Word: freak
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Because, it would seem, he has read too much Dostoyevsky. From literature's most famous betting freak he has learned that the essence of heroism lies in seeking out risks you do not have to take. In Axel's case, recklessness takes the form of exercising a willed belief that Harvard and ten is a credible basketball...
...before he was San-fordized, or Philip Roth confronting his middle-class American Jewish background in ways that have been judged, perhaps too hastily, as self-hateful and tasteless. Likewise, many blacks may find themselves both amused and offended by The Last Days of Louisiana Red, a combination circus freak show, detective story, Negro Dead Sea Scroll and improvised black-studies program...
...Fake or Freak. The author has warned that there must be no critical truffling in his works for deep-lying meanings. His word games in Harlequins justify the warning. Butterflies, however, may be chased. Nabokov, for instance, taught at Cornell University after emigrating to the U.S., and his clownish alter ego taught at "Quirn." The Oxford English Dictionary directs the student to "Quern," which derives in its first definition from a variety of languages, including old High German, Swedish and Russian ("Zhernov"), and means "a simple apparatus for grinding corn." The second definition is "a large piece of ice." These...
...this Age of the Blahs, many thousands of Americans are finding a new way to assuage money worries, insomnia, angst, neuroticism and neglect of liver and lungs. Their new-found route to tranquillity is yoga. Long regarded as a freak clique, yoga practitioners in virtually every community in the country, from suburb to ghetto, Y.M.C.A.s to churches and American Legion halls, are discovering that yoga, shorn of incantatory mysticism, is a highly practical way to relax tensions, tone up the physique, reduce the embonpoint and turn off tranquilizers, cholesterol-laden food, even smoking and drinking. In short, yoga, no longer...
...Reed. There is something about Lou Reed that makes him appealing to a circumscribed strata of the present-day rock culture. It is almost as impossible to penetrate the opaque image that Reed has projected for about a decade as it is to generalize about the classic Reed freak. There are people who have been staunch followers of Reed since his days with the Velvet Underground. Then there are those who discovered Reed with the debut of his solo career. The latter, embarrassed to admit the fact that they were seven years late, quickly bought up all the Velvets previously...