Word: dreariest
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...most important living photographers is a statement so at odds with his rough-edged accomplishment that it obscures its own point. Frank is the genius of the marginal and the unofficial. The nondescript corner of some ratty diner in South Carolina, the smudged window that opens onto the dreariest rooftops in Butte, Montana, the vacant stare of an elevator operator in Miami Beach -- these are things the Swiss-born Frank decided were central to comprehending his adopted nation. Important is a funny word to attach to a man so suspicious of whatever is well regarded and so indifferent to success...
...means to see a star; and this particular Hello, Dolly! is a superb production of one of the happiest creations in all of musical comedy. In general, cross-country tours of old musicals featuring septuagenarians who have, let's say, fallen out of the public eye can be the dreariest events in all of show business. Not this time...
What is the use of traditional miracles now? Perhaps, as Elie Wiesel once suggested, people need reassurance that miracles are still possible, even for them: the dreariest fate may be reversed. The miracle is antidote to the despair that arises from sheer inevitability. The disintegration of Soviet communism, said to have been foretold at Fatima, has had a surreal quality of the miraculous reversal about...
...more satisfying than its literal fulfillment. If the demagogue-bard says the infidel will swim in his own blood, then words have pre-empted the work of armies. Ambiguity has an ancient history in the West, but the Middle East has its special genius for mirage. There, the dreariest, basest impulses go dressed up in poetry. Aggressive greed may swagger around as jihad. "Arab dignity and honor" shine in the mind with a radiant life of their own, forever beleaguered and violated and crying for revenge -- visions really, not things to be struggled toward, to be earned...
...plagiarist could not resist. But what if the borrowed stuff is a flat, lifeless mess -- the road kill of passing ideas? In that case there is less risk, but surely no joy at all. (Does the plagiarist ever feel joy?) Safer to steal the duller stones. None but the dreariest specialists will remember them or sift for them in the muck...