Word: ironizing
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...place despite significant misgivings. Reading about the disaster for the second time, the reader feels a certain rage at the arrogance and idiocy that caused it, and cares enough about the astronauts--who had no inkling of the O-ring difficulty--to grieve for them. None but the most iron-hearted cynic could enjoy a space shuttle joke after reading this book...
...Iron and Silk is not so much a treatise on modern Chinese mores as a series of telling vignettes. When a clerical worker at the college committed suicide, her funeral could not be held or her family consoled until, four days later, local Communist Party officials announced that "her problems were personal and not political." Salzman killed a rat in his classroom, and his students merrily escorted him and his quarry to the local Rat Collection Office, where he was entitled to a 5 cents bounty. A young man teaching Salzman calligraphy was surprised when the American confided that...
Terry O'Quinn as the stepfather carries the burden of this suspense expertly, equally convincing in all his character's twisted levels of reality. His abrupt facial shifts from genial daddy to iron-jawed psycho are scary as hell--the expressions of contained violence, forced cheer, and wistful longing that flicker through this dude's eyes would shame many a Max Factor model. This guy really wants a happy family, and you see it in his face as he pitifully watches happy neighbors prancing around their lawns. Gotta love his end, it's just his means that send Oedipal chills...
COMING OFF COPLEY STREET'S opulent row of brownstones and boutiques, my first impression was that I had stumbled into the backroom of an unkempt--but uppercrust--Kinney's shoe store. Behind me was an enormous cut-glass, iron trellised, oak door; tumbling up to the ceiling on my left and right was a staggered tier of oak shelves, randomly crowded with shoes. Two clues that it wasn't Kinney's: the shoes, chunked with ice and vaguely steaming socky odor, were obviously not for sale; plus, the oak door, creaking shut behind me, was gilt with the words "International...
...Aspiring suburban housewife seeks aspiring young urban professional. I will iron your oxfords if you take me out for sushi...