Word: grimness
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
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...
...bodied go through a 17-week training course when they are 20 years old and annual refresher courses and deployments of three weeks or more, depending on their rank, until they are 32, when the demands lessen a bit. For those who refuse to join up, the options are grim. Each year several hundred Swiss are convicted of refusing to serve, and many of them spend three to twelve months in jail...
...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...
...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...