Word: gnomically
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...book, aptly subtitled My Canadian Album, is a mordant, witty brief for the defense of his homeland. As evidence, the Montreal native offers a series of diverse impressions of Canada's past imperfect and present tense. He lunches with Pierre Trudeau, and remembers an earlier Prime Minister, the gnomic William Lyon Mackenzie King, who "nightly for 22 years sat by his crystal ball, beneath an illuminated portrait of his mum, and rapped with her spirit, seeking guidance on how much to tax, when to call an election and where to send the troops." He ventures toward the Arctic Circle...
...Paper Men is not likely to cause defections from entrenched positions on either side. Those unmoved by Golding's work will have little trouble remaining calm once again; a large audience of devoted fans will find their author's gnomic mystifications as fascinating as ever. But no one can dispute how sharply Golding has made a break with some of his old habits. Unfortunately, he does not abandon his worst ones. At first, the customary mixture of history, allegory and determinist philosophy seems absent. Golding begins with a plausible version of the here and now, and introduces...
...Times, Harold Pinter's 1971 play, is perhaps his most gnomic meditation on this, his most preoccupying theme. A woman named Anna (Jane Alexander) comes to visit her roommate of 20 years before. She discovers (if she did not already know) that Kate (Marsha Mason) is married to a man named Deeley (Anthony Hopkins), with whom Anna had some ambiguous contact. Anna has a taste for hot climates, hard angles and social dominance. Kate prefers the steam from her long baths, or a heavy rain to blur reality...
...indeed because of, his unassuming pacifism, the unworldly scholar was often unable to dominate his nation's ruthless army. In 1941, for example, Japan's leaders turned to Hirohito while deliberating whether to join the war. Without explanation, the poker-faced monarch proceeded to recite a gnomic waka (a traditional 31-syllable poem) composed by his grandfather, the Meiji emperor: "On the seas surrounding all quarters of the globe/ All people are kin to each other/ Why then do winds and waters of conflict/ Disturb peace among us?" He said no more on the subject...
...shame that Emerson had to harden into a monument, into mere required reading, or worse, the man superseded by Kurt Vonnegut on the course lists. Too many generations came to regard him as a chill, gnomic bore, the best of American aphorists, no doubt, but also the most relentless ("A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds," "Traveling is a fool's paradise," "... fired the shot heard round the world," and even the 1960s' dreamy license, "Do your thing"). His fatally worthy subjects (Self-Reliance, Prudence, Friendship) have oppressed generations of eighth-grade English classes. People should...