Word: essayed
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Given such a formal view of dining, Mrs. Trilling's view of young people who actually took over college buildings in the 1960s in understandably unsympathetic. But even if her essay "On the Steps of Low Library," from her book We Must March My Darlings accords little credit to the student radicals, her paramount concern never ventures from the anarchic, antisocial nature of their protest. Indeed, today she seems almost wistful that no constructive, socially beneficial protests have occurred on the campuses. "The students don't protest anything," she says. "I was told that the students were agitated by cuts...
Despite his occasionally limiting editorializing, Trow does provide here a fine piece of the kind of journalism which shows how vapid some of the powerful and famous actually are. In a way, it is a fun spectacle. Phonies slither around and ooze grease so much that the essay borders on parody. The only celebrity to come out with any integrity is, interestingly, Keith Richards. Predictably frazzled at parties, Richards walks around suggesting ideas like an end to exorbitant concert ticket prices by having the oil companies pick up the tab. The oil companies have a lot of money, he reasons...
...anything redeeming in American culture. In the concept of consensus, Trow has hit on one of the key underpinnings of the culture. But he has not hit on everything, and his presentation--in the form of a series of block notes ranging in length from epigrams to miniature essays strung together into the longer essay--suffers from being overly polemical...
...SECOND ESSAY of Within the Context of No Context, represents Trow's attempt to illustrate some of the conclusions he reached in the first title essay. In it he profiles Ahmet Ertegun, founder and president of Atlantic Records, one of the truly powerful musical taste-makers in rock and R&B, and a quintessentially beautiful person. Trow does a capable job of portraying Ertegun and his set and depicting the rise of someone of Ertegun's entrepreneurial ilk. But Trow falls short when he ladles the commentary and the terminology of the first essay onto Ertegun and company. Undoubtedly...
Trow's second essay does succeed in getting the reader to shake his head in bewilderment. Yes, it is embarrassing if the height of the social season occurs when Bianca Jagger rides through a Studio 54 party on a white horse led a naked man and woman. And it is ludicrous when geriatric fashion priestess Diana Vreeland comments, "The thing about Bianca is the patrician quality." Trow puts together a good piece of debunking journalism. One only wishes he had not confined it in the thinking of his first essay, and let the sillinessof his subjects speak more for itself...