Word: fictions
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...public was favored with novels by, yes, Joan Collins, Ivana Trump, Martina Navratilova, Britt Ekland and supermodel Naomi Campbell, whose publisher provided her with a 250-word synopsis of her book so that she would be able to discuss it with reporters. Fabio has published fiction too. "He was fabulous on ideas," says Ellen Edwards, who edited the chesty male model...
...would be comforting to assume that the Collins--Random House imbroglio arose because the publisher finally felt shame at the prospect of putting out more bad prose under a big name. But it is equally possible, as Collins claims, that Random House decided the market for brand-label fiction was collapsing (or at least the market for the Joan Collins brand, once Dynasty left the air in 1989) and that the publisher could never earn back the $4 million it had promised the eager author...
...unexceptionable goals, concedes Mary Lefkowitz, a professor of humanities at Wellesley. But in a fierce little polemic called Not Out of Africa (BasicBooks; 222 pages; $24), she argues that the Afrocentrists substitute pseudo history for the real thing. As she writes, "The ancient Egypt described by Afrocentrists is a fiction...
...real problem with Afrocentrism, Lefkowitz concludes, is not that its "truths" about Greece and Egypt are false. More dangerous is the underlying attitude that all history is fiction, which can be manipulated at will for political ends. The enthronement of this view on campus, Lefkowitz warns, means the death of academic discourse as we know it. Sadly, that seems to be happening. Better for all if Not Out of Africa stirs an equally fierce--and fair--polemic from the other side...
Annihilating diversions in an age of addictive entertainment is one of Wallace's big themes. His variations sometimes come from stock dystopian fiction. But his drug scenes at a detox center have the bumpy rhythms and details that suggests reality rather than fantasy: "Tiny Ewell, in a blue suit and laser chronometer and tiny shoes whose shine you could read by, is sharing a dirty aluminum ashtray with Nell Gunther, who has a glass eye which she amuses herself by usually wearing so the pupil and iris face in and the dead white and tiny manufacturer's specifications...