Word: fonds
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Unlike their more evanescent brothers of the flesh, the great figures of fiction are not covered by the laws of libel. Did not Sherlock Holmes admirers helplessly endure odious allegations asserting that Dr. Watson was a woman? Accordingly, anyone fond of Midshipman, Lieutenant, Captain, Commodore or Admiral Horatio Hornblower naturally approaches this new biography with suspicion. Will Britain's second greatest seaman, one wonders, be spuriously presented, for example, as a Hermaphrodite Brig? Or Nelson's long-lost younger brother...
Kissinger is fond of calling himself the "Walt Rostow of peace by negotiations"; but in his diplomat's creed, negotiation is merely another tool to enforce one's will, a tool to which overtures, threats, and finally the use of force itself are all fixed as perpetual adjuncts. Kissinger's early advocacy of negotiations, his expressed belief that a compromise could be reached with Hanoi and the NLF, were rooted in the assumption that the overpowering weight of the U. S. military stood behind America's negotiators at every step of the way. And in a situation of fixed objectives...
...created in scholarly biography, Ford's breakdowns, his fibbing, his colossal self-pity seem sad, messy, asinine and above all repetitive. He viewed publishers as "tradesmen" and quarreled with them endlessly. Ford was fond of women and attractive to them, in part because he shared with his hero Tietjens the view that you seduce "a young woman in order to be able to finish your talks with her." Yet one feels he fully deserved Violet Hunt, the intellectual succubus for whom he broke up his first marriage in 1909 and who became the model for one of fiction...
These days, any experienced romantic reader would greet each page like a fond landmark on a trip back home. Martha is a typical heroine: shy but proud, quick with the truth but slow to subtlety, attractive in certain lights but no raving beauty. Connan is a worthy offspring of Mr. Rochester, a weary, sardonic fellow who never gets around to explaining the only thing the heroine has to know. Romantic props abound: deliciously enigmatic dreams, shadows in windows, gossiping servants, a horse that throws the child. Even the nomenclature is classic: Alvean, Gillyflower, Celestine...
...Liberals" are fond of casting at us the comparison with Nazi tactics during the Weimar Republic period in Germany. Besides inviting these critics to consider the content of our program, I would suggest that they take a closer look at this period in German history, for there is a lesson to be learned about the supposed "absolute" validity of the traditional liberties and the classical liberalism which supports them...