Word: grammars
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Young Colin Saville does well in his "eleven-plus" exam, wins the scholarship to a prestigious grammar school and is considered to be university material. The time is just after World War II, and the English educational system has begun its shift from the old-boy network to the creation of a meritocracy. Like D.H. Lawrence's characters in Sons and Lovers, Colin's father is abraded by a life in the coal pits, and his mother by poverty and sickness, but there seems to be no limit to what the boy can achieve...
Throughout the six-day convention, competition for ten coveted rosettes was, ipso facto, difficult indeed. Contenders in the Pentathlon had to work against the clock in proving to a computer their mastery of mythology, grammar and history. Nearby classrooms resounded to the ring of Ovid and Livy as the oratorical-minded -swathed in togas-declaimed before judges. Other judges trod carefully past papier-mache Pantheons and temples and an intricate mosaic depicting Medea fleeing to Athens, constructed from rice, grits and glue by a Tennessee contestant...
...being too dry and dusty. But the appeal of the arcanum shows signs of reviving Latin, along with the current educational drift back to basics. New courses in mythology and literature in translation have attracted students too. One innovative, popular program-used in ghetto schools to reinforce basic English grammar-even teaches conversational Latin by audiovisual methods. Besides, says Minter, "the classics still have a snob appeal-which we try to play to the hilt...
...just before his escape. He was dressed in prison blues and a gold windbreaker, and he looked fine, she recalls, "much better than his old pictures, and with good color in his face." His voice was high-pitched, and he spoke in short, broken sentences. His grammar was bad, but his mind was "clever and cunning." Ray rarely gestured, showed absolutely no sense of humor and projected the air of being a loner. He started out sitting next to his latest attorney, Jack Kershaw of Nashville, but gradually inched away during the two-hour interview until...
Vladimir Nabokov has lived all his adult life as an endangered (and dangerous) species. Woe unto the literary pretender who does not get his facts and grammar straight. Titled men of letters must be particularly careful. Edmund Wilson audaciously questioned Nabokov's Russian and was mauled by return mail. Critic George Steiner was the victim of one of the neatest decapitations in literary history. Responding to a generously appreciative essay, Nabokov wrote that "Mr. Steiner's article ("Extraterritorial") is built on solid abstractions and opaque generalizations. A few specific items can be made out and should be corrected...