Word: haplessness
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...present revival at Manhattan's Circle in the Square Theater is a gutsplitter. An accident immures Whiteside (Ellis Rabb) in an upper-middle-class home in a Midwestern backwater town. From his imperial wheelchair he plays an epigrammatic Nero to the hapless inhabitants. He forbids his hosts to use the telephone, tries to sabotage the love affair of his selfless secretary (Maureen Anderman), and makes his nurse rue the day that she first heard of Florence Nightingale...
Some of these pyrotechnics fizzle, and all of them operate in a narrative void. One reason Psycho continues to disturb is that Screenwriter Joseph Stefano gave Norman Bates and his hapless victims some emotional resonance. Even if you never screamed while watching Psycho, you could appreciate it for the sense it gave of seemingly ordinary people drawn into a swamp of frustrations and aggressions. De Palma's movies no longer explore these tensions; they have become exhibitions of a master puppeteer pulling high-tension strings. In Dressed to Kill, the marionettes on-screen still respond to De Palma...
...hapless victim of any of these ails, the quest for help may be as exasperating as the pain itself. Too often, each specialist who is consulted has a different explanation of what is wrong and, more vexing, a different way of setting it right. For example, some doctors still speak of lumbago and sciatica. But these are notoriously imprecise terms for generalized pain in the lower back or neighboring areas that may be the consequence of various difficulties. Says Murray Goldstein, deputy director of the National Institute of Neurological and Communicative Disorders and Stroke: "All treatments are controversial...
Imagine, if you will, Howard Cosell intoning in his inimitable manner: "The locales--Detroit's Cobo Hall, home of the hapless Pistons, and Madison Square Garden in New York, home of Sonny Werblin (the man who signed Joe Willie Namath thereby altering forever the face of football) and his corporate-athletic empire. The promoters--the national organizations some call 'the parties.' The contestants...
...Stanley hits a home run: "It would happen again, in other ball parks, in other seasons; and if Stanley had been able to cause it instead of having it happen to him, he would be in the major leagues." Author Andre Dubus, 43, specializes in such people, interested but hapless spectators of their own lives. Although many of his characters are physically rooted in New England mill towns, they walk the streets as moral transients. "Should and shouldn't don't have much to do with feelings," says one. Lacking the control that a sense of right might...