Word: imperfectible
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
DIED. Ilka Chase, 72, ultrasophisticated actress, author and wit; of internal hemorrhage; in Mexico City. While pursuing an acting career on stage (The Women, Forsaking All Others) and screen (Now, Voyager; Fast and Loose), Chase wrote more than a dozen books, including her memoirs Past Imperfect. The self-image she projected was that of a cool, sharp-tongued woman. If Journalist Dorothy Thompson didn't know as much as God, Chase once remarked, she most certainly knew as much...
Like its hero, The Honourable Schoolboy is all too obviously imperfect. In his effort to detail the slow, agonizing life of the aging spy, le Carre has gone overboard, producing a novel of epic proportions that conveys a theme of only moderate importance. What begins as a portrait of tired, dirty, washed-out and disillusioning reality becomes a frequently tedious chronicle of flatulent, hemmorhoidal and unnecessarily repulsive dreariness. The author uses a bludgeon when a tap on the shoulder would suffice--and heavy-handedness goes beyond his unsubtle attempts to expose the spy game. Le Carre's blatant symbolism...
...opposition, the pact has the backing of a very wide spectrum of informed opinion, including conservatives like Bill Buckley and John Wayne. Four successive Presidents-Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and now Jimmy Carter-have backed negotiations and pushed them along. Faults may be found with an imperfect document in a not so perfect world, but its basic realism has not been questioned by those with some familiarity with the issue. Why, then, the rancorous debate? Says former Secretary of State Dean Rusk, who testified on behalf of the pact: "A mistake was made in the beginning...
...World War I Europe, no financier intended to go broke building glass towers and ideal suburbs that nobody wanted to live in. And quite right too: for little in the history of architecture since the pharaohs quite equals the lofty disregard of human needs-the ordinary instinctive behavior of imperfect people wanting comfort-implicit in so many constructivist/Bauhaus designs...
...musician, whose natural medium is the most eloquent of languages, recourse to the more imperfect vocabulary of words must be a little like walking on stilts. And as for the dubious business of autobiography, it is a rare performer who can claim the effort of self-expression at the typewriter one-half as successful or as justified as the vibrant communication from stage and recording studio...