Word: french
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...forward. They are mounted at the tail end and pitched ahead at a 35° angle. The configuration increases lift, reduces drag, prevents stall outs, and allows the X-29A to turn on a dime at supersonic speeds. Just behind the cockpit are gill-like projections called canards, the French word for ducks. Indeed, the plane resembles a mallard in full flight...
This book, published in France four years ago, has a radically different setting the working-class world of a grim little town outside Lille, and the author has been lectured by French critics for attempting it. She borrowed the plot from a 1965 short story by Jean Hougron, who brought suit against her; Sagan won the case on appeal. The outline is familiar maybe even a bit hoary: Gueret, a downtrodden bookkeeper, despised by his bosses and his landlady, stumbles upon a cache of jewels. They were lost in the course of a murder, which Gueret did not commit...
...American publisher came up with a blithe title like Salad Days (the French title is Le Chien Couchant] for this predictable little morality tale is hard to figure out. Sagan is writing against her strength. She seems to have little access to these pinched minds, so that her customary grace notes-sly humor, sheer oddity-are rarely struck. But the story is told in sure-handed fashion, and it is flawlessly paced. Gueret at least is a convincing character, and the author takes an unexpectedly hearty interest in his clumsy pursuit of Mme. Biron. The French critics are doubtless right...
...Jean-Léon Gérôme and England's John Frederick Lewis, kept the crowds coming to the shows organized by the Academic des Beaux-Arts in Paris and the Royal Academy in London. By the turn of the 20th century a host of French and English artists, and a few venturesome Americans, had been drawn by the lure of "the Orient": a term that then denoted not the Far East but the Middle East and North Africa...
SEEKING DIVORCE. Mariana Simionescu, 27, former Rumanian tennis star who gave up her career to be a tournament wife; and Bjŏrn Borg, 28, alltime tennis great (five Wimbledon championships, six French Open titles) who retired last year after international competition stopped being "fun"; by mutual consent after four years of marriage, no children; in Monte Carlo...