Word: familiarizes
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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These are the central players in what evolves from a surface entertainment into a deceptively rich and complex novel about coming of age (if not about the age itself). Julian's story brims with figures and rituals familiar to British fiction: barmy relatives, eccentric aristocrats, a public school -- the "English Gulag" -- where the headmaster enjoys hitting boys with sticks. As a teenager, Julian spends a summer in Brittany, where French is taught by Mme. de Normandin and sex by her daughter Barbara. Later, while trying to avoid work in the army, he learns another of life's essential lessons...
These are familiar problems to some residents of California, Arizona and Florida, all states with large colonies of retirees. In Florida 17% of all motorists are 65 and over, and an astonishing 22,268 are 90 or over. In the wealthier districts of metropolises, like Tampa-St. Petersburg and Miami, the profusion of elderly drivers has acquired an unkind nickname: the "cataracts and Cadillacs" syndrome. In 1982 a public hue and cry arose over the driving record of an 81-year-old Miami Beach woman who surrendered her license after a 39-month streak during which she struck eleven people...
...pilots really act in self-defense last week? Were they justified in firing the first shots? No question about it, say former Navy pilots and other experts familiar with the F-14 Tomcat. "I know it sounds strange to the layman to say, 'He pointed his nose at me five times so I shot him,' " conceded a jet-fighter technician. "But it makes sense in aerial combat. Furthermore, if some guy aims a gun at you in a dark alley, you don't ask him whether it's loaded...
...industry for the Morgan Stanley investment firm, wants "to get this thing to be a viable enterprise and sell it to a major airline. They are not in it for the long run." But at least for the short term, the Braniff logo is going to become a familiar sight on U.S. runways...
Building a trustworthy bridge between civilized society and the Grand Guignol is tricky work, and Oates' success has varied from book to book. But American Appetites offers a thoroughly credible version of what is both unbelievable and disturbingly familiar. Her prose is headlong. There are cliches; sentences do not ask to be examined for artful felicities. Pausing seems beside the point. The rush is utterly convincing. Any definition of art that excludes this novel is probably too narrow...