Word: epigraph
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...first novel is also, in a traditional sense, the conclusion of the tale. Charles Baxter, 40, the author of two fine collections of short stories, has not only come across an interesting idea for an experimental narrative but has managed to translate it into convincing fiction. The book's epigraph, from Kierkegaard, provides the key: "Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards...
...Only Connect" was Forster's epigraph for Howards End, a plea to unite civilized ponds with subterranean wells of feeling. Unfortunately, he had no exact idea until age 30 of how men and women made love, a defect that Author Katherine Mansfield tartly noted in Howards End: "I can never be perfectly certain whether Helen was got with child by Leonard Bast or by his fatal forgotten umbrella. All things considered, I think it must have been the umbrella...
...Greek at dawn and by evening had taken him through Latin, mathematics, French and English literature. Young Jefferson studied 15 hours out of every 24. "Determine never to be idle," he told his daughter. "It is wonderful how much may be done if we are always doing." No better epigraph could be found for the leaders meeting at Williamsburg two centuries later...
...Forman's enterprise. His commitment to the actors allows them the time to bring their characters to quirky behavioral life, but every reaction shot, every unfinished phrase or repeated sentence means that many moments stolen from the Doctorow overview. Forman has taken as gospel the novel's epigraph-Scott Joplin's admonition, "It is never right to play ragtime fast"-reduced a pageant to an anecdote, and sacrificed sweep for nuance. Grateful as one is to have this Ragtime, with its many thrilling performances and its spurts of emotional grandeur, one would now like...
...poem was chosen as the epigraph for this splendid, pioneering collection of verse by women. Sadly, Sappho's fears of oblivion have proved valid. For each poet represented in this anthology there are uncounted others whose work has been diminished, dispersed or utterly lost. In A.D. 1073, virtually all existing copies of Sappho's work were burned in Rome and Constantinople, because the church perceived her lesbian love lyrics as a threat to Christian morality. In 12th century China the parents of Chu Shu-chen incinerated the body of the poet's work after her death...