Word: grimmest
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GEORGE ORWELL disappeared in 1950, before the Cold War entered its grimmest phase. He was spared the choices which faced other anticommunist leftists in the collision of the American and Soviet superstates. Orwell had tried desperately to carve out a place for a radical democratic socialism which would have no need either to defend the tergiversations of Stalin and his heirs in Moscow or to cling to American capitalism, which he regarded with contempt and horror. During the last years of his life he felt the opportunity for such a movement slipping away, and one is left to wonder...
...predicted that he would set son against father, daughter against mother. Christianity has often explained those "dark sayings" as angry hyperbole or simple pessimism about the acceptance of his revolutionary teachings, but from time to time a hard core of believers has chosen to take the Nazarene at his grimmest word. The latest group to do so is a controversial sect of young Christians who call themselves, with grand self-righteousness, the Children...
...Kennedy has had an extraordinary education in public affairs: more than a decade at the heart of American politics and power, tutored by a President and by some of the grimmest personal experiences in the nation's history. He has located some central issues ?civil and constitutional rights, health care, war, housing?and approached them with an uncomplicated and often effective passion. Of course, he is not unique in that...
...terrible century no one has to itemize what happens in a prison camp. It all happens in this play. It is horrible, cruel, and heartrending. But beneath it all, there are two buoyancies. One is Solzhenitsyn's indestructible humanity. The other is that this is a game, the grimmest game men can play: survival. A Polish sausage, a woman's body, a bottle of vodka-these are the chips. At this gaming table, to lose...
...last week's editorials did not represent an abrupt change for The New Yorker, even Shawn concedes that their tone may have revealed "deeper disquiet." In Shawn's view, this was because the events warranted it. "It was," he said, "one of the grimmest weeks that the country has ever lived through." Then he smiled slightly. "Despite that, there's also a lot of fun in the issue." Dick Nixon may not think so, unless he is in the market for a Rolls...