Word: heros
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...like the posteriorof one of his protagonist's many women:"gray-clad...firm but a touch more ample than [is]locally fashionable..." Though costumed in theheavily scented, rarefied air of the uptownapartments of the pretentious and over-educated,the novel, in keeping with the spirit of its(anti)hero, is at heart an ever-so-slightlydoddering, luscious, highly sexualized andself-satirical backwards glance at a ratherunremarkable life of letters. His absolutelysucculent, if somewhat condescending descriptionsof leggy, perpetually nude women aside, Updikeexcels in dialogue, cocktail party dialogue, rifewith the sarcastic, incisive mental commentary ofBech. Some of the most revealing scenes...
Stine (Christian Roulleau '01) is a hack writer who churns out detective pulp to feed the studios, living vicariously through his fictional hero and alter ego, the hardboiled gumshoe Stone (Dan Berwick '01). As Stine and his artistic integrity wrestle ineffectually with Buddy Fidler (Kevin Meyers '02), the big cheese at the studio, to produce a ratings safe screenplay, the hapless writer fantasizes by typewriter Stone's life of adventure. The fiction parallels the reality, and the reality is finally defined by the fiction, all in a convoluted but highly enjoyable way. Throughout, a bristling stable of beautiful, gutsy women...
While reading Billy Dead, the reader is trapped with Ray's skewed vision of the world and, what is worse, his sometimes hideously rambling narrative. To pull a novel off with a hero or heroine essentially isolated from society, the protagonist has to be vivid and interesting, which is why this novel suffers by any comparison to Bastard out of Carolina or any other tale of an abusive childhood. While Ruth Anne Boatwright remains in the reader's memory, Ray Johnson is easily forgotten, with only the horrible tales of abuse to vaguely haunt the readers, tales of suffering with...
...Right. He'd be a hero in Italy. He's a courageous...
...investing in the political repression of the Ogoni people, Harvard weakens its educational mission and contributes to social regression. I ask the Corporation to remove this ugly stain from our intellectual community and our legacy, to wash our hands of the deplorable execution of the modern hero Ken Saro-Wiwa and to divest all $34 million from Shell...