Word: habitant
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This June, I've taken that motto and extended it to the NBA and major league baseball. During the NBA finals, for example, I made a habit of obnoxious celebrations whenever the Knicks screwed up or the Rockets made a brilliant play...
...appear not in the first chapter of the latest Stephen King novel but rather in E.L. Doctorow's The Waterworks (Random House; 253 pages; $23). This is not entirely unexpected. The author of such luminous page turners as Ragtime, World's Fair and Billy Bathgate has made it a habit to surprise his readers with each new book. His central concerns -- the unavoidable sway of historical forces, the insidious effects of the powerful upon the powerless -- have remained constant, but he has chosen a variety of fictional voices and techniques to bring them to life. Even longtime readers, though...
Heller has a disconcerting habit of saying something deeply profound and then instantly undercutting it with a wry smile and a self-effacing joke. People tend to smile when asked about him, and everyone has a favorite "the time that Josh..." story. But behind the exuberant antics is a brilliant scientist recommended for a summa degree by the Computer Science Department and a Torah scholar who recently finished reading the Mishnah in just over a year, an almost unheard-of project. And then there's the Hasty Pudding script he's working...
...social life was limited to churchbreakfasts after choir, and strolls along theriver with conscientious objectors (like Harry whorode me on his bicycle handlebars) or boysclassified 4-F (like Eugene who was frequentlylate to class due to his habit of swooning in themiddle of Mass...
When Cormac McCarthy's sixth novel, All the Pretty Horses, won the National Book Award last year, journalists naturally wanted a word with the author. McCarthy possesses a lifelong habit of refusing questions, however. As a Texas lawyer buddy says, "He solicits publicity like a man evading process." A prestigious literary honor did nothing to change his mind; for that matter, he didn't go pick up the award. It made for a good story all the same. Here was a man with a fine hand with the language and a clear scope on the darkness out there, an impoverished...