Word: english
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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These are the central players in what evolves from a surface entertainment into a deceptively rich and complex novel about coming of age (if not about the age itself). Julian's story brims with figures and rituals familiar to British fiction: barmy relatives, eccentric aristocrats, a public school -- the "English Gulag" -- where the headmaster enjoys hitting boys with sticks. As a teenager, Julian spends a summer in Brittany, where French is taught by Mme. de Normandin and sex by her daughter Barbara. Later, while trying to avoid work in the army, he learns another of life's essential lessons...
Just ask E.D. Hirsch, whose educational philosophy mirrors Bacon's conclusion. Hirsch, an English professor at the University of Virginia, has enlisted the assistance of Joseph F. Kett and James Trefil to save our nation from cultural stagnation, assembling The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, a collection of specific knowledge of, according to the weighty hardcover's bold subtitle, "What Every American Needs to Know." But there is no power in this book's knowledge...
Another problem is that Hirsch strays from his proposed selection method of avoiding general or expert information. In his chapter on the Conventions of Written English, undoubtedly the worst in the volume, he includes entries like...
Everyone who watches the late show knows that the antique French spoke with Oxford accents. Here, though, the aristocrats speak breadbasket American, while the servants talk with an English or Irish lilt -- a subtle joke on the imperialism of American culture. If there is a pitfall in this strategy, it is that American actors are defter at explosions than at epigrams. They are not trained, as the English are, to coil themselves in hauteur. So at times Malkovich plays the evil dandy too diligently; on his brow you can almost see the fop sweat. Then gradually he learns to trust...
...Gemayel left the country because of pressure from the Phalangist militia once controlled by his murdered brother Bashir. Gemayel is now staying in Paris, where he receives visitors in a friend's well-guarded luxury apartment. A wealthy man, Gemayel talks vaguely of moving to the U.S. and taking English-language courses at Harvard...