Word: despairs
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...answer eludes him, and his quest points toward despair. Thoughts, he decides, "don't get us anywhere; our speculations are like a stationary bicycle." But Kenneth's huffing and puffing amount to an engrossing spectacle: a mind, albeit weird, attempting to make sense out of the overwhelming flood of data that most people dismiss as daily life. Despite, or perhaps because of, what the narrator calls "my divagations and aberrations, my absurdities," More Die of Heartbreak crackles with intelligence and wit. The novel is not only proof that Bellow, 72, can live up to his own standards; it is also...
Sometimes Phillips is almost willful in her virtuosity, and sometimes she is borne along too easily on waves of rhythmic prose. Nevertheless, her range is considerably greater than is common among her despair-addicted contemporaries, as is her fugitive grace. Where Ann Beattie's characters, for instance, are habitually on Valium, Phillips' are generally on speed; while Beattie's have surrendered to nothingness, Phillips' are still in search of something. Nearly all the stories in Fast Lanes are, like their characters, fascinated with gymnasts, tightrope walkers and others who find ways to steady and ground themselves. And the best...
Criticism, muckraking and its attendant skepticism have always been big business in Washington, a necessary part of a healthy democracy. The worry expressed above is that criticism is becoming the only business in Washington. Are we institutionalizing despair? The failings of humans who try to run this republic are legion, including those of not only Reagan but now Gary Hart, who wanted Reagan's job. And this week we can add a lot of names from the Navy, caught up in the tragedy of the Stark. Nothing seems immune. When Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall knocked the sacred 200-year...
...Auschwitz and Buchenwald, and at war's end he became a journalist in Paris. He would not speak out about the unspeakable for ten years. When that self-imposed vow of silence ended, he devoted his life to writing and talking, with rare eloquence and power, about the despair of the past and the concerns of the present. Now a U.S. citizen, Wiesel, 56, has written some 30 books and is widely acknowledged, in the words of the Nobel committee chairman, as a "messenger to mankind." Later this month he will testify in the case of The State of France...
Still, it is not for the sex therapist to despair--that is a task for old, fat, or ugly people. It is under dire circumstances that the mettle of great men proves itself, and in grave danger that the most bucks are to be made. Above all, one should always remember that the situation could always be worse. I mean, at least Gary didn't drive off a bridge with the girl...