Word: enigma
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CHRISTMAS WOULDN'T BE the same without the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU, alias "The Grinch") waging its annual legal campaign to remove Nativity scenes or "creches" from Christmas displays. Numerous courtroom challenges and conflicting decisions have transformed the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment into a bewildering legal enigma. But the U.S. Supreme Court this year may substantially clarify the extent to which municipalities can promote the religious aspects of Christmas in the pending case of Lynch v Donnelly...
...There is no definitive David Bowie," he once remarked. Ziggy and the Duke have been slithered out of, like shucked snakeskins, but their creator remains a well-nurtured enigma. Perhaps by design: in concert or in conversation, he always seems like a scrupulous creation. The body, even relaxed, seems conscious of pose. The face?Leslie Howard sketched by George Grosz?can be nearly beautiful, but the mouth splits its sculpted lines when it turns up into a toothy, gratified grin, like Chaplin's as he watched a fat man fall. Bowie's eyes, always appraising, seem to look straight down...
...understand that legacy, by which death ceased to be an enigma and became, not a lament for what might have been, but a hope for what...
...ways of life clear and uncommonly affecting. Take Dorsey, for example. He combines a holy man's zeal, a performer's ego and a revered older man's self-contentment, and the film's portrait of him becomes a little essay on the patriarch as enigma. Or consider Delois Barrett Campbell. Onstage she is a shatteringly forceful singer. Off stage she is married to the minister of a humble church who has trouble understanding the ambition that must lie behind a talent as large as hers. Like any wife whose career has outstripped her husband...
...fresh, distinctive style, this account refutes much previous speculation about the great composer's life and music, replacing it with scholarship and practical judgement. Much of the enjoyment in reading the biography derives from its flexible approach and its lack of a didactic single answer to the enigma. Hildesheimer freely admits that his work is only a contribution to the "concert of diverse voices," yet he hopes to alter that concert with his voice. He considers "the reader's power of imagination and willingness to imagine" an integral requisite for the appreciation of his discussion...