Word: fabricate
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...novel is conventional in form, despite Percy's suspicion that "there is a disintegration of the fabric of the modern world which is so far advanced that the conventional novel no longer makes sense." But his vision of rotting fabric broods over the novel. The hero, a likable, intelligent stockbroker surrounded from horizon to horizon by the quietest of despairs, expresses his predicament with irony: "It is a pleasure to carry out the duties of a citizen and to receive in return a receipt on a neat styrene card with one's name on it certifying...
...lies within the structure of the modern hairpiece itself. Where rough edges and crude foundations once made a man's deceit discernible to his snickering friends, the new wigs (made exclusively of imported hair, often from the peasant women of Italy) are fashioned on delicately tinted, skin-colored fabric or fiber-glass base, and are carefully matched in color and texture to the customer's remaining locks. The whole thing is generally affixed to the scalp by a couple of pieces of centrally stationed tape plus a smattering of adhesive cement around the edges. The new hairpieces...
...begins to fix the Sand Pebble's decrepit coal-burning monstrosity-and, worse, agonizingly tries to teach a Chinese coolie how steam drives the pistons-he puts the whole ship in an uproar. The Chinese are not supposed to grasp theory. Engine work is coolie labor. The intricate fabric of protective illusion cannot bear the slightest intrusion of reality...
...about them to hide the suit that never got wet or to match the short shorts (Bermudas are now for bicycling only) that came with the outfit. They may still have one in jersey left over from last summer but, more likely they will follow the trend to offbeat fabrics ranging all the way from suede to satin. An occasional girl will turn up in a plain old vanilla terry-cloth jacket or playsuit, but most of her fellow travelers will sport the same fabric colored purple, cerise or tangerine. The beach-bound set will wander the islands in shirts...
...emerge. I put in, I wipe out, I put back in. I change the shape of the shoulders, move the nose up and down." Jones's esthetic instinct is satisfied only after he has achieved the ectopasmic ambiguity that is his hallmark. "The figure is woven into the fabric of the surface," he explains. "The figures are hinged onto this darkness the way people are hinged onto life...