Word: earnest
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Morton followed his own sire into the New England textile industry. Morton expected the oldest of his four children to do the same. Jeff Forbes, Darman's Harvard roommate, recalls the genetic imprint: "Dick's father was extremely disciplined, with a view that life was very real and very earnest. Dick took that from...
...true nature of the lovable yet weak father, Lasse (Max von Sydow). Amidst the filth of the small room in which his son has just been whipped, Lasse says with defiance, "Your mother was worried I couldn't take care of you." For all of his efforts and earnest desire, Lasse will never be the role model for which young Pelle longs. He promises to revenge wrongs committed against Pelle, yet he is unable to fulfill the promises, and his moments of strength...
...earnest plonkers had written this clumsy, lively, thoroughly entertaining family saga of war and romance, no reader would have puzzled over deep currents that seem unaccountably shallow. Anthony Burgess, however, is one of literature's certified mandarins, known as an explicator of Ulysses (Re Joyce), a postapocalyptic moralist (A Clockwork Orange), and a scholar showily at home in a double handful of ancient and modern languages. He wigwags strenuously at the outset of this new novel that primal, mythic stuff is ahead -- ancient tales threading through the dark, tribal roots of 20th century bloody-mindedness...
...money game, or more precisely the lack-of-money game, began its long and intricate course in earnest last week. There were direct signals, mixed signals, contradictory signals -- something for everybody. The central point, however, was unambiguous. A debate rages over the exact effect monumental federal deficits have on the nation's economic health and its role as a world leader. But the President left no doubt that he disdains those who claim that deficits do not matter. If asked, Bush would undoubtedly agree with the assessment of Alice Rivlin, a former head of the Congressional Budget Office. "The budget...
...item in this show, his elaborate drawing entitled The Power of Man, 1786, showing a hunter and his young companion on horseback dragging home the carcasses of a lion and a huge eagle, predicts many of the elements of Nazi classicism if not its overweening vulgarity. The taste for earnest, portentous and sentimental allegory, which now and then muddies the work of even the best German artists in the postwar years -- Joseph Beuys, Anselm Kiefer -- is well and truly installed by the early 1800s in the elaborate metaphorical drawings and prints of Runge. His paeans to innocence, with their flying...