Word: gnomic
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...think of it as a compromise to write music that means something to the player and listener," says Zwilich, who lives in New York City. Indeed, although she studied at the Juilliard School with Elliott Carter and the late Roger Sessions, both masters of almost gnomic complexity, Zwilich writes in a disarmingly open style. On the page her music looks as clear as Brahms'; to the ear it sounds as bold and vigorous as Shostakovich's or Prokofiev's. But it always remains her own. Says she: "The more I am true to myself, the more accessible I seem...
...great deal happens in the novel: a cerebral, surly young man awaiting induction into the Army loiters through his days and keeps a journal filled with gnomic entries: "We are all drawn toward the same craters of the spirit--to know what we are and what we are for, to know our purpose, to seek grace." There was an originality to this insight; it was possible to live a meaningful life on one's own terms, to secularize spirituality...
...take sides, join causes or reveal anything interesting about his private life. He is reputed to enjoy rugby, practice vegetarianism, and to live in a house with formidable electronic defenses, but the truth is anyone's guess; in accordance with postmodern tradition, all personal questions are deflected with gnomic asides about illusion and reality. And yet, and yet. When all the literary games are done and his last sentence deconstructed, Coetzee will be remembered for something quite simple: here was a writer who described, more truly than any other, what it was to be white and conscious in the face...
...that says nothing about the way the movie from time to time slams to a halt so that gnomic thoughts on what it may mean can be exchanged. In the end, beneath the philosophical tosh and the high-blown action, this movie is just good guys (and gals)--basically, terrifically buff liberal humanists--vs. bad guys, who are, yes, soulless machines, though very nicely dressed...
Though it was not clear at the time, the attempt to build a unified international position on Iraq died that day. Everything that followed--the gnomic reports by Hans Blix, the U.N.'s chief biochemical-weapons inspector; Powell's presentation of new intelligence on Saddam's WMD capabilities; increasingly frantic British efforts to forge a new resolution that might win a majority of the Council--was no more than flowers on the coffin of Resolution 1441. Powell was furious at the Martin Luther King Day ambush. "He had won an internal debate within the Administration...