Word: descent
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...Read this book not for its epic retelling of his long descent into dementia or its ax-grinding with the singer's fourth wife, Barbara Marx, but for its thoughtful, sometimes moving recollections of growing up as Beverly Hills-Palm Springs royalty with an intermittently available father whose flaws cast very long shadows. Though there's little about music here, another of Tina's observations puts Frank's shortcomings into proper perspective: "Had he been a healthier, less tortured man, he might have been Perry Como." Of course you can't balance a childhood against, say, "All the Way," except...
...hours Time it took him to ski 11,515 ft. to base camp, becoming the first to complete the descent...
...interesting conundrum, the impracticality of having a character go mad. Bennett went through several drafts of Madness before he developed a subplot compelling enough to take the place of the king's personal tragedy in the second act of his play. A descent into insanity and a recovery from it are both dramatically tenable situations, but the state of madness itself leaves little room for engaging action. Hence the emphasis on affairs of state and the line of succession which fills the later parts of Bennett's playelements which were absent in his early drafts...
...Robertson, focusing on one character's descent into madness becomes a means of avoiding the madness trap. Not until the end of the play does Mary Girard admitor rather, accepther insanity. But she is surrounded from the very beginning by nameless characters whose abnormal mental states are already well established, making her the only persona in the drama with any degree of development. The Furies, as Robertson calls them, are dramatic constants, little more than moving pieces of scenery in the story of Mary's fall from sanity. But this dramatic bracketing of the other characters on stage...
...problem is that the 1 million citizens Israel calls Israeli Arabs tend to think of themselves as Palestinians who happen to live in Israel, not as Israelis of Arab descent. It's a crucial distinction and has always been a potential trigger. At the best of times it is a source of friction. In the midst of last week's chaos, it was a spark for some real tragedy...