Word: inverted
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...unwarranted. It is fascinating to watch a major writer re-examine his life, trying to extricate reality from the tales it later inspired. Sometimes, as he has so often pointed out, the gap between the two proves enormous. Roth describes his Newark childhood in warm, elegiac terms that completely invert the cramped, maddening domesticity endured by Alexander Portnoy: "Our lower- middle-class neighborhood of houses and shops -- a few square miles of tree-lined streets at the corner of the city bordering on residential Hillside and semi-industrial Irvington -- was as safe and peaceful a haven...
...they inhabit an unseen world where they play an elaborate game of spy and counterspy, conducted with high solemnity and utter ruthlessness. This emotional tinderbox is ignited when the espionage is discovered by an unstable outsider who believes he has found evidence of treason. Rendell's trademark is to invert the classic adventure story: rather than transmute ordinary men into heroes, exceptional events crush them into madness...
...came to light. Vickers can hardly be called indiscreet for ransacking them. After all, the diarist himself believed that his record of snobbism and social vaulting, of erotic triumphs and humiliations would make "amusing reading" someday. He was correct, but the most remarkable passages are not those of the invert. Fame was Beaton's aphrodisiac, and if heterosexuality was required for a brilliant conquest, well then, he would try that costume for a while. When he met Greta Garbo after World War II, he energetically seduced her. "I am so unexpectedly violent and have such unlicensed energy when called upon...
...show or movie was The Last Time I Saw Paris. He mercilessly cut any song that did not fit its situation. Conversely, he was a great hoarder and tinkerer. Alter just a few bars of Till the Clouds Roll By and presto! it becomes Look for the Silver Lining. Invert the melody, depress the tempo and voila! the Cotton Blossom theme from Show Boat is alchemized into Ol' Man River...
...brilliance of George Orwell's decision to invert the last two digits of 1948 (the year he was completing 1984) is that it gave his readers a point to watch for in their own time. So they have watched, with trepidation and titillation, up to the present when the fatal year is about to make its entrance. For those who trusted Orwell's gloomy vision the results may seem disappointing. Some Soviet bloc countries and several scattered dictatorships may be living close to the "Freedom Is Slavery" of Orwell's imagination, but among the democracies...