Word: flotsam
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...bottom composed of two centuries of solidified human rubbish, it is often studded with beer cans, packing crates and half-submerged logs. Auxiliary coast guardsmen spent seven days policing the river before last week's President's Cup Regatta-knowing full well that a bit of flotsam could shatter the fragile hull of a hydroplane hurtling across the water at 150 m.p.h. or more...
Since then, a great tidal wash of malice and misunderstanding has oscillated in the Atlantic. Malcolm Bradbury's Stepping Westward is the latest fictional flotsam on this tide. It is a pointed little farce, and as cultural anthropology it offers a thoughtful thesis to such British and American minds as can rise above the trousers-pants hassle. The Englishman in the U.S., it demonstrates, is no longer a comic figure known for his arrogance, social pretension, accent or what not. He is a switched-off, not-with-it fellow whose vague uncertainties about the liberal vision of life reflect...
...tanned, lanky Hamilton, 26, whose attributes are more highly esteemed by Hollywood starlets than by the movie critics, comes to such sumptuous living, he says, via a "sort of flotsam and jetsam route"-Memphis, Palm Beach, Manhattan, 25 different schools. His late father was a musician and perfume company executive. His Southern-born mother, George says, is "an Auntie Mame, but more warm and contemporary," who has been married and divorced four times...
...Viet Nam? He received a telegram on the battlefield which read: 'We regret to inform you that your mother and father were killed "in action" in Los Angeles.' " When a Mississippi anti-poverty program folded, Ward bade farewell to the "slew-footed, unsoaped ragtag of human flotsam who were roaming Mississippi to create hate and provoke a killing...
More than two hours passed before the first flotsam of disaster bobbed to the ocean surface. Then Coast Guardsmen began fishing out the remains: shreds of metal covered with flesh, a child's mitten, a blue snowsuit, a stewardess' jacket, a woman's mohair coat, a paperback copy of Call It Sleep, and-eventually-the body of a little boy. Part of the cockpit floated up, and when rescuers began to lift it out of the water, the headless body of a crew member flopped out into the water...