Word: illicitness
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Author Gordimer, a Johanne burger herself, tours this world of racial strangers with easy accuracy. When she describes a party, white or mixed, a hunting trip, or an illicit visit to a colored shebeen (speakeasy), there is always a byproduct of insights into what is meant by every word or act. When she has finished with Toby Hood, he is a changed man. Any reader who shares Toby's indifference may feel at least the beginnings of a similar change of heart...
...when the repeal of Prohibition is voted in Oklahoma, I wonder whether Candidate Howard Edmondson (presupposing he has an illicit bottle stashed away somewhere) will commute the sentences of men now serving long sentences in the state's prisons for having similar tastes...
Zombis in Hipster-land. This bizarre rite, called the "cinnamon caper," is disdained by Author Gutwillig's hero Tom Freeman, but he and his pals indulge in such mellow old youth-novel capers as fornication, abortion, homosexuality and illicit Negro-white love affairs. These goings-on take place at or near an Ivy Leaguish college named Arden that physically resembles Cornell, but the true locale is hipsterland, and the hero's quest for identity is as manic as if he were looking for a hypodermic needle in a haystack. Stylistically, Author Gutwillig tries to evoke Scott Fitzgerald...
...Illicit by Another Name. When Isa and Maurice cannot kill their illicit love, they decide to clear its name. They call it "passion" and proceed to enjoy it. But with Belle's death, Isa feels the birthpangs of guilt ("dead . . . she divided us forever"). Isa and Maurice quarrel, Gallic-fashion, over the disposition of La Fouve. Then the women again close ranks, and that episodic intruder, man, is expelled bewildered from this strange Garden of Eves. With fitting irony, Maurice leaves Isa pregnant with a daughter to carry on the cycle of gynarchy...
...techniques they use to probe the mind are "open to reservations," however praiseworthy the ends. Some secrets, he said, "can absolutely not be unveiled, even to one prudent person." The Pope also condemned the use of lie detectors. Explained a Vatican official: "The lie detector is always illicit, even with the consent of the subject. Just as a man may not consent to euthanasia because religious law forbids him from doing away with himself, so he may not destroy his own freedom to answer or not according to his own judgment. Those who ask for a lie-detector test...