Word: groundful
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...aligned with U.S. peacemaking efforts - could ignite a new Palestinian intifada. And if a new confrontation does occur, it's a safe bet that there'll be voices on both sides blaming President Obama for having raised unrealistic expectations and prompting both sides to press their claims on the ground...
...from ending the conflict in Afghanistan, President Obama came into office declaring it the "war of necessity", and immediately ordered a further 21,000 U.S. troops into the fight. Since then, the sheer scale of the challenge has become apparent to his Administration, particularly after his commander on the ground said a further 40,000 troops were needed to turn the situation around. Even if, as now seems possible, Obama seeks a political solution in Afghanistan that involves some sort of power-sharing deal with the Taliban, the implementation of that policy won't look much like peacemaking. The Taliban...
There are many parallels between your last book, a graphic novel called The Three Incestuous Sisters, and Her Fearful Symmetry. Is there something in the way that sisters interact, in your mind, that makes those relationships fertile ground for stories to grow out of? Yes, though I should hasten to add that my relationship with my own sisters is idyllic and lovely. However, there's so much potential for rivalry and competition. But then there are all the upsides of companionship and that "Who knows you better than your sister?" feeling...
London is literature's Victorian ghost-story capital. Did you have to grapple with everything that came before in that genre? I definitely wanted to ground my story in all the stuff that had come before. A couple of reviewers have faulted me for using all these terrible old clichés, but that was actually the project - to take all the tropes of the 19th century English novel and try to reanimate them. The book is definitely supposed to comment and hopefully expand on London ghost stories of yore...
...Around the same time, Occidental was having problems. In the late 1960s the company bought Hooker Chemical Co. in a effort to diversify. But in the 1970s, allegations surfaced that toxic waste that Hooker dumped into the ground during the 1940s and early '50s was causing severe health problems in Niagara's Love Canal neighborhood. Oxy Pete needed cash to shore up this and other problems, and its CEO, Armand Hammer - flamboyant, powerful and ultimately corrupt - came up with a solution: raid the retirement kitty. Amazingly, this was legal at the time, and Hammer wasn't alone in doing...