Word: epernay
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...Mark Epernay's slim volume of essays is a paeon of praise to the imaginative and eccentric Herschel McLandress, former professor of Psychiatric Measurement at the Harvard Medical School, a genius fated, Mr. Epernay tells us, for a position of honor among the scientific and medical immortals. Not content to mend the tattered psyches of Harvard students and tired of serving as pathfinder to 'Cliffies trying to find themselves, Dr. McLandress devoted himself to applying statistical methods to the analysis of political and economic trends...
...greatest success, according to Mr. Epernay, a faithful Boswell, is the development of the McLandress Dimension, a measurement designed to record the length of time an individual can keep his thoughts centered on subjects other than himself. The unit of measurement is termed the McLandress Coefficient--known to the cognoscenti as the McL-C (pronounced Mack-el-see); a McL-C of 60 minutes, which is above average, means that the subject's thoughts return to himself approximately every hour...
...Dimension is the highpoint of Dr. McLandress' career, Mr. Epernay's account of the McL-C's of various prominent people is the highpoint of The McLandress Dimension. He seems to delight in sly jabs at the greats as he records these sophisticated, psychological VIP-coated gossip columns...
Despite the humor of this chapter, The McLandress Dimension is not a great success. First of all, its seven essays do not hang together; several seem to have little connection with the others. In a few cases, Mr. Epernay appears to have inserted Dr. McLandress almost as an afterthought into essays in which he plays no real part...
...McLANDRESS DIMENSION, by Mark Epernay. A slyly satiric formula for estimating the character of statesmen and public personages by calculating their ability to concentrate on something other than themselves and ironic assaults on the dignity of bureaucracy. The pseudonymous author is ex-Ambassador to India John Kenneth Galbraith...