King of Kings, alias Chief of Chiefs, the god who created planet earth. Believers will live eternally in hairless, toothless bodies that are free of disease and decay. Groll scoffs about possible parallels between the camp discipline and the tragic end of Jonestown: "Anyone can walk away. We just have to turn from a caterpillar into a butterfly and then we'll be ready to leave...
...stand up, a prince turned slave, a man who once commanded 2 million rubles, ends up trying to cadge a thousand from an arriviste. In a moment of extreme poignance, the prince spies Strider. He remembers him and yet refuses to recognize him. Time, the supreme sculptor of decay and death, has confronted him with his own crumbling skull in a mirror...
Class Reunion is not the worst of the recent books on Harvard. Unlike Enrique Lopez, author of The Harvard Mystique, Jaffe has no axe to grind with Harvard. She's not wailing about the decay of institutions of College Life, like Lansing Lamont in Campus Shock. Her stories read more smoothly than The Mem Hall Murders. In the end Harvard fares pretty well, because she uses it only for background: dropping names of buildings and alumni, reminiscing about sneaking a feel in an Eliot House room or necking on the steps of Briggs Hall. The Harvard name may sell...