Word: imperium
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Coward made mock of many social dogmas, but he was a true believer in the imperium of style. Those who had the divine spark got to ride through life on a silk cushion, inventing their own rules and then ignoring them, cutting the boorish infidels down with gay, rapier wit. Thus it is with the merrily amoral ménage in Design for Living, a triangle with some complex emotional geometry. Otto (Frank Langella) and Leo (Raul Julia) are friends; Gilda (Jill Clayburgh) and Otto become lovers; Gilda dumps Otto for Leo; Gilda leaves them both for a stuffy...
...nine decades, Liang took part in most of the great debates and political movements that have swept China since the downfall of the imperium. But throughout, his influence has primarily been restricted to what Alitto has called the literate "middlebrow" strata of Chinese society. Alitto, however, chafed in his role as the chronicler of one man and his influence. Consequently, the book is marred by his attempts to make Liang an overarching symbol for traditional China, striving to capture in one life, the dilemmas of an entire nation confronted with alien cultures and agonizing domestic political choices...