Word: grim
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Palestinian guerrillas armed with automatic weapons offered a grim demonstration of that philosophy last month when they ambushed an Israeli patrol in the Gaza Strip and killed two soldiers. But stepped-up Palestinian violence will only beget more violence from Israel. Warned Brigadier General Zvi Poleg, who commands Israeli forces in Gaza: "The rules of the game change when lethal weapons are used against soldiers...
...grim central image of modern spy literature is the death of Alec Leamas, shot by G.D.R. Grenzpolizisten at the Wall in the last scene of The Spy Who Came In from the Cold. John le Carre's bleak and entirely believable novel was published in 1963, only two years after the East German regime built the Wall. Since then, Le Carre's surviving operatives and those of Len Deighton, another notable English spymaster, have made dodgy livings evading Vopos at the Wall, armed with little but false passports and the turned-up collars of their raincoats...
...PEOPLE AND UNCOLLECTED STORIES by Bernard Malamud (Farrar, Straus & Giroux; $18.95). This posthumous volume includes an unfinished novel and 16 short stories never before collected in book form. The novel is little more than a sketch of what might have been, but the stories -- grim and comical in equal measure -- offer poignant reminders of Malamud's gift and his stature as an American master...
...permeable, it is a good deal easier to accept. In the end it does not matter whether Eastern Europe's Communists are reforming out of conviction or if, as one East German protest banner put it, THE PEOPLE LEAD -- THE PARTY LIMPS BEHIND. What does matter is that the grim, fearsome Wall, for almost three decades a marker for relentless oppression, has overnight become something far different, a symbol of the failure of regimentation to suppress the human yearning for freedom. Ambassador Herder declared that the Wall will soon "disappear" physically, but it might almost better be left...
...novels, including The Natural and The Assistant, and books of stories such as The Magic Barrel and Idiots First long ago established his place among the best postwar American writers. This triumph was not easily won. Malamud never catered to popular tastes or expectations. His fiction was often as grim as it was enchanting. He wrote, and rewrote, slowly, with consummate care...