Word: essayed
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...reasons he suggests--that the assumption is so cosmic that it might be accepted. It is rarely "accepted;" we aren't here to accept or reject--we're here to be amused. The more dazzling, personal, unorthodox, paradoxic your assumptions (paradoxes are not equivocations), the more interesting an essay is likely to be. (If you have a chance to confer with the assistant in advance, of course--and we all like to be called "assistants," not "graders"--you may be able to ferret out one or two cosmic assumptions of his own; seeing them in your bluebook, he can only...
...uproar over the guy who left his intended bride in the lurch [ESSAY, Dec. 8], we must note that this nonevent was not an ordinary wedding. It was a megabuck marriage right up there with a corporate takeover. Perhaps the wayward groom decided that the cost of trading in his Porsche for a Ferrari was too high. Hardly anything to concern the masses. If the jilted wealthy bride really wants to get married, she can run an HEIRESS SEEKS HUSBAND ad, or tour Europe interviewing studs. When she finds the right man, she can mold him into her very...
Roger Rosenblatt, in writing about the newly revealed tape recordings made by Richard Nixon, recalled with fondness the laughs evoked by some of the remarks of past American Chief Executives [ESSAY, Nov. 24]. As a U.S. historian who focuses on the presidency, I found Rosenblatt's commentary downright hysterical until I got to the quote he attributed to Woodrow Wilson. In fact, it was Calvin Coolidge who said when a great many people are unable to find work, unemployment results. It's worth noting that Silent Cal had a sense of humor so dry that Alice Roosevelt Longworth said...
...from its policy of "constructive engagement" with China. Wei was such a leading light of the dissident movement--and thus considered so dangerous by the Chinese government--that his supporters sometimes feared he would never go free. A former electrician in Beijing, Wei first gained notoriety with a 1978 essay advocating that Deng Xiaoping broaden his campaign to carry out "Four Modernizations"--of industry, agriculture, science and the military--to include democracy as a "fifth modernization." The next year, after writing a wall poster that accused Deng of being a dictator, Wei was arrested...
...Midnight is one of those rare films that cries out for a voice-over, but Eastwood and his writers seem to have consciously avoided that course of action. Instead, they give us John Kelso (Cusack), an idealistic young writer from New York who comes to Savannah to write an essay on a Christmas party and ends up getting involved in Williams' murder trial. By embroiling Kelso in the plot, the refreshing detachment of Berendt's narrative is lost. The story shifts from the town and people of Savannah to the fictional Kelso--his life, his ideals and, I'm sorry...