Word: idea
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...time to heal," borrowing from Ecclesiastes. If it actually were a time to heal, that healing called for active therapy, not indolence: Ford led a reign of atrophy. "A time to heal" cannot explain away the nonpareil frivolity of the WIN button (which Ford still defends as a "good idea"); in line with his Calvinistic youth, Ford is begging off his responsibility to a force, in this case history, beyond his control...
Martin can't sustain one narrative idea for more than two of even these decimated pages, anyway. And, unlike his stage appearances, he can't just spreadeagle and say "Excuuuuse me!" when things go wrong. Even so, you had a right to expect more from Martin's book. Maybe one funny piece. Or one funny line...
...style precludes that. Even when he gets a potentially funny idea, he puts it in his title, warning you, and then decapitates any rising titter by tacking some flat line at a moment when a curious twist or jab might have released a legitimate laugh. Martin bypasses the sublime, hurtles through the ridiculous and lands with a splat in the pitiful...
Decadence is a wonderfully versatile idea-like a perfume that gives off different scents depending on a woman's body chemistry and heat. It arouses pleasure, disgust and bombast...
...second model is the metaphor of natural decay, the seasons of human life, for example. Animals, people, have birth, growth, periods of vigor, then decline and death. Do societies obey that pattern? The idea of decadence, of course, implies exactly that. But it seems a risky metaphor. Historians like Arnold Toynbee, like the 14th century Berber Ibn-Khaldun and the 18th century Italian Giovanni Battista Vico, have constructed cyclical theories of civilizations that rise up in vigor, flourish, mature and then fall into decadence. Such theories may sometimes be too deterministic; they might well have failed, for example, to predict...