Word: layman
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...needed to cope with daily life. What, for example, is the difference between a Treasury bond and a Treasury certificate, or a condominium and a cooperative apartment? Whether the subject is glamour or gold, condos or coops, Network for Learning provides the answers, enlisting experts to explain esoterica in layman's language. Says Jeffrey Hollender, 26, executive director of Network: "We've expanded the bounds of traditional adult education." One of his instructors puts it more succinctly: "We're the fast food of education." The menu offers two entrees: a "one-night stand," running...
...have the whole story in Layman's The Shadow Man. Layman's book is the best of its kind around today, and even without the help of Lillian Hellman, he has pieced together the life in a readable, if somewhat stodgy account. It's workmanlike biography of an unworkmanlike man, with none of the flair that marked Hammett's writing and none of the hard sensibilities he made so popular. In some respects, it's not nearly as interesting as Hammett's fiction, since Hammett's Ops have more to say about the state of things in the urban steamvat...
Biographer Richard Layman has gathered most of the clues to this puzzling case. He got no help from Playwright Lillian Hellman, Hammett's friend and frequent companion during the last 30 years of his life, but this handicap is not crippling. Hammett had done his best work by the time he met Hellman. The crucial years, when he raised pulp writing to the level of art, were already behind...
...Layman argues that "Hellman's influence" chiefly led Hammett into liberal, antifascist crusades in the late 1930s. This may explain his initiation but not the zealousness that followed. In 1937, like many writers at the time, he became a champion of the Loyalist side in the Spanish Civil War. By 1940 he had moved far to the left and was working to get the Communist Party slate on state ballots in time for the upcoming election. His conversion was swift and complete. Writes Layman: "It seems likely from the responsibilities Hammett was given for Communist activities that he joined...
...Layman avoids speculation and sticks to the facts...